Digitizing

Your last assignment for this course is to post a digital version of your final project to Medium.com. My principle aim in asking you to do so is to prompt you to think about what it means to work as a writer in a digital age—specifically, about the differing affordances of the page and the screen. I thus encourage you to make as active and thoughtful use of the various affordances of the web as you can in creating a new version of your piece for Medium.

But I have other reasons for assigning this work. I also want you to have one more chance to rethink and develop your project. You should thus feel free to continue to do research into your topic, to add to what you’ve written, and to rework and refine your prose. I will be eager, that is, to see changes to the substance as well as the presentation of your piece.

And posting your work to Medium also makes it easier for us to share and celebrate what you’ve done. As part of this assignment, then, I’d also like you to post a link to your Medium piece on this site, along with a brief “teaser” for it—a paragraph or so in which you summarize your piece and point out some of its highlights. On Monday, 12/02, we’ll project both your teaser and your Medium essay onscreen, and I’ll ask you to briefly talk about what you changed in your piece (and why) as you shifted modalities from page to screen.

I will give this digitized version of your final project a letter grade. If your piece has grown since its “paper” version—become more substantive, polished, engaging—then it will receive a higher grade. If not, then the “pencil” grade you received on your paper version will become the final grade for your project.

Good luck! I look forward to seeing what you with your piece!