More on punctuation

Reading Kerry's post reminded me of a story that came in from The Associated Press last week; the first write-through read thusly:

MIAMI — Part of a construction crane plummeted 30 floors at the site of a high-rise condominium Tuesday, smashing into a home the contractor used for storage and killing two workers, police said.

Now, that's a tough boss -- to actually set aside a space for killing workers! At least he limited himself to two!

Not to make light of a tragedy, but this helps illustrate the importance of punctuation.

New term coinage?

I hadn't heard this one.

I spent six years living with and traveling with a nationally headlining professional comedian. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1997. A friend of mine who knew Frank just wrote me saying, "I saw Frank's name online the other day. Guess he's 'e-mortal.'" Has anyone heard that one? I really like it.

Kress 122-175

As we talked in class last class, it is important to have proper punctuation due to the fact that some people will misunderstand the point if the punctuation is incorrect. For example, in class last time, my group as well as another group had discussed the road sign that said "Slow children playing." Obviously to most it would mean that children are playing so you should drive slow. All it needs is a comma for everyone to understand that the children aren't "slow".

When reading about multimodality meaning using different modes to help us understand a concept, what I thought about are all the things in cars today. For example, the Lexus has now come out with a car that can parallel park for you. Since I cannot parallel park worth a flip, this would be a great thing for me. However, at this time, you have to be more wealthy than I am to purchase that car.

122-175

When Kress addresses the importance of punctuation, it made me think of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Both Kress and Truss highlight how punctuation creates meaning, something important to think about as text messages and informal emails are becoming primary forms of communication. I also thought that Kress' ideas about reading as semiosis were reminiscent of some of Foucault's theories about language and control.

Kress

Sorry that I am so behind on my blog posts. I have had them all written down but I just got my computer back from it crashing. So here's the Kress 35-83. The others will follow.

This reading really took me a long time to read. I read then reread in order to try to understand. So, this took a lot of time. Basically one of the things I got from Kress and this reading is that art comes in all forms: writing, television, painting; it can all be some sort of art. they all go hand in hand. Maybe me getting this out of this reading was completely off but I did the best I could.

Kress 84-121

The text was a little difficult once again, but because of the definitions and discussions in class, I was able to understand a little better. When I can place examples with these words, this helps me to understand. I wished that I could remember some of the examples we used in class. I do remember our group discussion of the Starbucks coffee mermaid and its meaning.

Last of Kress

Ahh ... punctuation ... the last bastion of civility. Seriously, though, it's interesting to think of punctuation in terms of visual "text."

In its traditional sense, punctuation is VERY important -- for those to whom it's important, that is. For instance, there's a clothing shop on S.C. 123 between Clemson and Seneca whose sign reads "Two Sister's Boutique." It drives me absolutely mad. I've taken pictures of it, and sent them to all my copy-editor nerd friends. They, too, are beside themselves. Did the owners commission the sign incorrectly? Did the sign hangers simply hang it wrong? Semiotically speaking, it drives me away from doing business with the place. As I said, ahh ... punctuation.

In terms of the punctuation of space, I had experience with this recently at my job as a copy editor/page designer at a newspaper. I'm A LOT better copy editor than I am page designer, and as such, I was having difficulty with a particular B-section cover that required, as all designs do, a dominant image. In this case, the image meant to be dominant was included with a story that also included a column signature (picture of the writer) and text boxes (with ancillary info). Since a column also occupied the entire left side of the page, I had but five columns left with which to work. To worsen matters, the secondary art (photo) on the page was a huge standalone (no accompanying story) depicting a pastor lighting the Easter flame. How could I make the dominant photo dominant while "taming" the flame photo?

I've always been one to follow the rules, so thinking outside the box spatially poses me a problem. As I puzzled over this particular problem, it occurred to me, "Hey, why does this flame photo need to take up the entire space it's allotted? Could it work with some 'air' around it?" I tried that, simply downsizing the photo and leaving about a 1/2- to 3/4-inch white "frame" around it. Suddenly, the dominant art was indeed dominant, and the flame -- with its fiery foreground and dark, solemn background, was "punctuated" by the space. I loved it, and I was pleased.

Individual Project

I have had a really difficult time trying to come up with an individual project. So, I finally came up with something but Im not sure what to do with it or how to present it. I wanted to talk about the Internet and how it has changed so much in the past few years alone. I thought about how now people can pay bills, keep up with bank statements and so many more things that make it easier on us a people to live in this world. This is much easier to us a a society, however, it can cause quite a bit more problems when it comes to identity theft and such. I'm not sure exactly what to do with this or how to present it if anyone has any ideas.

122-175

When Kress mentioned "multimodality," voice-to-machine interaction, and other such interations, it made me think of all of the technologies that seemed so far away when growing up (watching The Jetsons...). I mention The Jetsons because just about everything you can think of from that show exists today -- minus the flying cars. There are toy robot dogs that respond to voice commands, telephones that know who you want call, and computer programs that know how to punctuation correct errors when you are typing/writing. I am not very good at grammar/punctuation, so, programs that help me are always nice except when I'm writing poetry. I prefer typing instead of writing by hand, but it gets old when Microsoft Office Word keeps capitalizing or deleting extra spaces when I specifically want them there. I can see what Kress is getting at when he says "white spaces and punctuation" have as much meaning as other symbols.

individual project proposal

Subject/Focus

My project will focus on the way interpersonal communication has changed in format, language, medium, context, etc. I want to show this through a narrative story that follows three generations of people as they communicate with friends, family, colleagues, peers in both their personal and professional lives. In doing this I think I will touch on themes of social interaction, generational differences affecting the way people choose to communicate and the way technology has enabled such rapid communication but has detracted from the social aspect of interpersonal communication.

Treatment

The final product for this project will be a hypertext website in which the viewer will determine the path the narrative takes by clicking on text within a handwritten letter, an online chat session, or text accompanying a video or image. It will be multimodal and include text, images, video and sound.

Technology specifications including the software you will use to create the project)

• Dreamweaver
• Digital camera (?)
• Scanner

Timeline including each major task and when it will be completed

Weeks 1 & 2: Gather the different “artifacts” of communication
Week 3: Storyboard to lay out how the “artifacts” will be linked
Week 4: Determine which words will be hyperlinks, create webpage and add images, video, text, etc.

CRP

After starting on my creative response project I realized that it would be a better task for me to just make a children's book of vocabulary words with pictures of things involving the computer. Before, I had wanted to do a children's manual for a particular game online. Then I realized that wouldn't work out the way I wanted it to so I have changed my mind.

An Interesting Article

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/03/28/sl.autism.irpt/index.html

Thought this article was very relevant to our class. It talks about how people with Autism are using Second Life and how the skills they obtain there help them interact socially. Thought this was a pretty cool example of digital literacy changing the way a specific group interacts!

