Inventing your space: non-traditional housing trends. We have explored several readings on the significance
Inventing your space: non-traditional housing trends. We have explored several readings on the significance
This Post has three parts: Please do not combine. Please do them in different files.
1. Alternative House – 5 full pages
Inventing your space: non-traditional housing trends. We have explored several readings on the significance associated with styles of houses, with the psychology of house and home, with creating non-conventional spaces that fit a particular whim or fancy or lifestyle or economic situation or environmental situation. Now it is your turn to explore this current trend.
The subject could quite possibly be as big as a house, but the focus here is going to be much narrower, and the following template will help you focus. Organize, and develop your paper as long as you are reading carefully and following instructions. This shorter essay will be useful later if you decide to opt for this topic for your final project.
Papers must be five full pages (not counting pictures or the Works Cited page). To insure your pages are truly “full” pages, I recommend they go over a little (so a full five-page paper will have a little bit more than five pages of text; it’s good to be safe). Any paper less than five (5) full pages will not be accepted.
There are five parts to this assignment, but please do not number them or put headings for each section. This should be arranged as an essay. You will open with a paragraph, and each of the other sections will be in paragraph form, one following the other (not on separate pages). Some of the “parts” (explained below) may be more than one paragraph. There should be smooth transition sentences leading from one paragraph to the next.
There are a couple of ways to start this paper (your opening paragraph, about 1/2 – 2/3 of a page). You could open with a description of someone in a very unusual living situation related to this paper (maybe getting up in the morning from a converted bus and showering outdoors under a garden hose). Or you could open with some thoughts on what makes a house a home (you could even quote from one of our readings this week, but be sure if you do to quote directly and follow that with a parenthetical citation, and make sure the work has a Works Cited entry). Then your transition sentence should suggest that in many cases people are turning away from traditional housing to embrace very distinctive alternatives.
Follow this with a paragraph that features three examples of different types of alternative houses that you locate by doing your own research. Make sure they are quite different from one another; you are trying to show the range and diversity of alternative houses in this paragraph. For each, include a picture, a note on what kind of house it is, and a brief (two to three sentences each) description of some unique characteristic of the house. If, for example, you have “Tiny houses, which are typically houses, portable or not, that are under 400 square feet. To make up for what they lack in size, tiny house designers often work in several clever space-saving and multi-purpose features, such as collapsible dining tables.” on your list, you should include next to it, or after it, a picture of a tiny house. For this assignment, you don’t need to document the source of the picture. Here’s a good website to begin with, but there are many more: 9 Unique Alternative Housing Ideas.
This next part (2-4 paragraphs) will put your paper in context. This is the main body of your paper, and it will be the longest part of your paper, with at least two meaty paragraphs with a lot of information. About 1/3 of this section should be direct quotations (followed by parenthetical citations) from things you look up, and they must be sources YOU look up; you may not use our course readings in this section). Begin the first of these paragraphs with the following transition, word-for-word (yes, you do need to complete the sentence with an example):
Alternative housing is not a new idea; they go back as far as…
Then follow with some really unusual historical examples (at least two, things like cliff dwellings or the Thoreau cabin or the Sears mail-order catalogue build-your-own-house kit, or Hoovervilles or ?) from your research in one or two paragraphs. Be sure these paragraphs are a blend of your explanations (do not use “I” or “me” here, by the way) supported and illustrated by interesting details directly quoted and parenthetically cited from your research sources. I sure hope you have been reading the Lecture material. After you are done writing about some unique historical examples, use the following transitional sentence to lead into the other contextual section on why alt houses are currently popular (so you are going from old to new–that is the logic here); again, copy this word-for-word, and it should be the beginning of a new paragraph:
There are several reasons why alternative houses are so popular nowadays.
Follow this with another one or two meaty paragraphs showing compelling reasons this is currently trending (eco-consciousness? cost savings? mobility? whatever you discover). Somewhere in these paragraphs, including a couple of documented quotations with correct parenthetical citations with some thought-provoking or provocative or amazing ideas from some of your sources (obviously, you want sources with lots of thoughtful text, not just simple websites with a lot of images and brief labels). Find people talking about why they want to be off the grid or find information on exact cost savings–things like that.
Then describe the following in one relatively short concluding paragraph (about 1/2 – 2/3 of a page). If you could design any style of alternative home (and you can invent something entirely new), what would it be and why? Consider fantasy, economics, ecological concerns, materials/location, etc. What would make that space feel like “home” to you (aside from the people in it)? Would it be the space? The light? The furniture? The colors? Or something else? You will NOT quote from sources in this conclusion, but you will want to put in a few exact details. By the way, it IS appropriate to use “I” or “me” in this last paragraph.
Create a correctly-formatted MLA-8 Works Cited page (Works Cited pages always start on their own page, but they are numbered with the rest of the paper), that includes an entry for each of the sources that you quoted and cited above.
NOTE: You absolutely must include pictures in the essay; they do not count as pages of text, but they do enhance your work. 5 pages and up without pictures and references
2. Discussion board – Google Projects – Problems and Solutions (500 words)
This week’s discussion topic is a pre-writing activity for the upcoming paper. As always, in addition to your own thoughts, both Posts and Replies should have direct quotations and parenthetical citations from the sources where you found your information.
