It feels good to have our first major assignment behind us, doesn’t it? I’m looking forward to watching your videos this weekend, and I will do my best to respond to each of you individually within the next week. I hope you’ll enjoy watching each other’s videos, and I hope you’ll start sharing your videos with a broader audience. A few ideas to get you started: tweet a link to your video, share it on Facebook, email friends and family, create a “teaser” video using Vine or Instagram, and/or embed your video in your personal blog. Remember: one of our goals for this class is to get comfortable writing in public, and this is a great opportunity to share your work with the world.

During the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring some new formats and genres of writing, using the tap essay to focus our discussions. If you haven’t create a Tapestry account and downloaded the app on your iPad, you should do so ASAP, and you should get in the habit of bringing your iPad (or another mobile device with Tapestry on it) to class throughout Unit #2.

Here’s a quick overview of how we’ll get started on this new project next week:

• On Monday, I will be at a professional conference, so I’ve scheduled a video viewing party for you. You’ll get the chance to watch all of the video narratives created this semester, then vote on your favorites. Erika has graciously agreed to manage the playlists (one on YouTube and one on Vimeo), and you are welcome to bring snacks and drinks if you’d like. At the end of class (or shortly thereafter), please vote for your five favorite videos. I’ll announce the winner(s) of the “Audience Prize” at the beginning of class on Wednesday.
• On Wednesday, we will begin working with the Tapestry application to better understand the differences between traditional printed texts and multimodal texts. You should bring a laptop to class or plan on borrowing one from the Innovation Space. Before you come to class, please create a document in your shared Google Drive folder containing at least five possible topics for your tap essay. For each topic, write a paragraph that summarizes the argument you want to make and describes how you might do so using the tap essay format. During class, you’ll share these ideas with your peers and narrow down your list of topics to three finalists. I will then review these ideas with each of you to help you finalize your topic for this project.

I won’t be back on campus until Wednesday morning, but if you need to reach me, I’ll be checking my email while I’m away.