Kress pgs. 84-121

Like many others, I also found this text difficult to digest (even after a second reading). Nevertheless, as with all texts, I found some things worth the effort of digesting while others I found both difficult to understand and difficult to apply. The most useful components of the text, as previously stated, were the definitions themselves. The definitions allow us the chance to come up with an example/application that makes sense to us (because let's face it--Kress doesn't always do this for us). I find that the biggest help is when we have an understanding of the definitions or at the very least definitions to work with and we're able to discuss them in class and generate examples/discuss them as a group. It's funny, for me at least, how after understanding what a concept means I find myself applying it to everything. How many of you have said, "that's remediated!"? I know I have.

Kress pgs. 122-175

When I first read the the post on white space in a picture the first thing I thought about was the importance of white space in poetry and narratives. Similarly, I also considered the importance of punctuation in poetry and narratives. It's amazing how much nonlanguage can contribute to a text. Punctuation/white space can both indicate a break in thought. Punctuation can indicate circular thought where a character's mind is spinning around one particular subject or where a character's mind is racing forward. White space can indicate ones pondering. It can also indicate loneliness, a sudden silence, mystery of what is not said--among other things.

Kress 122-175

As with the other chapters, I found myself reading these chapters more than once. I did find the discussion in Chapter 9 of image and text a nice way to wrap up the book. As in Chapter's 4 &5, Kress advises that designers of (electronic) text consider the "best fit" (p. 156) when using various media. Using images to represent concepts more easily represented visually and using text to represent sequentially-based concepts are his recommendations to the designer. Multimodality also makes us aware of how reading paths are determined by the layout of a document. As we use electronic text more and more it seems that the right to left reading path may become a thing of the past.

Individual Project Proposal

My digital literacy project will be a narration of what the K-12 school of the future will look like in western culture. The current mode for our educational system was created at the end of the 19th century. Schools were designed to provide students with a sufficient educational foundation to deal with the demands of a job. Today, our culture is constantly changing technically and our schools will also need to be able to do the same to produce educated professionals to compete in a global market.

The project will first document the history of the educational process in our schools starting around the end of the 19th century and how “literacy” has changed over time. The project will then focus on what the school of future will look like. I believe the concepts and terminology (remediation, genre, discourse community, immediacy, etc.,) in class will be address through out the project.

I will be using Adobe Presenter (formerly Breeze) to present my project. I have never used this software before, so I feel this will increase my digital literacy. I will first compose a PowerPoint presentation and write a script to accompany the presentation. I may use a video camera to tape interviews; however, I am not sure if I will need the camera at this point.

The timeline for this project will be approximately one month. I will be learning Adobe Presenter as the project progresses, therefore that process may complicate sticking to a timeline. I first will conduct extensive research and interview Dr. Joanne Avery at Anderson School District Four regarding the “Inside out School” project she is co-charring. The next step will be able to navigate Adobe Presenter. I will then compile the PowerPoint presentation and compile the narration to accompany the slides. These will be put together for the final presentation. The final step will be to draft the reflection paper.

Kress 122-175

I thought this section was interesting overall. I did get lost several times, but think that Kress brings up an interesting point about the function of punctuation and semiotic meanings. As I read this selection, I thought about how both punctuation and white space are usually overlooked as a form of communication. In my Visual Communication class, we discussed how the white space in a picture is just as important as the object itself; moreover, the white space is a shape. This idea follows Kress' argument about punctuation as a socially constructed form of communication.

Kress 84-121

I found this text incredibly difficult to understand . However, the most useful sections were the definitions. One of the best distinctions that Kress makes between genre and text is on page 93. He states, "Text is the category which refers to the material aspects of language, the tangible phenomenon; genre refers to aspects of the organization of the text, and intangible phenomenon." He continues to say that although the two are not coextensive of one another, all textual elements are generically formed. Honestly, I still found myself scratching my head on this concept, but the definitions by themselves make some sense. The conversation in class helped somewhat.

Individual Project Proposal

Subject/ focus:
The focus of this project will be to explore how practitioners of non main stream religions find community online.

Treatment (what media, perspective, and approach you will use):
I will be doing a documentary style short movie using research gathered from the internet as well as interviews with various people. It will be from my perspective, but I'm hoping that I will be able to accurately portray the perspectives of the people I'm portraying in my movie as objectively as possible.

Technology specifications including the software you will use to create the project:
I will be using iMovie, iTunes, and somehow I will be figuring out how to download movies from You Tube. I will also be using Blogger and other sites like this to documents the points of view of my subjects as well as a method for asking my interview questions.

Timeline including each major task and when it will be completed:
Week 1: Start gathering materials/make sure that materials are available; Begin researching; begin sending out interview questions
Week 2: Compile material and find the central narrative for the movie
Week 3: Put everything together in iMovie
Week 4: Revise and edit as necessary
Week 5: Finalize and turn in.

Detailed Individual Project Proposal

Subject/ focus:
The subject and focus of this project will be the debate that has been created between users of the PC and Mac.

Treatment (what media, perspective, and approach you will use)
This will be a documentary approach that involves interviewing and researching. I'll be interviewing both PC and Mac users as well as those who use both. I'll be able to add my own two cents because I'm a Mac user that grew up using a PC but will never revert to being a PC user again. (If I don't have to.) I'll be going to an advertising company in Greenville, SC to interview the graphic artists who work in the studio. It will incorporate the humor of the PC vs. Mac commercials as well.

Technology specifications including the software you will use to create the project

• IMovie
• YouTube Grabber 2.0
• Video Camera
  

Timeline including each major task and when it will be completed
Week 1: Start gathering materials/make sure that materials are available; Begin researching
and set up times to interview
Week 2: Intensive research and interviewing
Week 3: Finish up interviews; Start editing process with IMovie
Week 4: Continue editing process after getting feedback from different viewers
Week 5: Final editing

Kress, Chps. 6 & 7

In the discussion of genre within "A Social Theory of Text," Kress describes genre as a "definition of everything that goes on in the text" (p. 94). An example he later provides correlates closely with my creative project: the Annapelle label on p. 103, which promotes a purse sold in Australia.

The purse is made in China using Italian leather. Kress analyzes the label in terms of its genre: "The text is laid out in what I take to be an aesthetically pleasing fashon -- it is 'sculpted.' ... The makers of the card address me as someone who is interested in something beautiful, as someone who has taste. There is of course the logo (is it Renaissance Italy, or is it Australian art deco?). The language too strikes me as carefully 'crafted'; it uses adjectives such as 'fine.' The punctuation is sparse to the point of severity; I assume so as not to make the text look fussy."

He goes on to determine that the card -- earlier described as olive/eucalypt green -- fits most closely within the "report" genre, and he puzzles as to the use of such a genre so seemingly out of context.

Genre, he stresses, pertains to and is shaped by the social relations of the participants -- the sign maker and the audience. This reflects in many ways what I hope to incorporate into the marketing materials for my fake bartending business. The materials' content is both visual and textual, but overall, the pictures, the verbiage and even the colors used are chosen with the intent of evoking a certain ... status -- an image in terms of "reputation" or "presence." I want to appeal to a certain type of client, and in embracing the "descriptive" genre, I hope to create in the consumer a desire for not only my staff's services, but for my products (specialty drinks) as well. My marketing materials describe my products and services, and therefore insinuate the social relations between my business and the clients I hope to attract, as well as the guests of the people who would avail themselves of my services and products -- a je ne sais quoi of exclusivity creating an image of the desired.

