This is the post for the October 31, 2014 class meeting.

Today, we will talk about your pitch (due on Monday), discuss selfies, and have some Halloween treats. Get started by going to the Multimodal Character Selfies questions on Padlet please.

Halloween Party

Remember that the 2015 English Undergraduate Research Conference’s Halloween Party takes place on October 31, from noon to 2 PM in Shanks 370/380.

Take a selfie of yourself at the party, post it on your blog, and email me the link for your blog entry by midnight Saturday. We’ll use a wide definition of selfies and allow photos you take of yourself or that you ask someone else at the party to take. They have to be definite portraits however. If you hate self-portraits, be creative and imaginative.

If you complete this activity, you will earn extra credit for the Participation, forum posts, and blog posts portion of your grade, which works out to 1% of your grade (or 6.67% of that portion of your grade, according to Scholar).

Prepare Your Pitch

You will pitch your project to the class on Monday, November 3. As Writer/Designer defines it, “A pitch is a short presentation that explains how the what and the how of your idea might come together in the final project. . . . Pitches are sometimes called elevator speeches, drawing on the idea of a writer who is on an elevator with a publisher and has only four floors to convince the publisher to accept his or her book proposal” (55).

You will have about two minutes to tell the class the story you have chosen, how you are remixing it, what form/genre you are using, what tools you will use, and how are you incorporating risk.

• See the list of questions on p. 56 of Writer/Designer.
• If you want even more tips, watch relevant portions of the Lynda.com tutorial on Pitching Projects and Products to Executives (free with your VT.edu login).

To prepare for your pitch, send me an email that informally pitches your project. I’ll reply by the end of the weekend and let you know if there are any changes you might want to make.

Selfies

The sources I asked you to explore before class today talked about selfies generally (Wikipedia entry on Selfies) and compared how self-portraits and the role of the artist to selfies (TEDx video).

1. We will talk a bit about how the modes of communication are used in selfies, and general trends in selfies:
   

2. We will look at your responses to the Multimodal Character Selfies questions. If you think you may want to use a character selfie in your project, copy your ideas into a blog post so you can find them later.

3. We will have some fun with selfies.

Writing and Homework

• Today: Send me an informal proposal for Project 3 by midnight. If you go to the departmental Halloween Party, email me the URL to the blog post with your selfie by midnight Saturday.

• Monday, 11/3: Be ready to give your pitch to the class.

• Wednesday, 11/5: We’ll go over the highlights of Chapter 5. Most of the class time will be spent working on the project.

• Friday, 11/7: We’ll go over the highlights of Chapter 6, looking at mock-ups and storyboards. Most of the class time will be spent working on the project. I will ask you to declare the primary technologies you will use in a blog post.