Each week will contain an introductory video I have created that explains the work for the week. It will also contain links to what needs to be read or watched, as well as links to any new assignments any Discussion and Design Journal prompts. My goal is to have the video and assignment for the following week posted the Thursday or Friday prior. The schedule is subject to change; it is your responsibility to check it regularly.
Assignment for Week Fifteen The assignment for week 15 is to continue working on the Final Semester Assignment. The assignment page includes all the details.
The final assignment is due Friday, May 1 by 11:00pm.
On Thursday, April 30, I am available to meet with students via Zoom who would like some feedback on drafts of their final work. I will be sending around a signup sheet later in the week. You must sign up in order to meet. If those times won’t work for you but you would still like to meet, please email me and let me know what days and times might work.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry You will be linking to your final work under the Week 15 heading. See the final submission details for that info.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Thank you all for a wonderful semester. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you through your work and I wish you all the best in the future. Be well and above all, practice kindness, love, and empathy. Take care, Bill
Week One (1/12-1/16): Introduction to the Course
Week One Video
Assignment for Week One
We’re going to get started pretty slowly this week just to make sure I can work out any asynchronous kinks that might occur. So, just a few little assignments and then we’ll get going next week.
Please read through the course web site carefully and post two questions you have about it to this anonymous form:
I would also like you to read through the Weekly Discussion and Design Journal Assignment. This week I will be sharing with each of you a GoogleDoc you will use for that assignment. We’ll start using it next week, but just so I know you have received it, please add your name and email in the appropriate location in the document.
I will also share with each of you a GoogleDoc where I’d like you to add some background info about your learning up to this point in your educational career. This information will remain between me and each individual student.
Please complete the above work by Friday, January 16 at 11:00pm.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email me.
Week Two (1/19-1/23): Evolution of the Alphabet and the Future of Languages
M: MLK Jr. Day
Week Two Video
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 2. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here. Specifically, the video discusses:
0:00: Introductory Remarks 0:55: About the reading from The Story of Writing 2:30: About the documentary Language Matters with Bob Holman 4:05: Connections to Sand Talk 6:00: Where to find the assignment and writing the work for your Weekly Discussion and Design Journal
Assignment for Week Two: Due Friday 1/23 at 11:00pm The assignment for week two will get us started thinking about communication, focusing specifically on the history of writing and the fragile future for many of the world’s languages. In doing so, you will be introduced one of the main concepts of the semester: the technologies we use — and language is one of the main technologies we use daily — are not neutral. That is, embedded within them are complex histories, social hierarchies, politics, and human biases, to name a few impactful structures.
Don’t wait until the last minute to start this work, as it will take time.
To begin, I’d like you read selections from Andrew Robinson’s wonderful book, The Story of Writing. You can download a PDF of the selections on the Readings and Texts page (the password is in the email I sent to the class earlier in week 1). The reading ends with the Greeks, but you can see the continued evolution of writing that led to the Latin alphabet in the below image created by Matt Baker:
(As I was preparing this assignment, my 10 and 12 year old boys saw that graphic and decided to write their names in Proto-Sinaitic. You might try the same!)
Robinson’s book is wonderful because it presents nuanced facts incredibly well and has excellent evidence to illuminate the points he is making. But, it does not contain much in terms of the social, political, and ethical implications of how languages evolved.
That is exactly what director David Grubin presents in the fascinating documentary, Language Matters with Bob Holman, released on PBS in 2015. The documentary is 1 hour 50 minutes long and I strongly recommend you watch the entire thing. But, if you are pressed for time, skipping the content between 0:55:45 and 1:09:40 won’t cause you to miss anything truly vital. You can find a link to the documentary under Grubin on the Readings and Texts page (to watch it you will need to log in with your SJU email and password).
Weekly Discussion Journal Entry For your first Weekly Discussion Journal entry, I’d like to respond to the following prompt:
I’d like you to think about how the reading and documentary reveal how writing and language are not neutral (as I wrote above) and how the structures embedded within them have impacted the societies where those languages are spoken and written. Please refer to and/or cite both the Robinson reading and the documentary (which very nicely comes with a full transcript).