Indivdual Project

Subject: A narrative about the Dangers of the Media and publishing to much information about oneself online.

Treatment: I will tell the stories, through a rap, of two or three people who encountered danger while operating inappropriately on the internet. For instance, I may focus on predators who lure children over the internet or the possibility of someone attaining a person’s address with negative intentions.

Technology: I plan to present my narrative through song. In order to do this, I will use a the beat-making program Fruity Loops to create a beat for the song and a computer and studio to record the song. I will use the help of a producer to master the song and get it in acceptable format.

Timeline: March 25-30- Write the song
April 1-10- Create the beat
April 18-20- Record the song and get it mastered.

response to Kress (84-121)

Although this section of Kress was dense, one thing I took away from the reading is the idea that we make sense of what we see and hear by creating representations through language and images (texts in Kress’s definition of the term).

I also thought Kress’s discussion of texts as based in more than simply language was interesting. Texts are created through images, text, etc., and part of literacy is this idea of semiotic design. “We have moved from literacy as an enterprise founded on language to text-making as a matter of design, an enterprise founded on a variety of forms of representation and communication. From competence in use we have moved to competence in design and, with that, innovation and creativity…are now in the centre” (105). As we’ve discussed in class, literacy is more than simply the ability to read and write. It is also the ability to deliver a message in a way that is appropriate to the audience receiving that message, and Kress addresses that notion in these chapters.

Individual project details

My project will examine the use of video resumes. My medium will be film, probably via Windows MovieMaker.

First, I'll research the origin/history of the video resume. I'll decide what facts and facets are most important, and develop a storyline for the film.

Next I'll search for clips and other artifiacts that can contribute to the visual effect of my film. Perhaps I'll conduct short interviews on videotape.

After writing a script/narration outline, I'll begin to put the clips together and lay the narration track.

The additions of transitions and graphics will finalize the project.

Kress

35-83

The only thing that I could think of throughout this whole section was a poem by Robert Hass entitled "Meditation at Lagunitas." When discussing the signifer and signified in terms of a difference in meaning, one must think on the way that people interpret the same thing in different ways. The idea of disconnect between perseption and speech is something that scholars have been battling to reconcile for years. I love that a class focusing on digital literacy can bring in such areas of inspection that are so fascinating. In this poem, does blackberry mean blackberry or as the poet suggests, does saying blackberry mean the death of its true meaning? Does speaking the word "woman" grasp its true perseption? It is a strange and interesting thing to tie into the digital realm.

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,
pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence
like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river
with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,
muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish
called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.
Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.
But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,
the thing her father said that hurt her, what
she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous
as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.
Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,
saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Individual Project Proposal

I hope to create an informative film that demonstrates how digital literacy is changing and has changed the process of electing our president. I want to look at the history of media coverage and how each progression (newspapers, photography, radio, television, internet, youtube, etc.) changed the nature of debates and the election process.

How does digital literacy effect who rules our country? Does digital literacy change or effect the people who go to the voting booths?

I plan to use Windows movie maker for this project.

Weekly Plan:
-Week 1 (now): collect images, articles, sources that may have insight or quotes that I include in my film Do the preliminary research necessary to understanding the subject.
-Week 2: Outline the film on a posterboard--including the order of every clip, etc., that I want to be included.
-Week 3: struggle and cry over the software begging it to work.
-Week 4: continuing editing and figuring out how to create the film
-Week 5: ready to be presented.

Projecting

For this project, I’d like to create a web site for personal and professional use. I will go through each step in the process including buying a domain name, getting space on a server, and publishing the site to the web. On my site I’ll include my resume, my blogs, pictures, videos, work samples, and other items of interest.

Steps:
1. Buy a domain name
2. Sign up for a server (mac.com)
3. Pick a color scheme/ template
4. Learn how to create web pages
5. Diagram how the pages will connect
6. Gather material for the website
7. Figure out how to post the material on the web site
8. Publish the site to the web

Resources Needed:
• Domain name
• Server space
• Knowledge on how to make a web page

Time to Acquire Resources: 10-30 hours

Tentative Timeline:
3/25- Buy domain name and sign up for a .Mac account
3/26- Figure out how to connect the domain name with the .Mac server space
3/28- Create a homepage
3/30- Add other pages to the site and organize the information
4/1- Gather materials for the site
4/3- Upload the materials to the site and make the appropriate links
4/10- Test the site to make sure everything works
4/17- Revise the site and make sure there is a story

Individual Project

The goal for my individual project is to explore the realm of art through the medium of the internet. I hope to gain insight from various sources of which can be considered "art." Whether a Monet is more readily avaible, an online game, or a paint document I would like to explore the different options avaible.

With an emphasis of using digital portfolios for college students to display all of their collegiate work, how do art students display their works online?

I plan to use movie maker for this project.

Tentative Plan:
-Week of March 23rd find examples of art in different forms/ gather opinions of "what is art"
-Week of March 30th draw a rough sketch of film
-Week of April 6th work on film
-Week of April 13th continue work on film (finish film)
-Week of April 20th film ready to be presented

Individual Project Proposal

My digital literacy project will document my learning process using Final Cut Pro. It will show my progression from a first time user to an experienced user more familiar with the program and production process. This project will include the use of Final Cut Pro, an instructional podcast, and a video camcorder. Integrating these various forms of media will express my digital literacy while also narrating my comprehension of Final Cut Pro.

The project will not explicitly address concepts from class, but they will be evident through the way the project is arranged. Specifically, as I learn Final Cut Pro, the viewer will also learn. The narrative will show how the project itself is a remediation of the podcast. It will also illustrate other key terms such as immediacy, hypermediacy, and transparency.

The project will be organized in segments to address the basic functions of Final Cut Pro. Each segment will cover a topic that I will use as I work to complete this project. Moreover, the recorded material will be of me actually learning the program and working on my final project.

The projected time it will take for me to complete this assignment will be approximately a month. The reason this project will be so time consuming is because I will have to record myself while in the MATRF lab using the Mac computer since I do not own one; also, I can only check out a video camcorder for a twenty-four hour period. Since I will be learning the program and recording, I will end up with more material than I need. I will also have to write a script to accompany my taping. Therefore, it is somewhat difficult to create an accurate timeline for this assignment. I will be tasked with both taping and learning the program while also determining what footage to discard in order to make the documentary relevant.

This project will demonstrate how digital literacy is not only about being technologically skillful, but also thinking critically about what approach to take, what is at stake, and what is the meaning behind the medium. Doing this project will make me more sensitive to how the information is presented, what are the audience's needs, and what is the message of the project.

