assignments ENGL298 Second Year Seminar: This Bridgewater Life
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com |
SPRING 2014 Office Hours
Monday: 3:30 to 4:30 Tuesday: 11:00 to 12:00 Friday: 1:00 to 2:00 and by appointment. |
Short Partner Interviews
As a first assignment, the Short Interview is designed to accomplish many things. First, you should recognize it as a riff on the cheesy ice-breakers you’ve probably been asked to do in some of your classes. No less cheesy, probably, at least you’ll get some academic credit for getting to know your classmates in this assignment.
Secondly, the SI is meant to give you practice in the technology of creating podcasts. This is still fairly new territory for me if it isn’t for you—and I rethink how to do this every semester as I learn more. I am going to assume that there are going to be some problems. We have to learn how to use the mics and the software, learn how to download the material off recorders onto computers, edit and all that on the computer, and then make the file available to each other. Maybe this seems easy to you, but it still makes me twitchy.
The most important thing that you’ll learn from this assignment is how to start to think about the big project of the semester—your fifteen minute This Bridgewater Life podcast. You’ll have a chance to listen to This American Life, a chance to revise your interview, a chance to think about what you need to learn how to do in order to tell the story you want to tell.
So while your effort, energy, and final product for this piece is important, you should, as I do, understand this first project as practice. You should also know that you will have the chance to get formal feedback from me and then revise your podcast of the interview at midterm for the midterm portfolio. I’m taking all this time to explain the rationale behind this assignment because if I were taking this class and doing this assignment I would be nervous about doing it right. What I’m trying to tell you is that you will have multiple opportunities to get this right. So don’t worry.
Here are all the things you will need to do for this first assignment:
Here is a more detailed version of the above (taken from our class board notes from 7 February 2014)
1. Identify your Assignment: To tell the story of a classmate in 2 and 1/2 minutes, a story that is interesting and thoughtful and focused.
2. Determine a theme to frame your story around: Phineas & Ferb: Adventure Awaits!
3. Figure out questions that will yield answers that will let you accomplish #1, while meeting the theme of #2.
4. Ask Follow up questions that you think of because of answers you get in #3. These questions should help you start to focus in on the story you want to tell about your classmate.
5. Think about what your theme for your particular story is--separate from the larger theme of Adventure Awaits.
6. Write up your story in a script. Two things to think about 1) One page, double-spaced, typed text in 12 point font is 2 minutes of talking time. So your script should be about 1 and a quarter pages. 2) The way you write and the way you write when you are going to read what you write sounds different. Test it out. Your script should sound like you are just talking, not like you are reading off a piece of paper.
7. Test your script. Read it to people that don't know your classmate. See what they have to say about who they think the person is. Does it jibe with the individual theme (#5) you intended to showcase? Does it fit in with the larger theme of Adventure (#2)? If not, back to the drawing board.
8. Test your script. What does the classmate think? Accurate? Not so much? All the stuff mentioned in #7? Revise as necessary.
NOTE: Steps 4 through 7 are steps you might go through over and over in a project like this. They are recursive, one step can lead you forward or back to an earlier step--that's just the process).
9. Record your script (2 and 1/2 minutes per person; 5 minutes per pair--7 and 1/2 if you have three in your group. You can have a fluid or shared 5 minutes or you can have two distinct 2/12 minute stories).
10. Listen to your script. Does it do all the stuff you want it to do in #2 and #3? Does the stuff from #4 and #5 prove it?
11. Revise your recording as needed.
As a first assignment, the Short Interview is designed to accomplish many things. First, you should recognize it as a riff on the cheesy ice-breakers you’ve probably been asked to do in some of your classes. No less cheesy, probably, at least you’ll get some academic credit for getting to know your classmates in this assignment.
Secondly, the SI is meant to give you practice in the technology of creating podcasts. This is still fairly new territory for me if it isn’t for you—and I rethink how to do this every semester as I learn more. I am going to assume that there are going to be some problems. We have to learn how to use the mics and the software, learn how to download the material off recorders onto computers, edit and all that on the computer, and then make the file available to each other. Maybe this seems easy to you, but it still makes me twitchy.
The most important thing that you’ll learn from this assignment is how to start to think about the big project of the semester—your fifteen minute This Bridgewater Life podcast. You’ll have a chance to listen to This American Life, a chance to revise your interview, a chance to think about what you need to learn how to do in order to tell the story you want to tell.
So while your effort, energy, and final product for this piece is important, you should, as I do, understand this first project as practice. You should also know that you will have the chance to get formal feedback from me and then revise your podcast of the interview at midterm for the midterm portfolio. I’m taking all this time to explain the rationale behind this assignment because if I were taking this class and doing this assignment I would be nervous about doing it right. What I’m trying to tell you is that you will have multiple opportunities to get this right. So don’t worry.
Here are all the things you will need to do for this first assignment:
- Partner up
- Get preliminary information on your person. You know, the sort of boring background information that you need but that you might not entirely include.
- Get the best story you can out of that person, a story that does the best job possible of telling the rest of the class something about who this person is.
- Put together your story
- You will have five minutes TOTAL for your interviews. That’s 2 and ½ minutes for each half of your duo.
- You can put the story together anyway you see fit: funny, heartfelt, combined, separate.
Here is a more detailed version of the above (taken from our class board notes from 7 February 2014)
1. Identify your Assignment: To tell the story of a classmate in 2 and 1/2 minutes, a story that is interesting and thoughtful and focused.
2. Determine a theme to frame your story around: Phineas & Ferb: Adventure Awaits!
3. Figure out questions that will yield answers that will let you accomplish #1, while meeting the theme of #2.
4. Ask Follow up questions that you think of because of answers you get in #3. These questions should help you start to focus in on the story you want to tell about your classmate.
5. Think about what your theme for your particular story is--separate from the larger theme of Adventure Awaits.
6. Write up your story in a script. Two things to think about 1) One page, double-spaced, typed text in 12 point font is 2 minutes of talking time. So your script should be about 1 and a quarter pages. 2) The way you write and the way you write when you are going to read what you write sounds different. Test it out. Your script should sound like you are just talking, not like you are reading off a piece of paper.
7. Test your script. Read it to people that don't know your classmate. See what they have to say about who they think the person is. Does it jibe with the individual theme (#5) you intended to showcase? Does it fit in with the larger theme of Adventure (#2)? If not, back to the drawing board.
8. Test your script. What does the classmate think? Accurate? Not so much? All the stuff mentioned in #7? Revise as necessary.
NOTE: Steps 4 through 7 are steps you might go through over and over in a project like this. They are recursive, one step can lead you forward or back to an earlier step--that's just the process).
9. Record your script (2 and 1/2 minutes per person; 5 minutes per pair--7 and 1/2 if you have three in your group. You can have a fluid or shared 5 minutes or you can have two distinct 2/12 minute stories).
10. Listen to your script. Does it do all the stuff you want it to do in #2 and #3? Does the stuff from #4 and #5 prove it?
11. Revise your recording as needed.