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 3. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Three: Due Thursday, January 29 by 11:00pm The assignment for week three is going to move us from the evolution of the alphabet and the implications of language loss, which we learned about in week two, to the evolution of print. We’ll be watching videos on the subjects of moveable type, which was invented in China, the Gutenberg printing press, the last press in the United States that uses traditional hand-crafted printing methods, and the invention of word processing. To contextualize those videos, we’ll be reading sort selections from Jay David Bolter’s book, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print (2001), which can be found on the Readings and Texts page.
Please complete the work in the following order: read Bolter, “Writing as a Technology.” Then, watch the four videos. Then read Bolter, “Remediation.”
For your second Discussion Journal entry, please respond to the following prompt by Thursday, January 29, at 11:00pm:
On page 19, Bolter writes: “The technical and cultural dimensions of writing are so intricately related that it is not useful to try to separate them: together they constitute writing as a technology.” Try to break that sentence down a bit. What does Bolter mean by “technical and cultural dimensions of writing”? Why and how are they so “intricately related”? Think about how you might see that represented in the evolution of print as depicted in the videos. What do those changes say about the changes in human culture (don’t make assumptions about differences between nationalities) from the time when humans first invented moveable type to Engelbart’s 1968 presentation? Why do you think some people still enjoy using traditional methods?
There are lot of questions in that prompt and you don’t need to address them all. Just go where your ideas take you, ensuring that you are discussing the videos in terms of Bolter’s ideas.
Week Four (2/2-2/6): Social Media, Algorithms, and AI
Week Four Video
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 4. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Four: Due by Saturday, February 7 at 11:00pm The assignment for week four is going to leap-frog us from the invention of word processing, which is where we ended in week three, to our contemporary social media moment.
In the years leading up to the invention of social media, internet scholars and technology critics lauded the democratic, egalitarian possibilities of the internet, calling it, as Harold Rheingold did in 1993, a “virtual community” where the technology that hosts it “has the potential to bring enormous leverage to ordinary citizens at relatively little cost–intellectual leverage, social leverage, commercial leverage, and most important, political leverage.” But, Rheingold warned, “The same tool, improperly controlled and wielded, could become an instrument of tyranny. The vision of a citizen-designed, citizen-controlled worldwide communications network is a version of technological utopianism that could be called the vision of ‘the electronic agora.’ In the original democracy, Athens, the agora was the marketplace, and more–it was where citizens met to talk, gossip, argue, size each other up, find the weak spots in political ideas by debating about them. But another kind of vision could apply to the use of the Net in the wrong ways, a shadow vision of a less utopian kind of place.”
The work for this week will ask us to look into that “less utopian kind of place” and see what we think about what we see.
Toward that end, I’d like you to read four articles and watch one documentary (links on the Readings and Texts page) in chronological order:
Hatzipanagos (2018) on online hate (from The Washington Post)
Noble (2018) on algorithms (from her book, Algorithms of Oppression) (Note that this reading analyzes the social and racial implications of Google search results of innocuous terms, such as “Black girls” and “Latina girls,” that resulted in sexualized language and references to pornographic depictions of women)
Orlowski (2020), The Social Dilemma documentary
Bogost (2022) on ChatGTP (from The Atlantic)
Warzel and Wong (2025) on Grok (from The Atlantic)
For your third Discussion Journal entry, please respond to the following prompt by Saturday, February 7, at 11:00pm:
I’d like you to think about the implications for us as human beings and global citizens as a result of what we read and watched for this week, particularly in terms of the control that technology has over our lives.
We started this semester thinking about whether technology is neutral or not, but the texts for today suggest the question: how can we ever not be consumed by or manipulated or controlled by the information technologies that we use every second of the day (some even when we sleep as they monitor our breathing).
There are many cliched answers here — “the good outweighs the bad,” “I’m not addicted,” “here’s nothing we can do about it because all my friends and family use it” — and so on. Avoid all these, and more.
I want to read truly what you think about the way that these technologies, shape our actions, alter our livelihoods, and impact whether we live or die. (We’re a long way from moveable type….)
Please cite the texts in our discussion. Make sure to complete the Reflection portion of your response and include questions. And remember, feel free to exceed the word count.