Individual Project Proposal

I would like my final project to be a comparison of my digital literacy at 14 compared to my brother, who is 14, based on his use of myspace and my use of what was around 10 years ago. I would like to make it into a movie, making the point that when I was 14 there was no such thing as myspace and once these kids get to high school and college, their digital literacy is much more advanced then mine was.
I will interview my brother, think about my own digital literacy at 14, make screen shots from myspace, find pictures/movies that reflect my own digital literacy, and put everything together as a movie with iMovie. Using iMovie will be the hardest part of this project. I have fiddled with it a little bit over break and got frustrated, so I will have to try once again.
My tenative plan will be to first talk to my brother about what capabilities he has with the Internet based on what he learned from myspace and gather pictures of me when I was 14 and get some pictures of my brother (which I can do on myspace) and begin to figure out how to use what he has to say. My next task will be to think about my own digital literacy at 14 based on what was available to me at the time (aim). Think about how this affected my use of computers in school and once I got to college and figure out how to use this in a movie. Next I will storyboard all of the information and pictures I have and begin putting everything together. Lastly, I will edit what I have and make sure everything works correctly.

Kress 84-121

I would like to comment on the discussion of writing beginning on page 89. This passage made me think about my high school English classes and how the only correct interpretation of a poem or other piece of writing was what the teacher said. I used to write papers that were considered "way off base" from what the poem was "really" saying. This was a very discouraging experience and once I got to college, I realized that it did not have to be that way. I was always challenging my English teachers because I enjoyed reading, writing, and using my imagination to figure out what the author was trying to say, which did not bode well for my grade. In college, I found, you can say anything as long as something in the poem or piece of writing can back you up. In high school, my classmates always had differing points of view about whatever we were reading and some of them were even more "off base" then I was, which is a testament to the fact that they were teaching the way they had been taught, which was to assume that their students "shared a homogeneous social background", while in college, most professors realize that this is not the case.
I am not sure if any of what I just wrote makes sense and if it is even pertinent, but it is what I thought about when I read that part of the book.

Individual Project Proposal

So, far the only idea I have for my final project is to redesign a website page for the little boy I babysit. He has his own blog right now, which mainly showcases his work with his fellow boy scouts. I think it would be cool to revamp his blog and add a lot of cool applications, etc.

I would have to gets some pictures and short movie clips of Noah’s troop. Also, I would need to research some details and history about the boy scouts. I haven’t decided if I just want to show the website or get still frames of the website and incorporate that into a movie.

I need to learn how to create a blog. I also need to ask Noah, if he wants this and would be willing to help me. This will take the whole time I’m allotted for the project most likely since I'm working with a 10 year old.

I will start by asking Noah, if he would be up to helping me the week after spring break. Then once I have Noah’s input/pictures/movies, I will start putting together the website. After I finish the website, then I will decide whether or not I will create some kind of movie using Windows Movie Maker or use breeze to incorporate Noah's input.

Individual Project Proposal

For my individual project, I want to show how computer use at a young age is beneficial to the learning of a child. I want to explore the use of computers in schools as well as in the homes of the children.

I want to research facts on how common computers for children are, the effectiveness of computer learning programs, and whether or not most schools promote the use of computer related learning.

I want to provide video footage, pictures of children on computers, and facts. I hope to use microsoft movie maker to put this together.

I will need to explore and gain a better understanding of movie maker in order to make this a successful project. I also will need to borrow a video camera from the library, and gain permission from the parents of the children who I will be filming.

I hope to make this an interesting and fun project for the class to watch, so that they too can learn about children's computer use.

Creative project details

I don't think I provided sufficient details re: my creative project, so ... I plan to create at least three deliverable elements of a marketing campaign to promote my (entirely fake) private bartending business, including a business card prototype, snazzy letterhead and possibly a specialty-drink menu with color photos.

Individual Project Proposal

Subject/Focus: I am doing my creative project on celebrity blogs and their effect on the way people spend their time on the internet. From working at US Weekly this past summer I spent a considerable amount of time on blogs catered toward the gossip and scandal of celebrities. I always found these blogs outrageous and now having been in this class I find them an interesting aspect of digital literacy. Some of the blogs that are out there already are very outrageous and some are milder. For example, Perezhilton.com is very shocking and blunt, while blogs like JustJared.com simply pose the facts about celebrity gossip. I want the “mock” celebrity blog that I create to fit somewhere in the middle. At first I wanted to make it so ridiculous that it would almost be unreadable, but after researching what blogs are already out there I saw that you couldn’t get more shocking than Perezhilton.com. So I then decided to create a blog that is witty, catchy, still shocking, but also a little classier than some others. This way I could still poke fun at the notion of celebrity blogs, but also not go to far with it as so it looks tacky. But perhaps tacky is the way to go? I am still open to suggestions on this detail of the project.

Technology Specifications:Blogger.com, imovie, Adobe Photoshop

Task Breakdown:
Get caught up with major celebrity gossip (that worth covering and information that will surely attract bloggers)
Visit other celebrity blog sites and compare/learn
Select images or movie clips to blog
Upload images or movie clips to blog
Work with images and or movie clips
Comment and “blog” these situations that arise from celebrity photos, clips, and anything else readily available.
Edit and work with blog
Polish final results
Develop the best way to present the project

Timeline:
Proposal completed 3.13.08
First draft completed 3.21.08 Final draft completed 3.28.08
Final project due 4.1.08

Individual Project Proposal Draft

Starving for Acceptance
by Sharon Reese

Subject/Focus

The subject is the almost “proana” body image messages that the highly popular media carries for young women. This project will focus on the influence that media has on the views and behaviors of young women and how these views and behaviors are embedded in our being even as adults. It will also show the shifts in “what’s hot and what’s not” overtime.

Treatment

Documentary video.

Technology specifications

The software that I will be using is iMovie and Adobe Photoshop.

Task breakdown
· Research statistics , proana sites, blogs, etc.
· Select final images/photoshop images
· Select music that tells my story
· Upload images and music to IMOVIE
· Add textual statistics, voiceovers, and transitions
· Polish final product
· Work on presentation of material

Working Time Line
Proposal completed 3.13 Final draft completed 4.28
First draft completed 3.28 Final project due during exam time

Creative Project Proposal

Don't Judge a Person by their Cover Shot on Vogue

by Sharon Reese

Subject/Focus

My creative project subject deals with celebrities before and after photoshop. This idea is something that is cool in a way, scary in another. The problem is that after seeing these photoshopped pictures for years, we start to believe that people with flawless skin exist. This makes real people with real, human 'flaws' appear to look bad. I know this type of photo retouching has been going on since way before Adobe Photoshop, but it seems to create an ideal that doesn’t exist. I guess the argument could be made that retouching pictures is art. For this reason, I will attempt to create my own art by retouching photographs of myself and others.Treatment: Digital Portfolio.

Technology specifications:
Nikon DSLR, Adobe Photoshop, and iMovie (maybe)

Task breakdown
· Select images from magazines
· Take images/photoshop images
· Select music
· Upload images and music (not sure what software I’ll use; Perhaps, I’ll use iMovie)
· Edit transitions, etc.
· Polish final product
· Work on presentation of material

Working Time Line:
Proposal completed 3.13 Final draft completed 3.28
First draft completed 3.21 Final project due 4.1

Creative Project

For my individual creative project I am going to select an online game from yahoo and keep a record of my experiences. I will record thoughts before, during, and after my experiences playing an online game.

