Tips for a Great Final Project

Annotated Bibliography

• Make sure each of your sources are correctly formatted.
• Make sure each of your annotations contain a quote or paraphrased thought and that you correctly cite those quotes or thoughts.  Review how to do in-text citations.  (Please look at the Sample Annotated Bibliography if you haven't)
• I don't want one bibliography from each of your group members.  I want one bibliography per group.  You need to coordinate with your group to get all of your sources into one document, if you haven't already.

Narrative

• Make sure you reach the required page length- 5 to 7 pages- And the required sources- 10 sources.
• Remember to tell a story.  You want to include your research but make sure that you tell a good story.  Create good characters, set the scene well, and make it interesting.
• Make sure you include a Works Cited Page with the sources that you use in your narrative.
• Don't forget your footnotes or your Notes Page. (See Class Documents- Project 4: Footnotes)

Visual

• Make sure it's connected to your narrative somehow.  
• Try and provide us with info that you didn't include in your narrative.
• Be creative. 
• If you're doing a PowerPoint, the less text you use the better.

Course Recap for Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Finding Good Sources for Your Annotated Bibliography
We talked about the types of sources that I will be accepting this project and the types of sources I will not be accepting.  I want you to have at least 1 print source per person in your annotated bibliography.  I don't want any online sources that don't have authors and aren't backed by some major trusted organization.   Try to avoid major overview websites that aren't hosted by an organization. The sort of sites that list a bunch of facts about your historical event or era but doesn't list where any of their information came from.  Even if the information is true, you would be better off citing that information from a much more valid source.

Here are some tips for finding and citing print sources for your Annotated Bibliography.

1. Use Western's Library Website: www.wmich.edu/library  You can find books, newspaper articles, and journal articles and most of them you can access online.
2. If you find a newspaper article online on the Western website, cite it the same way you would a print source.  Those articles are basically the same text that was printed in the actual newspaper that someone has typed online so you have easy access to it.  So check the MLA guide on the Purdue website and use the instructions for citing a newspaper article. (This is only for newspaper articles you find on the library website. I can't vouch for any you find in any other way.)
3. When using a journal article always check the right hand corner to see if there is a PDF version of the article.  You have to be able to list the page numbers when using a journal article and you will only know the page numbers if you can see the journal article as a PDF. Just like with the newspaper articles, cite it as a print source. 
4.  For print sources you must have the page numbers where the information came from when doing in-text citations- when you quote or paraphrase the information in your own writing.

For your annotations (the descriptions of the sources) I want you to summarize the source and it's relevance to your paper. In that summary you must include at least one direct quote or paraphrased thought for each source. This will give you a chance to practice in-text citations again since you will be using footnotes to note your research in your actual narrative.

Course Recap for Monday, November 26, 2012

Tips for a Great Unfamiliar Genre Project

• Take very specific and detailed notes in your journals.  It will make the other parts of the assignment a lot easier.
• Attach your examples or give me detailed information about each example so they will be easy for me to refer to.
• Make sure that you establish the essential elements for your genre before you start creating it.
• I'm not expecting perfection but I want you to create as close to a replica of your genre as you can get.  If your genre requires photos, make sure it has photos.  If it's set up a certain way on the page you need to try and find some way to make that happen. 
• Create your how-to guide as if you're writing it for an alien.  Someone who knows nothing about your genre and its inner workings.  Don't take things for granted.  Don't just say things like come up with an interesting topic.  That could mean anything.  Give examples or provide tips that can help the reader get to an interesting topic.
• Include specific examples for your journals in your how-to guide.  It'll help back up your steps and give your readers more guidance.  You studied several examples of your genre.  Your reader did not.
• If you don't know how to begin the how-to guide simply start by describing your own process.  What did you do first?  What choices did you make and why?

Remember the elements you want to look for in each example

• The audience-How does the piece appeal to that audience?
• The purpose-How does the piece achieve its purpose?
• The tone-what is the mood the piece gives off.  Look for words that describe emotion here.
• The attitude-what is the author's stance.  Is the author simply providing information? Are they being critical? Are they praising the topic?  Offering an opinion.  Is the author or speaker fond of what they're speaking about?
• The design-what does it look like on the page.  This is also a good place to take note of any things you notice about the language of the pieces or how it flows from one subject to the other, how is the plot structured, etc.
• The medium-this is only important for those of you who are allowed to use both print and online sources.  How does the medium change the rules of the genre?
• Make sure you keep track of similarities and note any major differences you see from example to example.

Extra Credit Opportunities
You can gain extra credit by taking your fairytales and transforming them into teen vampire dramas.  Your new piece should contain most of the elements that we came up with in class.  This is due Friday.
If everyone in the class fills out a course evaluation for this course by the last day of class, everyone will receive extra credit.  Please fill these out.  They are very important to me.  I want to know what you liked about the course, what you didn't like, things you think I could've done better, topics you're happy I covered, and things you might've wished I had gone over.  Make sure you fill out the comment sections and not just the multiple choice options.  These help me make the necessary changes to the course to make this class better for future students and helps me improve as an instructor.  I spend a lot of time critiquing your work, here's a chance for you to critique mine.

