Step Back in Time with South Carolina's Most Important Figures

The goal of this lesson is enhance students' skills in ELA (researching, speaking/listening, writing, communication) as well as reinforcing our 8th grade SS standards as they are provided by the SCDE.

Students have to complete many assignments for so many various things - each subject requires projects to provide some sort of proof that learning has taken place. Our school district also participates in the SC ePortfolio program, where each 8th grader is taught technology and assessed to see what they've learned, besides what they've learned in the core content areas. As a result of this, students complete many projects for each to upload to the state's ePortfolio system as documentation.
I would like to complete this "project" you might say for many reasons. First, students are being taught the skills to research material through the Internet on a particular person from SC's history, such as Francis Marion, one of our very own political figures of South Carolina (SS standards would be addressed here). They would then create interview questions to ask their partner (each person will have a partner to interview, asking and receiving questions - you give the interview and you will be interviewed as well). They must demonstrate skill by communicating and listening/speaking during the interview portion of the project.
After the assignment has been completed, their interviews are recorded via flip camera, just like an Oprah Winfrey interview. The students must be the character, speaking and acting just as that person would during a live interview. This task would not only cover ELA and SS standards, but it would also incorporate the state's technology portion.
I can honestly say that we could do our assignment/project with one (1) Flip Video camera, and that would allow other classes you deemed appropriately needy to use the remaining cameras.
I would like to have additional CD's to save each student their own copy of the interview for future reference. It would be nice to look back and say they once walked in "Francis Marion's shoes for a day!" The copy would also be good to use as a learning tool for journalism - look at the interview to see the good points and areas of weakness that could be improved.