What Clemson Kids Like

For my creative project, I plan to create a blog that enumerates and explores the stuff Clemson kids like. I plan to parody this funny blog- http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/.
I'll incorporate pictures, videos, and links, including linking to the above site when fitting.

Individual Project

I will document and record my digital literacy as I explore and learn computer programs that I have never used. In doing this assignment, I will not only be talking about my digital literacy progress, but also showing it.

My creative assignment will be submitted as a Powerpoint presentation.

I plan to compare and contrast music videos and their you tube counter parts. I hope to find the amateur music videos that I have seen before on the internet over spring break along with the actual music videos. This creative project is mainly for enjoyment and entertainment. I hope also to do a survey of the class and see what music videos they prefer!

Creative project

For my creative project I anticipate creating a video scrapbook for the graduating sixth graders at Townville Elementary School. I plan on using digital photographs taken during the school year by the staff, as well as taking some photos myself. This presentation will be part of the graduation ceremony at the end of the year. Each sixth grade student will also receive a CD.

I believe I will use PowerPoint. I have used PowerPoint for training and academic presentations, but I have never put together a presentation with timed slides coordinated with a musical theme. I am looking at various songs to incorporate into the presentation that will be fitting for this milestone.

Individual Proposal

For my individual project I am going to explore [probably in documentary style] the change from PC to Mac. It applies to me personally because I grew up using a PC and then got a Mac for a laptop in preparation for college. This base of switching from a PC to a Mac gives me a wide variety of things to explore for the final project. I'm going to be interviewing Mac and nonMac users alike and gathering information on why Mac users are 'sold for life' when they switch.

Detailed Creative Project Idea

My creative project is going to be a story of a gumby-type clay figure who is having a normal day when something extraordinary happens to him. The inspiration for this idea stems from the Pixar shorts that are hilarious, like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9erlZnMekZ0

Unlike the Pixar shorts that are either computer graphics or drawn and then animated, my project will be done in a different style. I'll be taking pictures to illustrate the story and then I'll put the pictures in order in IMovie to tell the story. There probably won't be voiceover, but I'll figure that out as I get to it.

Here are some more Pixar clips just for fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m75i68Ob8ko&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zv9vRz4QYM&feature=related

Kress Reading

I also had trouble really getting into this reading, but since I have read some of Reading Images by Kress & Van Lewen (Spelled that wrong!), so some of it made sense to me. The part about affordances, though, reminded me of a reading from my workplace comm class from a book called The Myth of the Paperless Office. In that reading, it talked about the affordances of paper and why those affordances make paper something that people like and will continue to use despite having the internet. I felt like Kress was kind of taking the other side of this idea by discussing the affordances of new media.

I felt like I couldn't post about this reading until after we had discussed it in class. Having the class discussions about some of these really dense things definitely makes it easier to understand what's going on!

Clarification on Individual Project

Now that I understand the difference b/w the creative project and individual project, i am going to use my initial idea for the Creative project for my Final Project.

Final Project--the narrative of elections and how digital literacy is changing how we choose who we are going to vote for. Starting with the beginning of our country, moving through the transition of photographs, to radio, to the most current Youtube elections.

Creative Project Idea--I want to make some representation of "online knowledge"--like Wikpedia and online encyclopedias. I will post my proposal by thursday, but i am thinking about some kind of physical representation of how I use these websites to define my knowledge of the world.

Project Proposal

For my project, I have decided to do a funny advertisement for all of the obsurd things being sold on EBay. I plan on picking several of the most out-there items being sold on EBay and creating a flyer to try to convince you to get online and buy things from EBay.

I want to start by researching EBay and the qualifications for selling things on their website. Once I figure this out, I want to go on EBay and look for weird and unusual items that leave you wondering, "who would buy this?"

Once I have composed a sunstantial list of items, I want to print their site pages out, and combine them on an attractive flyer, promoting EBay.

The idea of the flyer, is new to my project, because Dr. Fishman helped me come up with this creative idea. So I hope that I can make the flyer appealing and eye-catching.

Jennifer Salane: Creative Project Proposal

*The Onion vs. The New York Times*

Project Focus
Jennifer Salane proposes to create a “play on roles”, so-to-speak, concerning the relationship between what is real, hard news versus what makes fun of the real, hard news. Jennifer will demonstrate this comparison through the creation of a blog that contains information from both a tabloid-type newspaper, such as The Onion, and a hard-news newspaper, such as The New York Times. The proposed title of the blog is “Real vs. Superfluous News: What Modern Day Society Really Needs to Know vs. What They Are Actually Reading”. Within this blog, Jennifer will explore what sorts of articles would appear in each type of publication, the effect those articles have on the reader, and the overall benefit of the publication to the general public, whether available through hard copy or online. Jennifer hopes to approach this project with a sense of humor, but also hopes to show the irony of having “superfluous” news, which might prevent or distract people from real life, pertinent news.

Background Information: The Onion
The Onion features satirical articles compiled of international, national, and local news. According to Frank Athens in “Area Readers Get the Joke,” The Onion claims a national print circulation of 710,000 and says 67 percent of its website viewers are between 18 and 44 years old. The publication is available online daily and in hard copy once a week. The articles contained in The Onion discuss current events, both real and imagined, that parody traditional editorial-style writing, layout, and Associated Press (AP)-style editorial voice. Much of the humor in these articles is created by conveying what is hard news in a lighter, more comical way; in some cases, this can be a play-on-words with simple things like headlines on stories.

Specifications
Jennifer plans to create a basic, yet specified blog with creative visuals of articles, photographs, and interviews, in a way that they would be presented in the real news as well as the superfluous “Onion” news. Jennifer will make a number of sections on the blog, including a part devoted to pieces of research (“artifacts”) that she finds pertaining to her subject that provide good commentary from various users of both types of publications. The blog will be done from a third-party point of view, like a birds-eye view of what goes on between these two news sources; the news will essentially speak for itself.

The technology and software we will potentially use includes the internet, www.blogger.com (to create the actual body of the blog), Photoshop, and music sources. Other software may be needed as we work through the project. Once she has completed her blog, Jennifer will save the link to it and email it to Professor Fishman. Screenshots can also be taken.

Tasks
1. Create the body of the blog (color, font, font size, etc.)
2. Choose how the information will be organized on the blog
1. The New York Times
2. The Onion
3. Collect research
4. Screen captures of online versions of newspapers?
5. Other images that pertain to the subject/main idea
6. Text/ Audio from articles, clippings, interviews
7. Full interviews- funny and real
8. Web sites, blogs, YouTube clips, etc. that support the ideas and go with the blog’s theme
9. A poll?
10. Insert research, complete blog, get interaction/feedback?

