Writing
My preferred format for writing this semester (with a couple specific exceptions) is markdown or multimarkdown. If you have not heard of it, ask google. Multimarkdown does tables. It also does math, but I don’t expect we will need that.
The ultimate goal for most writing is to be on the internet. But no one wants to write in html or read it uninterpreted. Converting word docs gets really old, really fast. Markdown allows us to use a standard format to create human parseable hypertext that can be machine translated into html. markdown’s simple text file format means you do not need special software to work on it.
Writing is also collaborative. We will make use of a couple environments for collaborative writing:
- Google Drive – Unfortunately Google docs doesn’t understand markdown, but it is great at collaboration. You can go ahead and put markdown there anyway and just ignore the on-site formatting tools. A great place for unfinished writing we want to all look at and work on together.
- Slack.com – Not a full featured collaborative writing environment, but will form the backbone of our other communications and a good place to put something when it’s “done” so that we’ll see it. More on it elsewhere in our materials and meetings.
- Your own blog. There are a lot of great publishing environments, and this way your writing can really be yours. You just happen to do something with it for this class. Slack loves the internet, so posting the link to Slack is just as good as native posting.
Your conference proposal will be in the word doc format. Even though it is old school, it is still standard for a lot of academic stuff. If you need any special help producing this kind of document (i.e. you don’t have word), just ask.
Writing Templates
Use the appropriate markdown template for your responses. There will often be templates for specific assignments. The general ones are linked below:
- “Reading” template, generally for at least one of the media you read/listened to/watched that week.
- Concept/Theme Template to document and discuss ideas brought up in class/texts.
- Place/Issue/Theme Templates to share and describe your local interests.
- Game/App/Design Tool Template to share your experiences.
Submitting Assignments
Write your submission using Markdown formatting (wherever you want, but maybe in Google docs if you want to share and collaborate on the original markdown) and write a post or post a link to the original on your blog in the appropriate channel on Slack. That’s the official submission.
When asked for APA formatted references, do not worry about indentation (except for the conference proposal).
If you post on Slack, submit your work as a post (click the arrow to the left of the posting box and choose “create a post”) in the appropriate channel. Copy and paste your markdown (not the converted html) into this post. Once you publish your post, also make sure to create a public link. It will be helpful for recomposing all the posts to have links that are not limited to Slack team members.
To comment on these, then you can leave comments on the post on Slack or directly on your blog if that’s how you want to do it. They will also show up in the channel, but will adhere to the original post (and not the others), making for coherent conversations.
Collaboration
Rather than email and paper documents, we will make use of a course homepage for official stuff and Slack for collaborative teamwork outside actual collaborative writing.
- Course webpage. Syllabus, etc. are here. So is anything final and public we make, like your game project Kickstarters and conference proposals at the end of the semester (not their grades of course). As much as is possible, your work should be directed to and actually inform an outside audience, including future students in this course.
- Slack.com – questions about assignments, discussions about readings, connecting with team members, etc. Slack is mobile and desktop, cross-platform, and brand new. It’s not just something we use in our course, but its existence and affordances is relevant content to our course.
Game Development
For obvious reasons, I will somewhat foreground ARIS as a design tool for your projects. But it is not the only possible choice. Your project’s direction or your personal thinking may see you using other design environments. Exploring other tools is welcome and encouraged, especially if you can turn around and produce supporting documentation to help others follow your path with these tools in the future. See the Resources page for more options.