Week Five (2/9-2/13): Copyright; Intro to Graphic Design and the Grid; Draft 1
Week FIVE Video
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 5. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Five: Due Sunday, February 15 by 6:00pm The assignment for week five is going to get us started on our first major project, the Design Assignment. In this assignment you will be learning about and putting into practice the fundamentals of graphic design. The project will be completed over a series of weeks, with each week’s work building on the prior week, resulting in very different drafts from week to week. It will be, I hope, a challenging and fun assignment to complete.
By the end of this week you will have complete Draft 1.
Please note there is a lot of content this week, which will require you to complete it over a period of days. Do not attempt to complete it in one sitting.
Preparing for the Assignment: Copyright To prepare for the assignment I’d like you to watch two videos and read one short article on copyright. We’re learning about copyright because understanding the concept is essential for all creators and because for Design Assignment we will be using material obtained from the web. Knowing what material we can use and why is important. You work falls under the heading of Fair Use. The videos and text are:
Completing the Assignment Once you have completed the Copyright work, I’d like you to read the Design Assignment. You’ll see an overview of the assignment and then the first of what will be several specific weekly assignments. You are to complete all of the steps under the Week 5: Graphic Design Fundamentals and Draft 1 heading. I have created 2 tutorials for you and there are also several videos to watch. They all must be watched in order to complete the assignment.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry This week will be the first of several weeks that feature design work in your Discussion and Design Journal. See the assignment for specifics of what to include in Design entries. Use the same Discussion and Design Journal GoogleDoc you have been using all semester, but follow the Design guidelines in the assignment:
Design entries are to be completed during the weeks when you are working on your designs (or photographs). Each Design entry will have two sections, the Designs and the Reflection:
The Designs: This entry should include 3 screenshots of various stages of the design (or photography) work you have completed and a 30 – 50 word description directly under or above each screenshot of what you were trying to achieve in each example. In your description, highlight various design (or photography) techniques you were attempting to employ.
The Reflection: In 50 – 75 words, discuss how the work challenged you as a designer (or photographer) and list 1 or 2 questions you have about your designs (or photographs).
Because there is much to complete this week, and because I am behind on your work, and because this Sunday is the Super Bowl and next Saturday is Valentine’s Day, I’m making the deadline be Sunday, February 15 by 6:00pm.
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 6. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Six: due by Saturday, 2/21 at 11:00pm The assignment for week six is going to have us continuing to work on the Design Assignment. Specifically, we are going to be making color and typography choices. You can work on the color first or the typography first, it doesn’t matter, and I have broken the work into sections based each.
Completing the Assignment You will find the assignment under the Week 6: Color and Typeface Theory and Draft 2 heading on the Design Assignment page. I have created 2 tutorials for you, and there is some reading and a few videos to watch. They all must be watched in order to complete the assignment.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry As you are completing the work on your typography and color, be sure to take screenshots so you can add them to your discussion and design journal. See the assignment for specifics of what to include in Design entries. Use the same Discussion and Design Journal GoogleDoc you have been using all semester, but follow the Design guidelines in the assignment:
Design entries are to be completed during the weeks when you are working on your designs (or photographs). Each Design entry will have two sections, the Designs and the Reflection:
The Designs: This entry should include 3 screenshots of various stages of the design (or photography) work you have completed and a 30 – 50 word description directly under or above each screenshot of what you were trying to achieve in each example. In your description, highlight various design (or photography) techniques you were attempting to employ.
The Reflection: In 50 – 75 words, discuss how the work challenged you as a designer (or photographer) and list 1 or 2 questions you have about your designs (or photographs).
Because there is much to complete this week, I’m extending the deadline from Thursday to Friday, so your drafts and your Journal entry will be due by Saturday, 2/21 at 11:00pm.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Week Seven (2/23-2/27): Advanced Design, Graphics, and Design
Week SEVEN Video
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 6. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Seven: Due by Monday, March 9 at 11:00pm The assignment for week seven is going to have us continuing to work on the Design Assignment. Specifically, the work for week 7 is going to radically transform your project, as the last two weeks were essentially designed to introduce you to some design concepts and the Canva workspace, both of which I have been pleased to read in your Discussion and Design Journals have been new to many of you.
Please note that due to the snow and power outages I had to post this late and I apologize for that. As a result, I have made the deadline after Spring Break. I encourage you, however, to complete it before Spring Break. As soon as they are all completed or on Tuesday, March 9, whichever comes first, I will be creating a series of video comments on your drafts. The sooner you get the work in, the sooner I will be able to make them.
