Project USA  The Sound of ...    The American South                     November 2001
  

General Information

In this multimedia unit we are going to deal with aspects of life in the American South, namely Louisiana, Mississippi and North Carolina.

Our work will be based on "USA The Sound of ...", a multimedia learning experience consisting of two DVDs (videos, pictures,  music, texts etc.) and a special website devoted to the topics on the DVDs (http://www.wissen.swr.de/usa).   

General Aims

In the course of the unit you should learn

• about aspects of life in the American South
• to deal effectively with modern media like DVDs, the internet and web-publishing
• to create a website
• to present the results of your work to the class

Methods

Except for the first part of the unit (introduction, getting to know the media and methods) you'll be working in groups of 6 - 8 students. Each group will be responsible for its work. It is important that communication among group members is kept up all the time, especially if you should decide to split up in smaller groups.

This is what you should do

Step 1

• watch the video that covers your topic
• decide which (sub) topics you're going to focus on (choose a minimum of three topics, please)
• if you want to specialize on the topics:  split up in mini-groups of at least 2 students
• now watch the sections on those topics again; take notes: open questions, things you would like to find out more about etc.

Step 2

• check the additional material and follow some of the links on the internet
• if you want to use some of that material in your future work, save it in your group's directory

Step 3

• prepare your part of the "American South" website
• decide which texts, pictures, sounds etc. you want to use; edit the texts and write your own texts
• decide on the layout and structure
• create your web documents using Frontpage