What Will We Do?
Course Content
| What we really try to make is more complete human beings,
people who reach their full potential in every dimension. Now if you think of an
information-based society, surely the ability to integrate -- to extract important
information and connect it to other pieces of information, in a setting where you're
swamped with information -- has to be a very important component of the mindset we create.
And in doing that, I think, we begin to create people who can make a better and wiser
world. David Scott, Chancellor,
University of Massachusetts |
The writing that professionals do is
currently in a state of upheaval, if not revolution. We're all trained to move paper. Our
desks, filing cabinets, bookshelves, archives, and wastebaskets are full of it. If we look
at ourselves as moving information instead of paper, however, then digital networks can
change the way we move it around, or publish it.
Is your work part of the collaborative collection,
creation, editing, distribution, and management of an organization's collective knowledge?
My work is. As a college graduate, yours probably will be, too. You won't make the steel;
you'll make the information about managing the making of the steel. Thus we are all in the
publishing business. My business, your business, every professional's business. We are
becoming, ta-da! ...
Knowledge Workers in
the Information Age
| In other words, we're paper pushers. Or at
least we used to push paper. More and more, we're pushing digital bits. The technology may settle down in time. For now, however,
professionals have several options for reporting their activities. In WRT 350, you will
explore some current options. If you've been a back-seat passenger on the information
highway, this course will move you into the driver's seat. |
My Bet on the
Future
In the coming
decades, you will get paid for your ability to create digital information and experiences
that customers, colleagues, and supervisors find valuable and compelling. To do this, you
must organize and present words and images to directly address these readers' needs as
well as their level of information anxiety and visual literacy. |
|
The course will encourage you to learn more about:
 |
the Internet, especially the World
Wide Web |
|
search engines |
|
information design, including
graphic design for the Web |
|
acquisition, creation, storage,
manipulation, and management of textual and graphic information |
|
hardware, software, and networks |
|
popular issues such as copyright,
privacy, and access so that you can better separate hype from reality |
For details, see the class-by-class syllabus (day || eve ). I am asking you to climb a
steep learning curve, so I want to give you a variety of footholds.
Writing
|
Web site and search engine
critiques |
forms |
|
your web's proposal, design, and
prototype |
PowerPoint slides; Web pages |
|
introduction to your web |
250-word introduction in
various file formats |
Oral Presentations
|
Web site tour and search engine
tours |
browser |
|
your Web's proposal, design,
and prototype |
PowerPoint; browser |
Tests
|
four open-book tests |
|
software competency demonstrations |
|
final closed-book exam |
last update: April 27, 1998
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/infodesign/cdscont.htm |