Introduction to Project 4
You picked your groups for Project 4 and starting brainstorming topics for the piece.  You will be writing a historical narrative.  You will be splitting the research amongst yourselves and then will take everyone's research to create your narrative. We will be revisiting the annotated bibliography and will be learning how to do footnotes. (See Class Documents for Project 4 Assignment Sheet.)

Homework

•  Project 3 Assignment (Due Wed Nov. 28)
• Extra Credit Assignment-Genre Transformation (Due Fri Nov. 30)

Course Recap for Monday, November 12, 2012

Introduction to Project 3
You guys were introduced to Project 3.  You will be researching, analyzing, and observing a genre of writing that is unfamiliar to you and then creating your own example of the genre.  You observations will be recorded in reading/viewing journals.  We will discuss these in more detail in a later class.  (See Class Documents Project 3 Assignment Sheet and Possible Genres.) Everyone picked the genre they wanted to use for the project, and you have to bring in 2 to 3 examples of that genre to class on Wednesday.

Analysis of the Teen Vampire Genre
We went over your notes from last class on the two clips we watched and analyzed different aspects of the teen vampire genre.  We agreed that the audience for both pieces were women, mainly teenagers but some older women too, although we felt that The Vampire Diaries might be targeting teenage boys too because of the violence and the use of very attractive actresses.  Both pieces appeal to their target audience by using teenagers as the main characters, by casting attractive male leads, by making the romance the dominant part of the plot, and by creating a very ideal romance (love at first sight, destined lovers, etc.)  We decided that the purpose of each piece is to entertain the audience by making them fall in love with and root for the main couple and to also thrill and scare the audience a bit with the supernatural angles.  They do this by making the couple an attractive couple with all the odds against them and they scare and thrill us by putting the characters in dangerous and potentially violent situations.  Even the dark lighting and use of fog in both pieces helps put audiences on edge.  We realized that because Twilight is a movie it had a longer time to get the story started, but it also could only focus on a few characters.  The Vampire Diaries is a TV show so it has to achieve the same purpose of Twilight in a shorter amount of time but it also has the chance to develop more characters since they have weekly episodes.  Our Top 10 List of things needed for the Teen Vampire Romance Genre are

1. Attractive male lead
2. A romance
3. A high school setting
4. Someone in the main couple is not a vampire
5. A human competitor (someone who is not a vampire competing for the human character's love)
6. Vegetarian vampires-the vampire involved in the couple usually doesn't drink human blood
7. A villian who is usually a vampire that does drink human blood
8. The human character (almost always a female) has something in their past or background that has forced them to grow up faster than other girls their age. They appear more mature than their friends.
9. Almost always set in a small town.
10. Dramatic storyline.  Nothing is subtle.  Everything is life or death.

The same questions you asked yourself about the two clips we watched are the sorts of questions you are going to ask when you are doing your reading journals.  How does the examples you look at appeal to its audience?  How does it achieve its purpose?  What similarities do you see from one example to the next and why do you think those similarities exist?

Homework

• Final Draft of Project 2 via email-micealaya.moses@gmail.com (Due Tues Nov 13 by 9am)  Please Make Sure You Attach Your Works Cited Page
• Bring in 2 to 3 examples of your genre to class (print examples please) (Due Wed Nov 14)

Course Recap for Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Homework

• For the two clips we watched in class, Twilight and The Vampire Diaries, tell me the audience of each clip and the purpose of it.  Then create a checklist of five things you feel are essential to the teen vampire romance drama based on what you saw.  Then give 3 significant differences you saw between the pieces and think about why those differences occur.  Why did the writers and/or directors choose to go that way. (Due Mon. Nov. 12)
• Final Draft of Project 2, via email- micealaya.moses@gmail.com  (Due Tues Nov. 13 by 9am)

Fairy Tale Assignment

Homework
Write a 1 to 2 page fairytale based on the criteria we came up with in class.
If you can't read the pics, save them to your computer and view them through a photo viewer. This will allow you to zoom in on the picture.

The Text in the first picture reads:

• Audience-Children/Families
• Purpose-Entertainment, Teach Lesson
• Do's-Magic, Happy Ending, Obstacle usually involving evil character, a lesson, evil person usually dies, good characters are usually unlikely heroes and has some sort of personal obstacle to overcome like poverty or a disability or naivete.
• Don'ts-Be realistic, good character never loses, little violence, keep it short, not too wordy

Course Recap for Monday, November 5, 2012

MEMES!

FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

FEMINIST RYAN GOSLING

SHAKESPEAREAN RYAN GOSLING

LIKES THE LIBRARY RYAN GOSLING