Category: Class Plans

28 June. Poster W/S 2 & Unit 2 Intro

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Presentation Session Assignments


Session 1 Presenters Session 2 Presenters
James Peavy Hannah Fallon
Ryan Enfield Peyton Nguyen
Hajime Minoguchi Callie Anderson
George Frampton Marlene Garcia Gomez
Brian Buckley Aaqila Faizer
Ryan Piansky Yue Teng
Devarsh Pandya Elhadji Barry
Ryan Kretzmer Malina Hy
Keanu White Isaiah Sutherland
Xiang Li Ibitola Toyin-Adelaja
Utibeno Ekpoudom
Gunhyun Park
Hajime Minoguchi
Brianna Shearwood
Benjamin Holmes

Explainer Video Group Preference Form

 

Poster Workshop 2

Please complete the following:
  • 1.If you have hardcopies of your poster and introduction drafts put them on the table in front of you. If you have digital copies of your poster and introduction drafts open them up on your laptop.
  • 2. Move from draft to draft. After you finish reading your peer’s draft respond, either by hand or in the Introduction doc file, to the following: what element of the Poster/Intro. is most successful? Suggest one detail/design choice your peer could make to help you better understand his/her claim.
  • 3. Once we have had a chance to read and respond to most drafts, we will our successes.

Unit 2: Navigating the Psychological and the Social in Sustainability

Video & the Rhetoric of Sustainability

PSA’s, slide share presentations, and documentaries are a mainstay of the discourse of sustainability in which scholars, activists, and policy makers aim to persuade individuals of environmental problems and how they can take action to solve those problems. As we watch the sample videos, please keep the following questions in mind for the discussion that follows:
  • 1.The problem presented and the solutions the videos offer.
  • 2.Describe sound effects and/or background music; Camera movement (panning shot, tracking shot: from above, below, in/out/circular; zoom in or out, slow or fast; zip pan; tilt shot; handheld shot; camera on vehicle); and POV (Does the film acknowledge the spectator, or do events transpire as if no one were present?)
  • 3.Who is the intended audience of the video and of what does the video attempt to persuade its audience? Is one video more successful than another, why or why not?

 

Keep America Beautiful, 1971

Vox Media, The Diet that Helps Fight Climate Change, 2017

 

Thoreau, “Where I lived and What I lived For”

  • How does Thoreau combine the personal and the political/social? OR, What are his specific critiques of social institutions and what are some of his individual/personal solutions?

 

27 June. The Ecological Thought Post Nature

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Featured Image: NOLA Water Treatment Facility Katrina Repairs 

Housekeeping

  • 1. Good work at the workshop yesterday. If you navigate to the Poster Assignment Page, please find some How-to materials in the right hand column.
  • 2. Multimedia Studio printing turn around time?
  • 3. I forgot to ask you to put your name on the Google form I sent out for Poster Presentation Preferences. You can have three extra credit points if you present on Monday.

Freewrite

Freewrite: Write a response to the following question for 7-10 minutes without stopping, and be prepared to share your answer with the class:

In a few sentences, describe the local or national development issue/project have you chosen to illustrate the concept of sustainability in your poster. Then, in a few more sentences, explain what exactly the issue/project you chose aims to sustain, i.e. preserve, protect, maintain.

Morton Discussion

Organize yourselves into groups according to the first few letters of your last name, and answer the question below that corresponds with your group number:


Group Number Group Names
Group 1 A-E
Group 2 F-H
Group 3 M-N
Group 4 P
Group 5 S-W
Take 10-15 minutes to discuss your answer in your group & be prepared to cite evidence when you respond to your question.

  • Group One: List some of the ways that Morton defines the ecological thought. Are you ever satisfied with his definition? Is he?

  • Group Two: List some of the rhetorical or stylistic choices Morton makes in this chapter. How does his rhetorical style compare with Caradonna’s? Is one author more successful than the other, why/why not?

  • Group Three: What does the term “Nature” describe according to Morton? Why do we have to let go of “Nature” to have ecology? Do you agree, why/why not?

  • Group Four: What happens to the concept of personhood or the human when it expands under the ecological thought? For instance, what do you think Morton means when he says that “The ecological thought fans out into questions concerning cyborgs, artificial intelligence, and the irreducible uncertainty over what counts as a person” (8)?Do you agree, why/why not? 

  • Group Five: What sorts of artwork best demonstrate the ecological thought? To respond to this question, examine at least one movie, book, etc. that he talks about as an example of the ecological thought. Can you think of your own example(s)? Do you agree with his assessment, why/why not?

Break!!

