Web Project 2 - The Invention and Explosion of Teen Culture
For your second project, create a webpage, with an original title, that illustrates and profiles your weekend.
What are you doing tonight?
What’s on the radio?
Gonna listen to Alan Freed?
Do you like Pat Boone or Chuck Berry?
How about a movie?
Maybe go to a drive-in to watch the submarine races?
What are you going to see? Heard about Blackboard Jungle or Rebel Without a Cause?
You and your teenage hellion friends are really worrying your parents and their uptight friends.
Decided what to wear?
Do you want to look like your favorite movie star?
Just remember, whether you’re a cool cat or a radioactive paper shaker, you don’t want to have a fake out in your flip-top.
STEPS IN THIS PROJECT:
- Find out more about how the teenager became part of popular culture.
- Then, create a web page, with an original title, in which you briefly illustrate and describe at least one example from five (5) of the categories listed below.
- Now, assume that you are a teenager in Middletown, U. S. A., in the 1950s and that these images and ideas are a part of your life.
- Then write
a short description of your weekend in which all of your examples appear.
Feel free to be creative here.
Here are some possibilities for research. You can’t include everything.
CATEGORIES:
- Slang
- Television
- Fashion
- Teen idols
- Hot rods
- Homes, furnishings (Do you live in a Levittown?)
- Music
- Popular products
- Movies
- Can you think of another topic?
RESOURCES:
Here are a few websites to get you started:
- http://www.fiftiesweb.com
a guide to popular culture from the decade including fads, fashion, slang, music, movies, TV and radio (links to audio clips of interviews with Alan Freed. Who is he anyway?) - http://home.att.net/~boomers.fifties.teenmag/1950_history.html
another general 50s site. - http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/exhibition_14_4.html
a guide to the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition of "America on the Move" with a discussion of "hotrods and hangouts." - http://www.adflip.com
advertising – images of print advertisements from the 50s - http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/browse.html
Browse advertisements from the 50s for beauty and hygiene, radio, television and transportation. - http://www.archive.org/details/movies
The Prelinger Archive. Search "teenage" or "teenager" and find examples of educational films you might have watched in school that instruct you how to behave on a date, develop social skills, or stay "out of trouble." - http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/trailers/trailers_year.cfm
Digital History. Scroll down to the 50s for movie trailers from some of the decade’s best flicks.
PROJECT CHECKLIST:
- Original title for your page
- 400 – 500 words of text
- In-text parenthetical citations for all material either paraphrased or directly quoted
- Acknowledgement of sources for both text and images at the bottom of your page in MLA format
TECH CHECKLIST:
- At least 5 images
- Page name that reflects your project
- At least 2 pages with navigation between pages
- Link from your menu page to the project and from the project back to the menu page
- Link to an at least one external website, opening in a new window, that gives your viewer additional information
- Link to an audio and video clip
- Alt tags for images
- At least 1 thumbnail of an image
| Project
due: March 9 |
Images:
Felson, Gregor Henry. Hot Rod. Online image. “America on the Move,” special exhibit of the American History Museum. The Smithsonian Institution. 9 February 2005. <http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/collection/object_607.html>.
Rebel without a Cause (movie poster). Online image. 9 February 2005. <http://www.homevideos.com/revclas/28.htm>.
