July 22nd: Catching Up On Visuals
and Communication in the
Digital World

Plan for the Day

• July 16th's Digital World Stuff
• Ch. 6 Visuals
• I, Robot Preview
• Looking Ahead to Research

Midterm Fun

We'll go over the midterm exam tomorrow before our I, Robot discussion. That discussion will probably go into Wednesday, 7/24.

Visual Appeal

Visuals are rather important in technical communication as you undoubtedly know. I want you to tell me what makes a particular visual appropriate for a particular purpose. Check out the "famous" Visual Rhetoric Page.

Why visual rhetoric?

Research Discussion Introduction

Here's what I propose for our research discussions:

• What is research?

• How would you find information on...?

• What is epistemology?

• How do we determine a source's credibility?

• What are the annotated bibliography requirements?

What is research? Why do it? Why is it something people devote their lives to? What does it mean to research a topic? Where do you start? When do you stop? How do you come to a conclusion? Do you or should you come to a conclusion?

I know what you're thinking: "Hold on! Can't you just tell us what to do?" Well, I could, but where's the fun in that?

As a class, let's think about how we've researched and been told to research in the past. Think about the research assignments you've done for other classes (in high school or college). What were their purposes, and how did you create a research "paper" or final project?

Epistemology

How do we make knowledge? How do we take data and make it information? Let's consider those questions as we explore epistemology.

Keep Up with the Syllabus

Tomorrow (7/23) we'll have our I, Robot discussion, and your I, Robot Essays are due. For Thursday you should read Ch. 8 in Tebeaux and Dragga, and your Set of Instructions assignment is due on Thursday (7/25).

This research discussion isn't over, so we'll come back to your seriously modified "research" project later this week, so be thinking about a topic you'd like to consider for you Proposal, Visual, Annotated Bibliography, and Final Presentation. All of those will be due very soon. The term is almost over, so don't get behind...

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