Discussion of “Nature, Post-Nature”

Get out the Clark essay and be prepared to discuss the following:
  • 1.What does Clark mean when he says that the language we have inherited to describe the current environmental crisis is “fragile” (75)? How do the words “nature” and “natural” get “pulled in opposite directions at once” (75)?
  • 2.What is the Anthropocene? How does the Anthropocene mess with distinctions such nature and culture or human and nature?
  • 3. What “scenarios” does Clark propose would “avoid the disasters of the Anthropocene” (84) if implemented? What keeps his proposals from being implemented?
  • 4. How does Clark’s definition of nature compare to Morton’s defintion? How does Clark’s definition compare to Caradonna’s?

Finally…How might you incorporate Morton or Clark’s ideas into your poster?

 

 

June 26. Comm Lab & Paragraph Elements

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Comm Lab, Dr. James Howard

Elements of Analysis Paragraphs

Based on your previous experience, what key elements make up a successful paragraph?

 

The following is a overview of elements that make-up paragraphs in argument driven expository essay/prose:
  • 1.Topic sentence: states/restates claim to lead into the text that follows or transition from previous paragraph and introduces new information to follow.
  • 2. Transition from topic sentence that sets up the citation, especially through description. Describe the context and/or major theme in the citation you plan to include next.
  • 3. In-text citation in MLA format. Remember format long/block quotes accordingly. Here’s a Guide for Citing Sources from a Database
  • 4. Close analysis: pick out one or two key features from the bit of text you cite and explain how those features help you understand the passage, the novel, and/or the major themes of the paper.
  • 5.Tie your analysis back into the larger goal/claim of the paper and set-up your transition to the next paragraph.

Sample Introduction

June 25. What is Sustainability?

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Featured Image: Le Boulevard de Montmartre, Matinée de Printemps, street view from hotel window, 1897

Housekeeping

Here’s some follow-up info. from last class:
  • 1. Some follow-up info. from Sarah’s presentation: Sarah Neville, Sustainability Related Student Organizations, and Tour Slides. Want to talk about a couple of take aways from Sarah’s presentation: anyone want to collect all the straws we use in one week in a bag, or some variation? Want to gamify a solution to the problem of using too much water in the dorm showers?
  • 2. I will made a Google doc to share our pics and footage. Just click on the link i nthe Google invite and you’ll have full access. We can calk about attribution later. Dr. Yow is going to send us the video from the Beltline Tour and the Gravel talk, which I will upload, along with some video and images I have taken.
  • 3. Who has had WOVENText issues?
  • 4. Tomorrow we are meeting at the Comm Lab, Clough 447
  • 5. I made a mistake with Canvas, so the Caradonna reading was not accessible till early this morning. I’ll go over key details during discussion that you can return to if you choose to use Caradonna in your Poster Presentation. Actually, take a few minutes and make sure you can access the readings and the First Week Video submission page in Canvas.
  • 5. We’ll be talking about our First Week Video drafts later, but I wanted to review video submission now, so I don’t forget.

What is Sustainability?

Get into four groups and respond to the questions below:
  • 1. According to Sarah Neville, Ryan Gravel, OR Jeremey Caradonna, what is sustainability?
  • 2. What are some conditions under which the theory and practice of sustainability develops?
  • 3. Pick one image that Neville, Gravel, or Caradonna uses, which you think best conveys sustainability to audiences, share that image with me by pasting the link/image in the comments below, and be preprepared to explain why and/or how the image you chose is so successful.

Representing Sustainability

One your own, please respond to the following without stopping:
  • 1.Make a list of sustainable development projects that you could illustrate in your poster presentation (i.e low flow fixtures, tree canopy, waste infrastructure, solar power, composting, water reclamation, bikes, trains, and local food).
  • 2. Pick one project you listed and explain how that project illustrates one, or more, concepts of sustainability.
  • 3. Draw the project you chose, or one element of it, on the board.

Poster Presentation Assignment 

Break!!

First Week Video Workshop

The numbers of the questions below correspond to numbers on the board.Please read through the questions below, and then take yourself and your draft to the number that corresponds to the question that best describes the biggest challenge you face in your First Week Video.Once in your groups, take turns reading/describing your Video draft and then discuss revision strategies. I will circulate from group to group and answer questions.
  • 1. Claims: Are you having trouble articulating a challenge relating to one of the modes/assignments—written, oral, visual, electronic, or nonverbal communication—that you’ll be engaging with in class projects this semester and exploring at least one portion of that challenge in depth?
  • 2. Evidence: Are you having trouble developing your claim through a specific example from your personal experience and/or explaining how you plan to meet the challenge(s) you anticipate facing?
  • 3. Organization: Are  you having trouble sustaining the claim throughout and/or transitioning from one piece of evidence to another?
  • 4. Affordances of the Medium: Are you having trouble incorporating sound or images that reinforce the main goal of the video and help audiences better understand your challenges you anticipate facing and ways you plan to meet those challenges ? 

