CS345U Fall 2009
Cyberculture: The Internet and Popular Culture
This page is stored at cs.pdx.edu/~len/345
If
you are reading this for the first time, begin with Course information and assignments,
which can be found below the course schedule.
The
schedule doesn’t have dates because, this being the first time I’ve taught this
course or anything like it, I don’t know how long we’ll spend on each
topic. I’ll fill in dates online as the
course progresses. You may need to
ctrl-click to activate the blue links.
I
will present the lecture in class and one person will be assigned to present
each discussion article. You will get
more from the class if you read the discussion articles before class and print
out the lecture slides so you can take notes on them.
GOALS:
At the end of this course I want each of you to be a more intelligent and
successful user of the Internet, to understand how the internet works, to be
aware of the wide variety of applications that exist on the internet, and to
understand the primary principles that underlie the success the Internet has
had in changing popular culture. This is
not a course about the culture of the Internet – for that, see http://tinyurl.com/dnd94y . On the
first day of class I will ask you what other goals, if any, you may have for
our course.
EXPERIMENT:
This is the first time I’ve taught this course, or any course remotely like
this. I don’t think there is any course
quite like this taught anywhere in the world.
Thus we are participating in an experiment. Please help me make it a success. I will appreciate your coming to class and
participating in discussions, bringing to class any materials that you feel will
contribute to our goals, and being prepared for midstream changes as we discover
what works best.
GRADING:
There will be two homework assignments and a project. Each counts for one quarter of your
grade. In class I will assign you to
read articles and ask you to lead class discussion on those articles. Class participation counts for another
quarter of your grade. There is no final
exam in the course.
DRC: Students with disabilities who are in need of
academic accommodations should contact me as soon as possible to arrange needed
supports. Students are also encouraged to contact the
CHEATING:
All the work you hand in must be written by you, or you must cite a reference.
Violation of this rule will result in a grade of zero on that assignment, and a
letter to the Dean of Students for possible further consequences.
CS MAJORS: This course, or any Junior Cluster course ending in U, cannot be used to fulfill the upper division CS electives requirement for CS majors.
THANKS:
To Joseph Bradshaw, Grace Dillon, Bart Massey, Martha Balshem, Bob Liebman,
Elayne Shapiro, Joe Shapiro and Dan Shapiro for their help in developing this
course.
Each of you will choose at
least two articles from the “Discussion Articles” column above to present to
the class. If you choose a journal
article it will count as two articles.
Your presentation can be free form - it does not have to be based on
slides. You should first present the
main ideas of the article. Convey all
the facts and concepts in the article.
If there are links in the article, follow them and explain what is in
them. Then you should lead a
discussion, by asking questions of the class to bring out the class’s thoughts
about the article.
Both
assignments should be submitted in class at the beginning of lecture on the due
date, typed, 12 pt. font. Late
assignments should be submitted to my office (under the door if it is closed)
and are penalized 10% per late day unless you have permission from me before
the due date.
With each Cyberculture Log, you
will be documenting one full day of
all the applications you come into contact with on the Internet, so it will be important for you to plan
ahead and give yourself enough time to document a full day. (You may use 2 or 3 days if you wish.)
Both Cyberculture Logs will include three items, a Ledger, an Essay, and a What If. The second log will also include a fourth
item, a New Applications discussion.
A Ledger is a relatively complete list of all the applications you
used on the Internet, on one single day, from the time you get up from the time
you go to bed. The ledger will not include applications that you access as part of your
job, or telephone calls, or that you access exclusively as part of course work, or that
do not access the internet, such as word processing, music that is stored
locally (on your iPod or other computer), spreadsheet, scanning, printing,
bookkeping or calculating programs, unless you access the internet within these
applications. The ledger will include anything you access with a browser, any music that you access over
the Internet, or chat.
This Ledger will not be
easy to keep, because people normally multitask; they switch between multiple
tasks at the same time. No one has a
whole day that looks like
9-9:15
email
9:15-9:25
Google
9:25-9:45
Facebook …
Instead, people spend a
lot of time switching between using email, Google, Facebook, and perhaps other
programs, giving a few minutes to each one.
Don’t worry about being precise, just be as accurate as you can. Therefore you should keep a ledger that looks
like this:
Email 10+5+3
Youtube 15+3
Google 2+10+4
Facebook 20+5+25 …
This means that you spent
10 minutes on email, then after other items you spent another 5 minutes on
email, then later you spent about 3 minutes on email. That is, don’t worry about when you accessed
an application, just keep track as best you can of how long you spent on each
one. The ledger you hand in will include
only the totals, so it will look like
Email 125
YouTube 45
Google 36 …
meaning that during your
Ledger day you spent a total of 125 minutes on Email, a total of 45 minutes on
YouTube, etc. It should be in order, that is, the most used
application on top, the second most used application next, etc. Please explain with a few words any sites that are not well known.
If you worry that your day
is not typical, feel free to record another day and take the average of two
days, or chuck the first one and use the second one.
The second part of your
assignment is a short Essay of
300-500 words. Comment on what, if any,
results in your ledger were surprising to you.
Comment on how the material you have learned in class has affected your
use of Internet applications. Discuss
their ledgers with other students in class and comment on how theirs differs
from yours and what you have learned from this difference.
The third part of your
assignment is a What If discussion
of 300-500 words. I want you to pick the
top 2 applications on your ledger and discuss how you would manage if they were
not available to you for a week and
you could not use the Internet to substitute for them. What would be the social and cultural
implications to you if these programs were not available for a week and you
could not use any Internet-based applications as substitutes?
The fourth part of your
assignment, for the second log only, is a 300-500 word discussion of what New Applications have appeared in your
ledger that you did not use before this course.
Discuss the social and cultural implications of what you have been able
to do with these new applications that you were not able to do before.
Evaluation
For the ledger, I am
checking that the applications are internet applications. If you enter something like “Quicken” be sure
to note that it was when Quicken accessed the Internet, e.g. when you
downloaded transactions. For the Essay,
What If and New Applications, I am looking for correct spelling and grammar
(feel free to use the writing center at www.writingcenter.pdx.edu ) and
that you have engaged with the material of the class.
The Wikipedia Project will be presented by your
team in class on December 1, the last day of class. You will hand in a hardcopy report at the
beginning of your presentation .
Not long ago, most people
got most of their information from credentialed experts. Now most people get most of their information
from amateurs via the internet. In this
assignment you’ll learn how hard or easy it is to contribute to this pool of
amateurs. You will form a team of 2-4
students and add a new article or articles, or add substantial content to an
existing article or articles, on Wikipedia.