MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Post a topic proposal here. UPDATED LINK. Last chance to look at what colleagues last year did.  I will clear them out later today. POST WITH YOUR INITIALS, NOT YOUR FULL NAME. Use this prompt:

Write a working title

Audience

Context

Purpose

Document type

Next up, an annotated bibliography.  Due on Monday, the 24th in HARD COPY.

For fun on this rainy day:

Dana Willams - "One More" from caleb wood on Vimeo.

to your designed document.  PLEASE.  YOU CANNOT EARN AN A WITHOUT THIS.

Checklist here, with document design portion highlighted in pale green.

Prepping for Friday, when you proposed a final project to me in a tentative move toward 1) a conversation and 2) locking this down so you can write an annotated bibliography or seven sources.  That will be due in hard copy on Friday the 21se.

See how we are now thinking toward the final project?  We will write and revise this all the rest of the semester, with the support of small assignments.

By locking down, you will compose one of these next week.  That will be due on Monday the 17th.

Be sure to email me your directions extra-credit option by Friday, close of business (COB). Also, COB is a pre-proposal to me by email about your final project. You can send two of them, in this format:

Working Title

Audience

Context

Purpose (two part: yours and the reader's)

For Monday, we complete the document design portion of the two-article review  Some of you will be revising the prose, as well as "pouring" your text into the design template.  You will need approximately three graphics to work with:

• journal covers
• photos of researchers
• selected graphic from article
• outside graphic

To Be Discussed in class. Bring these images to class along with your revised text of the review. We will work on this document in class WED and THURS. Revised document design version due in class on MONDAY for a grade NO REWRITES.

For discussion, we will look at this sample THAT HAS SOME THINGS WRONG WITH IT!!!!

So we preview next week and the end of the semester. More on Monday.  For fun and edification, we will talk about visuals in technical communication. I wish that we offered you/required of you a second semester in which we worked soley on visual communication, including Power Point presentation.  Alas, we do not; further, I expect that you might resent the additional requirement.

Let's talk a bit about infographics.  I love and hate them. Why?  Largely for the lack of attention to:

• authority
• credibility
• sources

However, Compound Interest is a good place to start.  Here is one that will also teach you something useful regarding asparagus. That infograph is primarily informative.  This infographic on bad science ismore  directive. Look for your favorites.

This website is crowd sourced.  I like many of the graphics but some of the science ones are visually seductive (a pathos mover) but lack in details (logos) and, again, authority (ethos). 

Visuals and statistics, from Swedish scholar Hans Rosling, in this TED talk.

Look at this visual communication from weather forecasting, courtesy of a Slate article.

We are developing ways to visualize complexity, courtesy of bioinformatics, science visualization in computer science, and through both graphics arts and cognitive science.  Look at this graphic concerning kidney transplant rejection.  Visuals are important in many technical documents.  Here is one about organizing kidney transplants by computers.  Lastly, think about patient and family communication regarding kidney transplants.

Citation studies is another area for visualization; here is one about the complexity of science journal article data.

Back to document design, which relies on visual strategies.  I love this Wikepedia entry on the genealogy of theoretical physicists.

Finally, because this is Friday and yesterday was White Coat Day at the UMD MD School, I give you this:

 And for contrast:

And, this one.