Critical Communication

Take five minutes and think through the questions that follow. If you did not have a chance to read WOVENText, share with a neighbor who has a text and/or find the info. in your minds or on the internet:
  • 1. What are some characteristics of successful writing across modes (WOVEN)?
  • 2. What are the three “critical concepts of communication” and how do those concepts help make good writing possible?
  • 3. What is “Code Switching“, and what are common modes of address? How do these terms effect how you write an email (21)? How might What are their larger, socio-political implications?
  • 4. What is the Comm Center? (11 & 25-28)

 

21 June. Campus Sustainability Tour.

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Housekeeping

Here is some follow-up info. from last class:
  • 1. Thanks for your hard work yesterday: Really nice work yesterday! Thanks for your careful participation and great comments during discussion.
  • 2. Events: For students in the SLS Equity and Sustainability Track, please attend as many events as possible.

    For students in the other tracks or no track, you are welcome to attend the SLS events. SLS events, such as Ryan Gravel’s talk tonight, will provide you with opportunities to take photos and video you can use in your poster and video projects. Events such as tomorrow’s workshop on infrastructure, the reflection workshop (July 24), and the final Showcase (July 25), will help develop your projects.

    Students in the other tracks can talk with me about incorporating the other track activities and your disciplinary interests into your course projects.

    Some Images and Video of the events will be available for you to use in your projects if necessary.

  • 3. Reading: Buy WOVENText in time to complete the reading assignment for Monday. Check out the reading questions for those pages, video drafts can be as rough or complete as choose for Monday’s workshop, and read the Caradonna chapter, which is in Canvas.
  • 4. Office Hours: If you want to meet to discuss the video or have any questions about the course, I am free after class today and Monday.

Campus Sustainability Tour

Before I hand out class over to Ms. Sarah Neville, Sustainability Coordinator at GATech, lets talk for a minute about how the tour fits into our course goals/assignment sequences:
  • 1.The goal of Poster, which is due next Thursday, is to “Illustrate a key concept from one or more of our theoretical readings (Caradonna, Morton, or Sheldon) through a local or national development issue of your choice.” 
  • 2. Jeremy Caradonna, for example, argues that “sustainability” is “a desire to create a society that is safe, stable, prosperous, and ecologically minded,” as well as sets of corrective policies, developments, ideas that are directly tied to counterbalancing climate change (3).
  • 3. So as we walk through campus today, I suggest you take photos and short video of projects on campus that illustrate (or challenge, or complicate) definitions such as those cited above.

Details

  • If you do not want to carry you bags, you can put them in my office and get them afterwards. The classroom doesn’t lock, so I suggest you do not leave them here.

    • Tour Route

    overall_sustainabilitiy

20 June. Welcome!

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Part I. Introductions

Name Tags: Take a sheet of paper that is being passed around and write/draw the following. After you are finished, we will go around and introduce ourselves.
  • 1. Write your name (or Nickname)
  • 2. Draw your family pet or pet you might get someday
  • 3. Draw your favorite vacation spot
  • 4. Draw your favorite food
  • 5. Draw your favorite sport or hobby
  • 6. Fold into a name plate and put in front of you on your table

Part II. Course Overview

Follow along as I review the following information all contained on the course site. After the review has concluded you will have time to complete the Student Instructor Agreement Form.

Part III. First Week Video

Analysis

Get into four groups, watch the sample student video assigned to your group, and then respond to the following questions. You do not need to write out full answers to the questions. Just be prepared to discuss your findings with the class.
  • 1. What WOVEN mode do the students in the video anticipate will challenge them most and why?
  • 2. How do the students in the video plan to overcome their anticipated challenges?
  • 3. What’s one moment in the video where the student could have taken advantage of the medium? For instance, how might a video about the potential pressures of oral communication telegraph those pressures visually to offset pressures a project poses?

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group  4

Invention Exercise

Respond to the following on your own or with a partner. As soon as you have finished drafting (5-8 mins), draw your visual representation on the board:
  • 1. What course assignment & mode do you anticipate to be most challenging?
  • 2. Why? That is, how has the mode challenged you in the past?
  • 3. How do you plan to overcome the challenge?
  • 4. What is one image you can use in your video represent the challenges you perceive?
  • 5. Draw the visual representation of your challenge on the board.

For Next Time…

Please complete the following for Thurs, June 22:
  • 1. Draft of script, outline, or rough video for workshop on Monday, June 25.
  • 2. Come prepared for the Campus Sustainability tour: wear sunscreen and bring water 
  • 3. Remember tomorrow night, Thursday, June 21, is the second SLS event, so please join us for Ryan Gravel’s talk “The Atlanta Beltline: From Vision to Reality” 4:00-5:00PM in Clough 152
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