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Week 5: Interrogating Twitter; Peer Critique Workshop

Now that everyone has gathered artifacts and selected a software program for the Video Narrative assignment, your videos should be looking like … well, videos, not just collections of pictures. As you assemble your video, remember the advice we heard from Ira Glass and be ruthless about revising and editing your work.

To help you focus on your videos, I have postponed our next reading assignment in Net Smart, and I have added some additional workshop time to our class sessions next week. Here’s how we’ll spend our time in class:

  • On Monday, we will begin by “interrogating” Twitter’s official interfaces and several third-party Twitter applications. Before you come to class, please read Daniel Jalkut’s “Elements of Twitter Style” and “How to Cultivate a Personal Learning Network: Tips from Howard Rheingold” by Chuck Frey. In addition, you should install one of Twitter’s official applications on your laptop, your iPad, or your phone, then install at least one third-party application on one of these devices. (There are lots of ways to find third-party applications. You can start with Wikipedia’s list, or you can search for “Best Twitter application for [insert your platform]” to find recommendations from other Twitter users.) This should probably go without saying, but just in case, you should come to class with whatever device (laptop, iPad, or phone) you used to install these Twitter applications. After we complete our Twitter exercise, we will spend the remainder of class in workshop mode, so be sure to have access to your video narrative files in class.
  • Wednesday’s entire class will be devoted to a peer critique workshop. In order to participate in this workshop, you must come to class with a finished, playable video containing your complete video narrative. If you arrive with a half-finished video file and a missing audio track, I will ask you to leave and mark you as absent for the day. I don’t enjoy being a stickler, but in order for this peer critique session to go well, everyone needs to be on equal footing. Showing up unprepared is disrespectful to your peers who have put in the work to finish their projects. If you need help with your video, you can come to my office hours on Tuesday afternoon (1–4) or Wednesday morning (9–noon), but postponing your work on this project until a few hours before class starts is a very risky strategy. (P.S. — Don’t forget to bring your headphones to class!)

If you have questions about these plans, please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll see you in class on Monday. Have a great weekend!