WR152 Family Snaps and Stories Spring 2023 Module 4 Assignment The Photo-Essay on Digication Due: Photo Essay Final Version and Reflection on Digication on Thursday, 5/4, by 11:59PM Purpose: To consider a different rhetorical situation for your academic project; to create original, multimodal content that can reach a particular audience; to hone and craft our skills with a web application; to generate a narrative that prioritizes the visual exhibits and with few words effectively draw an audience and further disseminate your research; to understand the importance of digital media in the research realm and beyond; to critically assess how different media can portray the same arguments and bolster them. Assignment: The photo-essay is a form of visual-verbal argument or storytelling that originates with “the rise of mass-circulation illustrated press” (Hopkinson). Originally, photo-essays appeared in illustrated journals and magazines, such as Life, Fortune, and Vogue. Photo-essays often the medium of social, racial, and environmental justice, featuring the voices and faces of individuals misunderstood or marginalized by mainstream society. Our course readings include Gordon Parks’ photo-essay on Southern segregation from Life, as well as more recent ones from The Guardian, Mother Jones, and The New York Times, which have digital magazine features. Your photo-essay should translate your academic paper into a narrative that conveys the importance of your subject: you can focus on the main claim or develop a supporting claim or story from within the essay. The language of the photo-essay should be suitable for a general audience and integrate multimodal exhibits: family photographs mainly but also potentially handwritten or government documents, videos, newspaper clippings, maps, graphs, or timelines. Requirements: 1. The essay should consist of approximately 800 words (or more with captions) presented in a font that is easy to read online. You can use language from your research paper but make it accessible to a general rather than academic reader. 2. 5-7 visual exhibits should be sequenced, integrated, and captioned. At least three of the exhibits should be family pictures of some kind. The arrangement of the exhibits will be part of the argument, and your creativity is encouraged! You can cluster exhibits together, feature one as an opening “paragraph,” or seed them strategically throughout the essay. .Module 4 Assignment p. 2 The photo-essay’s design will be part of the grade. Please see our course model for design ideas, but also further Design Elements below. 3. Caption citation information can be transferred from the original essay. You can also use descriptive (also called discursive) captions. 4. A Works Cited box for all relevant sources. 5. A Reflection to be submitted under “Reflection” page on Digication. Digital Tools: If you have experience creating a blog, you are welcome to draw on those skills for this assignment, though I do not assume you have such skills. Digication is an ePortfolio/website platform hosted by BU. You can access the site via our Blackboard page. I’ve created a template for our course. You will use the template for your project and design the photo-essay on one of the ePortfolio’s blog-like pages. If you prefer another platform, such as Weebly or Wix, you are welcome to use it. Just be sure I can access the assignment. Tech Details Getting Started with the Photo-Essay Make sure you're signed into our class site on Blackboard: https://learn.bu.edu. 1. Click on “Digication” in the left column. 2. Click the green +Plus button to access the photo-essay template for our course. 3. On the next page, you will see the “WR152 Photo-Essay Template S23” template, click on the template. 4. Then, click the button “Use this template.” 5. Next, click on the blue +Create button. 6. Once you are in the template, please title it as follows: yourlastname_WR152yoursectionnumber_S23. Then, scroll down to click the blue “Create” button. You will then see a button: View Recommended Settings. Click the button and then Save at the bottom. Your ePortfolio should be shared with our class and me (see the figure below). Once the ePortfolio is published you can access it through the Digication link on Blackboard. To ensure that your ePortfolio Pages are published, click the Share button in the upper right corner and “Publish This Page.” .Module 4 Assignment p. 3 If you want to see what your reader sees, click “View Published Version” Finally, you don’t have to save the ePortfolio because Digication does that for you. You do not need to submit the ePortfolio to Blackboard because I already have access to it. Organization and Design Elements Your photo-essay should be organized to sequence exhibits and text in a manner that creates a general audience for some aspect of your research project. The Digication Photo-Essay “Page” includes Contents can be moved around and resized. Text boxes include a huge selection of fonts that can be enlarged or colored. Backgrounds for the Page and Contents can be filled, shaded, or wallpapered in various ways. The blank area is called a Section and the things you add are called Content Boxes. The blue + button allows you to add Content Boxes to the Sections. .Module 4 Assignment p. 4 I recommend using Rich Text for text boxes and Upload File for image files. As you can see, other kinds of multimodal content can be uploaded as well, including weblinks, videos, and audio recordings. The uploaded item can be resized and moved around on the page. You can