Writing Up Assignments

Guide to Blogging ds106 Assignments
We are entering the main part of the ds106 class where your task entails choosing your own things to complete from the Assignment Bank This guide gives you some criteria for what we are looking for in terms of your blog posts where you summarize your work- it is more than just saying "here is my assignment". Just posting the results without anything else is not satisfying the ds106 criteria for writing up your work.

The three main portions you must cover to receive full credit include:


 * The Work Itself
 * Telling the Story Behind the Story
 * Narrating the Process

In terms of the blog post, we want you to post it with a descriptive title that is more than "My Visual Assignment"- the title of your post is what people will glance at from among many other blog posts, so think of it as a headline. Be clever with your post titles. Use metaphors, plays on words, cultural memes, anything to grab someone's interest.

Also, be sure to add a hyperlink back to the original assignment, this allows others to see its prompt, as well as the other examples and tutorials related to it. Think links! In addition, it is best to describe in your own post how the assignment is written, so a reader knows the context of the work you are posting. One way is to copy the description and put it in a blockquote tag on your blog.

In the body of your post, we want to hear you tell us about the meaning of your work and how it is related to the concept of digital storytelling or just your own connection to it. Your post should include hyperlinks to reference material(e.g. a link to the Internet Movie Database for a movie, a link to previous work if you have built upon something done earlier, a link to media sources used).

The Work Itself
What you created ought to be embedded into the body of your post, not just hyperlinked. See the Blogging Tips to see how media is embedded when you write your posts. You will want to write an introduction to your creation, more than "My assignment" - see what happens if you make your assignment part of a larger narrative. Write around the media, reference it.

The most key thing is that you include the specific assignment tags that are provided on each assignment. For example, the Design Your Dream Animal assignment, you must add the tags DesignAssignments and DesignAssignments394 to your post. Feel free to add any other descriptive tags, but the base tags are required.

http://macguffin.ds106.us/files/2012/06/assignment-tags.jpg

You can enter these separated by commans in ther Tags box and click Add.

http://macguffin.ds106.us/files/2012/06/tagged.jpg

Including these in your post does two important things- it enables your own post to be added to the list of examples on the original assignment. Also, the general tag "DesignAssignments" provides a simple way to link to all of your Design Assigmments- if your blog is

then the link for all of your Design Assignment work is

Telling the story behind the story
As part of your writeup, we want to see evidence of the thinking behind it. Use a few paragraphs to describe why you chose the assignment or the topic, or what the thing you made means to you. What is its context? What is the story it tells? What does it mean to you? to society? to other media?

Think of this part as the part of a DVD that includes the extras- behind the scenes, out takes, director's commentary.

Narrate the Process
Again, your task is more than the final product. Include in your assignment blog posts a description of how you created it, the software used, techniques/tools within the software, the sources of any media, etc. Think of it as a guide to someone else who might want to recreate what you did. This the part of the DVD extras menu like "The Making Of My Groovy Assignment"

Remember that part of your class requirement is writing up a tutorial, so if you do a complete description of how you created your work, a writeup can also count as a tutorial (We recommend you do a full blown tutorial as a separate blog post; note that tutorial also have a specific set of require tags listed on the assignments page).

Got Examples?
Here are some well written up assignments from previous ds106 students that model this way of doing assignments


 * Using an Elevator
 * Minimalist Movie Poster: The Life Aquatic
 * Spying on People
 * Playing Devil’s Advocate Through Imagery
 * Warning- Lightsaber
 * Splash the Color – It’s all downhill from here
 * Ghostly Lullaby Dream Story
 * Hugo Meets Inception