Tired of uploading user photos to your profiles on multiple sites? Many sites, including most blogs run by WordPress, will get a user photo from a single source: Gravatar. Log into your Gravatar account using your wordpress.com user info and upload an image that you want to be associated with your default email address. You […]

If you have any trouble with the media content on the class web site or class blog, or if either site doesn’t look on your screen the way it looks in my screencast videos, the likely culprit is your web browser. I try to design sites so that they look good in all web browsers […]

Rule: Long quotations should be blocked to make them easier to read. In this context, “blocked” means indented .5” from the left margin. But don’t do this manually. Use Word’s block indent tool. Blocked quotations do not need quotation marks and the period at the end should come after the last sentence instead of after […]

Every semester, I have at least two or three students who lose all their files, including final papers for my class, near the end of the semester due to computer theft, damage, or failure. After you’ve experienced this once, you’ll see the value of backing up your data regularly, but I’m hoping some of you […]

The steps below will help you with a variety of web-related issues. Step #1: If at first you don’t succeed, try again in a few minutes. Sometimes links just don’t cooperate the first time. Step #2: If that doesn’t do the trick, quit your web browser, launch it again, and try again. Step #3: Still […]

It’s always a good idea to have more than one web browser on your computer, so that when something doesn’t work in one, you can try it in another. If you publish anything on the web, also be sure to take a look at it across multiple web browsers on both PCs and Macs as […]

Multimedia applications on Mac and Windows computers don’t always make it easy to save or export files in a format that any computer can open, so if you find yourself with a file you’ve downloaded but are unable to open, or if you create a file that isn’t in the correct format for sharing with […]

I don’t have easy access to a computer with Windows 7 and screencasting software, but thankfully lots of tutorials are available online. The 7Tutorials.com site has many useful handouts, including this series on Windows Live Movie Maker. Also see this tutorial, created by a student in my Fall 2011 section of WRTG 3035: Technical Communication […]

To embed a video or audiovisual essay you created into a blog post, you will need to upload it to a free video hosting site like YouTube or Vimeo first. Those sites provide you with embed codes that will activate a “player” in your blog post, so that viewers can watch the video without leaving […]

If you’re planning to import video clips into your digital composition project, make sure you have access to the highest quality version of the video clip, saved in a format that your composing tool will accept. Lots of factors impact video quality, including the rate of “frames per second” used to record the original, the […]

A remix video conveys an original message using short video clips from a variety of sources, assembled in a way that “repurposes” their original meaning. The most common messages conveyed through remix are social commentaries or political critiques, which is why it’s commonly used in writing and rhetoric classes as well as by activists and […]

Because you can find so many tutorials on Windows MovieMaker on the web, I don’t have a lot of details here. I recommend that you start by browsing Microsoft’s MovieMaker help pages. Launch MovieMaker If you can’t find MovieMaker on your computer, you may need to download it from the Windows Live Movie Maker site. […]

PLAYABLE AUDIO About the Story: This is an accurate account of a student who has no perception of possible future consequences due to his blatant disregard of schoolwork. He believes that the world will open up to him regardless of his G.P.A.. The student has a strong sense that just being himself will land him […]

PSA by WRTG 3020 Students – Fall 2010 Two students in one of my Spring 2010 sections of WRTG 3020 created this short multimedia message, which is designed to persuade viewers to rethink the strategies needed to end violence against transgendered people. The presentation follows a different assignment than what students are working on in […]