Web assignments

March 2004



ASSIGNMENT 1

Walls of death

Group work 60 minutes


A.

The Wailing Wall, the Berlin Wall, Pink Floyd's The Wall, the Great Wall of China, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall; the 'wall of death' in Jenin isn't the only famous wall.

1. In your group, choose two of these walls and use the Internet to find out:
Compare the two walls in a diagram (a Venn diagram, a table, a two-in-a-row diagram) and include this in your report as well. Don't use information from one source only. Also, try to show multiple points of view, for instance different opinions on the wall, or the political meaning and the artistic meaning of the wall. Use your own words; you may add website fragments as an annex, but you can't copy and paste Internet information in your report. Your report should be about 300/400 words.

2. Make a presentation on one of the walls you consider most interesting, based on your report. Make sure everyone in the group contributes to the presentation, for instance;
Don't read out information from your report, if you think you might forget about things, make cards with keywords of your speech. Your presentation should last about 10 minutes.

B. Wall paintings and posters

The Wall of Death isn't unique: Walls have always been used to leave messages on. Your task is to find information on walls as a medium for art, political or religious purposes or other uses.

Your task in this exercise is to make a timeline and a mind map on the use of walls as message boards throughout the ages.

Mind map: Take a look at the following mind map on 'The wall as message board'. Which uses can you add? What examples of the uses mentioned in the mind map, or though of by yourself, can you think of? In your group, complete the mind map and add general examples and website addresses where more information or illustrations of these examples can be found, as shown in the example of hieroglyphs. Sometimes you'll have to make cross-links, for instance when a poster has both artistic and political value.

Download mind map

Timeline: Make a timeline in which you order the examples (including web addresses) you used for your mind map in chronological order.

Useful links (but try to find examples by yourself as well):

The wall as a message board in:

France:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/index.html

Mexico:
http://www.sparcmurals.org/home.html

The USA:
http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/6788/murals.htm
http://www.at149st.com/hpart2.html
http://www.hetland.com/murals/
http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~davidtoc/murals/murals.html
http://www.mpls.lib.mn.us/wpdb/index.asp?searchsubject=Communication
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/museum/posters/

The UK:
http://www.filmposterworld.co.uk/
http://www.aoqv41.dsl.pipex.com/album/church/moulton2.htm
http://www.historial.org/us/art/posters.htm

Italy:
http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~mcogan/Humanities/Sistine/Ceiling/

Nicaragua:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/arts/nicaragua/murals/political/

China:
http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/

Egypt:
http://members.aol.com/egyptnew/glyph.html

Northern Ireland:
http://members.fortunecity.com/stevesbackpackers/lodging/id11.html
http://people.ku.edu/~kconrad/murals.html
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bogsideartists/menu.htm

Rumania:
http://iconaantica.spb.ru/





ASSIGNMENT 2

Naked truth about sexy ads

Individual work/group work
60 minutes


Maybe you've done the exercise on 'making an ad' that was connected to the article 'the naked truth about sexy ads'. In this Internet exercise, it's your task to work on a slogan 'the real way'; to do research, formulate a mission statement, work on a slogan, check whether the slogan will work, and present your ideas in a report. Work in groups of 4-6 persons.

A. Preparation
The aim of this exercise is to create a slogan and write a full report on the process of creating this slogan. The report should include answers to all questions asked in the following sections, brainstorming material, reports on the discussions you had and of course the final product.

1. There are many products advertised daily with slogans in English. Do you know which brands they belong to? Do you think they are good or not? What makes them good or not? Identify the following slogans, either from memory or by looking them up on the Internet, and discuss in your group whether you think they are good or not and why they are good or not. 2. At http://www.adslogans.com/ans/index.html you'll find, in the left-hand column, a list of things slogans should be. Which of these do you consider most important? List the five most important features and compare lists with your group members.


