Create a walkthrough video for your revised e-poem. This walkthrough should have two focuses: 1) revision you have made from the first version, and 2) discussion of the sources you have used in the final piece. In many ways, this assignment builds from the results of our first e-poetry walkthroughs, which featured lots of discussion of materials. In this video, we will push on that idea as a way of responding to the question, Why document sources?

Follow these steps: 

First, revise your e-poem following the e-poem revision assignment.

Next, review at least four of the initial walkthrough videos for the e-poetry assignment. Gather your thoughts on what strategies work well in a walkthrough video an on aspects you might want to emulate.

Next, compose your walkthrough video for the revised e-poem. Although you will want to talk about revisions as you move through the piece, a good strategy might be to take viewers through the use of sources. The first step will be the citation information. You can use a video callout or some other text-based technique to deliver this information. The forthcoming MLA Handbook suggests that citations include "traits shared by most works." For much or our web-gathered media (images, video, music), these will be the author, the title, and the URL. For more traditional sources, you might also include the publication in which the source appears and the date. You may not be able to find all of these details, but aim to have an author, title, and URL (or publication) for everything.

Once you have a citation with the basic access information for each item in the video, you can turn to evaluating your use of the source. These considerations should be the heart of the walkthrough video. The MLA Handbook suggests using questions like who, what, how, where, and when to evaluate sources. You can discuss these aspects. And you should extend this by (and can focus most of your energy on) discussing why you selected a particular source. (Note that most of the initial walkthrough videos already are doing quite well at this.)

As you focus on the why behind your use the sources in your video, don't feel confined to what might be expected in a typical works cited page--which is mostly informational. Instead, use the opportunity to explain what makes the source meaningful to you and to the potential viewers of the video. Personal connections, aesthetic elements of the source, intellectual concerns related to the source or topic, the role of the source in helping to create the message of the video--any of these are good aspects to discuss when thinking about the why behind the use of sources. You might also take up concerns of intellectual property and fair use. You can discuss ways in which your use of materials transforms them and the role of mixing other people's materials into your video and creative process.

The walkthrough video will be built around guiding the viewer through your use of sources in a meaningful way. You can also weave in larger conclusions if they seem to fit--discussion of poetry, composing, media, learning, etc. (We will also have an opportunity to take these up in more detail later.) Finally, you can wrap up or weave throughout the walkthrough larger conclusions about the role of citation--and of working with materials.

Finally, since you are becoming more familiar with Camtasia, you might challenge yourself to explore some new composing moves or to otherwise make as full a use of the video medium as you can. You might make an effort to play some of the materials you are citing to help demonstrate them--balancing your narration with weaving the materials into the walkthrough. You might push back against the linearity of this assignment, starting in the middle and moving around through the e-poem. You can also just experiment with some of the video editing tools--animations, masking, new ways of weaving in callouts, etc.

Post your video using the E-poetry Revisions and Citations option before class on April 5th.