This week we spent most of our time finishing our multimedia projects. Thankfully, my group and I were very productive and we were able to finish everything just in time for the presentations on Friday. Instead of doing the usual presentations in front of the whole class, we did a gallery walk. To better understand what a gallery walk is, I read this short but informative article: serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/gallerywalk/what.html. There were aspects of this that I liked and other aspects that I did not like. Some of the cons to a gallery walk for a group project is that the pressure of presenting is all on one person, the docent. This is not really fair because that one person does not get to see anyone else's presentations and the rest of the group does no work as far as the presentation aspect goes. I was the docent and I was really disappointed I did not get to see the other group's projects. Some of the positive aspects of a galley walk style of presentation is that I got to give the presentation to a much smaller group of people so it was less intimidating. Although it did feel repetitive since I had to give the same presentation multiple times, the discussion afterwards was unique and different with each group and I enjoyed that. Overall, I think that the galley walk style of presenting is easier for the presenter and more enjoyable for the audience but it is unfair with a group project since one person is forced to do the whole presentation on their own and the rest of the group has nothing to do.
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This week I was super productive. I was able to accomplish a lot. Furthermore, for the most part, my group and I worked very well together. We finished our books this past weekend and then we spent this week making the PowerPoints with the picture notes. We were able to finish the powerpoint pretty quickly because as we read, we took a lot of picture notes. But, I do wish that we had known the questions we were looking for as we read, not just the big question, because as a group we took many pictures and it was hard to go through and filter what we needed. The specific five questions that were given to us during the powerpoint creation process would have helped to further guide our reading beyond just the broad big question. Once we finish the powerpoint, it was hard to start the Website for multiple reasons. First of all, it was a big project and we were not sure how to tackle it, since it is such a large, complex piece. Secondly, the day we were trying to start the project Mr. Schoenborn and our digital media person for our group was not there. So, we could not create the website to start and we could not get answers to the questions we had. But, we were able to overcome this hurdle by creating a Google Doc and putting all our ideas and organizing our thoughts there. By doing this, Eric (the writer) and I were able to create an outline to the writing. This outline was super helpful. We looked at the structure of snowfall and we considered it in the context of our book, from there we broke down what each section would focus on. This gave us clear objectives for our writing, and then everything started to come in place around that. It became clear where interviews, animations, maps, and pictures would fit based on the decided content of the writing. Furthermore, I read this article about Snowfall, which analyze the multimodal aspect of Snowfall and has made me greatly appreciate the benefits of this project.
This week was the start of the new trimester. At the beginning of the week, we started our next big project. We will be creating a online website based off of the novels we choose to read as a group. In my group, we chose Sela to be the graphic designer because she has a strong background in digital media. I am the video journalist, Eric is the writer, and Lindsey and Emmy are the wild cards. I am very happy with my group, and so far, it seems as though we work very well together. We are all very productive and are able to fulfil our roles within the group. Currently, we are reading our chosen novel. We had a hard time choosing what book we wanted to read. Originally, we choose The Kite Runner, but there were no copies of that book left in class, so we had to reconsider our decision. I have already read Things Fall Apart and The Alchemist, so we chose to read Siddhartha. I am glad we chose this book because it is very captivating thus far. I am about halfway though and it has been a very quick read. Here is a summary for the novel: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52036.Siddhartha I wonder if the book is completely historically accurate or if it is historical fiction. It has been interesting to read the novel and compare it to what I learned about the foundations of Buddhism in World History class. These past couple of days have been very busy. I finished my fourth marking period Creative Writing and my fourth marking period book. I enjoyed working on the creative writing, as I usually do. I started working on the Pecha Kucha presentation. I am actually having a good time editing and finding pictures for my Pecha Kucha. I think I did really well at organizing my slides, and I think that the Pecha Kucha we watched about presentations really helped. I did not know you can add a background color to words on slides and make it slightly transparent. This is useful because sometimes when I put words over a picture there is no color for the words that make then visible. I also came across the official Pecha Kucha website. It was really interesting to watch the other Pecha Kucha presentations given by professionals. Seeing how they organized their slides has inspired me in my own Pecha Kucha.
In the content of my presentation, I had a few discoveries that were very exciting. As I finished my second book and began to take a step back and look at the broader stories of both novels, I found many compelling parallels between the two books. I am eager to finish my presentation and to share the comparisons I made. Additionally, I found two very good outside sources that connect really well to Medea. Now I am looking for my third outside source and I want something that connects to both books or maybe just The Awakening. Towards the beginning of the week, I finished up my TIB video. The editing took longer than I thought it would, even though I spent a good deal of time over the weekend working on it. But, once I got the hang of WeVideo, editing was not very difficult. On Tuesday, I was not able to make it to class because my car had to be taken to the fix it shop because it was making a weird noise. And, Wednesday I had a college interview so I was not in class.