B. Selection and Exploration

As an advertising agency, you can get some pretty difficult customers. Beer brands who'd like a slogan that doesn't have 'refreshing' in it, major brands who expect you to treat them as gods because they have asked you to do their slogan, managers of car companies who insist on having bikini-clad girls on the bonnet, washing powder companies who want an ad that actually sells. But, since you'll have to earn your bread, you'd better accept their demands and get to work with it. Now, suppose your group is one of these beginning advertising companies, and your first customer is one of the following enterprises:

Vegetarian Restaurant: Manna
http://www.manna-veg.com/home.html

Vegan Catfood: 'Evolution Diet'
http://www.petfoodshop.com/

Non-leather shoes: Freerangers
http://www.freerangers.co.uk/shop/

Ethical clothing: Clean Clothes Campaign
http://www.cleanclothes.org/

Against animal testing: Bodyshop
http://www.thebodyshop.com/

Global shopping: Fair Trade stores
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/stores/

Ethical banking: Triodos Bank
http://www.triodos.co.uk/

  1. You may already know a bit about these organisations through reading 'Inside New York's sweatshops' or 'Pigs have feelings too', both articles you can find in this Alquin. Browse through the homepages of all these organisations and decide in your group which one you'd like best as a client. Write down which organisation you have chosen and explain clearly how you came to that decision, which enterprises no one liked and why, and which enterprises were popular.


  2. Now, take a look at http://www.adslogans.co.uk/general/evolution.html#1. Here, you'll find a list of steps to take when you want to make a slogan. In your group, your task is to explore each of these topics, starting with the first three. You can ignore the last two columns; you are the advertising company, you don't need another advertising company to do the work for you (well, you might, but that way you'll probably never make a profit). So start by:


  3. What other companies can you find that operate in the same field as your client's? First list some of the key players who work generally speaking in the same field as your customer, i.e. banks, restaurants, drugstores, cat food, shoe shops. Note down some major brands / chains / names, their web addresses and their slogan, if any.


  4. Then search for enterprises that work in the same field more specifically. In other words, other ethical banks, vegetarian restaurants, against-animal-testing or organic drugstores or toiletries, vegan or vegetarian shoes or cat food brands. Again, write down their names, web addresses and slogans, if any.


  5. Now look up your enterprise's mission statement; what is the enterprise's aim, what would they like to express, what makes it 'tick', why was the enterprise founded. Summarise the mission statement in your own words. Use about 100 words. Write down the exact web address where you found the information.


  6. Compare the info you have on your brand with the info on the competition, both from 3. and 4. Write down in what way your brand is different from the others. Use comparison diagrams (Venn diagrams, two-in-a-row diagrams, tables) to make the information more readable.


  7. Now decide on your target group. Who do you want to address mainly: young people, old people, people with young children, singles, males, females, students, kids or business? Who should remember the slogan, and why? What do you know about your target group? What do you want them to do, and how might you be able to convince them to do so? What have your competitors done before you? Do you want to address the same group, or try for another group? Write down your ideas about your target group in about 250 words; it may be handy to divide the questions in your group, and construct them to a logical story when you have all finished.


  8. Write down both strengths and weaknesses of your brand, and brainstorm in your group about what you could do with the brand's name and image (opportunities) and what you should beware of when making the slogan (risks). Organise the information in a SWOT (Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats) diagram:



 
Strengths: Weakness:
Opportunities:   Threats:



C. Working on a slogan
  1. Now that you've looked at the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, your target group and the competition, it's time to think about a slogan. Just as a reminder of what a slogan should and shouldn't be (according to AdSlogans.com), take a look at http://www.adslogans.co.uk/ans/index.html again. In the left-hand column you can find a list of dos and don'ts. Make sure you understand what they mean; if not, click the ones you don't understand to read more about the subject.


  2. We'll stick to this page in order to get started with our slogan. Read the elaborate information on sections 1 and 2, 'Be Memorable' and 'Recall the brand name'. In these sections, some ways of making slogans are mentioned, for instance through rhyme, alliteration, coined words or puns. So, start by writing down your brand name on several pieces of paper and make one paper for alliterations, one for puns on the name, one for rhyme words, one for coined words and one for free associations with the brand name or the product. Every group member takes a pen and writes down as many associations, alliterations, puns or coined words he or she can remember on the papers. Use (rhyming) dictionaries (Dutch-English-Dutch and English-English), thesauri and other reference books for inspiration. Also look at the 'proverb' section most dictionaries have on proverbs that are connected to your product or service, for instance 'food', 'banks', 'shoes' or 'walking' etcetera. Don't focus on writing full slogans already; this is just the first step. Also, read what others have written and let their writings inspire you. This should take about 30-45 minutes.