Footnotes
Ahrens, Frank. "Area Readers Get the Joke", The Washington Post, 2007-01-18, p. D07. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.

www.theonion.com

www.wikipedia.com

Creative Project

I am sticking to my idea of creating a mock celebrity blog. It has always interested me that the celebrity blogs out there attract so many viewers and get so many hits regardless of how ridiculous the stories are about the celebrities. It almost seems the more embarrassing the more attention is given. With that in mind I plan to make the most outrageous mock blog and poke fun and this interesting aspect of digital literacy. For examples of celebrity blogs see

Perezhilton.com
pinkisthenewblog.com

Kress 35- 83

While reading this text and evaluating what it meant I found that I could really relate to what the text was saying. I like how it states that everyone interprets things differently. I think this could not be more true. The more and more you think about it everything and anything is interpreted differently by everyone. Like with the example of the child and the car... I was trying to think of other examples of people interpretation things differently and I realized that the possibilities are endless. People interpret how movies end differently, what a piece of art is trying to convey differently, what a outfit is trying to express differently, what message a song is trying to give differently, there is really no limit. I think this idea of everyone approaching things differently plays nicely into our semester long discussion of remediation. Digital literacy is re mediated from different peoples points of view so it works out they way they think it should... the way they want it interpreted. I am excited to see how else the text can play into my understanding of remediation.

Individual Creative Project

For my individual project. I really want to address the evolution of the election process due to digital awareness. From the beginning of the country, what was the public's knowledge of each candidate?
I want to trace that transition up to this last election. I especially want to focus on how the YouTube debates targeted a younger (college age) audience for the first time in a few decades. As the public's digital literacy increases, so does the scrutiny of each candidate. I think this political transition would be really interesting in a film using Movie Maker.

Kress 35-83

I'll have to agree that this reading was arduous and took me quite some time to actually piece together what Kress was trying to get across. I also think that I'll need to re-read it to absorb more of what Kress is saying. His communication is uuber verbose and tiring to a point. One of the only things that jumped out at me while I was trying to understand was the chapter on literacy, starting on page 61. He makes the statement about the mode of writing and image and how they appear together and how they are supposed to be read together. This made me think about what Ardi said in class about how they are coming out with the different kinds of 'paper' that change what is written when they are touched. This also brought up conversation about the Daily Prophet [Harry Potter] that has pictures that move. As much as writing and image compete as art forms, they are both art forms and when paired they usually complement each other. In my Intro to Journalism class we discussed how the TV/Internet has decreased the sale of paper newspapers and thus the newspapers have adapted to the modernization of communication. So will the newspaper continue to adapt as more and more changes [and advances] occur? Honestly I think that the death of the newspaper will be slow, but it will eventually die as print and rather live on-line.

Creative Project Proposal

After thinking about this project some more, I have decided to not create something digital. Originally, I had wanted to do a web page that dealt with "web art", but to be honest, I don't enjoy making web sites. I do, however, enjoy making art. So, for my project, I'm going to make a puzzle, and each piece will define digital literacy as we've explored it in class. The puzzle is meant to represent a web site. Each piece can be read and understood independently of all of the other pieces, just like a page in a web site, but you can't see the "bigger picture" until you put all of the pieces together.

I plan to make it out of illustration board and collage.

So, I read the reading assignment, Kress 35-83, and didn't understand it at all. I would like to point out to those who may not have noticed, but there are at least thirty italicizes words on each page. After awhile this gets old, if you are trying to highlight key words and definitions. Also, Kress included a lot of diagrams and pictures that were probably not the best for the ideas that Kress was trying to convey. I'm reading over the section again and maybe I'll get something more out of it besides complex, italicized words.

Kress 35-83

When I began reading these chapters, I could not help but to think about the Literary Festival panel that discussed literary journal editing that was held on Thursday, March 6. One of the discussions was about the move from paper journals to online journals and one of the editors was actually an editor of an online journal. This discussion was interesting because I never thought about how much more expensive it is to produce a paper journal. Although I spent some time with Dr. Wayne Chapman working on the South Carolina Review, I never really thought of paper journals as being a waste of paper. While I was working for Dr. Chapman, he had me scan old copies of The South Carolina Review so that they could be posted online and at the time I thought this process was quite mind-numbing, but once I saw all of the copies of the journal online and how easy they were to access, I began to appreciate the monotonous job I had accomplished. It makes sense with all of the technological advances to publish work online because not only are all the copies accessible all in one place, but they are accessible to anyone anywhere who has access to the internet. The issue of only putting blurbs on the Internet came up because then people would not buy the journals anymore, but for the most part, I think people who are interested in the journals will still buy them. One of the panelists also said that even though he likes to have access to the journals online, whenever he reads something off of the computer, he prints it out anyway, which I also thought was interesting. I too find it easier to read things that have been printed off of the computer as opposed to reading them off of the screen, I know that this response may not have a lot to do with what these chapters in particular were about, but it is kind of what the book as a whole is about and also something that I wanted to post about anyway, since this discussion is pertinent to our class.

Week 10 Readings

In the beginning he touched on the concept of meaning. This seems like such a simple idea in communication, but he described the three specific ways on page 37: "It is the work of filling the elements or writing with content. It is the work of making hypotheses about the 'content' of these elemenst, and it is the work of making sense of these elements in all possible combinations which they can contract with each other in the text." This quote made me laugh, because as much as I write I have never looked at the "meaning" of my writing as doing just this. But in fact, Kress makes total sense. By making hypothese you are giving more backup to the meaning you are tryint to convey.

Another point I thought was interesting was about adding meaning directly to a word. On page 59, it says "Each word asks to be filled with meaning, a meaning that comes from our past experience of that word in our social lives. " I tried to relate this to my writing, but as I thought about it, I realized that this is an unconcious action. I am sure that whatever meaning I put into my writing in fact does come from a past experience or from something I learned.

This reading was exensive and detailed, but Kress have numerous points that caused me to think about my own writing and communication.

Creative project proposal

I am going to create a book of poems that discuss literacy, digital media, and digital literacy and the process we follow using these terms. I am thinking it will only be three poems and I would like them to be funny, like a limerick. I do not want it to be a long book, but a book nonetheless.

Bolter and Grusin 212-271

These last pages of "Remediation" bring up a really interesting social question. What happens to your self-image when your identity is created by so much of the digital world?

How does immediacy and hypermediacy change my identity?
Of course, the obvious ones are issues we looked at in our group projects. The one that must applies to my life is Facebook--how does the hypermediacy of facebook redefine my image? Is my page a hypermediate version of myself? I am constantly aware of the pictures I tag of myself, the posts on my wall, etc.

I also was really interested in the section about body image. Unflattering body images can be avoided in your digital image. Is your physical image erased in the digital world?

The author says, "The remediated self is also evident in 'virtual communities' on the Internet, in which individuals stake out and occupy verbal and visual points of view through textual and graphic manifestation, but at the same time constitute their collective identities as a network of affiliations among these mediated selfs."

The concept of your self being remediated means that you are constantly being interpreted through different media: for example, your image is taken in a picture, then put on facebook, then put in an album. Your image is constantly remediated.

Kress pgs. 35-83

We all interpret things differently. That's what I took away from this reading. There are many examples supporting this argument, but there is one way in particular that comes to mind for me--METAPHORS. this is the most comprehensive and easiest-to-follow example that I know of.

