To submit your video, you must first export it in WMV format. Go to the File menu in MovieMaker and select Save Movie File. Choose My Computer and then Click Next. Enter a name for the movie and check the location where you are saving it. Click Next.

On the next screen if there is a link saying "Show more choices" select it (if that link is not there, then you are fine.) Select the Other settings option and then choose Video for Broadband (512kbs) from the menu. Click Next.

Your movie will be exported. Create a new blog posting on our Web site and attach the movie that you have exported to the posting. If your video is more than 10 megabytes it may not work. If that is the case or if you have trouble, just let me know.

Here are the instructions for submitting the final portfolio of your
work:

Remember that you will need a cover or closing letter that reflects on the entire body of your work and on your progression as a thinker and writer for the class. Remember that portfolios work well at demonstrating learning, personal growth, effort, and excellence in the final products of your work. Your letter, then, can serve to educate readers of the portfolio about the materials you have collected in terms of these kinds of criteria. I'm also interested in your thoughts on this course if they seem relevant to the discussion of your work.

Also, remember that the final portfolio signals that you have completed any revisions you wish to make you your entire body of work. You will want to ensure that the materials that you link to are cleaned up and contain all the necessary elements for each assignment--lists of sources, short descriptions, links to all revisions, etc. Also proofread everything in the portfolio, polishing all of the work.

Here is a breakdown of what you need to submit:

The playlist--be sure to add any polish needed to the second revision. Make additional changes. Use the Create New Revision option to submit a final version.

The podcast--you can find your podcast linked to this posting

Make sure your work on the annotation project is complete and that it is linked in the portfolio.

Your collages--make any additional revisions and then create links in the portfolio to all of the versions.

Link to your video. To upload your video, create a blog posting and submit the video as an attachment. Make a link to the video in the portfolio.

Collect the blog postings and comments that you have made during the course. You should have at least 10 postings and comments. If you have more you can link to them, or you can select the best 10.

So, the portfolio will link to all of the versions you have of

• the playlist
• the podcast
• the annotation work
• the collages
• the video, and
• the blog postings.

Once you have linked to all of these materials, work on the composition of the portfolio. This is your best chance to do writing in the class. For all of the items write explanations that help readers make sense of the materials and that explore the key goals of the portfolio and other issues relevant to the course or writing. Be sure to discuss the revisions you have made--what have you changed and what did those changes do. As you write these explorations of all of the pieces, you can keep these touchstones in mind:

• effort
• learning
• growth
• excellence
• challenges
• what you've discovered about the topics you have covered in a given piece
• thoughts on the composing process for the pieces
• what you've learned about writing
• what you've learned about yourself

Each item will call for variations of these concerns to be addressed. You should also keep in mind the message you want to get across in the cover letter and the portfolio as a whole as you develop these reflections.

Be sure to write a reflection for your blog postings as well

Try to develop explanations that further the discussion of your work as a whole that you put forward in your cover letter.

When you have collected and reflected on everything and developed your cover letter, submit the posting--you may want to submit it as you work several times to save your thoughts.

Here are the podcasts from last week.

In this assignment you will bring many of the skills you have developed together to create a video collage. The video collage will feature an audio track, which will most likely be a piece of music but which also can contain your own recorded comments. While this audio track plays, you will sequence images and text to offer an interpretation of a literary work, to offer information about an author, genre, period, or other aspect of literary study, or to provide an overview of an issue of importance to the field of literary studies. Your collage should be at least three minutes in length.

There will be three major concerns related to this assignment:

1. Identifying a topic that lends itself to expression in a video collage. The key aspect of this form of composition is that it has a changing visual component--images. If you are working with photography and literature of the Great Depression, there would be little trouble coming up with materials that would lend themselves to this form of presentation. If you were doing Emily Dickinson, you might have more difficulty. One solution is to select a work that lends itself to visual exploration. Another solution is to broaden your definition of literature—if you want to interpret film, photography, fine art, or advertising you should be able to find ample materials for your project. A final solution is to work with a larger issues or aspect of literary studies. If you wanted to write about African-American fiction, war poetry, and so forth, you could find all kinds of images. Don’t be discouraged, but do think of an idea that will lend itself to this form.

