PowerPoint assignment: maybe it isn’t what you think!

If you weren’t in class today, I wanted you to know that we spent about half of the period discussing the PowerPoint assignment. By the way, it is due on Tuesday October 16 — that’s a change that came out of our discussion. A lot of people in the class assumed that I wanted you to create a PowerPoint file with pictures from the Caribbean about a theme. Actually, that is NOT what I want.

What I want you to do is to find a picture on a website. You need to know what website it came from — this is a key part of the assignment as I explain below. You are going to do two things with that picture — the same two things we have been doing in class with our daily Show’n’tell, though maybe it hasn’t been obvious enough.

The first thing is I want you to analyze the picture, the one that is the focus of your website. What aspects of the Caribbean does it represent? Find other pictures that amplify and show other perspectives on that picture. For example if you have a website on Cuban music with a picture of a musician you think is interesting, you could find other images of Caribbean musicians, or of Cuban people, to describe and amplify the theme presented by the image. This would be about 7 to 10 slides of the 15 to 20 slide PowerPoint file.

The second thing is, I want you to analyze the website. This is trickier. It requires critical thinking and a bit of saavy web research. You want to explain, “Why is that particular picture on the web?” “Who created the website?” “What is he or she trying to sell or communicate, by putting that picture on the web?” You’ll need to do some research about the creator of the website, about the product or ideology or perspective that that person or organization is pushing.

I’ll use the example of www.afrocubaweb.com, though it is not a good example because that website has almost no pictures. But it is a good example because it has a very particular point of view, which makes the job of analysis easier. The authors of the site explain that they are promoting the fact that Cuban music is really AfroCuban music and that they want to encourage people around the world to support Cuban performers in their country and perhaps visit Cuba. Look for the “About us” link that many webpages have to get more background information

All this analysis of the website goes into the 2nd half of the Powerpoint. Why is a website “pushing” Cuban music? I haven’t done the research, but I can think of some possible motivations for the authors of afrocubaweb.com. For example: 1) Cuba needs money because of the US embargo and music is one of the country’s most famous and popular products; 2) the Buena Vista Social Club craze of the late 1990s introduced a lot of people to old-style Cuban music and the website is trying to build on that interest; 3) black Cubans are justifiably proud of their musical heritage and realized that many non-Cubans associate Cuban music with white performers like Desi Arnaz and Gloria Estefan, and they want to correct that stereotype by educating people about black Cuban musicians.

Because so many people in the class wanted to revise their PowerPoint work after we discussed the assignment in depth, we changed the due date. The PowerPoint is due Tuesday October 16 at 5 pm. The paper on the Haitian revolution, which we are talking about in class, is due on Tuesday October 23.

Good luck!