Step 6: Analyzing Digital Profiles
Unit 3 | Week 7-8 | ePortfolio Digital Track
Goals: Students will deploy media in a public-anticipating way and think about media composition; branding themselves, as part of their angle.
Until now, the digital elements of the course have been playing second-fiddle to genres we were examining. But now we’ll move beyond dabbling into more explicit experimentation with digital forms.
In this step, you’ll choose a couple of multimodal examples of Profiles and invite students to try their hand at digitally composing using these same tricks/tools.
Preparing for Step 6:
❏ Locate a couple of modal profile samples within your chosen sub-genre (or use defaults). And encourage students to bring in their own samples of the sub-genre.
❏ Remix the Profile Assignment to include your digital genre(s) of choice.
❏ Give students the prompt for the Profile assignment and encourage them to think about how they will approach it. Ask them to think up ‘pitches’ for their project.
❏ Walk students through composing with media in simple activities in class. (Consider using some of the small demo activities in the toolkits).
❏ Recommended: Have students collaborate on a small digital thing together in one of these activities!
Examples of Step 6 in action:
Maria (Video Track): Maria opens class by showing the first 30 seconds of the Pilot Episode of Parks and Recreation where the main character, Leslie Knope, interviews a child in a park in Pawnee Indiana. They discuss how to conduct an interview professionally and explain to their students how they will act as journalists for the profile assignment.
Maria also shows some examples of interviews from news outlets.
Leo (Audio Track): Leo has his students looking at several podcasts this unit, and it’s quickly becoming one of the themes of the course. He uses S-Town as an example of a profile, and he assigns the first two episodes. As a class, they compare how these podcasts are working to reach their audience in different from previous examples, and they do a few audio activities from the toolkit to practice making their own.
Even though the remix unit is still a ways off, a number of students approach Leo and say they’ll want to remix their profile for sure, so can they skip the essay part and just write the podcast episode? Leo explains that-- for now-- they should write the paper itself, but he shows them how they can write the essay in a script form to make it easy to adapt next unit.
Tips and Tools:
If students are excited about the idea of remixing the profile, some may want to go in with digital work already. How you approach this is largely up to you, but you may want to encourage students to approach the profile essay as a prototype for their remix, if that is how they want to see it.
Remember that the Sanford Media Center can provide instructional tutorials on key software, as well as access to all kinds of equipment (checked out through Gorgas circulation). If you want to have a ‘greenscreen day’ in class or something to introduce students to the equipment they have access to, go for it! Make sure to get in touch with the Sanford Media Center sooner rather than later to make sure they can accommodate your class.
Back to Step 5.
Next to Step 7.