The one @nytimes.com no longer works. If you want to get in touch with Connie, email her at constance.rosenblum@gmail.com instead.

At this point we’ve ironed out most of the kinks with the New York Dreams site, so we should share it so others can read the amazing stories you wrote. (That said, if you discover anything that still needs fixin’, feel free to edit or contact me with a bug report.)

Instead of the long eportfolios address, you can simply share nydreams.ga, our very own domain name courtesy of the Gabonese Republic.

The seminar has focused on immigration in New York City in the 19th, 20th and early 21st century. The nature of immigration to the city and the nation was dramatically transformed by the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965.

In a well-structured essay of 1,000 words, discuss difference and similarities between the immigrants of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century, and those who followed in the last half of the 20th century and the early 21st century. Consider such issues as politics, economics, the city’s neighborhoods, discrimination and prejudice, language, family dynamics, culture, and assimilation.

Your essays should incorporate material from the readings, speakers, and in-class discussions as well as research you’ve done for your neighborhood essay and the New York Dreams website. I’m looking not only for your broad grasp of the issue but also your mastery of details. Essays will be judged on writing ability as well as content.

Please being a paper copy of your exam essay to the final class this Wednesday, May 21, so it can be handed in by 7 p.m. If you have trouble printing out your exam essay, it can be emailed to me by that time, but a paper copy is preferable. Please email me if you have any questions. cr

As you know, we are using Eportfolios with the Aesop Story Engine enabled for our New York Dreams public site.

As I mentioned last night, the user interface of Aesop unfortunately leaves a lot to be desired, making for a poor user experience (or “UX,” as the cool kids put it).

So I thought I’d make some resources available here to help you create your stories with additional components, such as pull quotes, video, images, maps, and more. That way, you hopefully won’t have to do too much of this:

Step 1: Create a New Post

Nothing surprising here.

Step 2: Set a Subhead

Enter your subhead in the “Excerpt” field. If it does not appear on your screen, you may have to enable it first.

Step 3: Set a Featured Image

The featured image becomes the image background for your story tile on the landing page as well as the cover image at the top of your story. Make sure to use a wide, high-resolution image. If you took an image yourself, great. Otherwise, you can use public domain or Creative Commons stock images. Make sure to add an attribution if required.

Step 4: Add Your Copy

This is pretty obvious, though it might help to enable “Paste as Text” mode if your text contains weird formatting (e.g., differing font sizes and faces) that you want to get rid of.

Step 5: Add Components

This is where the Aesop engine comes in! Most Aesop functions are accessible by clicking on the “Add Component” button.

Pull quotes

First, let’s use the pull quote component. There are lots of options you can play with, but the most important thing is to enter in the quote.

Adding components generates shortcodes in square brackets, in this case [[aesop_quote]]. If you have to change the text in the quote, it’s probably easiest to edit the text inside the shortcode.

Please feel free to play around with the options. You can’t really break anything.

Videos

I’ll show you how to embed a video from an external source, in this case YouTube.

Audio

I’m not sure which audio formats Aesop supports, but to play it safe, try to use common formats like MP3.

Note that if you want a component to appear in a different part of your story, it’s as easy as cutting and pasting the shortcode (the stuff in the square brackets) to a different part of your post.

Map

This is definitely the most confusing and poorly developed feature. You have to figure out the latitude and longitude where you want your map centered. One way to do so is by using Open Street Map, as I do in the screencapture below. Try out different zoom levels. For a neighborhood map, something between 13 and 15 should work. You can also set the height of the map (in pixels). Something between 240 and 640 is probably good.

You can also add markers to your map, in which case you also have to find out the lat and long and manually enter them. Even more confusing :(

Feel free to ask me for help, especially with this last part. In general, please take time to explore the various options!

Step 6: Celebrate!

bharatikemraj@gmail.com

Considering that Aesop is more cumbersome to use than anticipated, I will make some resources available to you to guide you through creating your story and adding story elements. I hope to have them up later today.

We will grant you four extra days to get your entries up on the New York Dreams site. The firm deadline now is Sunday, May 18, at midnight CEST. If you can finish earlier, please try to do so. That way I (John) can iron out remaining kinks with the site so it looks extra fantabulous when we go public.

Please let me know if you have trouble editing your own or your fellow students’ posts.

Reminder: Your stories should be around 500 words in length.

I know John has made you all editors on the site, so you’ll be able to edit not only your own posts but also other people’s. 

Because this site will be open to the public, anything that can be done in the way of catching typos, misspellings, etc., will be great. So don’t hesitate to give your postings an extra look to make sure there are no glitches. And if you see something in someone else’s post, don’t hesitate to just adjust that too. That person will thank you.