edit a Rich Text box by clicking on it and using the pencil button to cut and paste the text of your photo-essay and create captions. Whenever you click on a Content Box or a Section, a vertical menu box with three icons appears on the far right. The top four-arrow button allows you to move your Contents or Sections. The middle “cog” button opens a “Section Settings” column (on the left) that allows you to add and layer background images and adjust their opacity, etc. .Module 4 Assignment p. 5 The bottom trash button allows you to delete anything you no longer want or like. See the following site for more help (and screenshots!) with your New Digication ePortfolio. An explanation of the terminology helps keep all the aspects of the site straight: https://bu.digication.com/portfolio_about_portfolios/Creating_an_ePortfolio_in_th e_New_Digication Design Elements: The photo-essay possesses two important components: sequenced visual exhibits and concise prose. In print and digital journalism, photo-essays capture the reader’s attention with the visual power of its design and concise, persuasive language. Professional photo-essays vary in style and emphasis: some consist only of photographs and captioned words. This assignment asks you to use prose and images to convey tell a story related to your research paper to a general audience. A photo-essay should be designed with both the exhibits and prose in mind. Do you want to begin with an image and then provide the opening paragraph? Do .Module 4 Assignment p. 6 you want the visual artifacts (or the text and artifacts) to support or compete with each other? How will you incorporate other multi-modal elements such as video, graphs, or maps? As you design your photo-essay, you’ll want to consider the style of font (or typeface) you will use as well as the placement and size of your artifacts. Ball and Sheppard (pp. 44-50) identify the following six key design concepts. I have adapted their language for concision: 1. Emphasis: aspects of design that draw attention to an element whether words or images 2. Contrast: the difference between elements that can play a large role in emphasis; color, size, placement shape and content can create contrast 3. Color: the temperature of colors create feelings and emotions in the audience; shades of black and white can also create contrast and have an emotional impact 4. Organization: the way in which elements are arranged to form a coherent unit or functioning whole; an MLA formatted essay is designed to emphasize sentences arranged in sequenced paragraphs; the photoessay uses sentences, visual artifacts, and web design to convey an argument to a general audience 5. Alignment: how things line up to guide our sight; words and images might be justified left in a column or an artifact might be centered with text wrapped around it; alignment creates emphasis as well as contrast 6. Proximity: the closeness of elements to each other; the spacing between elements; proximity creates contrast or likeness .Module 4 Assignment p. 7 WR152 Reflection on the Photo-Essay Assignment: Please answer the following questions to the best of your ability. You can fill out this form or write a separate paragraph to accompany your final essay. Please upload the Reflection to the “Reflection” subpage of the Photo-Essay tab on Digication. You do not need to submit anything to Blackboard. What was your strategy for creating a visual-verbal story out of your research? What are two important things you learned in designing and writing the photoessay? Was Digication easy to use for this assignment? What were its virtues or shortcomings if any? If you had more time on the photo-essay assignment, what would you do? .Module 4 Assignment p. 8 What elements of the photo-essay did you enjoy creating most? Did a student offer a comment/question/suggestion that helped you focus or design your photo-essay? .Module 4 Assignment p. 9 Grading Rubric for the Photo-Essay 25 points Essay 15 points Design 10 points A, A-: the essay reflects the shift to a non-academic audience; the subject matter is clear and offers a new angle from the research paper; the commentary and analysis refers to the exhibits; the exhibits are captioned and include source information. B+, B, B-: the prose is only a partial shift in audience; the exact subject is clear but not that different from the research essay; the commentary and analysis refer to the exhibits; the prose is concise and well edited; the exhibits are captioned and include source information. A, A-: the exhibits are organized in a sequence or coherent arrangement related to the essay’s topic; all exhibits have clear resolution and proper captioning. C+, C, C-: the prose lacks clarity or coherence, proper editing, or citation. The exhibits are not captioned. C+, C, C-: the exhibits lack an organizing principle; they are poorly scanned and lack captioning; the photo-essay lacks at least five exhibits. D+, D, D-: the essay lacks coherence and is disorganized; paragraphs lack transitions; sources lack attribution; exhibits are not addressed. D+, D, D-: the photo-essay lacks exhibits or the minimum of five; they lack captioning; no effort is made to construct a sequence B+, B, B-: the exhibits are organized in a sequence or coherent arrangement related to the essay’s topic; all exhibits have clear resolution and proper captioning. Note: Students can gain extra points for integrating relevant and creative design elements, such as striking backgrounds, multimodal artifacts, and innovative (but easy-to-read) typeface.
