Things to do:
- Apologize for Blue Host charging for a three year commitment (that is not a commitment) up front
- Talk about working on the web and .zip files
- Have people attempt to .zip and send me their MEmorial assignment sheets
- Talk about Ulmer
- Look at Blue Host interface
- Look at WordPress One-Click Install
- Locate .www folder / talk about file/folder structure
- Set-up SuperBetter and email list
- For Next Meeting
Work on the Web: Images, Files, and Folders Oh My!
A quick note about images and the web. When you use HTML to include an image on a web page, you are pointing to a file that exists either 1) on the web or 2) on your computer. If the file exists on the web (meaning it has a URL like this one), then you don’t have to worry–that image should show up anywhere you host the HTML file. Moving the file around will not change whether the image works
If, however, you are creating a local path to the image (meaning the image is on your computer), then it is very important that you preserve that path when you move the HTML file.
For example, say I write the code: img src=”evil_kittens.jpg” That means the browser will look in the same folder for a file called evil_kittens.jpg. If that file is not in the same folder as the HTML file, then it will display an image error icon.
When working on files in class–or even at home–I highly recommend that you create a folder for each project. And in that folder, you should create a sub-folder called “images.” Thus, your img src links would read img src=”images/evil_kittens.jpg” / Make sense?
BlueHost/Wordpress Interface
I am a veteran of several content management systems, and I found Bluehost’s interface a bit confusing at first. After installing WordPress, it took me quite awhile to figure out how to access it. And once I left it, it took me a good bit of time to find it again. Let’s see if we can make life easier.
When you first login to www.bluehost.com, you should see the screen above. This is the home screen. Pictured at the bottom is the WordPress install.
As I indicated above, once you have installed, WordPress, it can be tricky to locate the login portal. Click again on “install WordPress” and then scroll your screen down to see the buttons pictured above.
Next back to the Bluehost home page, look for the C-Panel button.
The file manager!
Folders!
Sharing Ulmer Assignment Sheets
First you talk and share and I will listen. You are not committed to completing your assignment and can alter it in anyway. You are encouraged to steal from each other because Web 2.0 and stuff.
Talking About Ulmer
To cheat a little bit, here is the article this class produced two years ago: Our Electrate Stories / Explicating Ulmer’s Mystory genre. In that piece, I argued that Ulmer’s mystory was a postpedagogical response to the socio-epistemic rhetoric/cultural studies pedagogy popularized by James Berlin.
For Ulmer, there is no sense of a self apart from others. There is no self uninhibited from the influence of networks. We jestingly refer to Ulmer’s postpedagogy as a socio-expressivism: the mystory is an attempt to map the recursive, feedback-infused influence of networks, to reveal what / who bounds a self into the avatar that plays me / that I play. Ulmer’s avatar frames selfhood as a messy conglomeration of body and mind engendered and sustained through networks. A central goal of the mystory concerns exposing this conglomeration via memory. Ulmer drew upon Roland Barthes’ (1981) concepts of studium and punctum, describing the mystory’s use of photographs to trigger what Barthes described as the sting of personal memory, the ways it idiosyncratically divests itself from “the public encyclopedia of concepts” (Ulmer, 2003, p. 44). Thus, unlike the forms of expressionism Berlin condemned, Ulmer’s mystory remains mindful of the material and the ways the material engenders selfhood.[8] The mystory genre aims for more than a digital renewal of the ancient Socratic mantra of “know thyself.” The mystory, by rejuvenating our faith in personal testimony, attempts to fashion a digital form of agency that returns politics back to the individual.
[…]
In short, Ulmer’s mystory, like expressionistic rhetoric, makes no explicit move to demystify a student’s false consciousness (Berlin, 1988, p. 490). Again, it looks to “sting” them emotionally, in the sense of Barthes’ (1981) punctum (see Ulmer, 2003, p. 44). Jeff Rice (2007) characterized this sting as a kind of aha moment, one that awakens the student to see unexpected relationships and ask unanticipated questions. Thomas Rickert (2007) referred to this kind of moment as surprising, stressing that it is a kairotic emergence for which we necessarily cannot plan and which we certainly cannot guarantee (pp. 172-173). The surprising aha moment is not a function of pedagogical mastery but of pedagogical serendipity.[9]
The importance on Barthes’s punctum, further explicated in that article, is also, I believe, at the core of the MEmorial project.
To cheat a bit more, here’s a link to a previous page I wrote for my undergrad class on Electronic Monuments.
For Next Meeting
- Read Presentation Zen Design, pages 5-127. I will ask that your final MEmorial incorporate the visual aesthetic advocated by Garr and Reynolds (and, honestly, I think their Zen approach works well with the Ulmer’s pedagogy). This means that you should think about the screen as a canvas–as an image (rather than thinking about the screen as something that can scroll).
- Read Ducket’s chapter on lists. Make a list somewhere in .html. Chances are you will need to refer back to Duckett’s info on .html
- In next week’s class, we will work with CSS and visual design. This week, you should work HARD to collect any research / write any text you will need for your MEmorial. Code as much of the .html as you can. Think about navigation and links. Think about crafting an experience rather than conveying information. Come to next class with at least 5 .html pages coded up.
- Check into SuperBetter once a day; my SuperBetter email address is marccsantos@hotmail.com
- Write something for your blog. It shouldn’t doesn’t have to have anything to do with this class. If you are reading something, then try writing a five minute review. Or generate a series of questions to answer. “Grid” it in public. Tag it, too.
