Interactive Textual Presentation

The final project for English 343 will be the Interactive Textual Production (ITP). Building on the critical and technical skills you've developed in this course, this assignment calls upon you to construct and present an interactive text. The immediate audience will be the other members of the class, but as with everything online, the potential audience numbers in the millions.

There is no assigned topic for this project. It may be scholarly, creative, persuasive, humorous, or any combination of these. I will review the projects as you post drafts and working copies, as will the rest of the class, so there will be ample feedback.

The production must include

• at least eight interlinked screens
• at least two navigation paths or routes through the screens (at least one of which must be something other than "next screen" linearity)
• a creative application of meaning making textual effects
• meaningful audience interaction
• a link to your hypertext manifesto

You will present your project to the class. Each presentation should be roughly 10 minutes. When you present your production to class, please

• rehearse
• identify which aspects of the production you want to present
• work from notes; do not read from the screen.
• prepare a backup version (on CD or zip disk) in case of tech problems
• time your presentation

The online project earns 75% of the grade. The presentation earns 25%.

—Creative Commons is running a "moving image" contest (ending December 31, 2003). While the entries are not interactive, I will allow anyone entering the contest to submit their entry as the final project for this course.

Even if you do not enter the contest, the CC has provided several sources for public-domain or CC-licensed works, including The Prelinger Archives (video), Opsound (music), and Common Content.

—I will be editing an issue of ://English Matters on copyright and its alternatives this semester. If you use any public domain or CC-licensed work in your project, you should consider releasing your work under a Creative Commons license. If you do so, your work will be considered for publication in ://English Matters. I may ask you to write a short essay, based on your class presentation, to introduce your project.