Note: This was originally written for a long version of the midterm project, with time for group meetings and planning. It may still help you decide on an individual project with less formal cooperation with classmates.
Your goal is to explore, find, describe and compare online sites that are doing something interesting with Web storytelling, marketing or information. If you work with a group, you can pick an "umbrella" topic and have each member specialize on a subtopic, while still producing individual pages that demonstrate your page-building skills.
For instance, if you are interested in multimedia -- including video, slides with audio, animations, interactive databases, etc. -- there are hundreds of sites to choose from. How do you narrow it down?
One student might focus on "multimedia for news," another on "multimedia in advertising," another on "TV program sites."
Some organizations specialize in multimedia training and production, others have added such techniques to their "older media" presence online. In both cases, you could focus on individual stories to illustrate what the organization is doing. You might watch or interact with more than one whole story, then pick a "telling" example to make your points about the organization or site.
For example, a report on "newspaper" sites using multimedia and interactivity might focus on the New Orleans Times Picayune and its coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or a regional paper's coverage of a major music festival, and another paper's innovative election coverage.
An advertising project might focus on three different kinds of products or services being marketed online, or one category of product being handled in different ways by competing manufacturers. (Ford, Honda and VW; Apple, Dell and Sony; iPhone, Droid and Blackberry; Ragu, Newman"s Own and Prince etc.)
You will do individual projects, but classmates can help sort out your ideas, plan and offer reactions and advice. Meet in groups of three or four to
Use "umbrella" topics for group support. You might draft a "about" statement that applies to all members of the group – what the projects will have in common and how they will be different. All group members' sites could include that paragraph on their project home pages, along with an explanation of the individual's special focus.
For example, three people in the first category below could differentiate their projects by focusing on different kinds of news – "breaking news," "investigative reporting," "sports," "business news," "technology" etc.
Multimedia Storytelling & Interactivity in Online Journalism
Multimedia Documentary Storytelling Online
Technical issues in online multimedia
Multimedia Techniques in Online Advertising & Marketing
Multimedia
at Social Networking Sites
(Facebook,
MySpace, YouTube & more)