Our main posting this week is your final presentation. Details about the present

Our main posting this week is your final presentation. Details about the presentation are available in the Final Presentation area of our course.
Please post your video file or a link to your video so that your classmates will view it.
Post this new thread in our Week 11 Discussions board on or before Friday night at 11:59 pm Central time.
Presentations are common in college classes. However, this presentation is a little different in order to make it work in our online environment. Your job is to make a short commercial for your final essay. We will view your commercial on our discussion board. Yep, a commercial is also known as a persuasive presentation.
Do you work best alone? Or, would you like to work together with a classmate? Or, would you like to work with two classmates on this final presentation and its accompanying final essay? The choice is yours. The essay and presentation can be an individual effort. Or, you can ask a classmate or two to work together. The limit is a group of three students. So, you have the option of one, two, or three people.
If you want to work together, then you need to find a classmate or two. There is a discussion board later in the course set up for this purpose. Feel free to post a message and ask about possible project partners. If you choose to work with a partner or two classmates, then each person gets the same grade for the deliverables.
Remember, you are “selling” your essay. Your commercial should persuade viewers to read your essay for more information. So, this is not a PowerPoint presentation with lots of slides and texts. Instead, sell us your essay, and we can learn the details when we read it.
The software:
Students sometimes panic and say, “I don’t know how to make a video! This is too hard! I can’t do it! This professor is crazy!!” Okay, calm down. Making a video is surprisingly easy these days. You probably have the software already installed on your computer. Or, you can use one of the free web tools for making videos. Some choices are:
My quick search for the best free editors revealed MANY possible free or demo options, including Magisto, Wondershare Filmora InVideo, InShot, WeVideo, Splice, Adobe Premiere Rush, PicPlayPost, Blender, Lightworks, Movavi, Shotcut, VSDC Free Video Editor, Machete Video Editor Lite, Avidemux, HitFilm, Wideo, VideoShow, PowerDirector, Quik, KineMaster, and VivaVideo. I have NOT tried all of these, by the way.
Biteable.com (my students seem to like this one quite a bit.)
Microsoft Movie Maker. This comes with your Windows operating system.
iMovie. This comes with your Macintosh operating system.
Prezi. A free web tool for making web presentations. Very easy to use for novices.
Animoto. Another web tool with a free/educational version for making cool video presentations. Very easy to use for novices.
There are many other freebies on the Internet if you like to tinker with software. Search for free video editor.
Your digital camera or webcam probably came with a free or trial version of a video editor.
Please do NOT use PowerPoint. Students often have a lot of problems transferring their multimedia projects for us to view. And students often put way too much text into PowerPoint presentations. Let’s try a video editor instead.
So, don’t panic. You have lots of good options. Students who have never made videos before often say this is the best thing they learned in this class. They use their video editor for their home photos and videos.
The steps:
First, feel free to try a practice video. You will see this optional assignment in our weekly assignment folders. It is not graded. It is optional. Play around with your software; this takes a lot of stress out of the assignment and improves your project immensely.
Second, find images of your paper. Pictures are important. This is a multimedia presentation. You need more than just text. Look for larger images. Small thumbnail images look bad when you put them into a video.
Third, take some time with your software. Make a commercial for your final paper. The video should be about 30 seconds long, 60 seconds maximum. This is not a lecture. Short, snappy, and persuasive. Make us want to read your paper. Show a draft of your commercial to a friend and ask them what they think of it. Edit as needed.
Fourth, post your video on the appropriate discussion board for your classmates to view and discuss. If you used a web application, then you posted a link to your video. If you put your video on YouTube, then post the link to your video. If you created the video on your personal computer, then upload the video to our discussion board.
These four steps show up in your weekly assignments. You will be reminded to work on this multimedia project as the term moves along.
The specifics:
A full grading rubric is available below. Also, here are the most commonly asked questions about grades:
The commercial should be 30 to 60 seconds long.
Please use good images for your video. Don’t use tiny thumbnail images; they look blurry in a video.
Add music or narration for the full multimedia effect. You do not have to narrate your video since not everyone has a good microphone. However, at least add some music if you are not going to narrate.
Remember to share the video with us. If your video editor saves the video as a web link, then share that link. If your video editor creates a video file, then share that file. If you like to upload things to your YouTube account, then share that link.
Practice is important. The practice video is not graded, but it is a great way to get the bugs out.
By the way, remember that your commercial is selling your essay. So, you should refer viewers to your essay somewhere in the presentation; the commercial should steer viewers to your essay in the same way that any commercial sells something.
Ask questions in the professor’s office as needed. Good luck, and I look forward to seeing your creative efforts.