Seniors: Assembling the First Draft of Your Project

In the first stage of your Own Town research project, you composed a

schematic that describes your own particular vision of the relationships among three theories. In this second stage, you'll build the first draft of your project.

Here's the overview of what your project should look like.


Slide 1: title
Slide 2: diagram
Slide 3: PEPI theory one
Slide 4: PEPI theory two
Slide 5: PEPI theory three
Slide 6: Synthesis slide


Details about each slide:


The title slide is the argument, or main persuasive idea, of your overall project. Titles in the academic world have two parts. Here are example titles:
New vocabularies in film semiotics: Structuralism, post-structuralism, and beyond
A critical discourse analysis of family literacy practices: Power in and out of print

The diagram slide should be composed primarily of images/ visuals/ schematics. The print should only comprised of keywords.

The three PEPI slides should delineate the particular theories upon which you have decided. Each of these theories connects to your particular area of interest. These are the slides in which your unique voice should shine through.

The synthesis slide draws together the most important information from your five previous slides. It captures the essence, totality, and significance of the messages that you have targeted.

It's time to combine textual analysis and research

Where do we begin? How do we start to compose our own research?

First, decide on the discourse that resonates with you most intensely. This would include a combination of textual evidence and specific theoretical lenses from which you might draw deductions.

Second, create a diagram, also called a schema, that visually represents the relationships you see between discourse and theory.

Third, in life, we need to know rules in order to know when we're breaking rules or extending rules. It's the same way when a person conducts research and shares findings with others. When we compose research texts, the following information comprises a commonly accepted formula or set of rules for necessary criteria to include when describing research.

P: Point

E: Evidence

P: Peer-reviewed, scholarly research

I: Interpretation

Create a series of three templates that outline three different PEPI formulas for your particular foci for your upcoming research. In our next session, we'll extend this foundation of planning for research into the beginnings of what will become a hyperlinked research project. New literacies meet the traditional public school!

Our Town Peer-Reviewed Articles

Here are four of the six peer-reviewed articles for the Our Town, in case they'd be helpful for future reference.

A Project for Communication Classes...

In our Living and Dying...

Thornton Wilder Analysis...

Worlds of Works of Art....

Fortuna's master answers

Juniors' Inherit the Wind Photostory

Inherit the Wind Final Project: A Contemporary Film Trailer

Project Overview:

You have finished reading/ viewing Inherit the Wind, by Lawrence and Lee, and now you are ready for your final project. You are going to create the script for a ‘film trailer’ to inspire others to experience this text.

The ability to build an intelligent discussion around the viewing of a film is very important. In your film trailer, you are going to describe a contemporary/ current version of the film. Think of it as a version of the text that’s going to be released in 2011. You will create a photostory, which is a short film. You, as a composer, will make the same decisions as any producer or director of a film.

Your finished product will have ten sections: each section represents a frame of the trailer. You’ll incorporate 10 graphics, 10 excerpts from the Lawrence and Lee print text, and 10 interpretations.

Resources for reviewing the play and film
http://www.shsu.edu/~his_www/tah08/scopestrial.pdf
http://www.smusd.org/1679206516174780/lib/1679206516174780/_files/Inherit_the_Wind-theme,_motif,_prof.help,_act_1,act_3.ppt#256,1,Inherit the Wind: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
http://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct96/ExposingTheLieInheritTheWind.html
http://thedispersalofdarwin.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/inherit-the-wind/

Introduction:
You will unveil your film trailer to a prospective audience through identifying an essential question and developing a narrative that entices the viewer to learn more about the plot through the ways you answer that essential question.

What is a film trailer?
A ‘film trailer’ is an advertisement for a future film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. Film trailers have now become extremely popular on the internet. Of some 10-billion videos watched online annually, movie trailers rank #3, after news and user-created video. Trailers consist of a series of selected shots from the film being advertised. Since the purpose of the trailer is to attract an audience to the film, these excerpts are usually drawn from the most exciting, funny, or otherwise noteworthy parts of the film but in abbreviated form and without giving away the ending.

For this purpose, the scenes are not necessarily in the order in which they appear in the film. A trailer has to achieve that in less than two and a half minutes, the maximum length allowed by theaters.

What is an essential question?
An essential question is a question you pose as a central organizing principle. All information that is collected is helps the audience to learn answers to the essential question you have proposed. Essential questions help to clarify why people have different kinds of ideas. Have you ever wondered where ideas originate? This project is designed to encourage you to become a self-conscious learner, exploring not only the what, but also the how and why of knowing.

