September 27, 2010 Archives

The first Production Portfolio (which will include the Production Lab Report -- the 400-word news story on your contributions to The Setonian) is not due until next week, Oct 4. (Usually, the lab report is due the week after the paper comes out, but I wanted you to have the time to learn from my feedback on your peer profile interviews, so I pushed the assignment back a little.)

However, your assignment for today is to make sure you have already interviewed your supervisors -- so that you won't be "asking for a quote" at the last minute.  The work for the second issue of the paper will be done by now, so your supervisors may have a little more time.

This is also a good time to share your ideas for how you can contribute to the next issue.

Leadership Portfolio 1

Documentation of your leadership goals and accomplishments. A 3-page narrative, with supporting documents such as emails, copy-editing, etc. One component of this portfolio is the production lab report that we discussed the last few weeks (and which, for the freshmen, is not due until next week.

I have already shared with you the full rubric for the Lab Report exercise.

Since you have both explained you won't be able to make it to the DC field trip, we'll need to discuss some alternative assignment.

InDesign Layout 1 (lay out a practice page, using different layers for background, text and images)

Follow the tutorials we started in class last week. You will need to schedule time to use the computers in A405, unless you happen to have access to your own copy of Adobe CS3.

From the page that first introduced the assigment, last week:

[T]he assignment is to design a one-page practice document, using text (including headlines and body text), images (including photos and/or other illustrations), and a background (which may have a watermark, shading, guidelines, etc.).

I'm leaving the content of the page unspecific, other than asking you to demonstrate something you have learned so far in EL200. You can a poster advertising some event (historical or imaginary); a mockup of a page from a magazine or newspaper, or a spoof in the tradition of The Onion.  You are free to re-use any of the materials you have written so far for this class; you may also use text somebody else wrote, as long as you have permission from that author. So, you might want to lay out two or three peer profiles

You may work with a partner as you learn the software, but I will ask each student to submit a separate one-page practice document. (If you and your partner use the same text, that is fine; just make sure your layout is completely different.)

Submit your work by emailing a PDF of your document to me. (The process of converting your CS project to a PDF is described at about the 7:30 mark in the second tutorial.) 

Our goal for this initial exercise is

1) basic familiarity with the tools and file formats
2) gaining experience in learning from a screencast tutorial
3) respecting deadlines (you will have to plan, on your own time, to finish watching these tutorials and carry out these steps in Adobe CS3)

See note from last week.