More Details on Project 4

This is the post for the Monday, April 6, 2015 class meeting.

risktakerToday we will go over additional resources and examples for the assignment.

Details on Project 4

There are three documents to consider today:

I will also talk about what class sessions will generally look like for the rest of the term.

In-Class Research and Homework

This week you need to read Chapter 3 and 4 of Writer/Designer and to be ready to talk about how the information applies to your remix. Here is a general overview:

  • Monday, 4/6: You will begin researching and planning for your project.
  • Wednesday, 4/8: You will continue gathering information and doing preliminary planning on your project. By the end of the class, you will write a blog post that gives me details on plans (more details below).
  • Friday, 4/10: You will give an informal pitch for your project (more details below).

In more specific detail, we will work on these tasks:

  1. Choose your story and do some preliminary research. Go online and find at least three different (and credible) versions of the story you will explore. Alternately, you can go to the library, bookstore, or elsewhere to gather your resources.

  2. Evaluate the credibility of your sources with the information on pp. 58–60 in Writer/Designer. Stories are told by many people and from many different perspectives. Your goal is to have plenty of source material to choose from as you create your new version. Think of the resources you locate as your inspiration, as the base from which your adaptation will begin.

    Your main source should be a text that relies primarily on the linguistic mode. Your additional choices can use other modes of communication. You may also choose more than three sources if you desire.

    Examples:

    • The person who did the Don Quixote animation choose the original novel by Cervantes, an art exhibition at Georgetown University in 2005, and a TV miniseries released in Spain about the first part of the book.
    • The person who did Little Red Riding Hood choose the original version of the story by Charles Perrault, a Disney cartoon, and the ABC TV show Once Upon a Time.
    • The person who did the Boston Tea Party video originally chose the Schoolhouse Rock BTP episode, PBS Kids show "Liberty’s Kids" BTP episode, and ushistory.org. She also used some Ken Burns documentaries to help her learn about her genre.
  3. By the end of Wednesday’s class, you should have written a blog post that informally proposes the story you will focus on for your remix, or in the language of Chapter 3 of Writer/Designer, “the what” you will focus on. Include the following information:

    • Tell us the story you have chosen.
    • Explain what portion of the story, if relevant.
    • Identify what genre you want to use for the project.
    • Give us the bibliographic citations and/or links to at least three sources that you will use as you work on your project. You can use any bibliographic format you like, but be sure there’s enough information for me to confirm the sources.
  4. On Friday, April 10, you will pitch your ideas in class, in short 2-minute max explanations, following the list of questions on p. 56 of Writer/Designer.