Your poster from this week forward will now be advertising a fake exhibit for the subject you have chosen at the The Frances M. Maguire Art Museum, which is a beautiful brand new museum on the SJU campus housed in the former Barnes Museum space.
Completing the Assignment You will find the assignment under the Week 7: Advanced Concepts, Purpose, and Graphics and Draft 3 heading on the Design Assignment page. I have created 1 tutorial for you and there are also a few videos to watch. They all must be watched in order to complete the assignment (the linked-to Canva tutorials are not required, but could help with specific Canva functions).
Discussion and Design Journal Entry As you are completing the work on your typography and color, be sure to take screenshots so you can add them to your discussion and design journal. See the assignment for specifics of what to include in Design entries. Use the same Discussion and Design Journal GoogleDoc you have been using all semester, but follow the Design guidelines in the assignment:
Design entries are to be completed during the weeks when you are working on your designs (or photographs). Each Design entry will have two sections, the Designs and the Reflection:
The Designs: This entry should include 3 screenshots of various stages of the design (or photography) work you have completed and a 30 – 50 word description directly under or above each screenshot of what you were trying to achieve in each example. In your description, highlight various design (or photography) techniques you were attempting to employ.
The Reflection: In 50 – 75 words, discuss how the work challenged you as a designer (or photographer) and list 1 or 2 questions you have about your designs (or photographs).
Sharing Your Drafts So I am able to create video comments on your work, please share it with me through Canva by following these steps. Do this even if you have shared it with me already:
Go to your design.
In the upper right click the white Share button.
Enter Bill’s SJU email into the field.
Select Edit from the pulldown menu so I can edit.
Click the purple Share button.
Note in the Week 7 space in your Discussion and Design Journal that you have shared it with me.
Week Eight (3/9-3/13): Rule of Thirds, Color Contrast, Final Drafts and Presentations Due
Week EIGHT Video
This video introduces the concepts that will be covered in the work we complete during week 8. Note that the video was created a few years ago and may have references to prior sections and a slightly different website layout. Everything still applies here.
Assignment for Week Eight The assignment for week seven is going to have us completing the Design Assignment. Specifically, the work for week 8 is going to be finishing and submitting your poster and a 12-slide, less-than-5-minute presentation about the poster in which you discuss your design decisions.
To help inform the final draft of your poster, have added video comments on all drafts that were shared with me by Tuesday morning. Please watch the whole video and not just your own, because I cover different concepts and ideas on different drafts and seeing those will help you with your revisions. If you don’t see yours it is being you didn’t share with me a version of your Canva space work that has the rough draft. The video is part of the Week 8 assignment (linked below).
Completing the Assignment You will find the assignment under the Week 8: Final Design and Presentation Due heading on the Design Assignment page. I have created 1 tutorial for you, which must be watched you so know how to create and submit your presentation.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry The discussion and design journal entry this week will ONLY consist of links to your final poster and final presentation. No other content is required.
Links to your work are due by 11:00pm, Sunday, March 15.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Wednesday, March 11: Midterm Submitted to University
Assignment for Week NINE: due by Saturday, March 21 by 11:00pm This week we are going to shift focus and move into our Photography unit. As we did when considering writing, we start with the history and development of photography. We’re also getting back to written Discussion and Design Journal entries.
The Work for the Week I would like you to watch the following videos, in order presented, which will provide you with an overview of the technical history of photography.
Then, I would like you to watch the following video, which discusses the social and racial implications of how film and digital sensors were created, specifically using a calibration device that became known as Shirley Cards.
Moving forward to the present day, I’d like to focus on one contemporary photographer, Ruddy Roye, who is using photography to communicate visually stunning, soulful, and compelling stories. Please go to Ruddy Roye’s professional site and look at the images under the series “When Living is a Protest” (and explore the rest of the site, as you’d like). You can also check out Roye’s Instagram page, if you’d like. Then, watch the below videos, which in different ways they both showcase his approach to telling stories (note that they are both promotional videos for Fuji Cameras so there is some Fuji hyping in there, too):
Discussion and Design Journal Entry
In your Weekly Discussion Journal entry, I’d like to respond to the following prompt:
I’d like you to think about the role of communication in photography, especially as a medium that invites storytelling, which even in the 1800s was a central component of it. In your discussion, I’d like you to consider how the technologies of photography afford or interfere with stories being able to be told. Make sure to reference Roye as well as some of the technical videos.
