Weekly Assignments
From digmovements
Each week, students received a set of assignments that guided the development of their research project and provided instructions for organizing their research products in the wiki. Weekly assignments were distributed to students through the program blog, Dig Blog. Assignments usually included use of students' own blogs and the wiki. The program curriculum required students to complete these assignments as "distance tasks," though they were provided some structured classtime for their distance work. We reviewed completed assignments together each week to monitor and focus student progress.
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[edit] Week 1 - Choose Research Topic
1. Complete your professional resume and place it on your wiki userpage. Make it like a real job resume, with educational experience and study interests included.
2. Post some reading notes to your blog about the assigned chapters in Cyberactivism, Intro and Ch 1.
3. Find a news item or two in the MSM about online activism or web use in a social cause and blog about it.
4. Think about research topics and about which focus you want to take (see the nav bar on the wiki). If you are ready to choose, describe your topic on your blog and make a page for it on the wiki. Link it on the focus page you want and your description of it there. If you aren't ready to choose, be ready to discuss your initial thinking on Friday.
[edit] Week 2 - Begin Research
This week, we begin research for our term projects, and we begin building the substantive content of our wiki. Our tasks include wiki work, web research, and library research.
These tasks are formally structured and very specific. They are designed to put an architectural foundation in place for the wiki's information content. Once this foundation is in place for us to rely on, our assignments will be much more general in nature. We can create articles, compose content, and tag the wiki as we will.
1. Wiki Work
Start two article pages on the wiki using these naming conventions, and post your finished assignments to them:
- Topic Name Annotated Bibliography - Blogosphere Annotated Bibliography
- Topic Name Organizations Online - Indy Media Blogs
- Tag both with Category:Topic Name - Category: Blogosphere
Article discussion pages on the wiki can be used for making and hanging on to research notes. Polished work should go on the artilce page.
2. Web Research
Choose two groups, one large and one small, and use these criteria to analyze each of them:
- Describe the group: What are the group's specific cause(s) and activities within your larger topic? How big is it? Is it a formal organization? How is it funded? How long has it been around? What are its stature and reputation in its field?
- Describe its website: How is the website structured? Static webpages? Blog? Wiki? How easy is the navigation to follow? (ie, How successful is its information architecture?) What does the group want the website to do?
- Describe the group's online actitivism: How does the group use the website to reach out to members? Nonmembers? Are there opportunities for read-write communication? Does it offer downloadable resources? What does the website ask its readers to do?
- Critique the website: Does the website succeed? Is its content well documented? Is it fair and balanced? Is it readable and well written? Is its rhetorical tone scholarly? Friendly? Polemical? Does the website's look and feel fit with and help convey the group's over all message? Is the hosting application appropriate the website's content and goals?
- Draw conclusions: Does this group's use of the web on this website constitute meaningful activism? Does it contribute to tangible results?
3. Library Research
Gather and annotate four scholarly sources, articles or books that inform your larger topic.
- Use peer reviewed sources only.
- Follow assigned guidelines for annotation to write and format your bibliography.
[edit] Week 3 - Define Topic
1. Add four more scholarly sources for your project and post annotations for them on the wiki.
2. Answer the first set of questions derived from Tilly's analytical model for social movements. Support your answers with specific evidence from vetted sources. Document and properly cite your sources. Post the answers to your main project page on the wiki.
- What is the “campaign” of your movement?
- What is the over all goal it wishes to accomplish?
- What is the campaign plan to achieve this goal?
3. Choose five program member blogs and comment meaningfully on their latest post.
4. Do your own blog post on the terms, "GNU", "free software", "copyleft", and "open source". Document your sources.
[edit] Week 4 - Midterm Checklist
1. On the wiki, you will find a checklist for everything that should be done in time for midterm conferences on Friday.
2. No new distance assignments this week, to provide everyone time to get caught up.
3. Don't forget we'll be meeting in the Mac Lounge on Friday instead of our usual classroom.
[edit] Week 5 - Expand and Refine Research
1. Continue with your library research.
- Add four more annotated scholarly sources to your project bibliography on the wiki.
- If you are not clear about what your scholarly research should include or what annotation means, go back to the Library Research Workshop wiki page we reviewed together in Week 1. You can follow the annotation link on that page to the UW's writer's handbook description of annotation.
- Keep in mind that your bibliography assignments are not complete until you've caught up with the weekly library research assignments and have properly annotated all your sources.
- This assignment makes a total of twelve library sources that you should have looked at, reviewed sufficiently for meaningful annotation, and annotated by this Friday.
2. Continue gathering documentary images and creating art images for your project gallery. Everyone should have a few of each by this Friday. Don't forget to caption them and cite their sources properly.
3. Add answers to these questions to our first Tilly assignment and post it all on your project main page on the wiki:
What “claims-making performances” does your movement use?
- Public meetings, demonstrations, street theatre, boycotts, art?
- Pamphlets, publications, press releases, lawsuits?
- Civic associations, membership organizations, unions, collectives?
What are its “WUNC displays,” ie, how does it establish the legitimacy of its cause?
- WUNC – worthiness, unity, numbers, commitment
- How does it explain the worthiness of its cause?
- How does it demonstrate the unity of its followers?
- How does it document and use its number of followers and allies?
- How does it prove that its followers are committed?
4. Have some internet fun. Either create or contribute to a collaborative page on the wiki based around our seminar conversation on Friday.
Some ideas we came up with:
- Crazy Internet Rumors
- Blogs In Our Program And Beyond
- GNU's Not Unix
- Futuristic Gadgets
Tag any page you make with an Internet Fun tag.
[edit] Week 6 - Focus and Refine Topic
1. Finish reviewing and annotating the library sources you've collected.
2. Find art in your movement and blog about it.
- What does art consist of in your movement?
- Where is it found?
- Who is making it?
- If there is no art in your movement, discuss how there could be.
- Make some examples - ie, make a montage image or poster, write a poem, choose some relevant songs.
3. Find your movement or cause in the news.
- Add a newsreel feed to your blog about topics related to your movement.
- Post about 3 or 4 news articles on your blog.
4. Answer these remaining questions from Tilly's analytical model:
Who are the participants in the movement?
- Organizers – Who are the proponents initiating and guiding the movement?
- Activists – Who are the active followers?
- Authorities – Who or what are the powers the movement targets?
- Third parties – Who is in between? As public observers? Allies? “Objects of reform”?
What are the claims of your movement? (35-36)
- Program – What are the movement’s specific political goals?
- Identity – What shared traits or social positions hold the movement’s activists and followers together?
- Standing – What political rights make the movement possible? What material conditions?
Are web technologies creating/transforming your movement? (pp. 97-98)
- In what ways?
- How do they produce their effects?
- How do online tactics and online forms of organization interact with your movement?
- To what extent and how do recent alterations in your movement result from the changes in technology?”
[edit] Week 7 - Draft Outline
1. Draft your paper outline.
2. Write a provisional abstract for the paper - a short paragraph that describes what the contents and main message of the paper will be.
3. Have both ready for class review and discussion on WEDNESDAY morning.
4. Don't forget that we'll meet for imaging class in Photoland on Monday afternoon.
- Bring an image to print
- Bring plastic to pay for it.
5. Blog your topic in the news.
