CM203 Introduction to Communication • Dr. Russell Cook
Assignment -- Mystory Baltimore DUE DATE/TIME: Completed website posted by 4PM, Friday, December 8, 2006 OVERVIEW OF "MYSTORY BALTIMORE" ASSIGNMENT The "Mystory Baltimore" Assignment combines three essential course elements: 1. "Mystory" is a postmodern essay form devised by University of Florida Professor Gregory Ulmer (http://www.nwe.ufl.edu/~gulmer/), which incorporates three discourses (expert, cultural, and personal) in a rhisomatically woven network of meanings. The ideal medium for conveying a mystory is a website. Instances of the three discourses represent nodes of the network that are tied together in experience by chance connections, or puns. As it is not linear and hierarchical, the mystory may be experienced in a variety of sequences, leading to new insights during each encounter. The mystory genre is thought to be more compatible with television-age, "videographic" young people than traditional forms of "typographical" literature. Reference text: Gregory Ulmer, Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video (New York: Routledge, 1989), ISBN 0415902129 paperback. The Course Director will give information in class on the Mystory essay genre and supporting theory. 2. To encourage the Loyola College community more involved in our host city, our president, Father Brian Linnane, proclaimed this the "Year of the City." For more information on the Year of the City and on Baltimore, Maryland, consult the official Year of the City website (http://www.loyola.edu/yotc/), which contains a myriad of resources and links. For this assignment, students will do research on the city through all available resources, will personally explore the city by traveling in it on bus and foot, and will report their experiences in their Mystory website with text, list of references, pictures, and, optionally, video, all linked rhisomatically to enhance awareness of relationships of expert, cultural, and personal discourses. Pictures must include evidence of traveling the city by bus. 3. Web Authoring -- Students will create their own personal websites to present their "Mystory Baltimore" projects. The Course Director will demonstrate basic web authoring in class. Students will use their own cameras and will have access to Communication Department computer facilities to create their projects. Among the help resources available to the students will be on-line software guides, one-on-one consultation with the Course Director during his office hours or by appointment, and student proctors available on request. All student websites will be linked together by a master "Mystory Baltimore" website.
MYSTORY REFERENCE TEXT
Gregory Ulmer (1989). Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415901219 pbk.
LOYOLA COLLEGE YEAR OF THE CITY WEBSITE
http://www.loyola.edu/yotc/
ASSIGNMENT EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES (corresponding Loyola College Educational Aims*)
1. To identify and to apply prominent communication theories, models, and analytical techniques (Intellectual Excellence, Critical Understanding). 2. To practice verbal and nonverbal information literacy skills of search, gathering, collection, organization, evaluation (Critical Understanding, Eloquentia Perfecta, Aesthetics). 3. To practice academic writing and citation (Eloquentia Perfecta, Aesthetics). 4. To author a website (Critical Understanding, Eloquentia Perfecta, Aesthetics). 5. To learn about Baltimore culture, neighborhoods, challenges, and hope -- Year of the City (Intellectual Excellence, Critical Understanding, Aesthetics, Faith and Mission, Promotion of Justice, Diversity). *For more information on Loyola College's Educational Aims, consult the college website (http://www.loyola.edu/academics/academicaffairs/UgAims.html). 6. Have fun while learning!
LEARNING OUTCOMES After successfully completing this assignment, the student will be able t 1. Discuss Prof. Gregory Ulmer’s concept of teletheory as an example of videographic thinking. 2. Distinguish between hierarchical and rhisomatic structures of thinking. 3. Identify personal, cultural, and expert resources on the topic of Baltimore, Maryland. 5. Discuss the history and culture of Baltimore neighborhoods and Loyola College's contributions. 6. Navigate the city of Baltimore via the city bus system. 7. Construct a basic, personal website containing headlines, text blocks, pictures, and links by composing text, taking and capturing still pictures and video, and composing a website in Macromedia Dreamweaver® web authoring computer software and Adobe Photoshop® picture editing software.