For instance, my English 310 professor used the following example by Larson:

...if you literally translate "John is a rock" into another language, you could be saying that he doesn't move, that he can't talk, that he's always there, or that he's very strong. If you say "John is like a sheep", you could mean that he has long hair, that he is a drunkard, that he doesn't answer back, that he follows without thinking, or that he's a young fellow waiting for girls to follow him(!).

The interpretation, therefore, will depend on the language spoken by the listener, and the interpretations given above are the ones that Larson is familiar with for those two metaphors.

Creative Project

For my creative project, I will be making a mockery of people who cannot "function" in class without their laptops. I will probably take some interesting spin on movie maker and drawings as a mode of presentation.

Kress 35-83

The beginning of this reading focused on how people interpret words differently. Kress' argument about perspective sounds eerily familiar to that of Kenneth Burke's (overused) terministic screens concept. The example with the child and the drawing of a car was an excellent example of the variance of articulation and understanding. Another interesting point Kress mentions is that regardless of mode, "communication... always happens as text" (47). This idea is interesting because it brings me back to the Bolter and Grusin reading. In Remediation, the book states that the internet/computer attempts to remediate printed media. Oddly, books are comprised of text and everything that tries to remediate it still has to use text. I guess in a way, the catch is "this is the new text". It seems almost weird that people are so gullible (myself included), but the fact remains that people always want what is new and cutting edge.

On a side note, the Kress reading is starting to come full circle now that we have already covered Remediation.

response to kress (35-83)

“Making meaning in writing and making meaning in reading both have to be newly thought about” (35).

This quote from Kress goes along with what we were talking about in terms of the way we defined (or redefined) literacy in class last Tuesday. The concept of literacy is more than simply knowing how to read a text (a term whose definition Kress asks us to reconsider as the screen has overtaken the page as the dominant media of “texts” in the era of new media—“A theory that deals with multimodality comes up against the need for a usable definition of text, given that our present sense of text comes from the era of the dominance of the mode of writing, and the dominance of the medium of the book” 36). Literacy is also comprehension and more importantly the ability to appropriately, effectively and creatively convey a message to an audience whether through words, images, a combination of both, etc. Kress refers back to this concept over and over again in different ways throughout these two chapters. He talks about literacy in terms of an “author’s” ability to know the situation, know his audience and then know how to frame and deliver the message in way that is effective under those very particular circumstances—in other words to be literate is to be aware of the rhetorical situation (39, 49, 50). This is applies whether the “author” is a writer, a designer, etc.—anyone who creates “texts” in Kress’s interpretation of the word.

I particularly liked Kress’s explanation of the signifier and signified. He notes that different people understand a signified object or concept differently when that object or concept is represented by the same signifier (e.g. Kress’s tree example). Although he never talks about Burke, Kress’s discussion about the way we make meaning, the way we understand the world around us is similar to Burke’s terministic screens—the way we understand and make meaning is dependent on the terms we use to describe things, and the interpretation of these terms is different for different people.

Creative Project Idea

My idea for a creative project deals with celebrities before and after photoshop. This idea is something that is cool in a way, scary in another. The problem is that after seeing these photoshopped pictures for years, we start to believe that people with flawless skin exist. This makes real people with real, human 'flaws' appear to look bad. I know this type of photo retouching has been going on since way before Adobe Photoshop, but it seems to create an ideal that doesn’t exist. I guess the argument could be made that retouching pictures is art. For this reason, I will attempt to create my own art by retouching photographs of myself and others.

Suggestions are welcomed :)

Clarification of my creative project idea

To be clear, my "fake" business is just something that would be a fun side gig for a certain crowd. I'm never going to open such a business, nor does this have anything to do with any other class (since I no longer HAVE another class this semester; I was taking one for fun, but it had to go once I started working a second, full-time job).

I started playing around with the visual images that could possibly make up the professional image I'd want to convey. Perhaps this project would be better suited to Dr. Fishman's Visual Communication course, but I see this course as sort of an extension of that one (actually, it could have been a precursor). I don't have a lot of "design" experience -- outside of fairly structured, largely predetermined and modular newspaper pages; I totally prefer to deal with text -- so I'd like to play around with this. It's been fun so far!

creative inquiry project idea...

I was thinking that I would create a website for this project. In class one of the groups suggested that one way to demonstrate full digital literacy is by explaining the concept to someone else. Although I haven’t really thought about a subject matter yet, I think I might do some sort of tutorial and demonstrate my own digital literacy by creating the website and then including text, images, video clips, etc.

In exploring the possibilities for the creative project I kept coming back to online gaming. The only experience I've had of computer gaming consists of solitaire and/or minesweeper. This project will let me "branch out" to the possibility of exploring yahoo games. Alongside playing this online game I will keep a record of my experiences on an online journal. The only decision that I need to make is to choose a game that I would not initially think of playing or to play a game that I am "naturally" drawn to. I am welcome to any one's suggestions of games they like to play.

Creative Project Idea

I was thinking of doing something in my creative project that incorporates the notion of celebrity blogs. Sites like perezhilton.com and justjared.com are forms of digital literacy that are solely committed to celebrity gossip. While working this summer it was amazing to me how many people followed these and kept up with them. I wanted to somehow do something to poke fun at how outrageous these are, but they still attract millions of hits to their sites. Perhaps create a mock celebrity gossip site that is silly and pokes fun at this concept of digital literacy? I don't know the idea is still up in the air and am very open to suggestions and comments.

Creative idea project

For my creative idea project I am thinking about developing a tutorial for Clemson faculty and staff on either how to fill out a proposal processing form, or how to develop a budget for a proposal using Adobe Presenter (possibly). The finished product will be posted on the CAAH Research Support website. This project would add a bit of "fun" to my day while I work.

Word

For my creative project, I've been tossing around the idea of spoofing the Colbert Report's "Word" segments, seen here. But I'm not sure about what or how. I appreciate how open the project is to what we want to do, but I'm afraid I haven't found further inspiration at this point.

Creative Idea Projects

I've been thinking about poking fun at the notion of full digital literacy. I've been thinking it would be funny not only to take a poem (like I'm thinking Dr. Seuss here to add to the comedy) and add animation or pictures to it... but to show it slowly being turned into binary. It would be completely ridiculous because no one except super-digitally literate people will understand what it says. I just thought that it could be a funny spoof or a lightening up of the subject of digital literacy. So far this is my only idea. If anyone has any comments, feel free to post!

Bolter & Grusin (212-271)

Reading in the section on the virtual self, I was very interested in the degrees of freedom. I had never thought about the 6 degrees of freedom that you have with a video camera even though I have used a camera for Skype. When I was in Australia I used my ISight on Skype to talk to my family and it was funny to look at yourself and adjust the angles at which you were viewed. But was even more interesting to me was the section that talked about exploration [pg.244] because I remember the first time I used Google Earth. How amazing is it that I can type in the address of where I stayed when I studied abroad in Australia and instantly the world spins and I can visually see where I lived for 6 months. And not just on the map that I used to see in geography in the 8th grade that was just different colors, but now it is a real picture and I can see the house I lived in.

