Microsoft Office Project

Fall 2011

Mr. Garner

Technology Applications

Instructions:

According to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, every four years a President and Vice President must be elected. As you may know, it is that time again: it is time to elect the President of the United States. For more than a year leading up to election day, campaign teams work non-stop to get their candidate elected. You are the campaign manager. It is your job to get your candidate elected.

First, you need to decide which of the first seven Presidents you are working for. Will you be the campaign manager for George Washington? Or maybe the anti-federalist Thomas Jefferson? Or the hot-tempered Andrew Jackson? Or will you ride the wave of popularity started by Madison and work for James Monroe? You may choose any of the first seven Presidents, but once you have decided, there is no turning back. Full steam ahead to the White House!

Each of the following assignments are going to be critical aspects to getting your candidate into the White House. Be sure to give yourself enough time to plan and research for each assignment and get each item turned in by its deadline. If the campaign manager misses any deadlines, it will cause the candidate to lose the election, forever changing the fate of our nation.

Microsoft Word  Due December 16

- The first thing you’ll need to do as campaign manager is learn everything you can about the candidate you’re helping to elect. Using Microsoft Word, you need to write a two-page (minimum) research paper that clearly and effectively highlights the major points of your candidate. What are their political views? What do they plan on doing while in office? Where were they born? What kinds of jobs did they have? Why are they popular with citizens of the public? You need to use at least 3 credible, verifiable sources of information and include an alphabetized bibliography or works cited page at the end of your research paper. You may wish to start with http://archives.gov.

- One of the primary ways that presidential candidates get their messages out is through touring the country and giving speeches. The candidates themselves don’t actually write the speeches. That’s where you come in: you’re going to write your candidates next speech. The topic needs to be a pressing scientific issue of the time. (Yes, you’ll need to research to figure out what the most important scientific issues of the day were AND what your candidate would have believed about that topic.) The speech should be about 5 minutes in length, typed and ready to hand to your candidate.

- As your candidate travels around the country holding large rallies and gatherings, you’ll need to have flyers,  informational brochures, and fact sheets ready to hand out that teach more about the candidate. You’ll need to make one of each (3 separate items). Recommendation: research some of the political materials throughout history and make a flyer and brochure that would be fitting for your candidate.

- One of the primary tasks of the campaign manager is assessing what the public thinks about your candidate. This means that you’ll need to read and even write various news articles and press releases to help the public learn more about your candidate. For this document, you’ll need to write a news article to be given to the major newspapers around the country. Check out http://loc.gov for more.

Excel  Due January 12

- Campaign managers are obsessed with data. Microsoft Excel provides a great resource for managing that data. First and foremost, you need to be aware of the money-side of the campaign. Candidates will spend thousands of dollars traveling around the country campaigning and you need to have a budget in place. You should create a detailed spending plan/budget that includes your travel expenses, campaign staff salaries, and related campaign expenses. You should have a least 50 different items listed in your budget. Your budget needs to have every single expense or purchase written out with a dollar amount. If you plan on spending money, it needs to be listed in this document. The last line of the budget needs to use the auto-sum feature of Excel to find the total amount being spent (so you know how much you need to raise at all those campaign fundraisers you’ll be attending).

- It is extremely important to be on time. For this reason, you’ll need to create a calendar and itinerary. Where will you be traveling? What kind of citizens will be there? What groups will you be speaking to? Because the election will take place in the fall, you have several months worth of campaign stops that you need to plan for. Remember, too few stops and your candidate won’t get elected! People need to hear the message of your candidate!

- A table or graph/chart showing the demographic and polling data is essential to the success of any presidential candidate. You’ll need to create this material so your candidate knows how he is doing. Who are the kinds of people that will vote for him? Businessmen? Farmers? Soldiers? You should create at least three different tables, charts, and/or graphs with different types of information. Be sure to include a short explanation of the table/graph/chart that you’ve created.

- You need to develop a table (separate from the previous task) that organizes a set of important data about the campaign. What are the crucial dates? When are the caucuses? When are the scheduled debates? When is the election? Inauguration? Who are the key people you need to know and/or meet with? You may decide what information is crucial to your campaign, but be ready to defend it! Your candidate will fire you if you don’t stay organized and have this information ready!

PowerPoint  Due January 12

- Your candidate is going to be giving lots of speeches (at least one of which you wrote!). It is always helpful for the audience to have a visual aid to help them understand the importance of the topics being discussed. You need to create a PowerPoint that will serve as a visual aid for one of the speeches. You need to determine who the target audience is, what the most important facts will be, and what info/graphics/charts/graphs/etc will be most important for your candidate to get his point across. Be creative! Do NOT type the entire speech on the slides. This is NOT a teleprompter, but a series of visuals to help your audience understand the main points of your candidate’s presentation.

Extra Credit Due January 12

- Create a political commercial (for either yet-to-be-invented radio or television) for your candidate.

Have fun with this! This collection of assignments will constitute the majority of your grade for the third six-weeks. At the completion of this, you will get to celebrate the inauguration of your candidate into the White House! (That is, of course, if you do your job well!)

As you finish, please email your work to greg.garner@tylerisd.org and don’t hesitate to ask questions! Try http://diigo.com/user/mrgarner for some resources on MS Office.