ENGW 3332: Writing Online

This update will be short and sweet, but feel free to contact me if you have any questions about our plans. Here’s a quick overview of how we’ll spend our time in class during Week 6:

• On Tuesday we will briefly discuss the importance of information architecture as it relates to your Unit #2 projects, then we will conduct a review session for our first exam. This review session will be as short or as long as you need it to be, so please come to class ready to ask any questions you have about the exam. Whatever time is leftover after our review will be spent in a WordPress workshop. Before you come to class, please read “Introduction to Information Architecture,” by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville. In addition, you have two short homework assignments that need to be completed before you come to class on Tuesday:
  1. Create all of your pages in WordPress for the Unit #2 project. (Translation: copy and paste the text from your original document into WordPress, breaking up the text into individual pages.)
  2. Find and install at least three different themes on your WordPress site. You will show your themes to your classmates at the end of class on Tuesday.
• On Thursday we will have the first exam of the semester. Please arrive on Thursday ready to spend the entire class period on the exam, which will consist of three sections: multiple choice questions, short responses (definitions and mini-essays), and a coding exercise.

As always, you can stop by my office (211 Premont) during office hours (Monday 9-12, Wednesday 1-4) if you need help with any of these tasks.

Now that each of you have your own WordPress installation on our new “sandbox” website, you should be getting familiar with the WordPress dashboard, the difference between posts and pages, and the process of installing themes and plugins. If you run into problems or find yourself confused, you’ll probably be able to find help in the WordPress Codex or the WordPress Forums. (Bookmark those two sites! They will be your best friends during Unit #2.) Of course, I’m available to help out during office hours, too, so come see me if you’re feeling lost.

During Week 5, we will catch up on the image workshop that got postponed on Thursday, then we will spend some time reviewing CSS techniques for positioning content. Here’s the day-by-day plan:

• On Tuesday, we will review Hours 10, 11, and 12 in the Sams book. (You already read Hours 10 and 11 last week, but you may want to quickly skim them again.) In class, we will practice finding and adapting images and videos for use on the web. Your only other homework assignment for the weekend is to finalize your choice of document for the Unit #2 project. If you plan to use the default document (the SEU Undergraduate Bulletin), you don’t need to do anything special; however, if you want to use another document, please submit it to me via email before you come to class on Tuesday.
• On Thursday, we will review Hours 14 and 15 in the Sams book. For some of you, these chapters will feel like a basic review, but if you are fuzzy on any of the concepts, you’ll need to spend some quality time with the textbook and your computer before you come to class. For some of you, it won’t be enough just to do the readings; you’ll need to download the source code and follow the step-by-step exercises in the book. When you come to class on Thursday, you should have a firm grasp on the “box model” and CSS positioning.

If you want to talk about any of these plans, just let me know. Otherwise, have a great weekend!

I enjoyed looking at the drafts of your résumé projects in class yesterday, and I’m excited to see how they turn out. Some of you are ready to put the finishing touches on your Unit #1 project, while others may need to spend more time revising the structure of your résumé or cleaning up your code. (The W3C Validator is a harsh master!) Don’t forget that Unit #1 is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday. Please review the assignment details before you submit your project, and don’t forget the final piece of the assignment: a one-page memo explaining and justifying the choices you made as worked on your résumé.

After you submit your résumé projects, we’ll be ready to move on to Unit #2, the Print-to-Web Conversion Project. Here’s how we’ll start:

• On Tuesday, we will discuss the difference between static websites and dynamic websites powered by content management systems. Before you come to class, please read “Why Do I Need a Content Management System?” and “Designing for Content Management Systems.”
• On Thursday, we will talk about how to find, edit, and insert images into webpages. Please read Hours 10 and 11 in the Sams book before you come to class.

If you have any questions about these plans, or if you want to reserve a time to see me during office hours on Monday, let me know.

In class on Thursday we spent a bit more time talking about Twitter than I originally planned, so we’ll need to do some catching up during Week 3. I hope you learned something about Twitter and how we’ll be using it this semester, but if you’re feeling confused, I recommend reviewing the following sites:

• A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter
• 10 Tips on Using Twitter Wisely
• Twitter Basics (the company’s official support page)

We’ll check in on our Twitter adventures next Thursday, so try to do a bit of tweeting between now and then. If you tweet about something related to our class, remember to use the class hashtag: #engw3332

Our main focus during Week 3 will be finishing up the online résumé assignment, which is due at the beginning of class on Thursday. Here’s how we’ll get there:

Before you come to class on Tuesday, please read Hours 8 and 9 in the Sams book. In class, we will review those chapters and cover some of the unresolved questions and problems you mentioned at the end of yesterday’s class. As you complete your reading assignment, please apply the concepts from the book to your Unit #1 project files. By the time you come to class on Tuesday, you should have two completed HTML files and a CSS file that is starting to take shape.