On Thursday, I really enjoyed watching other people's videos. In a way, it was nice to see people open up. Most of the time, people hold up a barrier and try to seem unbothered and perfect. Through this project, I got a glimpse of other people's problems and it added a human, three dimensional view to my fellow classmates. It was a good reminder that everyone is going though (and has gone through) their own struggle. Furthermore, by watching other people's videos I became more comfortable with my own. Looking back on my video, my only regret is that I did not use more actual videos while editing. Most of the visual aspect of my video is made up of moving pictures, but maybe I should have included more videos. Overall, I am happy with how my video turned out and I am glad I did not change my idea. Furthermore, I learned a lot by watching other people's videos and was amazed to see how interesting and insightful my classmate's presentations were. NPR, one of my favorite radio stations, has a series of This I Believe recordings that I also highly enjoyed: http://www.npr.org/series/4538138/this-i-believe I was able to get a lot done for the This I Believe project this week. I thought of an idea for the project, wrote the essay, recorded myself, and began editing the video. I was excited to finally come up with an idea that I felt comfortable with. Once I came up with the idea, writing the essay went by quickly. I essay flowed out of me and then I simply edited and revised it. Recording it was more difficult than I expected. The recording process was harder than I thought because I thought it would only take one or two takes. However, it took me much more takes. My perfectionism got in the way as I wanted the voice over to be clear and dynamic, I did not want the voice to sound monotonous. Even though the editing is taking a long time, I enjoy editing. It is relaxing. Looking for pictures is fun in the sense that it is nice to find a picture that captures the mood, tone, and image you are trying to convey. Sometimes, I felt like I wanted to edit the pictures so that they better fit with the rest of the video. In these times I used this online website that allows you to do many editing techniques on pictures for free.
As I edit my video, I am starting to rethink some parts of my essay. I do not know if I should redo it to change the parts I am iffy about or if I should be confident with what I wrote and continue on with the project I am almost done with. Part of me wants a second opinion, but another part of me is afraid of what they would say. This week we started a new project, called "This I Believe." For the project, you write a breif narrative of a belief you hold to be true, explaining how you came to that belief, using personal anecdotes to help intensify your message. Then, you record your voice, add video clips, and add music in the background to make your story into a production. As someone with strong values and as someone who is interested in filmmaking, I thought this project would be a breeze and a lot of fun. However, I am struggling with this assignment. After days of hard work, many drafts, and a lot of self-reflection, I am still having a hard time defining my beliefs. Subconsciously, I know what they are, but I do not know how to put them into words and I do not know how I came around to my beliefs. My drafts all feel corny, fake, and--most importantly--not true to myself. I thought of some true beliefs that I was eager to write about, but I do not want to use them for this project because they are political beliefs. As much as I love talking about politics, I do not want to be that-person who makes everything political. Furthermore, I am having a hard time choosing personal stories to go along with my beliefs. I feel as though I share too much or not enough, striving to find a balance. This article has opened my mind and somewhat inspired me: http://thoughtcatalog.com/cait-fredricks/2014/06/15-things-to-believe-in-that-will-make-you-happy-to-be-alive/. I enjoyed the comical yet deep analysis of what that person believes.
In conclusion, even though this assignment has been a journey for me, I believe in myself and I am confident in my knowledge. I know I will find an idea that I fall in love with and make an amazing video. My knowledge and understanding of online tracking expanded a lot this past week. I knew that companies could track consumer data, but I never understood how large and complex tracking really is. This past week, we spent most of our class time learning more about tracking. We started off by reading many different articles. Then we reflected on those articles with our peers. By the end of the week, we were able to formulate our opinion on the issue and debate it with our classmates. I liked how we approached learning about tracking and I feel like my knowledge of the issue is facts based and I have a more whole understanding of my opinions and others' views and why they think that. I am able to appreciate the variety of perspectives on tracking while upholding my own beliefs.
Beyond what we read in class, I read this informative article: http://lifehacker.com/5887140/everyones-trying-to-track-what-you-do-on-the-web-heres-how-to-stop-them This article goes beyond educating the public about tracking but offers small solutions that can be made to try to decrease the amount you are tracked online. But, as we learned in class, there is not an easy fix to tracking. The government is considering making a simple button that can be clicked if you do not want to be tracked. I support that idea and I think it would be much easier and allow companies to be more transparent. This week my group and I finished up our presentation of the feminist literary criticism of Macbeth. I felt really productive this week. We perfected our essays, adding a few finishing touches to the conclusion and some of the body paragraphs. We also completed our presentations. I was nervous to present because we were not able to practice as a group before the final presentation, since we were in different classes. However, the presentation went very well. As I was presenting, I felt confident with what I was saying because I prepared myself and knew the material very well. Furthermore, usually I speak too quickly during presentations but this time I was able to steady myself to be articulate and captivating. And, I think that my group worked well together and as a whole, the presentation flowed smoothly.
Additionally, I spent time this week finishing my third marking period creative writing document. I really enjoyed creative writing this marking period. There were many interesting prompt that spurred my creativity. My favorite prompt was when our partners wrote the first sentence of a story and we got to finish it. That made my mind spin with ideas on how to continue the intriguing story I was given. Later, I was researching this idea, and I came across this website. The website generates a random first line. Using that line, you can finish the story and add any twist to it you would like. It is good for writer's block, if you can't think of an idea to write about. This week we did not have school on Monday and I was very sick most of the week. We analyzed two poems about spring this week. It was interesting to contrast them. Even though they both had similar topics, they conveyed very different messages. The first poem we read "Spring and All" is about spring's association with birth and the abundance of life. The second poem, "For Jane Meyers", looks at spring from a very different lens. "For Jane Meyers" point out the death in spring. The death of different flowers and plants that humans pick-- therefore killing the plants. This reminded me of when I was little and I pick my mother some flowers to give to her. She kindly told me to never pick flowers because flowers belong in their home where they do their part in the ecosystem and feed the bees. Both poets had similar yet different lives. According to their biographies [Gluck; Williams] both grew up in the same area during the same time and had ivy league educations. Looking at the poems from a historic lens, it is interesting to consider that the first poem was written before the Great Depression, before World War II and before the Holocaust, while the second poem was written after/during all those events. Spring, a beautiful concept that has been a muse for writers for centuries, became symbolic of the opposite of what it previously symbolized for writers like Louise Gluck.
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April 2017
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