Author Archives: Michael Mandiberg

Final Project Proposal

Your final work for Core 2 is to produce a project proposal that includes a proof of concept. Yes, we will be reading it for a grade, but your true audience for this proposal are the gatekeepers who hold institutional purse strings, allocate resources and space, approve curriculum, or administer technology resources. Your job is to convince this hypothetical reader that your project is intellectually and/or pedagogically vital, builds on but doesn’t duplicate existing work, is done in the most effective and efficient way possible, uses the right tech, and most importantly: that you can pull it off in the time frame that you have available to you.

This project proposal does not have a fixed length requirement. You are welcome to follow the guidelines for the NEH Digital Humanities grants, or another discipline specific set of requirements. This proposal can as also double as a first draft of your ITP Independent Study proposal. Generally, it needs to include an abstract or summary with a clear problem statement, a project narrative that gives the practical, historical, theoretical, and technical contexts for the project proposed, a clear work plan or project timeline, and proof that you can complete the project. Proposals typically include a budget; you may choose to include this, but it is not required. You may find it useful to include your personas and your use case scenarios. Some disciplines may have other, discipline specific requirements; please include those.

The proof that you can complete the project sometimes comes in the form of your biography, or a description of how the proposed project builds on your previous and related work, but in this instance, you need to complete a proof of concept for the project. This will be different for each of you, but it needs to demonstrate that you have learned enough about the task at hand that you will be able to complete it. Most of this learning is technical, but it might not be exclusively technical. Some examples of past proofs of concept:

  • When proposing a group wiki assignment, one person created a simulation of one assignment at the halfway state, with the text edited in character by the user accounts for each of the 4 personas described.
  • When proposing a mobile app, one person found an open source quiz app they could build on, changed the text of one of questions, and recompiled the app.
  • When proposing a student assignment to create multimedia historical maps of NYC neighborhoods, one student created a sample map with the Google Maps API that contained a map point for each type of media expected to be used (video, audio, photograph, text).

You will be turning in a text, and giving a presentation. The presentation will take place on one of the last three weeks of class May 7, 14, or 21. These will be 15 minute presentations, with 15-20 minutes of discussion/feedback afterwards, depending on how many schedule per day. We will invite all ITP faculty to join us, though we don’t expect all will be able to make it for all of the days. One advantage of presenting early: you can incorporate your feedback into your text. The text as a .doc/.odt will be due May 21st. Sign up for a time slot in the doc in our course group.

One paragraph project descriptions

In an effort to scaffold your approach to the project short descriptions, we want you to write one blog post that contains at least three one paragraph abstracts for potential projects. These revised projects should reflect the Getting Real reading and the conversations with the post I.S. students. We challenge you to do less.

Please post these to the Assignments category prior to next weeks class.

Wikipedia community discussion about paid editing

The Wikipedia community is having a fairly intense conversation about how to deal with the problem of paid editing. This comes on the heels of the contentious departure of Sara Stierch, a notable community organizer, who stands accused of paid editing. You can see some of the conflict on her talk page, though much has been removed, as it was trollish.

The legal department has proposed an amendment here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Terms_of_use/Paid_contributions_amendment. The conversation is happening on the that page’s talk page. The discussion has been going for less than 48 hours, and there are 150 separate discussion threads.

Short notice on two dana boyd book talks this week

dana boyd is giving two NYC book talks about her new book:

NYU Institute for Public Knowledge Tuesday (tomorrow): http://t.co/4ylbqflmm8
DoSomething.org on Wednesday: http://t.co/QaeLjZbUvE

The Wednesday talk conflicts with the skill session, so try to go tomorrow, especially if you are interested in the use of technology/social media by youth/teens.

Overview of Assignments

This semester we will be working on three major assignments, with continuous blog writing throughout.

Provocations and responses: We will continue the practice of having several students write provocations on the blog on the reading/subject of the week, and carrying on a conversation on the blog in advance of class. Because we meet a day earlier than in the past, we need the provocations to be up by Saturday, so that discussion can start Sunday, with enough time to bear fruit. Several of the provocation assignments will scaffold towards the three larger assignments below.

Project Abstracts/Short Proposals: Your midterm assignment is to create at least two different project proposals that each have at least two scope variations: one full and a reduced version. Full assignment will be given February 19th and is due March 19th

Collaboration and Wikipedia:  Collaboratively write a Wikipedia article on one of the readings from last semester. Groups will be assigned February 26th, and is due March 26th

Final Project Proposal and Proof of Concept: Your final project is to turn in a proposal for a larger project, that includes a proof of concept. Your goal is to convince us that your proposal is relevant and productive AND that you can actually pull it off. The details will be discussed on March 19th, and will be due at the end of the semester. We will have three days of presentations, and the written proposal will be due during finals period.