I always feel lucky when someone catches my errors, and everything we can do to make the site error-free will be all to the good. If any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email. Thanks. cr

from Connie:

Under the category “Assignment 4,” I’m not seeing the assignments from a few students, which were due last night. They might have been posted under another category by accident. If everyone can make sure the final assignment is posted and in the proper category, that would be great.

Class meets at City Lore tonight.

Please arrive no later than 6:30 p.m. That will give everyone enough time to travel to the City Lore office. Presentation by Steve Zeitlin, the CL director, will
start promptly. Session will run til 7:30 or 8.

This week we will visit City Lore, an East Village organization devoted to the history and preservation of urban folklore and the city’s cultural heritage. The director Steve Zeitlin will discuss City Lore’s goals and achievements.

View Larger Map

56 East First Street between First and Second Aves. Ride the F train to Second Ave.

Please respond to this post with the neighborhood you are planning to profile for assignment #4. (See this post for additional instructions for that assignment that do not appear in your syllabi.)

For the digital component of your assignment (if you decide to have one), you can use this site or a tool like Silk to collect images, audio and/or video. Contact me if you have any questions about how best to do this.

Have a lovely break!

I’ve started putting together the first bits for our final project site at /eportfolios/nydreams. Still lots to be done, but I wanted to share initial progress.

I’ll sign you all up as authors soon.

Please note a slight scheduling change in May. We will visit City Lore on May 7 rather than May 14.

An updated syllabus reflecting this change is now posted on the class site.

from Connie:

For those of your eager to improve both your grades and your writing, know that if you rewrite an assignment and it’s better the second time around (which I’m sure it will be), you’ll get the higher grade.

Also, any of you who want to meet with me for a short conference, either before or after class, to discuss ways to improve a paper, I’m happy to do that; just shoot me an email and we can arrange a time.

Finally, I can’t stress too strongly the importance of reading the essay on good writing by Bill Zinsser. It’s brilliant and it will help make anyone a better and clearer writer.

from Connie:

Since the final writing assignment won’t be linked to our public-facing web project, I wanted to throw out a few ideas to help clarify that assignment, which is described as follows:

Assignment #4: Neighborhood portrait. This is the major writing assignment for the seminar. Working individually or in groups, you’ll be asked to choose a neighborhood that is interesting in terms of its ethnic history or political or social aspects, and to tell its story through factual and statistical information (history, demographics, physical appearance, etc.), your own observations, and the stories of residents, based on in-person interviews.

A few points to keep in mind in choosing a neighborhood

Don’t forget the convenience of getting there and doing research. You might want to return to a neighborhood about which you’ve written in a previous assignment, but you might want to explore a new setting, so you don’t feel as if you’re endlessly repeating yourself.

The paper is due May 7, so you have just over a month to work on it. The length is 1,500 words, and it can run a bit longer since there’s lots of ground to cover.

These reports will be posted on our website and with the help of John Boy I hope we can include photos and maybe also audio and even video.

Overall description

Your paper should include specific information regarding the history, demographics, physical appearance and culture of a neighborhood. But the goal will be to tell the story of the neighborhood as much as possible through the people who live there so we can picture them, hear them speak, learn their histories, and through their eyes understand what it’s like to live in the neighborhood.

Specific elements

The paper should paint a visual portrait of the area, so we can picture the types of buildings (both residential and commercial), the parks and other open space, important institutions, street life, etc.

It should paint a portrait of the population in terms of age, income, and ethnic, religious and racial characteristics, types of occupations, and family structure (ie. single or families). In other words, what type of people live there?

It should tell us something about the cultural and social characteristics of the groups living in the neighborhood. What are their values and behavior patterns? What is their lifestyle like? How do people spend their free time? What goals have they set for themselves and their children? How do they interact with each other and how do they view outsiders? What, in a social and cultural sense, makes their community unique?

Some specific elements you will need to include:

• Census figures on the population of the neighborhood, its ethnic makeup, and how that makeup has changed over the years.
• A brief history of the neighborhood, with a discussion of various immigrant groups that have lived there.
• Details about immigrant life in the neighborhood as expressed through stores, religious institutions, restaurants and street life.
• Cultural characteristics of different groups living there—where they worship, how they handle matters like marriage and family, their attitudes toward education.
• Description of housing, quality of schools, transportation and health care and other social services.
• Discussion of major issues confronting the neighborhood — ie housing, crime, ethnic tensions, etc.

Some sources for basic research

1. “The Newest New Yorkers: Characteristics of the City’s Foreign-Born Population,” 2013 edition, by Joseph Salvo and Peter Lobo of the City Planning Department’s Population Division. This is a terrific source for basic demographic information. Here’s the PDF.
2. AIA Guide to New York City. Fifth edition, 2010. This is invaluable for a portrait of a neighborhood’s history, appearance and important buildings.
3. Profiles of individual community districts compiled by the City Planning Department and posted on the NYC.gov website.

Other suggestions of good sources much appreciated. Please post a comment below.