What is common to both Web and Live Presentations:  The basic underlying research process is exactly the same as that required for a performance: choose an interesting (to you), do-able Character with significant ties to Kansas, who was a real person but is no longer living. This must be a person for whom you will be able to find both secondary and primary sources.

Why choose the Website Option:   Of course, either option makes a great choice. Here's some of what you should think about when trying to decide on which format to choose:  If you choose to do the website, while you will lose the excitement and immediacy of live performance, you will gain flexibility (in terms of what Characters are do-able) and the "off-stage" dynamic of being able to craft your presentation ahead of time. In a performance, you must limit yourself to a Character of your own gender, and approximately your own race/ethnicity. One of live performance's greatest appeals is the electricity of being done right now, in this place, this time, with these people. Websites don't have that immediacy, but also lack the terrors that some people find daunting about live performance. (Of course please note that websites instead can bring the equal stresses of a new, complex technology.) Websites, once "gotten right" (of course this never really happens) also have the advantage of lasting, to be visited by family, friends, perhaps even future employers. Bottom line: either choice will help you develop valuable lifetime communication skills, whether in terms of in-person or on-line effectiveness.

Website Option Specifics: Like the traditional written student assignment, all websites must contain their authors' own interpretation of the topic. Just as you cannot simply turn in your reading notes and call it an interpretive essay, so you cannot just put a bunch of images and snippets of quotes on-line and call it an academically-valuable website. Thus all Kansas Characters websites must contain a core essay of at least two to three screens length, offering their authors' interpretation of who that character was, why and how s/he was important, what his/her place was in Kansas history. But at the same time, a website also should not be just a written paper put on screen, but rather should make use of the many ways that the web lets us incorporate multi-media and interactivity. Thus all Kansas Characters websites must also incorporate at least two web elements that would not be possible in a traditional written paper form.  Most usually this means annotated links to other websites, images (photographs, maps, artwork, etc), excerpts from original documents and supplemental essays. But other possibilities include sound and/or video clips, and various kinds of interactive elements.

Warning: Website students must be very careful not to violate intellectual property rights.  This means not putting up on the web any images or words which belong to anyone, without first securing their express permission to do so. Luckily much of what you will be wanting to include can be found in the Kansas State Historical Society, from whom it is usually possible to get permission for low resolution versions of images to be used on our student websites.
 

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