SPECIFIC PROCEDURE
1. Read excerpts of Teletheory by Ulmer and view a sample mystory video. 2. Select a personal discourse, a cultural discourse, and an expert discourse. In Ulmer's mystory, "Derrida at the Little Big Horn," these are his childhood in Montana, the "Custer's Last Stand" myth, and postmodernism, respectively. 3. Think about discourses and look for chance linkages, which Ulmer calls "Puncepts." An example of a Puncept in Ulmer's "Derrida at the Little Big Horn" is the letter "H," which stood for the football goal posts of his high school sports career (personal discourse), for "aitch" or hatchet, a Sioux Indian's weapon (popular discourse), and for the "H-bomb," the nihilistic presence overshadowing postmodern philosophy (expert discourse). 4. Research the history and culture of Baltimore, Maryland, by consulting all available sources and finding tools, including books, magazines, broadcast stations, classmates, city and organization websites, and the Year of the City website. 5. Obtain recording equipment for your exploration of the city: city map, notebook, digital still camera, digital audio recorder (optional), and digital video camera (optional). 6. Traveling in small groups of two to four persons, travel to selected city locations by city bus. Make notes on your route for return trips and for documenting in your website. 7. Having researched the history and culture of the City of Baltimore by a variety of means, you now are ready to narrow your topic. The city is too big for any personal website, so narrow your topic to the history and culture of a particular aspect of Baltimore that interests you. Suggested topics include a particular Baltimore city neighborhood, an industry or business important to Baltimore, a famous Baltimore citizen, or an important Baltimore institution. Because the point is to get off campus and learn about the city, Loyola College and its neighborhood may not be chosen. Consult the Course Director to confirm the appropriateness of your choice of topic. 8. Review your research sources to glean information about your specific topic. Isolate historical research sources on your topic as your Expert Discourse. Isolate contemporary mass media sources as your Cultural Discourse. Isolate personal stories, including accounts of your own experiences, as your Personal Discourse. Look for chance connections (Puncepts) among the expert, cultural, and personal discourses. For example, you might see a black bird flying over a city street (Personal Discourse) and think of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" (Expert Discourse), as well as Baltimore's National Football League team (Cultural Discourse). 9. Make additional excursions into the city to get more in-depth information on your specific topic about the city. Optional sound and video clips will enhance the realism of your website. While exploring, look for more Puncepts (chance connections among the three discourses). 10. Write a bibliography for your project containing all the sources you used, including books, periodicals, websites, and interviews; include at least three items for each of your three Discourses. 11. Following instructions given in class, set up your website: a. Go to a Communication Department computer lab. b. Access your web development server partition via the Internet. c. Create a project folder; inside the project folder, create "htm" and "pix" folders. d. Download pictures from your digital camera to the computer desktop. e. If you have movie clips, use your choice of movie editing software to compress them for the web; save the movie clips to a "mov" folder that you create inside your project folder. e. Use Adobe Photoshop® to orient, size, and compress the picture files for web use. f. Use the "Save for Web" command under Photoshop's File menu to compress picture files for the web; save the files in the "pix" folder inside your project folder. g. Save illustration pictures as GIF files with the number of colors minimized for desired quality. h. Save photographic pictures as JPG files with the quality setting minimized for desired quality. i. Compose large blocks of text in a word processing application for pasting into webpages. j. Open Macromedia Dreamweaver® and define your site. k. Copy your Dreamweaver site definition file onto removal media, such as a USB flash drive. l. If you continue work on a different computer, import your site definition file from your media. m. Create your homepage (index.html) and save it in your project folder. n. Create other HTML pages and save them in the "htm" folder inside your project folder. o. Make links to picture files saved in the "pix" folder inside your project folder. p. Make links to other HTML files saved in the "htm" folder inside your project folder. q. Create a page that contains your annotated bibliography. Add links to external reference sites. r. If you have movie files, insert media player plugin links into your HTML pages. s. To help browsers understand the rhisomatic organization of your site, create a "map page" (equifinality function) that shows all the elements and Puncept connections, and has links to all pages. t. You might want to add a special page that tells about you, the author. u. Get feedback on your website from your friends and classmates for improvement. 12. By the due date, send an e-mail message to the Course Director to tell him that your site is complete.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. May I use humor in my website? Yes. 2. May I use music in my website? Yes. 3. May I use include violent, erotic, or social insensitive material in my website? No. If you are not sure what material is inappropriate, check with the Course Director. 4. May I put myself in my website? Definitely yes, as part of your Personal Discourse. 5. How can I show that I rode the city bus? Your website is required to include pictures you took from the bus and pictures taken of you riding the bus. 6. What are copyright issues concerning my website? Copyright law provides for free educational use; however, you must cite all sources for borrowed materials, as per the Loyola Honor Code. 7. Should I identify the course and assignment on my website? Yes, at least one page must have your name, the course title, the date, and the "Mystory Baltimore" logo provided by the Course Director. 8. What screen format should I use for my webpages? A screen format accessible on most computer screens these days is 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels tall. 9. How can I get help? Contact the Course Director.
CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION (Course policy on late work applies.)
1. Clear presentation of three distinct Discourses: Expert, Cultural, and Personal. 2. “Puncept” connections among discourses based on chance visual and/or verbal comparisons. 3. Predominantly original pictorial materials. 4. "Map" webpage (equifinality function). 5. Annotated bibliography webpage, with at least one meaningful sentence of commentary on each bibliographic item; more extensive bibliographies will receive higher evaluations. 6. Author information and "Mystory Baltimore" logo on at least one page. 7. Clear evidence that the author traveled the City of Baltimore and explored at least one city neighborhood beyond Loyola College and the Evergreen neighborhood. 8. Citations of sources for borrowed materials appearing on the same pages as the borrowed materials. 9. Density and thoughtfulness of content and presentation. | 
