DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
What We Are Working Towards Today
Part One: A Final Video (Use WMV)
 
If you work on MAC/microsoft, your PPT will not maintain your custom animations when you save it as a movie (.mov).  You have to transfer it to imovie first.  Or, simply open up your PPT and/or finalize your PPT on windows.  When you save to .wmv, your animations are also saved.  Remember to upload to youtube as soon as you are done!
Part Two: Slideshare Version of Video
Create a slideshare account at slideshare.net.  Upload your powerpoint presentation there. You will later embed this powerpoint to your ePortfolio in a reflection section.  You can do this now or later but DO KNOW that you will be embedding a slideshare in a few weeks.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Step-by-Step Guide: Your Movie

You can go beyond these guidelines, but you must fulfill the list of minimum items that are presented here.

  1. Open powerpoint.  Create 5 (empty) slides: a) title slide; b) THREE slides that have title w/ double box pages; 5) credits slide.  Choose your layout now. 
  2. Decide your slide transitions.  You can change this later but think now how you want these main slides to move.
  3. Build your title page first.  Upload your background image. Go to DESIGN and choose background.  Under NO circumstance can you use a pre-existing template.  NEVER!  It makes you look like you are in elementary school.
  4.   Write in your title.  Keep the font consistent across ALL TITLES.
  5. Write in your name in the second box using the same font and color.
  6. Make a decision with your text box.  Make it a different color and/or work with the line of the box.  Alternatively, you could allow the words to blend into  the background.
  7. Start your first VIGNETTE slide (you will have three of these).  Add your audio.  Make the microphone small and hide the volume box.  Select "automatically" for when/how this song will play.  TIP: I use an online mp3 cutter to cut the song to EXACTLY the point where I want it to start playing.  You can do the same or use the PPT feature to do this.
  8. Upload your background image. Go to DESIGN and choose background.  Under NO circumstance can you use a pre-existing template.  NEVER!  It makes you look like you are in elementary school.
  9. Write in your title in the upper box.  The font should be the same as in your main title (#4).   
  10. Create a custom animation for this title box.
  11. Create a text box.  Write a short synopsis of your vignette: at least 50 words but no more than 75 words.  The words must be big enough to see and read clearly.  Keep this font for your next two vignettes.
  12. You need to highlight your text box now.  Follow through on this style in the next 2 vignettes (consistency will offer you a kind of professionalism here).  Make the box a different color (decide on the transparency).    Now make the box line a certain color and decide on its thickness (keep this consistent).
  13. Create a custom animation for this text box.
  14. Add in your first image in the image box.  Create a custom animation for this image.
  15. Add in your second image in the image box.  Make sure that it completely covers the previous image. Create a custom animation for this image.
  16. Add in your third image in the image box.  Make sure that it completely covers the previous image. Create a custom animation for this image.
  17. You are done with your FIRST VIGNETTE. Now do steps #7- #16 for your SECOND VIGNETTE.
  18. Now do steps #7- #16 for your THIRD VIGNETTE.  Let the music here play into the last slide.  Choose "across slides" here.
  19. Create a text box.  Write your music credits and any and all other acknowledgements here. The words must be big enough to see and read clearly.  Use the same font as you have used for your other vignettes.
  20. Now it is time to REHEARSE TIMINGS. You will decide now how long you want to pause on each slide.  Make sure that you READ your text boxes... make sure that you provide enough time between slides, but not tooooo long.
  21. Save your PPT as a movie now (use the .wmv option).
  22. Upload to youtube. Do not send me an attached video.  You must email me your three vignettes and a youtube link ONLY.  Email to: professorkynard@gmail.com by FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 Back in the Classroom: Writing an Introduction (for source, click here)

 

PROCESS TALK

How did it go?  What questions do you still have about this project?

 

WRITING TIME

Let's start with audience issues:

• Who is the likely audience? We know the following: classmates, teacher.  But who else? Try to get as specific as possible. Do you think the introduction will appeal to the audience?

• What personality do you want to project? Intelligent, serious, humorous, knowledgeable, sarcastic? Does that tone work for your audiences?

• Is your introduction interesting? Does it lead smoothly into the rest of the story?

 

Then rewrite, add on, or revise any introduction to one of your three vignettes with any of the following:

1. Start with a dramatic incident

It was all very hush-hush. In the winter of 1973 a top official of the National Cancer Institute flew from Washington, D.C., to Oakland, California, carrying in his briefcase five plastic flasks. Growing in a milky film at the bottom of each flask were live tumor cells. The cells came from cancer patients in five different medical centers in the Soviet Union. In the spirit of détente, Russia had given the cells to American scientists, who hoped they might contain new clues to the cause of cancer.

--Michael Gold, "The Cells That Would Not Die"

 

2. Start by telling a story

I have long looked for an opportunity to pay a certain debt which I have owed since I was seven years old. Debts are usually burdens, but this is no ordinary debt, and it is no burden, except as the feeling of warm gratitude may ache in one until it is expressed. My debt is to an Englishman, who long ago in China rendered an inestimable service to a small American child. That child was myself and that Englishman was Charles Dickens. I know no better way to meet my obligation than to write down what Charles Dickens did in China for an American Child.

--Pearl Buck, "A Debt To Dickens"

 

3. Start by setting the scene

The last inch of space was filled, yet people continued to wedge themselves along the walls of the store. Uncle Willie had turned the radio up to its last notch so that youngsters on the porch wouldn't miss a word. Women sat on kitchen chairs, dining-room chairs, stools, and upturned wooden boxes. Small children and babies perched in every lap available and men leaned on the shelves or on each other.

--Maya Angelou, "Hope"

 

4. Start with a question

How many of you have ever wondered where certain slang expressions come from? Like "She's the cat's pajamas," or to "Take it on the lam." Neither have I. And yet for those who are interested in this sort of thing I have provided a brief guide to a few of the more interesting origins.

--Woody Allen, "Slang Origins"

 

5. Start with a description

Niagara Falls is a city of unmatched natural beauty; it is also a tired industrial workhorse, beaten often and with a hard hand. A magnificent river--a strait really--connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario flows hurriedly north, at a pace of a half-million tons a minute, widening into a smooth expanse near the city before breaking into whitecaps and taking its famous 186-foot plunge. Then it cascades through a gorge of overhung shale and limestone to rapids higher and swifter than anywhere else on the continent.

--Michael Brown, "Love Canal and the Poisoning of America"

 

6. Start with unusual facts and figures OR a brief historical background

There are 435 members of the House of Representatives and 417 are white males. Ten of the others are women, and nine are black. I belong to both of these minorities, which makes it add up right. That makes me a celebrity, a kind of side show attraction. I was the first American citizen to be elected to Congress in spite of the double drawbacks of being female and having skin darkened by melanin.

--Shirley Chisholm, "Unbought and Unbossed"

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Preparing for Our Next Class: October 10!!!

The reading and writing for this class is mostly exploratory, a time for you to pause and think about what you might do as a research project at the end of the semester.  The major part of your work, since we are not meeting for more than 2 weeks, is to take a pass your human subjects certification test. Please do not leave this test for the last minute as it will take a few hours to complete. It is an online learning module with tests after each module.  After you complete the test, you are given a certificate. Please look at the webpage called "Taking the Human Subjects Test" for more information as well as a study guide.

 

We will spend part of class working towards the midterm ePortfolio (due 10/31).  Please be ready to design a webpage using the video that you made today AND all three of your vignettes.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.