Portfolio 2 is coming along, but slowly. I HOPE to have the first class (11 am, it's your turn to be first) back to you by Thursday sometime (Sorry--they are long, as are my Tuesdays, so I doubt they will be finished tomorrow) and then the rest not later than Sunday.

That said: let's dive into your third and final portfolio! We will work through as much as possible of this today, and pick up Thursday where we left off. 

1) Considering Purpose & Audience

In small groups, share your thoughts on audience (and on style/example publications). Use your blog post (due before class today) to help you with this. Share: What did you decide? Who is our audience? How would you describe them? What are their needs, interests, and expectations? What "rules" for webzine style have you discovered? What models do you think we could draw from to teach us to write well in this genre? Discuss possible site names, too (and remember that the site name will be the site address, too! It needs to be descriptive and direct.) Be ready to report the group's discussion to the class.

2) Joining/Intro to using Wordpress.com

• join site: Go to http://www.wordpress.com, and click on "get started."
• set up private blog (just for playing in--you will post to our site, once it's set up)
• explore! I made THIS HANDOUT for a previous class, but it should help you learn to do basic things on Wordpress. You will also find lots of video (and text) tutorials on Wordpress.com itself.
• Note that it DOES NOT include a link to our website,  or reference your assignment, nor have I already sent you invites to wordpress.com. It doesn't, in fact, even have my current email on it. It was made for another (past) class, in which I dictated more of this than I will for you--I want you all to help me pick the name, and style of this. I didn't revise it because I can only find the pdf just now (which isn't editable, and I can't bear to do it all from scratch tonight. LOL) Once we make some decisions together,I will set it up our site, and send out invites so you can become an author on the thing. For today, then, you're going to just join the site, set up a dummy blog (we can click a box to make it private, so no one but you will see it). 

3) Considering design:

• Design Matters!
• Discussion of Reading: "The Big Four: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity”  

4) What do you WANT/need to make:

Let's make a list of what other kinds of things you want to make/use. For example: Are you going to integrate a video? Do you want a slideshow? Do you want to include links, and if so, how? (You could use Pinterest for this, or could just build a link list to include as part of the post.) Etc. Remember: the sky is the limit, as long as you can justify how this is appropriate for our purpose(s) and audience. THIS is where we will start on Thursday. Visit our blog and let us know your thoughts.

For Thursday:

Make sure you've done the blog post requested above, and come ready to work on whatever "bells and whistles" you want to build for your site. (...so...bring whatever text and other resources you might need to start playing with this.)

In Thursday's class, we'll explore some resources and do a little mini-workshop on style, and editing surface features.

A REMINDER: Be careful about citation as you work. CITE AS YOU GO, not when you are "done." (It's too easy to make mistakes this way.) Be sure to collect citation information for images, videos, and sounds, too! We are using MLA, and you will need both in text and bibliographic citations. (...so there should be a works cited list at the end of your post.)