Don’t forget to complete the Discussion and the Reflection.
Week Ten (3/23-3/27): Photography and Storytelling
Week TEN Video
No video this week.
Assignment for Week TEN: due by Saturday, March 28 by 11:00pm This week we build on the history of photography from week nine by considering how we can use photographs to tell stories. This is your last written Discussion and Design Journal entry, so make it your best!
Discussion and Design Journal Entry This week for your Discussion and Design Journal Entries, with a bit of a visual twist. There are 3 parts:
In the Discussion portion of your entry, I’d like you to:
Discuss a passage from the duChemin reading that you found particularly interesting and/or engaging and why you gravitated toward that. Make sure you include the quote in your discussion. The quote does not count toward the word count.
Link to or paste a photograph you have seen online or a photograph you have taken that you think illuminates one of words of wisdom duChemin makes. The words of wisdom can be the same as you discussed above or different. Describe how you see the image illuminating the duChemin passage.
Link to or paste a photograph you have seen online or a photograph you have taken that is an example of one of the composition techniques O’Carroll describes. Discuss what impact you think the composition has on the story being told.
Don’t forget to complete the Reflection part of the Entry!
Assignment for Week ELEVEN: Due by Sunday, April 5, Thursday, April 9 at, 11:00pm This week we are going to start creating photographs, and we have a phenomenal week to get started on it. To get started, please the Photography Assignment with great care. Then, get started on the work for the week
The Work for the Week You will find the work for the week under the Work for Week 11 heading on the Photography Assignment page. There is one video, which must be watched, on interrelated subjects of aperture (also know as f-stops) and depth of field. It also includes a photography exercise to help you take intentional photographs that showcase various photography composition techniques and storytelling.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry This week we’ll be using the Discussion and Design Journal document with a bit of a twist.
In the Discussion portion of your entry, I’d like you to:
share links to the Technical and Soulful Imagesfolders you have created in Google Drive. Be sure to label which link is which and set permissions on the folders so I can see the images.
In the Reflection portion, I’d like you to:
reflect on your experiences taking the photos and what questions you might have
I will add video comments on a selection of photographs you take.
Please complete your work by Sunday, April 5, Tuesday, April 7,at 11:00pm.
Assignment for Week Twelve, due by Sunday April 19 at 11:00pm There are two parts to the assignment.
Part 1. Comments and New Photographs This work for Week Twelve will prepare you to complete the final photographs and to complete the Final Photography Assignment presentation.
On Sunday, April 12, I emailed you a link to a video that contains comments on all photographs that were submitted before April 12.
You are required to watch the whole video and not just of your own photos. Watching the whole thing will allow you to see what your fellow students are doing as well as give you insight into how I approach the technical composition techniques and what makes an effective composition.
After you have watched, get back out there, taking more effective and engaging technical and soulful photographs. Note that you really only need to take more photos if, based on my comments, you believe you need to so you have the best photos you have when submitting the final.
For the final submission, you can use photos from Week 11, Week 12, or a combination of both.
Part 2. Final Submission and Final Presentation Your final photographs and final presentation about the photographs will be due by Sunday, April 19 at 11:00pm. See Final Photography Assignment Submission and Final Presentation for the requirements, submission details, and rubric.
Assignment for Week Fourteen The assignment for week 14 is to start working on the Final Semester Assignment. You will be working on this assignment for the rest of the semester. The assignment page includes all the details.
The final assignment is due Friday, May 1 by 11:00pm, which gives you 2 weeks to work in it. That being said, do not wait until the last minute to complete it.
If you would like me to look a drafts of your photographs and/or designs, please email and let me know when you would be free for a 15 minute meeting. Provide multiple days and times. I will also have some meeting times available on Thursday, April 30, that you can sign up for. I’ll post those times during week 15.
Discussion and Design Journal Entry There is nothing to post in the Discussion and Design Journal this week.
Your final work will appear in the Week 15 section of the Discussion and Design Journal.
