Digital Capstone Project Proposal (Abstract)

For my digital capstone project, I will be expanding upon a previous project I started for Dr. Holmes’ course, Digital Writing and Publishing, in the spring of 2015. For the course, I created a WordPress site, a blog that I called Local Atlanta Bands. I started the blog in an effort to highlight up and coming indie bands in the local Atlanta area. My audience for the site is mainly focused on college students and for people of the ages of 18-30 years of age. This audience is not limited to this age group, but I intended it to be for young people.

I started the blog because I believe that Atlanta is a great, and growing, place for the indie music scene. For the digital capstone project, I plan on expanding posts by adding more content. I also plan on conducting more interviews with musicians of the Atlanta scene as well as reaching out to some other music blogs based in Atlanta.

The purpose of the blog is to educate the public on the music scene in Atlanta. Places like New York and Los Angeles have long been regarded as the musical hubs of the United States and Local Atlanta Bands will argue for Atlanta’s scene.

The content of the blog will incorporate several different elements. I will include many visuals, audio and video clips, and will attempt to include more interactive elements to the site (instead of a static page). Since the content will be a WordPress blog that is hosted online, the text will be short, easy to digest content that can be read on-the-go, or in any other style of the reader’s choosing.

I started the blog as a school project, but now that I have a second opportunity to improve and expand upon the project, I plan on creating a few social media accounts (a Facebook account and possibly a Twitter or Instagram account) for the blog in an effort to garner more attention and increase my understanding of digital texts and multimodality as well as create a dialogue amongst the audience.

 

Digital Capstone Project (Annotated Bibliography)

Arola, Kristin L., Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl E. Ball. Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Bedford/St. Martin’s: Boston, 2014. Print.

Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects is a how-to guide on composing digital projects and takes the reader through a step-by-step process. It explains everything from explaining what a multimodal project is to publishing your product and sending it out to the world. It will be especially useful for my digital capstone project since I will be working on a WordPress site and blog, and will help me create a Gantt schedule for the production of my project.

The text also focuses on rhetorical analyses of digital texts, which will help me develop my voice as well as the rhetoric statement I wish to communicate in my project.

I chose Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects because it is a simple, easy to understand text that provides the reader with important information regarding multimodal projects. I used the text in Dr. Holmes Digital Writing and Publishing course in spring 2015, and it played a major role in earning an A in the class. I have no doubt that it will serve as the best guide for my digital capstone project.

 

Carroll, Brian. Writing For Digital Media. Routledge: New York, 2010. Print.

Writing For Digital Media by Brian Carroll is another text that I used in Dr. Holmes’ course. Whereas Writer/Designer taught me about the design and multimodal components of a digital composition, Carroll’s text involves more of the text and rhetoric itself.

The text is divided into three parts: Foundations, Practice, and Contexts. The text opens with the differences between digital writing and analog writing, which is important because text reads differently on a screen versus printed, tangible material. The second part of the book, however, is the most useful. Here, Carroll offers the reader the best advice and lessons for a writer publishing material on the internet. Some of the chapters, such as “Headlines and Hypertext” are self-explanatory, but are nonetheless helpful in producing digital texts. Perhaps the most informative chapter of the book is “Screen Writing: Online Style and Techniques,” which Brian Carroll dives into how to write for audiences in a digital sphere.

Overall, Brian Carroll’s Writing For Digital Media will help me achieve my goals for the digital capstone project.

 

Eyman, Douglas and Ball, Cheryl E. “Composing For Digital Publication: Rhetoric, Design, Code.” Composition Studies. Vol. 42. Issue 1 (2014): 114-117. Web.

Douglas Eyman and Cheryl E. Ball’s article “Composing For Digital Publication: Rhetoric, Design, and Code” from Composition Studies is a short article, only three pages, but will no doubt be useful in my digital capstone project.

The text is divided between three parts: Rhetoric, Design, and Code. In the “Rhetoric” section, Eyman and Ball explain rhetorical concerns in digital landscapes: delivery, accessibility, and sustainability. These three elements will be at the back of my mind when writing and composing my blog for the digital capstone project. In the “Design” section, the authors argue that the design choices that a writer makes is, indeed, a rhetorical choice and can help shape an argument. Finally, Eyman and Ball discuss code in the final section of the same name. Everything on the internet is, of course, composed of code, a linguistic language that builds an interlining foundation. Code is important in their discussion because if the code is broken, the website that one is visiting may be broken as well. In addition, code, such as HTML, is useful in the design choices that a writer may use. This, of course, will no doubt be helpful to keep in mind when designing my project.

In conclusion, Eyman and Ball’s article is short and sweet, but useful nonetheless.

 

Nilsson, Monica. “Developing Voice in Digital Storytelling Through Creativity, Narrative, and Multimodality.” Seminar.Net: Media, Technology & Life-Long Learning 6.2 (2010): 148-160. Education Source. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

Monica Nilsson’s article “Developing Voice in Digital Storytelling Through Creativity, Narrative, and Multimodality” discusses literary in which she explains as the process of “drawing conclusions, making associations, connecting text to reality” (Nilsson 148). She argues that storytelling and narrative can be told through a digital sphere and can help improve literacy and understanding. This idea is specifically important to me and the decisions I’ll make while creating my digital capstone project.

 

Woodworth, Marc, and Grossan, Ally-Jane, eds. How to Write About Music. Bloomsbury: New York, 2015. Print.

My digital capstone project will involve writing about the Atlanta music scene. Now that I’ve had scholarly artciles and research to help build the foundations of the project, this collection of essays, interviews, and advice will help guide my research in the project.

The book is intensive. There are twelve chapters that range from writing music album reviews to conducting artist interviews and writing music blog posts (the latter of the two will be especially useful in my project). I bought this book for my own personal use, but looking through my collection, I noticed just how helpful it will be in my digital capstone project.

 

Immersive Atlanta. http://www.immersiveatlanta.com. Web. 29 March 2016.

Another source that will be helpful in my research for my digital capstone project is Immersive Atlanta, a blog based on the Atlanta music scene. I only stumbled upon the site a few months ago, and I believe it was created after I first started my Local Atlanta Bands blog in the spring of 2015. The website is extensive and hones in on a lot of up and coming bands in the Atlanta area. It is a clean site with visuals and videos. I plan on reaching out to the editors of the site to possibly conduct an interview to use for my digital capstone project.