Digital Notebook Project Guide

This project guide is still being built. Final introduction will be ready soon.

Overview

Knowledge is not received passively into the brain like a file download into a computer. It is constructed in the brain as a result of hard mental effort. Thus, most of our work in this course will not be reading/memorizing/reciting, but instead will be centered around the creation (and curation) of our own individual conceptual maps of knowledge.

We will do this by creating our own connected online research notebooks, starting in Week 2. The end product will be a set of online study notebooks owned by each student, each of which contains definitions, explanations, and musical applications (with media) for each core concept, as well as links between concepts and links to other individuals in the class. In the spirit of collaborative learning, no student will compose these materials entirely from scratch. Rather, each student will create some of their own resources, and then copy or remix resources created by others in the class. The result will be a network of online study notebooks that each contain a combination of high-quality original material and the best material composed by others.

The following video explains this project in more depth. Be sure to watch it in its entirety before beginning this project.

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Details

Each student’s digital notebook will contain 36 digital pages ― one for each core concept covered by the course’s reading assignments. These will be a combination of original material and curated material. The notebook will include:

• At least 8 original pages (built on the 8 weekly paragraphs). While you are welcome to incorporate materials from others in these original pages, the bulk of the content should be your own.
• At least 8 pages that are copied or remixed from others’ notebooks. These can be wholesale copies, or copies that you subsequently remix, extend, or improve. However, they should be curated ― things that you found on the digital notebook hub and critically evaluated for accuracy.
• The rest of the pages can be original content, or curated content. Your choice.

Each page will be evaluated passed/not-passed and will count as a single assignment toward the final course grade. To pass, a page must contain the following:

• an accurate definition of the concept
• a valid musical example (a piece or passage of music) that shows the concept in action
• at least one embedded element of digital media (audio, video, or graphical image)
• links to at least two other concept pages in your notebook

Schedule

Beginning in Week 2, you will create at least two new pages and copy/remix at least three additional pages each week. However, this will only get you half of the way there by the end of the course. This minimum amount per week is designed to keep everyone moving while also providing some scheduling flexibility. However, please budget your time appropriately in order to ensure that you complete everything on time.

Software overview

The following video will help you get oriented to Wikity, the software we’re using for this project.

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Creating pages

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Embedding media

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Finding colleagues’ pages

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Copying/remixing pages

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