2. Finding and making appropriate use of materials. You can use images that you collect online—be sure to keep track of their location as you collect them; you will include this information in the credits for your collage. For music, you will need to be a bit more aware. You may not simply insert a commercial piece of music into your collage. If you wish to use commercial music, then you will need to layer sections of 30 seconds or less into the overall composition. You can also use music that is released for use online; this will allow you to use an entire song. I suggest starting with the songs available on the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) but you can also find other public music sites where you can locate songs. If you have other non-commercial music sources, you can use them as well. Again, keep track of the information for the sources you use.

3. Composing the video collage. You will use the Movie Maker application to create the video collage. This program is based on a timeline composing process. You will import the audio and image clips—you can also import video—and then layer them in a sequence using the timeline. I will go over the process in class, but you will need to experiment to learn to work the program. The main skills you will need to emphasize are timing, sequencing, and integrating text into the collage.

Successful video collages will
• Demonstrate a thoughtful treatment of the topic. Again, you will want to ensure that the topic lends itself to visual representation. Viewers should finish the collage with a sense that it has spoken to them meaningfully about a literary work or issue.
• Appropriately use materials. We will be making our collages public, so we must respect intellectual property concerns. You need to use no more than 30 seconds of any copyright-protected song. You also need to list all of the sources you use in your credits.
• Smoothly integrate relevant images, sounds, and text. Begin with an idea for a video collage related to literature. Select images that convey ideas related to your topic. Work with the composing process to sequence and layer all of the elements together artfully.

As you work, you may want to look at some samples:

http://www.unc.edu/~fujita/fujitavc.wmv
http://www.unc.edu/~mclare/mclarenvc.wmv
http://www.unc.edu/~smithlj/smithvc.wmv

Here are the recordings of the practice podcasts.

For the consequences group

This assignment is for those who have been absent and have not been able to work with a group on the podcast assignment. It will require some individual work that involves technology.

Create a podcast that can be shared over the Internet. A podcast often takes a form somewhat like a radio show. There is usually the voice of a narrator/mc; there are often clips from interviews; and there can be samples from songs or other media that are played on the show.

Create a podcast that explains how an artist or group can be considered literary. You can play a clip from a song, and then analyze it to show its poetic nature (remember to think about the complicated relationship between music and lyrics). In addition, there are several additional moves you can use in the project to expand the argument to show that the group or artist is literary. First, you can focus on more than one song, so you can compare/contrast, build an argument, etc. Second, you can focus on other elements of what it means to be literary:

There are other criteria that you might use to connect your artist to literature; the point is not just to argue that the songs are like poems, but to go to the next level and show how the artist and the work of the artist can be viewed in terms common to the study of literature.

Again, you will want to use samples from the artist's work. (Stick to around 30 seconds or less for samples.) You can/probably should use interviews to add perspective and variety to the project. And you will use your own voice to weave together the samples and materials so that your podcast delivers the message you wish to get across.

The mechanics of the project will take some work.

You will need to download and install the Audacity audio editor to work with the sounds. You will need to figure out how to use the program. Refer to the tutorial at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials

You will import the songs into the project, and then edit them into the samples you will use.

You will also need to collect interview clips. I will give you a microphone that you can use with your laptop to record people. Before starting, you will need to think ahead about what you want to ask--if you ask something broad like is Steve Earle literary?, you may get a range of responses. If you say, what do you think about the topics or motifs in Earle's music?, the responses might be easier to plug into your project. In any case, the interview process often involves a good deal of collecting, listening, and then selecting and trimming. For every 10 minutes of interview "tape" you will probably get 20 or 30 seconds that really should end up in the podcast.

