{"id":37,"date":"2015-07-07T06:05:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T11:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/?page_id=37"},"modified":"2015-07-07T06:05:20","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T11:05:20","slug":"online-writing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/assignments\/online-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"online writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the online writing component of the class, you will design and maintain a blog on PSU’s sites.psu.edu<\/a> platform (which runs a somewhat modified version of WordPress<\/a>). \u00a0We typically think of writing\u00a0as a fundamentally solitary and private endeavor, as something we produce alone and something that is then consumed alone. \u00a0But interesting things happen when writing goes public\u2014not only when some finished, polished product is published after many rounds of writing, rewriting, and revision, but when the writing process itself<\/em> is made public, takes place in public spaces, circulates through plural and sometimes unpredictable audiences. \u00a0Writing for an audience larger and more diverse than just the person giving you a grade forces you to worry about things like maintaining audience interest (which you haven’t had to consider much in academic writing contexts, as the person reading your writing in such contexts generally has little choice in the matter!), but you’ll find it also liberates you in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

For the purposes of the class, your blog should be primarily oriented around some “passion”: \u00a0a theme or topic about which you are excited to write (maybe because you know it well, maybe because you want to get to know it well, maybe because it’s something about which you have a lot to say but about which you haven’t been able to write before in academic spaces). \u00a0As you choose the focus of your blog, think carefully about how you might sustain this blog throughout the summer session while maintaining energy and interest\u2014and while keeping your potential audiences energetic and interested. \u00a0Writing this blog should ideally be both a pleasure and a challenge. \u00a0We will discuss in class some examples of passion blog topics that have worked well in other classes, but please don’t be afraid to be quirky, creative, or specific. \u00a0“A blog about movies” might or might not turn out to be interesting; “a blog about watching IMDB’s lowest rated films” or “a blog about Nicolas Cage movies” or “a blog about film depictions of college”\u00a0will, with their stronger and more specific organizing principles, likely be more interesting. \u00a0You might choose a topic having to do with lifestyle, entertainment, politics, sports, hobbies, news, philosophy, travel, or any number of other things farther off the beaten path. \u00a0Remember: \u00a0there are a lot of blogs out there, and the broader\/more common your topic, the less likely an audience is to think, “oh, hey, that<\/em> sounds like an interesting and surprising thing I really want to check out!”<\/p>\n

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In terms of the logistics of posting, you should produce at least eight posts\u00a0total<\/strong> over the course of the summer session, and at least one each week<\/strong> (Monday-Sunday). \u00a0Posts should generally be at least 250 words apiece<\/strong> (or the equivalent, if you find yourself posting an entry in video, audio, or some other format).<\/p>\n

It’s worth thinking about the affordances of the medium in which you are writing these posts: \u00a0namely, that you can compose posts that use\u00a0an array of media forms\u00a0(hey, that sounds an awful lot like the class title). \u00a0Images, videos, audio, gifs, and so on\u2014all of these things can enrich your posts in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n

Lastly, for the purposes of the class, you’ll want to make sure that\u00a0you use sites.psu.edu’s tagging feature (on the bottom right when you’re writing a post) to include the Haley15<\/strong>\u00a0tag in each of your posts. \u00a0These tags function like hashtags on Twitter or Instagram: \u00a0they allow us to aggregate and collect all of the posts for our class, regardless of author. \u00a0Please note that categories and tags are different things; categories are purely internal to your blog, whereas tags link across the whole sites.psu.edu blogging ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the online writing component of the class, you will design and maintain a blog on PSU’s sites.psu.edu platform (which runs a somewhat modified version of WordPress). \u00a0We typically think of writing\u00a0as a fundamentally solitary and private endeavor, as something we produce alone and something that is then consumed alone. \u00a0But interesting things happen when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":13,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-37","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37\/revisions\/38"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noendofneon.net\/composingacrossmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}