Extra Credit Opportunity

It has been my experience that students have a great deal of trouble learning (and retaining) which rights and freedoms are associated with particular amendments in  the Bill of Rights, e.g. that the Eight Amendment provides protection against excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.

This semester, a couple of students have described creative ways they have come up with for remembering which amendment does what in the Bill of Rights.

In the hope of inspiring you all to commit this important information to your long-term memory and to try to harness your creativity to help me come up with a better way to teach this stuff, students who produce a video demonstrating an original and useful way to remember the content of the Bill of Rights (that is, which particular rights are protected by which particular amendments) can win extra credit that may be applied to your third exam.

Here are the rules:

1. An entry may be no longer than 5 minutes.
2. Each entry must provide instruction on the contents of all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights.
3. Entries may be the work of individual students or teams. (Students may collaborate across sections.)
4. Teams may be no larger than 4 students.
4. No student may be involved in more than one entry.
5. Entries must be burned onto a CD-ROM in a common video file format (e.g. .mpg, .mov, etc.).
6. All entries are must be physically turned in to me no later than the start of the entrant or entrants' class on Monday, November 21. Be sure to write the names of all students' responsible for the video on the physical disc.

I will select up to five finalist entries on the basis of three criteria: the usefulness of the video for helping future students learn the Bill of Rights (60%), creativity (25%), and production values (15%). I will them put together a small panel of judges to choose one winning video and one runner-up from among the finalists.

• Individuals or teams who produce the three finalist videos will receive 5 points of extra credit (per person). 
• The person or team who produces the runner-up video will receive 10 points of extra credit (per person). 
• The person or team who produces the winning video will receive 15 points of extra credit (per person).

All extra credit will be applied to grades for the third exam prior to any curves or other adjustments I may make. By submitting a video, entrants agree to assign to me the nonexclusive right to publish and distribute their video (including posting it online, making it available for others to download, and showing it in present and future classes). Lastly, and as always, I am the dictator of the extra credit assignment. My interpretation of the rules is final, and I reserve the right to alter or amend its terms at any time with reasonable notice.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this opportunity. Good luck.