Creation: Your Final Hypertext Project
Your final project in Hypertext is to create something new. Hence the name. It can be a web on any subject that interests you. Your challenge in conceiving and implementing this web is to do something that is more ambitious than your past webs both technically and intellectually. I would also like you to find a project that fits your interests, skills, and goals. Finding a good topic that you really care about is oten the key to a successful creation project.
For your final project I urge you to:
- Browse my list of final projects from past classes for ideas. Your final project does not have to fit into any of these categories. Indeed, I will be particularly impressed if you come up with an idea that forces me to create a new category.
- Find a topic that you really care about.
- Plan carefully.
- Make this project more ambitious than your first. Try to learn new things.
- Pay attention to the small details, make sure all of your pages have titles, and all of your links work. Look at your site on at least two different machines.
- Remember that your reflection is due no later Friday of finals week.
My final project archive has a massive collection of links from past projects, including projects that were substantial enough to be a final project even if they were completed for other parts of the class. Here are some notes on specific sites from the archive. This list does not include every genre in the archive site.
Celebrations: Celebrations are sites dedicated to something the author feels passionate about. Celebrations can be about virtually anything from Harlem Writers to Mustangs. What defines these websites as a genre is the passion that the author brings to topic. A good example is Andrea Kaplan's celebration of JRR Tolkein's The Silmarillion.
Children's Literature. Did you know that ISU has one of the strongest children's literature programs in the country? A number of these students have taken Hypertext and done Children's Literature based projects. See Jon Klassen's English 170 site, Holly Smith's Storytelling class anthology, or Julie Fraser's exploration of subversive Children's literature. If you have always wanted to write a children's book, this could be your chance.
Creative Writing Many student have used to occasion of the final project to do some new multimodal creative writing. Lori Propheteer's Dis/ease is very interesting though incomplete. Bad Ramen is a fragment of an animated graphic story.
Explorations are a Myst-like genre in which your reader wanders around exploring a webbed space. The point of the site is the journey rather than a specific end. The earliest is John Woolsey's Eyesite. A technical writing example is Rayn Travaille's architectural tour of downtown bloomington, while Wanna go for a walk is a lighter more personal exploration created for the author's friends.
Games and Interactive Sites Several students have created games for their final projects (as well as site about games). This category overlaps with explorations (as Eyesite is very game like). Case 351 is a clue type game. Virtual Spouse is exploration of distance relationship and how your construct your relationship with a distant partner through text. In the site, you interact with a virtual spouse through text forms.
People have done collaborative projects in the past. Collaborations are fine with me, but I expect you to pick a project that is sufficiently ambitious for two or more people to work on, and I would like each of you to write a separate reflection about the project, being sure to address your own contributions to the collaboration.
There are many other topics at the final project archive.