The project focuses on the nature of truth and reality and the role in the world each of us has constructed. The project challenges you to become an independent, introspective, and self-motivated learner. This project will embrace the nature of ideas via three different, but very much related ways of zooming in to look at the world: (1) the human; (2) the natural/biological; and (3) the spiritual. Through the use of ethical and moral themes, you will confront, examine, and explain personal and social belief systems.

You will use a pseudonym, or a false name, when posting your film on your blog for audiences on the internet.

Some ideas for the foundation of essential questions tied to Inherit the Wind:

1. Individual rights and the good of society

2. Creationism and Darwin’s theory of evolution in our contemporary world

3. The possible incompatibility of science and religion

4. Freedom of speech and pluralism in a democratic society

5. Separation of church and state in a democratic society

6. Fundamentalism in the United States: Impacts on the contemporary political scene

7. Loss of privacy rights in times of national security

8. Dividing lines: Geographic differences that lead to different points of view

9. Freedom to think and believe outside institutional constraints

10. Inevitability and need for progress in uncertain times

11. The relationship between self-esteem and self-worth

12. The value and chaos of multiple perspectives as means of human progress

13. Reconciling culture, custom, and tradition with changing times

14. Censorship and the pursuit of the common good: Irreconcilable differences?

15. Controversies and successes: The American Civil Liberties Union

Gathering your thoughts --- and materials you’ve already constructed
Now it’s time to start. When do you begin? Begin by assembling the materials you have already created during the Inherit the Wind unit. What can you draw out of these materials to use in your film trailer? They can help you to draw ideas for this project; let them serve as your initial brainstorming.

Go for it! This is new media composition in the classroom for the 21st century learner: you.

Digital Magazine for Juniors

Overview:
You will design a digital magazine that incorporates your own original compositions and visuals. Each prose composition must be about 100 words; each poem must be two stanzas/ eight lines long. These compositions have their origins in the work we have done together in class.

Digital Platform:
You will import and design your digital magazine on the internet platform called a “blog.” You can access the blog program at http://www.blogger.com/ You will need to set up an account with ‘blogger,’ which we will do together in class in the technology center.

Once you create a blog for the Digital Magazine project, you must let Dr. Carolyn know the url for your blog. She will guide you along your composition and design process by reviewing your blog periodically.

Your privacy:
You will be required to use a pseudonym (fake name) while publishing on the internet for class assignments. You and Dr. Carolyn will work together to choose an appropriate name.

Session One:
Please choose three of the following four writing events from this past week’s lessons.

Ø “My Inspirational Motto”
Ø “Media and Technology Metaphors of My Life”
Ø “Memory Map”
Ø “Poem of Happiness”

Input them into your newly created blog. Use the “import images” icon to add images to your blog.

Have fun!

Our Town and Its Special Qualities: An Assignment for Seniors

"Where are the centers of activity in our community?"

A) Brainstorm in a word file the following items to start off our activity today:

1) Identify the significant areas of our town and explain what makes it a center of activity.
2) What sights, sounds, people and/or activities might be encountered there?
3) When are most of the activities in the area taking place (any particular days or times)?
4) What about that area is appealing to you, and why?
5) What's unappealing, and why?
6) As you lean over the PCs and look at your peers’ brainstormings, was one area identified more than any others? Why might that be?
7) Did you ever stand back and observe the area and the people and activities in it? If so, what did you discover?
8) What activities normally take place here?
9) Other than the people, what makes this location interesting or unique (sights, sounds or smells)?
10) At what times might special moments, characters, stories and/or images be found at particular sites?

B) Your assignment:
You will create a blog/ documentary that captures the moments, characters, stories and images that your community can offer.
http://www.blogger.com/ is a Google site that is easy to navigate and is useful for these types of assignments.
Be creative, original, and resourceful. And have fun!

C) Internet protection and access:
1) You must choose and register a pseudonym with Dr. Carolyn.
2) You must register the url you choose for this particular blog assignment with Dr. Carolyn, who will, in turn, visit your blog occasionally to add comments and light suggestions.

Our Town Project Rubric

The student has created a project that meets the requirements of the project description through print and visual means (audio is optional but would receive extra points). The project is, overall, well-designed, colorful, imaginative, original, and insightful. 8

The student has identified the significant areas of our town and delineated as to what makes those the centers of activity. 5

The student has incorporated a plethora of sights, sounds, people and/or activities that might be encountered there. Additionally, there are some types of markers that indicate the special moments, characters, stories and/or images that might be found at these particular sites. 5

The student has signified in clever ways how some areas of our town are appealing and others are unappealing and why. 5

The student has recreated unique sensory perceptions: sights, sounds, smells, textures, textures). 5

Possible score. 28