Great Gatsby Final Project

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuKtmGFDDLc


Thesis:
 In comparison with the materialism and greed of the 1920’s, our societies definition of happiness is based off of charity and helping others.

Using pictures and a recorded voice thread, my group tried to show the contrast between American society in 1920 and our current day. The main observation we drew from a comparison in time periods is that our present society learned from the monetary mistakes of the 1920's. Being a millionaire in 1920 was a fantastic and new phenomenon in which many kept everything for themselves or wasted their money on gaudy possessions. 

The basic mindset of the roaring '20's eventually destructed the stock market and economy all together, which caused America as a whole to learn the true definition of the good life. As a country, we learned that happiness can be achieved solely from necessities as well as charity and helping others, whereas life in the fast lane, consisting of money, cars, and clothes defined the "good life" in the 1920's. 

The web tool my group used was a voice thread combined with pictures to create a video. I would definitely used this method again, I have used to frequently for projects such as this. I find this method to be relativity easy to put together but still effective in exploring a deeper topic such as a thesis and extensive examples.

The way my group split up the work, was effective. We separated the research and script for the video and then edited the writing piece under one person. All four of us helped to pick out pictures. I wrote the introduction while Amanda wrote the conclusion. Desiree and Rich wrote about the past and present from the research we all did together. I also created the thesis, and we all contributed to the underlying idea. Lastly, Rich did the voice recording and put the video together. This helped for the voice thread to be fluid in description and style. Next time, I will work to embed videos in such videos as well as pictures; a variation in media would have made the project more effective.