Use the “Login/Blog Me” button on this page and create a post on your own blog, with all the links and instructions your classmates and I will need in order to experience your project. Remember that I’m asking for you to present something that will engage a visitor for about 10 minutes, but the engagement cannot simply be a video of your cat chasing a laser pointer. (If you want to analyze poetry about the meaningless of existence and the cruel pleasures of the gods who toy with mortals, and you want to illustrate some point by showing a clip of your cat chasing a laser pointer, well, be my guest.)
While I’m not asking you to write separate, bullet-pointed introductions, I am asking that you come up with a creative, engaging way to make your blog post useful to
- a student from a future version of EL267
- a student from a different university who is researching the topic you chose to present on
- a future employer who has Googled your name and is curious about your university work
- your instructor, who has created this assignment as an alternative to a traditional final exam, and thus wants to see evidence of your best work. (Direct quotes that demonstrate an engagement with the language used in the literary work(s); evidence of college-level writing; evidence that your final project demonstrates your progress in meeting the learning goals as specified in the syllabus)
What would a future student want to know? (Probably details about the tools you used, about what was harder or easier than you thought, and things you wish you had done differently. What else?)
What would someone researching your topic want to know? (Your sources, the textual evidence from the literary works themselves that led you to make the creative choices you made, where to find more information. What else?)
What would a potential employer want to know? (What you learned; how this project fits into your educational plans at a liberal arts university and in your life after college; how this project highlights your most marketable skills and personality traits. What else?)
What do I want to know? (I want to see evidence that you have, in fact, met the learning objectives specified in the syllabus.)
Double-check:
- Do all your links work? (Ask a friend or classmate to check your link from a different computer… if your YouTube video is set to “private,” or you think you’ve uploaded a media file but you’re actually playing it from your own hard drive, or your content requires a special player or plug-in, it’s better to learn about this in advance.)
- Does what you ended up accomplishing match your academic goals?