Reflective piece for DTC 375 portfolios

The reflective piece serves as an introduction to your portfolio. It is the first thing I will read, so you have a chance to point out your strengths, to make certain that I notice them as I read through your portfolio. Note: This is not to become an argument for a grade. Instead, it is a chance for you to (a) show me the highlights of your work and (b) show me, on a metacognitive level, what you know about what you have done.

At the least, there are several questions you want to address in the reflective piece:
What are your strengths as a student? What tools have you acquired or improved upon this term? When you look at our rubric, which dimensions do you see as your strongest?

How does the work in your portfolio demonstrate or exemplify your strengths? How do you see your work as connected with your strengths? How did those opportunities help you develop your strengths?

What did you learn in doing this work that you found particularly useful? What process(es) did you use in developing the work to its current state? What did you learn about yourself and your strengths as you did that? This is an opportunity for self-evaluation—a self-assessment that, if done well, will surely influence my reading of your work.

How do your strengths demonstrate that you have achieved the goals of this course (listed on the syllabus)? To what extent has your work also helped to address the Seven Goals for the Baccalaureate?

Basically, again, you want to point out the highlights in your work and to demonstrate that you understand how you achieved those strengths. I’d expect these essays to be 2-5 pages in length, but as with any other assignment, a piece of writing should be as long as it needs to be.

The details:
Remember, portfolios must also contain a revised version of your book review; a one-page analysis of your contributions to your expert group product; three of your best blog entries or responses. Further selections are up to you. The portfolio as a whole should demonstrate your achievement of course objectives.

If you want to use one of your essays for the Jr. Writing Portfolio (which you should already have done!), include the cover sheet with the essay. Feel free to include more than one cover sheet. You can only use one essay from this class in your Jr. Portfolio, but you can have me sign off on more than one and make your choice later.

Please do not bother with fancy folders. They just get in my way. If you are handing in a paper portfolio, staple or paper-clip your work together. If your portfolio is on the Web, then send me the URL in an email message, marked “urgent,” and with DTC 375 in the subject line. If you want your portfolio back (and you will, if you’re using a paper for your Jr. Portfolio), then give it to me in a pre-addressed 8.5x11 manila envelope, so I can mail it to you when I’ve graded it.

Materials for in-class discussion, 4/13. Robotics

So Friday the 13th came on Thursday this month.

Boston Dynamics is a leader in the US. Let's see what they have done.

As if that weren't enough, take a look at Handle.

And Japan has a somewhat different take.

Why should a robot look like a human--or a dog?

And what are the ethical issues behind humanoid robots? How do these issues affect non-humanoid robots?

And, finally, in most systems, the robots won't look like much of anything at all.

Materials for in-class discussion Tuesday, 4/11.

Gaming and Culture

Nowadays, we view the internet as a tool the same way the ancient Greeks saw writing as a tool. It had the power to exploit and give power since it’s a communicatory tool, so we see a lot of the same language sprouting up so we can understand the effect the internet has on knowledge consumption. Now when we apply the same thought process to gaming – to see gaming as a tool instead of entertainment – what happens?

Some of you have seen Jane McGonigal's take on this question.

Here, too, are some ideas from Daphne Bavelier about video games and your brain.

Once we've begun a discussion about video games and cultural changes, we need to think carefully about the ethics of that development. The Gamergate scandal of a couple of years ago revealed the often seamy underside of gaming communities--and of the technologies we all use to form and develop our online communities.

These tools may not be inherently misogynistic or racist, but the power structures they are built in almost always leads to this being a problem because the individuals in a position of power will always refuse to give it up.

Materials for in-class discussion Thursday, 4/6

Femtophotography. Learn it. Use it. Make it yours. It's a coming thing, not in your cell phone, but in the world of "Gee, that's worth geeking about!

Exhibit one: Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. What are the chances, then, that you could actually see a laser burst move through a coke bottle?

Exhibit Two: Ramesh Raskar developed femtophotogtraphy. Here is his TED talk, with several more astonishing capabilities for this technology

And, finally, read more about it.

Materials for in-class discussion, Tuesday, 4/a

Today we'll talk about a different side of big data--the less dangerous part.
I want us to look at a couple of presentations by Hans Rosling, who is widely considered the father of big data-based argument.

Here is the first Rosling presentation

And here is the second one by Rosling

And, moae recently, David McCandless has taken up the torch: with demonstrations using data for all sorts of argumentative purposes

Links relative to paradigm shifts

As I come across stories that detail seismic shifts in one area of business, media, or personal life, I'll post them here. We can refer to them in class, or use them as the basis for future class discussions. Feel free, as you come across such stories, to post your links here, too.

Welcome to Language, Text, and Technology

This course sits at the interface between how we use the tools we create and how the tools we create change us in various ways. We will begin by looking at writing as a technology, thinking about the transition from orality to literacy. Literacy changed our brains, transforming us from associative thinkers to linear thinkers, making us less reliant on our memories, and creating a process of innovation that we now call bootstrapping.

We now live in another change moment, as we add new literacies (visual, computer, symbolic, etc) to our existing textual literacy. How do these new literacies change the set of assumptions upon which we live? If writing changed us in certain ways, how will these new literacies change us? Those are the largest questions that dominate our time together in 375.

I look forward to this journey with you!