Assignment: Index Card Pitch Post

we are using index cards
to prototype visual communication ideas

My students just went through a round of presenting their preliminary ideas for their individual semester project by using 10 index cards in a five-minute presentation to their peers in class.

I'm now asking them to create a blog post based on that presentation. First I will say why, and then how they should do so.

Why repeat the presentation as a blog post? To answer this I appeal to a principle of communication of increasing relevance in the digital age: translating one's ideas into a new format helps one to refine and develop those ideas. For class, they used handwritten images on index cards combined with an oral presentation; for this blog post, they will re-use those index cards as described below

This post is due by 10am (earlier if you can do so); and comments on others' posts are due by 11am.

Here are the requirements for the post:

Welcome to Critical Communication Re-Imagined

This blog is a sandbox for a group of students (members of a course in Rhetoric and Civilization at Brigham Young University during the term of Winter 2016) who are working together to reconsider communication from both a contemporary and an historical point of view.

We believe that the past can help us to understand and even to civilize the digital wilderness of the present. Each contributor to this project will pursue his/her personal project, and each will tie that presentation to a larger argument that I, as the instructor and project producer, will lay out.

In effect, we are blending both old and new sorts of communication: the individually authored idea; and the collaboratively organized concept.  Our format may or may not be successful, but we are confident that we will set forth -- individually and collectively -- arguments and issues that matter to us personally and as a society.

In the end, we will tidy up our sandbox and put things into a finished form for more formal sharing. But we are also demonstrating a new value for communication that is relevant today: interim knowledge. We are okay with publishing our process, thinking aloud, as it were, on the way to pinning down a more clearly organized final project.

Thanks for joining us. We welcome your input and responses!