Final Project Guidelines

Requirements

All final projects are due by noon, Monday, Dec. 14 and Wednesday, Dec. 16

Each student is required to produce a multimedia project that demonstrates the visual literacy learned in this class. It should be a web-based story with a hard news or feature focus and should be thoroughly researched, well-written, well-reported and utilize appropriate images. Use your pictures to do the bulk of your storytelling (show don't tell), and make sure your narrative has elements of conflict. 

Your piece should resemble a typical multimedia package that would be run by a news organization on a specific topic that has been approved by an editor (in this case the approval came from the instructor of this course).

Each student will do a three-minute in-class presentation about their project.

Presentations should include:

1. An explanation of the overall concept.
2. A brief look at interactive features.
3. What you learned from the project.

Final project presentations count toward your final class participation grade.

Grading

 

A (90-100) - Project reflects goals outlined in final project worksheet, includes two or more of the interactive features learned in lab (audio, still or moving photo). Project is journalistic in nature, well-reported, well written, could run without significant editing.

B (80-85) - Project reflects goals outlined in final project worksheet, includes at least two interactive features learned in lab, could run with minor editing. Project has minor problem with news judgment, attribution, balance or organization.

C (65-70) - Project reflects goals outlined in final project worksheet, includes fewer than two interactive features learned in lab, could run with significant editing. Project has significant problem with news judgment, attribution, balance or organization.

D (55-60) - Project does not reflect goals outlined in final project worksheet, is not journalistic, includes no interactive features learned in lab, could not run without significant editing.

F - Failure to turn in the project by the deadline (Dec. 14 or 16).

How to File your Project

It's MUCH EASIER to submit from an Emerson computers, so I recommend this first method unless you are skilled at ftp.

From Emerson computers:

1. Open the link to Courses (on the desktop for mac, on the start menu for windows).
2. Navigate to fall09/JR-200-M or fall09/JR-200-W
3. Open the Assignment_In folder and create a folder called "Last_First Name"
4. Inside your Last_First folder, create a SECOND folder called finalproject, and drag and drop your elements in THAT folder.
5. In the Assignment_In folder, you'll see a file called "index.html." This is your template for creating your "homepage." Open this file in text program and follow its directions to insert your name, date, title of final project, and a link to the elements in your "finalproject" folder.

If you're not using Emerson computers:

Windows Users:

Open a My Computer window, and in the address bar, type the following depending on Monday or Wednesday classes:

ftp://pages.emerson.edu/Courses/fall09/JR200-M/Assignments_In

OR

ftp://pages.emerson.edu/Courses/fall09/JR200-W/Assignments_In

Windows will ask you for your Emerson username and password. These are the same credentials you use to access your ECmail.

Have them create a folder with their username (or another format like last_first)

They can now put files in this folder.

For folders that contain a web page, there should be an index.html that serves as the home page of the site

Macintosh Users:

For Mac users' Pages access to work best, you'll need an FTP program like Fetch, Cyberduck, and Transmit.  As part of the Emerson community, you can download and use Fetch for free under an educational license! Download Fetch here, pre-licensed, to start using your Pages folder; you'll be prompted for your username and password to download.

Below are the settings you will need to connect (these will work for a PC based FTP program too!): 

FTP Server: pages.emerson.edu

Directory: Courses/fall09/JR200-M/Assignments_In OR Courses/fall09/JR200-W/Assignments_In

Username: Your ECnet Username

Password: Your ECnet Password

Here is a video tutorial that may help: http://www.emerson.edu/helpdesk/tutorials/Mac-OS-X-Pages.cfm

 

The homepage of your project MUST be named index.html. So, the web address for your project would be:

http://pages.emerson.edu/Courses/fall09/JR-200-M(or W)/yourfirstname_yourlastname/final_project

All video, audio, web pages, slideshows, etc., should be stored in your "final_project" folder.

 

Housekeeping

NOTE: If you want to keep a permanent copy of your project you should burn a CD or save it onto a USB stick. Files will eventually be deleted from this server!