The History and Future of Technology and Me - Portfolio Sequence Checklist o 2 Blog Posts o 1 Reading Response (250+ words)

o 2 Photocopies/Scans of Reading Annotations o 1 Writing Exploration (500+ words) o Technological Literacy Memoir (750-1250 words or 3-5 pages) Pre-Writing, Shitty Draft, Peer Review, Clean Copy o Reflection Letter (500-1000 words) General Assignment Description: This portfolio focuses on connecting your past experiences with technology (however you define it) to your present feelings, abilities, and aspirations as a college student in an increasingly digital world. As such, each piece included in the portfolio should somehow be related to its theme. Most of the required content should take the form of revised in-class or homework assignments. For each piece, consider how the memories you select, the descriptions you give, the connections you make the choices you make in your work impact your own thinking and memory as well as an audiences perception of you and your work. Step 1: Writing Exploration: This assignment asks you to generate ideas related to your experiences with various technologies (activities that interest you, games, hardware, software, social media). Think back over your experiences/memories involving technology: your first exposure to modern technology, a moment or memory of when you found technology/digital media to be fun, exciting, or useful, or anxious, boring, maybe even inhibiting. Describe those moments to me in extremely great detail. Use the questions below to help you generate ideas. Remember, the more you write now, the more content you will have to develop for your Technology Literacy Memoir. - What were you doing specifically? Why were you doing it? - What else was going on around you on that particular day? What events led to this moment in your life? - When did you discover that you were (not) enjoying yourself? Describe the way you felt before, during, and after. - Why do you think this memory was so important that you remembered it? - How much detail can you remember/write about this particular moment? - Reflecting back on the moment as an older, more mature person, is there a greater significance to anything you remember from that day? Perhaps how this event started a trend? Has this memory impacted you in some way? Step 2: Technological Literacy Memoir: The purpose of this assignment is to make a connection between your current level of technological fluency and your past experiences. We are shooting for a critical selfanalysis here. In other words, you should be asking yourself the following questions: 1. What is my current technological state of affairs? a. What do I struggle with? What makes me feel anxious or insecure? b. What am I successful with? What feels comfortable, interesting, or fun? 2. Why do I think/feel/work this way? a. Look back at your life and reflect on the crucial moments that made your views on technology today.

b. Are there people, places, events, classes, experiences, etc. that shaped your familiarity with technology for good or ill? c. Are there any patterns to your behavior or feelings? 3. How does this apply to my current and/or future situation? a. What sorts of conclusions might you reach? How is this point reflected throughout the piece? In other words, every word, sentence, paragraph should help you make a larger overall point about you and your literacy experiences. b. Did you learn something about yourself that will be useful in this course? How will it be useful? i. Have you found any good or bad habits? ii. Is there a weakness or strength that you would like to change/develop? iii. Are there certain processes/attitudes that will help/hurt you in college or in your career? c. Did you identify something about yourself and your literacy that will help you set goals for this writing class, other classes, or your career? This assignment is a type of Narrative (or story) told to your classmates and shared with the general public. As such, it should follow the conventions for a Narrative or Memoir, which we will discuss in class. You should tell your story vividly (with great detail) so that your readers can get a real sense of your experiences and feelings. This means purposefully choosing to craft and share your story in ways that will purposefully affect your audience somehow. However, the details of your story should not overshadow the main point you want people to take away from reading your piece. Essentially, your piece should clearly demonstrate the larger significance (or meaning) of the story you tell in other words, What is the point of your story? Important Features: - Remember that this is not just a retelling of the event; draw the reader into the moment with your careful use of description, narration, dialogue, or other techniques. - Remember to reflect on the events in detail and explain their greater significance in your life. - Remember to explain how the event affected you then, and also how it still might affect you today. Step 3: Reflection Letter: After you have assembled all of the elements for this portfolio, write a reflective letter to me. Your letter is intended to accomplish two main goals: 1. To get you to reflect on the process of writing, revising, and assembling your portfolio. a. What do you feel you learned about yourself, about reading, about writing, about using technology over the course of this project? b. How are the above mentioned skills, ideas, or processes shown in your portfolio work? c. Explain some of the choices youve made in selecting material, and in representing it in your writing. 2. To relate your thinking, processes, and artifacts on this portfolio to your understanding of the learning objectives. a. Reflect on the Course Learning Objectives on the syllabus. Choose 1-2 Objectives that apply to the work weve done during this project. b. Do you feel that youve made any changes in terms of understanding those objectives? In terms of the work you do and how it matches up to the objectives? c. How does the work in this portfolio represent your writing abilities? (Think of our learning objectives as definitions) d. Be sure to show how you came to your conclusions. Walk me through your thoughts step-by-step and use examples to demonstrate your points.