On Thursday, the résumé assignment is due at the beginning of class. Please review the assignment details before you submit your project, and don’t forget the final piece of the assignment: a short memo explaining and justifying the choices you made as worked on your résumé. [UPDATE: The due date for the résumé assignment has been postponed until next Tuesday, February 7. However, Thursday will be dedicated to a "debugging" workshop, so you still need to come to class with finished versions of your project files.] If you’re wondering how to focus your energies during the coming week, here are a few tips to ensure your success on the résumé project:

• Two of the most basic aspects of style sheets are color and typography, so I’ll be looking for evidence that you know how to go beyond the default colors and fonts imposed by your browser.
• We haven’t spent much time on CSS positioning (we’ll get there soon!), so I don’t expect to see incredibly complex page layouts. Your résumé doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective.
• Along the same lines, remember that you’re creating a professional résumé designed to be seen by potential employers. Yes, you should inject some of your personality into the design, but a résumé is not the best place to take big risks with an outlandish design.
• This first assignment is designed, in part, to see how well you’ve been paying attention to the readings in our textbook. Your code should be clean and well organized, and your XHTML and CSS should validate.
• The assignment sheet is very specific about what you should name your files and where they should be located. Please follow these directions to the letter.

I know you’ll be finishing up your résumés, so we won’t have a reading assignment for Thursday. After you submit your résumé projects at the beginning of class, I will introduce our next assignment (the Print-to-Web Conversion Project), and we will talk about the basics of content management systems. [UPDATE: We will postpone these plans until next Tuesday.]

Last but not least, I hope that all of you are keeping pace with the tutorials in the textbook. If you’re falling behind, please take some time this weekend to catch up. If you’ve put in the time with the exercises in the book and you’re still feeling lost, please come see me during office hours (Monday 9-12 or Wednesday 1-4) or email me to set up an appointment at another time.

We dove right in to the deep end of the pool this week, with Tuesday’s vocabulary pre-test and Thursday’s HTML/CSS workshop, but from what I saw, most of you had no trouble staying afloat. Some of you who have experience building websites may find the next few class periods moving a little slower than you’d like, but trust me — you’ll have plenty of opportunities to push yourselves in the coming weeks. And if you feel like you aren’t being challenged enough, please come see me and we’ll find ways to make these introductory assignments valuable for you.

Next week, we will continue our tour of the basics of HTML and CSS, using the online résumé assignment to learn some of web design’s foundational concepts. On Tuesday, we will finish applying basic HTML tags to your résumés and begin to think about how we can use colors and background images to improve their visual appearance. Before you come to class, please read Hours 2, 3, and 4 in the Sams book and try to make some additional progress on marking up the HTML version of your résumé.

On Thursday, we will focus on fine-tuning the typography and spacing of the elements in your résumés using cascading style sheets (CSS). Your only homework for Thursday is to read Hours 5 and 6 in the Sams book. A word of warning: these chapters mark the point at which the textbook begins to get a little more complex, so you’ll need to spend enough time with each chapter to really understand the new concepts before you come to class each day. Yes, the book is arranged into 24 one-hour lessons, but you might need to spend more than one hour working through each chapter. [UPDATE: Here is the in-class workshop for Thursday's class.]

By the end of Week 2, you should have a well-coded résumé and the makings of a well-styled résumé. If you’re doing all the reading and paying attention in class and you’re still feeling lost, please come talk to me. The material in this class will only get more complex as the semester progresses, so if things aren’t clicking for you, now is the time to address the problem.

If you have any questions about Week 2, or about anything else related to our class, leave a comment below or send me an email. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week. Have a great weekend!

Welcome to ENGW 3332: Writing Online. This website will function as the online headquarters for our class this semester. Each week, I will post an update to the website with details about coming week, deadline reminders, links to helpful resources, etc… I plan to use SEU’s Blackboard site to record your grades, but otherwise, everything related to this course will be posted here. And given that this class is about writing online, it seems appropriate that you should help me build this website as the semester progresses. (We’ll talk more about the particulars of that assignment soon.) There isn’t much to see now, but by the end of the semester, this site will look and feel like a collaborative venture.

A bit about me: I’m midway through my second year as an assistant professor at St. Edward’s University. I study how people use rhetoric in online environments, and most of the classes I teach have something to do with technology. I have been building websites since 1999, and I do a lot of web consulting for small businesses and nonprofit groups that need help getting (or getting up to date) online. When I’m not staring at a computer screen, I love to cook, read, and spend time with my wife, a brilliant freelance writer, and our two daughters.

After I gather your input in class on Tuesday, I will finalize the syllabus and bring it to class on Thursday. In the meantime, please complete the following tasks before you come to class on Thursday:

• Read Hour 1 in the Teach Yourself HTML and CSS book, and come to class with any questions you have about the reading.
• Sign up for a Twitter account, if you don’t have one already. (We’ll talk about using Twitter in the coming weeks, but for now, you just need to create an account, add a photo, and customize your profile.)
• Bring an electronic copy of your current résumé to class on Thursday.

Finally, a quick note about this website. Throughout the semester, I’ll be asking you to respond to posts on this website. To help you get comfortable with that process, please add a comment to this post that introduces yourself, links to your Twitter profile, and answers the following question: What is one specific thing you want to learn to do in ENGW 3332? Before you post, a couple of warnings: (1) Your classmates will see what you write, so don’t include anything intended just for me. (2) This website is public, so we will stick to using first names only. Also, please be sure to use the same email address every time you post to the class website. Once I “approve” your first comment on the site, you will be able to post comments for the rest of the semester without waiting for me to approve them.

UPDATE: We will use this file for our in-class workshop on Thursday. (You don’t need to download this until you get to class.)