Overview:
Your final project will be a mini Web site whose homepage will reside on your mysbfiles web space and whose contents may reside in a variety of other web environments, such as blogger.com and flickr.com.
Your topic must be approved by the date below and should be sufficiently news-worthy, a definition which may be broadly interpreted to include feature and enterprise journalism.
Your project will contain five elements that may overlap a bit but that accomplish separate aspects of the project. Each element is worth 20 percent of your grade. The elements are summarized here and explained in greater detail below:
- The homepage
- The main bar - a reported article of 900-1,500 words that should be the anchor of the project.
- A video, two to three minutes in length
- A photo gallery or Soundslides presentation of original photos
- A blog, to be used for, among other possibilities, aggregation on your topic, interactivity, hosting your main bar and other elements (some via embedding). Aggregation and interactivity are required enhancements.
All of your work for this project must be original and cannot have been produced for any other class.
Important dates:
- Wed., April 9: Deadline for topic "pitches" to be sent for approval. Send to dliss.nj@gmail.com
- Wed. April 16, end of class: Deadline for approval of topic.
- Friday, May 16, 5 p.m.: Project due date. No late work accepted.
Turn-in method: Email a link to your project's mysbfiles URL to dliss.nj@gmail.com
Topic approval: You are welcome to begin discussions with me at any time about a suitable topic for your project. By April 9, you are to send me a couple of paragraphs that get into some detail. Include the main idea of your main bar, the main idea of your video and how you intend to use the blog beyond its required uses. I will turn those around and either approve or ask for revision. By April 16 at the end of class, your topic must be approved, leaving you one month to complete it.
Your topic should be current, exciting and capable of supporting the bulk of the material you are being asked to package. Keep in mind that you will be reporting for your main bar and shooting your own video and stills, so the topic should have a local component.
The elements:
Homepage: Using a sufficiently journalistically styled template out of Dreamweaver (see additional note below), you will create a homepage for presenting all of the other elements of the project. It should include at least one photo. It should present the other elements in an enticing way, packaging each one with at least one interactive component. The overall look of the homepage should be neat and reflective of the relative weight of each of your elements. You may use either the code or the WYSIWYG features of Dreamweaver to construct your page.
Revision as of April 23:
Please see this blog entry for a description of available templates and options.
Main bar: You will report and compose an original 900-1,500 word main story. The actual length should be determined by your topic and how much space you need to accomplish your reporting goals. Do not go over 1,500 words without prior approval.
The main bar will be a blog entry linked to from the homepage. It should contain at least one photo. It can, and probably should, contain links (internal or external) where they help enhance your audience's experience with your project.
Video: You will produce a two- to three-minute edited video, created in Final Cut Pro, uploaded to YouTube, embedded in your blog and linked to from your homepage. The video should enhance but not repeat what your main bar does. It should contain some B-roll. Note: Be sure to use the
recommended Final Cut Pro export settings for YouTube posted in this blog.You will have normal access to the video cameras from the newsroom.
Photo gallery/Soundslides: You should produce a photo gallery or Soundslides presentation of 7-10 unique images, and present it from your homepage. These images may be used in other places in your project as well as in this element. You may use a commercial photo tool like Flickr.com to house your photo gallery, or you may choose to create a gallery manually in your blog. If you like, you may do a Soundslides presentation, keeping in mind that the sound need not be music - it could be a voice-over. If music is used, it must be credited. Each photo should have a well-written caption.
Blog: The blog must be used to host your main bar and video - perhaps also your photo gallery/Soundslides element as well. You blog should be used as a place for interactivity, with links inviting comments that go directly from the homepage to the comment space for your entries. You should also use one blog entry to aggregate links for your audience to explore your topic further. Finally, you can also freely use your blog in appropriate ways not covered here to enhance the project and your audience's experience.
Additional notes:
- I need to research homepage templates. Look out for further blog posts.
- As we approach the end of the term, we will dedicate a decent amount of class time for you to work on the project and confer with me. I will try to have a list of dates when we get closer to April 16.
- I reserve the right to alter this assignment sheet any time through April 16, though I don't expect any major changes.
- Plan ahead. The resources of the newsroom will be tight as the end of the semester approaches, and this is far too much work to do in a hurry. The other 320 section will have a nearly identical final project.
- I encourage you to rely on your peers for help shooting video, editing main bars and whatever else makes sense.