You will also need to record your own voice to stitch everything together. For your interviews and your own voice, you will need to experiment with the microphone placement and settings. You need to do everything possible to get good quality audio for the project.

This should be a project that raises some new challenges for you. Some will be technical--be sure to save your files often and give yourself time to learn how to compose with audio. Most of the challenges should be conceptual--you'll need to learn to imagine how you can organize a project based in sound, create transitions, convey information succinctly, create a mood through audio, etc. There will also be content challenges--what makes a musical artist literary, how can you demonstrate this literary aspect of the artist? Hopefuly the level of challenges will still allow the project to be creative and fun.

Here are some additional readings and resources:

http://www.stanford.edu/~jonahw/PWR2-W06/Resources.html.

From Transom, Alex Blumberg's story advice and some short audio profiles

Nancy Updike's writing for audio advice

Sound Portrait's advice on How to Record.
You can also listen to some samples from another class:

http://www.teachmix.com/websampler/?q=node/134
http://www.teachmix.com/websampler/?q=node/140
http://www.teachmix.com/websampler/?q=node/137

Create a podcast that can be shared over the Internet. A podcast often takes a form somewhat like a radio show. There is usually the voice of a narrator/mc; there are often clips from interviews; and there can be samples from songs or other media that are played on the show.

Work together with a group of peers to
produce a 10-15 minute (could be a bit longer) podcast about a theme or topic relevant to the study of literature.

The podcast will take the form of a live radio show that blends recorded snippets
of interviews, poetry or music with your own commentary or discussion. You can listen to some samples produced by other classes to get an idea for what the podcast might sound like, including All Poems Considered, The Fruitbasket, and We Get Lit.

For the topic and some of the content of your podcast, your group might select a literary figure or a theme/motif--families, innocence, nature, work, war, culture, entertainment, etc.

Once you have a broad theme in mind, you might want to focus your discussion on a few of the works related to that theme or on some smaller topics. Brainstorm about ways you might use recorded readings of poems, song samples, and other audio tidbits, and then look for a creative topic that can organize what you want to do.

Next, conduct research to inform your work on the project. You might learn all
you can about authors, or track down interpretations of songs or poems you
will use. You can locate essays related to the themes you wish to touch on.
Imagine ways the podcast might function as an audio research project; the more
seamlessly you can incorporate engaging information into the podcast, the stronger
it will be.

Next, select roles for the various members of the group—you might choose
a host or co-hosts. You could then identify guests, callers, reporters, or other
ways for everyone to participate. As you identify roles, you will also be refining your thinking about the overall shape of the podcast session—how you might sequence the speakers and integrate audio into the show. You will also need to designate a person in charge of the media files--this person will be responsible for cueing up and playing the audio portions you will include in your broadcast.

Next, compose a script outlining the podcasting session. Your script should
use speaker tags and stage directions to indicate what will happen during the
podcast—something like:

INTRO MUSIC [Eddy Money—“Two Tickets to Paradise” (just kidding)]

HOST: Give podcast info (date, place, topic, etc. > introduce guests >
topic background and segue way to first poem

PLAY “Marginalia”

HOST: First question to Jennifer—relationship of poem to podcast topic

You can see that the script does not spell out what each participant will say.
Instead, it provides a map that will guide the live session. The key to doing a successful podcast is knowing your topic--research as much as possible and get to know the works you will discuss, and your conversation will be engaging.

Let me emphasize what will make the podcast strong: good research and knowledge of the works and the topic combined with an informal conversational recording session. Don't write out everything you intend to say.

Your group will deliver the live podcast to the rest of the class. We will conduct the live podcasts on November 5th.

Add a comment to this blog posting before class on Wednesday. In your comment, discuss the most striking element you find in common among these texts:

Rites of Passage - 638

Advice to My Son - 639

Betwixt and Bewildered - 640

The Lesson - 662