  3. Take a look at what you've written and use different coloured felt tip pens to select words, puns and phrases that might be useful. Write these down on separate pieces of paper again and brainstorm on what you could do with these, either on paper or through oral discussion. Keep the brand's mission statement and your target group in mind. If you choose for the latter, make sure you make notes of your discussion for your report.


  4. Individually or in pairs, get to work on writing possible slogans based on your discussion and brainstorm results. Don't let this part take too long; use about 15 minutes to write down your ideas.


  5. Get back together again and discuss your ideas. You may use http://www.adslogans.com/sloganalysis/sloganalysis.html on some of the slogans to see what how it's rated; if you do, include this in your report of the discussion as well. Adapt slogans together to make them sound better. List all your slogans, but choose one you'd like to use. Add some basic ideas on how the slogans could be used in commercials or printed ads.


D. Finishing your report Now, all you have to do is collect all your writing, brainstorm reports, papers, drawings, diagrams and other things you have made, into one report. Add a table of contents and an introduction and make sure the report looks nice. Even though it's the contents that count, it's important to present things nicely as well, as you might have learned while working on this task. Also add a report on how the cooperation went in your group; did you manage to divide tasks evenly? Who did what, who was good in which parts, and how did your discussions go? Did you take turns taking minutes and chairing discussions or not? Which parts did you like, and which did you dislike? Use about 150 words.





ASSIGNMENT 3

Hanging out in London!

Group work/individual work
40 minutes


In 'Generation EA', you have come across the Plan B Bar in Brixton, London. If you went to London, that might be a nice place to visit… though you'll probably have to be 18 before you can get in. But suppose you were to go to London with your class, what else would you like to do?

The assignment:
In this assignment, your task is to make a schedule for a week to London with your class. The school has arranged a bus to get you and your teachers there on Monday afternoon, and pick you up again on Saturday afternoon, but it has been decided that you can have a go at making the programme for the week yourself. However, there are some rules to the programme; in order to get it approved, you should:
Additionally, you have to find accommodation (dormitories) in a cheap youth hostel (max. £8.00 a night, including breakfast) and find out how to get to the places you've selected from the hostel. On the Internet, find maps of both London and the Underground and mark your routes. Also, find out ways to travel through London, and possibilities for getting group discount or week-passes.

Programme:
Make a programme in which you explain what you plan on doing each day including a rough time schedule and why you have chosen for certain activities on certain days (for instance, you can have a day on which you go and see historical sights, or a day to visit special architecture). Also note down admittance fees for museums and sights. Make sure your programme is coherent and practical; it's no fun to spend hours travelling through London. You can do more activities on one morning or afternoon (for instance, you can combine watching the changing of the guards, have a stroll in one of the parks and end the afternoon with a generous English Tea - either in town, or maybe you can arrange something in the youth hostel). Just take care that you don't pack your afternoons too much; There is no fun in rushing from one site to the other.

You can use the example form or make a nice format of your own. Just make sure it looks attractive, that it contains a logical and precise programme and that you have included all necessary information.

Download example

Some useful links (but it's not hard to find many, many more):

London transport:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/
http://www.thingstodo-london.com/brochure/content.jsp?FIELD=Getting_Around
http://www.londontouristboard.com/travel/travelcards/

Visiting London:
http://www.starfury.demon.co.uk/uground/
http://www.a-zoftourism.com/travel-to-London.htm
http://www.londontouristboard.com/
http://www.londontown.com/
http://www.hotels-london.de/tourist_info.htm
http://www.freetraveladv
ice.com/london/index.html?kw=london+tourist+info

Hostels in London:
http://www.london33.com/
http://www.studios92.com/
http://www.youth-hostels-in.com/
http://www.hihostels.com/
http://www.hostelworld.com/index.php








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