Let's Talk: An interview with ...

A WebQuest for Secondary 3 - 4 students
Subject areas include English, History, Art, Literature, Social Studies and Science

Created by Mr Kevin Tan

Introduction

You are a senior student reporter with AHSTimes, an established and reputable school publication which is widely read by students, teachers, parents and several members of the community.

Task

You were asked by the Chief Editor (your English Language teacher) to produce a news product about a famous individual who had had a positive and significant impact on the society in the areas of science or art/literature.

The following is a list of historical figures about whom you are to create a news product. You may choose another historical figure as long as he/ she had contributed significantly and positively to the areas of science/ mathematics or art/ literature.

Science/ Mathematics
Albert Einstein
Joseph Lister
Louis Pasteur
Alexander Fleming
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz
Pythagoras
Euclid
Isaac Newton
Blaise Pascal
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

Art/ Literature
Salvador Dali
Vincent Van Gogh
Leonardo Da Vinci
René François Ghislain Magritte
George Orwell
Hans Christian Andersen
Albert Camus
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Lewis Carroll
Leo Tolstoy
J.R.R. Tolkien

So, you travelled back in time and paid a visit to these famous individuals to interview them for your feature news story.

You may present your news story in several ways, depending on your own creativity and availability of resources e.g. in-studio interview, poem, feature news story, audio recording etc.

To note: Although you will be assessed on how engaging and detailed your news story is (substance), your effort in delivering the news story (form) would be rewarded.

Procedure

1) In order to write/ record a good news story or interview transcript, you must find out more about the following:

* Person's background/ profile

* Key aspects of the period in which this person is living

* ONE specific event that this famous individual was involved in that had significantly and positively impacted the course of history e.g. what led to the event (causes), what happened during the event, and what transpired after that (effects)

To note: You are to acknowledge all sources used, whether they are websites or reference books. At least one source has to be a book. You will be given marks for the depth of your research, evident in the number of resources used in corroborating information.

2) Decide on the medium through which the interview is delivered.

3) Complete the final product.

* If you are using a video/ audio recording of the interview, please save the file into an empty CD/ DVD-ROM, properly labelled with your name. Alternatively, if you can upload it into a blog etc, provide your Chief Editor with the web address, ensuring that the file can be easily retrieved and opened. Formats like MPEG, JPEG, WMA are examples of user-friendly audio/ visual files.

* If you are writing a feature news story/ interview transcript/ poem etc, have it printed for submission. Alternatively, if you prefer to have it uploaded on the web, please provide your Chief Editor with a web address.

Research Resources

Take note: These are not exhaustive. There are many more autobiographies, biographies and sources of information about the specific person you are researching on.

Web-based :

http://www.historyworld.net/default.asp

http://www.famouspeople.com/

http://famouspeople.wordpress.com/

Book-based:

Famous People of the Middle Ages by Donna Trembinski

Remarkable People in History: Learn about famous lives from different times and places by editors Theodore Pappas ... [et al.] (Note: "et al." is used when there are more than three editors/ authors etc).

1000 Years of Famous People by Publisher New York, N.Y. : Kingfisher, c2002.

Almanac of Famous People: A comprehensive reference guide to more than 33,000 famous and infamous newsmakers from Biblical times to the present by editor Jennifer Mossman

Electronic sources (videos/ audio recordings)

A Few Good Men about various influential Singaporeans

Great Inventors by Unik Smart Educ-tech

Famous People in History 2 by Nicolas Soames.

Other resources to help you write/ record:

1) Interview transcripts

http://www.stanford.edu/group/howiwrite/conversationtranscripts.html

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2005/09/15.html

2) Feature news story

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~soules/media301/feature.htm

www.milforded.org/schools/foran/turtola/feature.ppt

http://student.bmj.com/write/how_to.php

3) Video/ audio recording of interview

http://www.podcasting-tools.com/audio-recording-tips.htm

http://www.soundportraits.org/education/how_to_record/

http://camcorders.about.com/od/videorecordingtips/a/ShootingTips.htm

http://www.loc.gov/vets/moreresources.html

4) Poetry writing resources

http://www.poewar.com/poetry-writing-tips/

http://www.poetrymagic.co.uk/

http://www.korepetycje.com/poetry-writing.html

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/poetry-explication.html

Assessment

You are to submit the following:

1) A news product - News story or audio recording or video recording or poems etc.

Guidelines
For feature news story - number of words = 200 - 300
For audio/ video recording - minimum interview time of = 5- 7 minutes
For interview transcripts - enough material to make 5 - 7 minutes of recorded interview
For poems - at least 16 lines (4 by 4)

2) A paragraph of not fewer than 150 words to explain why you have written about that particular person i.e. why you considered him/ her significant enough to have a news product written/ created about him.

In your final product, you should include a bibliography acknowledging the sources you have used.

You will be assessed based on:

a) Effort [8 marks]

b) Content (Relevancy, amount etc) [8 marks]

c) Presentation (well-organised, creative etc) [4 marks]

Your deadline is: Term 1 Week 2 of 2008

AHS EL Department 2007