For your Post:
Locate a Google Project that is not in our reading this week. Share the name of the project. Explain the purpose of the project (who it serves, what problem it addresses, what the benefits are). Describe it in enough detail, showing pluses and minuses, so that your reader can understand what this project does and how it works (or is intended to). If it is a project that is already being used, where and how? Then provide a link to the site where you read about this project.
3. Google Projects Essay – 4 full pages
The shape of things to come. Google is that search engine company, yes, that seems to have expanded into phones and apps and all sorts of popular tech arenas, but Google’s vision is much larger than its in-house projects. As you’ve seen from this week’s readings, Google funds a massive array of projects in wildly-unrelated areas: politics, the arts, medicine, the environment, gaming, biotech, robotics/A.I., transportation, the economy, and so on. Your paper is going to be an exploration of Google Projects, but the topic is so huge that it would take a book, so the topic is going to be narrowed down quite a bit.
Note: Papers must be in MLA format, four full pages. As always, pictures and the Works Cited page do not count as pages of text.
There are four parts to this assignment, but please do not number them or put headings for each section. This should be arranged as an essay. You will open with a paragraph, and each of the other sections will be in paragraph form, one following the other (not on separate pages). There should be smooth transition sentences leading from one paragraph to the next.
In your opening paragraph, you may want to capture your reader’s imagination by describing some activity (people wandering the city with cell phones trying to close alien portals or a muralist in the Irish countryside brilliantly painting the side of a bleak, concrete building). After you set the scene creatively, reveal that this is actually a project funded by Google. At the end of this paragraph or the beginning of the next, your transition will explain what Google Projects are. Try to give a general explanation as well as a compelling quotation (quote directly and document) from one of our readings or from a different source. The opening paragraph should be no more than one page.
Your next paragraph will refer to the diversity and broad range of Google projects (begin the paragraph with a transition sentence that says pretty much just that). Mention the different sorts of areas and issues these projects cover. Then describe a handful of them in a two to three very specific sentences each. Try to find some which are very different from each other (some ecological, some medical, some economic, some artistic, and, yes, some high-tech). This will exemplify that diversity and range you are writing about. Then speculate (again, use your research sources; quote and cite in as many of these sections as you can) about why Google is willing to fund/support such an incredibly broad set of projects. This paragraph should also be no more than one page.
In the larger part of your paper, which comes after you’ve given the reader some background, you will choose JUST ONE Google Project and explain why Google should or should not continue to fund and develop it. This should not just be a personal opinion (such as, “I don’t believe in warfare”). Instead, consider the actual implications of the project; imagine (and logically describe) what some of the positive or negative consequences might be and the impact the project might have (plus or minus). Try to be objective. Some projects are “neat” but impractical, beneficial but cost-prohibitive, tantalizing but outside the reach of current science/technology. Here is one instance:
If the driverless car is successfully developed, one of the logical applications would be to eliminate the need for drivers of long-haul trucks. This would potentially eliminate accidents and the need for trucks to be out of service as drivers rest, but it would also eliminate hundreds or thousands of jobs. The effect to the economy might be…
You would need to research (use authoritative, documented quotations in much of this section) that shows (in detail) some of the safety projections, some of the instances that have made the news. Do some research on the cost in jobs, etc. Make comparisons with driverless Uber cars, etc.
As always, about 1/3 of the body of your paper MUST BE direct quotations from your sources; each direct quotation MUST BE followed by a parenthetical citation.
Here are some tips:
The most obvious is not necessarily the best; yes, there is a ton of information on Waymo and Project Loon and Ara, but those have been done a lot. There are loads of smaller projects that are quite intriguing, even things like Ingress as a proof-of-concept for Pokemon GO which is likely a proof-of-concept for _______.
On the other hand, be sure that the project has enough information on it to build a detailed, supported argument (for or against keeping the project).
Be sure that you give plenty of information about the project and its goals.
Consider as many things as make sense in this argument to fund/defund the project (how many does it serve? Is it practical? What are the benefits/costs? What are some of the technical problems? Are there actual incidents to back up your claims? Project Loon, for example, is currently WORKING in Puerto Rico).
Yes, present both sides, but WEIGH which things seem most important and base your QUALIFIED decision on that.
SPECIAL NOTE FOR THIS PROJECT: Do not use the first person (“I” or “me” in this paper). Avoid anything like “I think” or “I believe”; instead, let the examples and the research lead logically to the conclusion. Use actual evidence (not opinion) to convince the reader.
And here are a couple of sites on the Google Mural Project (just so you can see some examples; you must pick a different project):
Data Center Murals
Google Commissions Artists to Beautify Data Centers
Create a correctly-formatted MLA-8 Works Cited page that includes entries for the sources that you quoted above.
NOTE: Try to include pictures in the essay; they do not count as pages of text, but they do enhance your work.
4 pages and up without pictures and references
Requirements: see above | .doc file
I attached 3 samples for questions 1 and 3 below if you like to see them.
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