"To occupy multiple points of view...becomes a new positive good and perhaps the major freedom that major freedom that our culture can now offer." [245]

Creative project idea

For the creative project I've thought about writing a story/animating it either with pictures or with some other form of animation. The inspiration for it [or at least the mental picture I have right now] is the Pixar movies that happen before the Pixar movies. That is all that I have right now as an idea or a direction for this project.

Creative Project

I really enjoy art, so I was thinking about exploring "web art" or artists' blogs and create a website for my findings and for my own "web art". I'm still thinking about this though, so I don't really have any solid ideas in terms of the particulars.

Creative Project Idea

Ok...I am not sure if this is what we are supposed to be going for with this project, but here we go. I think I am going to tackle the online gaming world, and the addictive qualities of it. I was recently watching an E True Hollywood story about a man who became so addicted to an online game that he shut himself in his house and evetually committed suicide becasue of the game. So, I think I am going to research this a little more and see if there is a cool way to present it, rather than using power point.

Creative project

I think I'll design marketing materials (biz card, letterhead) for my fake business. Could be fun!

Creative Project Ideas

I am interested in investigating the digital literacy of the senior population (50 and up). I find it fascinating how technology has allowed a bridge between the generation gap and wanted to explore this idea and concept. I will also look at the constraints that make it harder for literacy for this population as well as some of the reasons that senior citizens do and do not learn to use new age technology.

If anyone comes across any articles, or data that could help in this assignment, feel free to hit me up with an email.

Thanks
~Morgan Simmons

Creative Project Idea

1. I think I will try video recording myself using various computer programs that I do not know how to operate. While the project will show my lack of digital literacy in these programs, I will become more literate in the process. Secretly, this project will also help me to beef up my resume (Not so secret now.) This idea is not exactly what I plan on settling on, but is a start. I will use a video camera and various computer programs. In the last project, I familiarized myself with Adobe Premiere. For this project, I will tape myself struggling with Final Cut Pro as a means of editing the movie itself.

2. I also have an English degree with an emphasis in writing, so Megan's project sounds very cool to me. If I could, I would borrow that idea. Hopefully, I can come up with another way of integrating my passion for writing without being a copycat.

3. I'd like to poke fun at people who cannot seem to close their laptops during class. It never ceases to amaze me how students cannot seem to function in class without having their laptops open. When I was an undergraduate, no one brought a laptop to class. Now, it seems as if they cannot think without them. I'm not certain if this pertains to digital literacy, but I think I'd like to use this topic just to vent because I find this phenomenon ridiculous.

Bolter and Grusin

212-271

I found this section intriguing because it discusses something that we may not necessarily use day to day but it will most likely become more prevalent in the future. The convergence of the telephone, TV, and computer can be seen increasingly more in the newer technologies. The first example that came to mind was when I saw my roomate iChatting with two of her friends at one time the other night. The screen showed both of their faces with only a barely noticeable delay in sound. This shows the merging of something like three-way calling, watching your friends on video, and using a computer as the medium for this. Another example that kept coming to mind was something from Grey's Anatomy. In one of the episodes, a doctor located elsewhere in the country had the only knowledge on a certain procedure that was needed at the Seattle-Grace Hospital. So, in order to be able to do this surgery, the doctors placed a screen with the doctor in another state broadcasting on it. He observed while the Seattle-Grace doctor did the surgery and instructed them on the perfect procedure of it. This illustrates convergence as defined within the text.

Creative project idea

I think for my creative project I would like to do something that pokes fun at aim/facial expressions. Basically, I want to portray a conversation between two people where they go over board with the :) smiley faces, etc.

If you have any comments about this... please let me know through the blog or in class! Thanks!

Bolter and Grusin

132- 159

I thought this section was one of the most interesting that we have read so far. This is because I am very interested in art. In fact, I was almost an art major. Because of this and my experience within the field, I have witnessed first hand accounts of people negatively reacting to digital art. In my high school AP art class, my teacher thought it was important enough to make us take an outside photoshop class to encourage our digital, artistic literacy. I watched as many of my friends questioned the legitimacy of my digital works. I'd like to bring to mind the computer animation of movies such as Finding Nemo and many other Pixar animation films. It hard to deny that the people in charge of this are artists. The visual appeal is apparent, and they incorporate transparency into something as unrealistic as a talking turtle, so much so that kids and adults alike are equally ensnared by the animation. I think digital art is only another extension of the encompassing term that "art" has come to be. It is just another part in self-expression, creation, and remediation.

160-195

What struck me most about this section was its vast parallels to Baudrillard's essay on Simulations. For those of you who haven't read this essay, Baudrillard addresses how humans have come to make models or maps of actual places that are "realer than real." For example he contemplates the idea of Disney World and how even though it is a place of fantasy and non-reality, its existence and popularity have stapled it as one of the most "American" exhibits in the United states. This place, though incredible, has no essential basis in reality. This can be applied to many of our digital reality discussions that we have held in class. We, as a people, desire to escape to "real" places of "fantasy" i.e. second life, avatar-games, amusement parks, and shopping malls. For a moment our fantasies are tangible. What does this say about our society? Are we moving toward becoming a people living within our own minds? Escaping within places of "non-existence"? Interested only in being other than our physical, mental, or emotional selves? What do these implications have for us?

Another thing that I thought of when I read this was a book that I read called "The Last Book in the Universe." It deals with people who "plug-in" to daydreams and actually experience them first-hand within their minds. In the book, this is daydream is called a drug and people waste away, decay, and forget to eat because they do it all the time. Though this seems a little far-fetched I still see some similarities in its basis premise to the time period that I live within now. The book also talks about the end of books, and how no one writes anymore. I think this might be an interesting subject to discuss, as remediation hints at the end of written books.

Ideas for Creative Project

Since I have a literature background and enjoy writing poems and stories, I would either like to write a poem or a story about my digital literacy from when I was a small child to the present. I was thinking that I could showcase my poem in powerpoint with pictures and maybe even some music. Also, if it is not too long I may be able to use iMovie, but that is a big IF. I do not know exactly what I will say yet, but these are just some ideas.

Full Digital Literacy

Megan, Kerry, April, and Mike

We decided that the best way to show full digital literacy would be to create a website with many digital elements including: text, pictures, video, music, blogging, and links. A website is an all-encompassing media that can showcase one's digital literacy. We also discussed what full digital literacy really is, because it might vary from person to person. One person may think that knowing everything there is to know about every digital technology is full digital literacy while another might say that they are fully digitally literate because they can accomplish things digitally that they want to. It all depends on what you want to do and how you plan to use it.

Full Literacy

Joni, Mackenzie, Jenny Conard

We defined literacy as having some sort of reading comprehension, sense of culture in order to make connections or references (a cultural canon to follow), the ability to construct something new, and being digitally literate (go online and navigate successfully).

In regards to becoming fully literate, we decided that it was any realization of creativity regardless of the medium, any way that you can express yourself within “reality” you should be able to convey this same thing digitally and as effectively, i.e. creating a video, using weblog, making digital connections and links, and considering the impact of the medium on the message.

Posts for this week:

3 weblog posts for this week:

1. Responding to Bolter & Grusin

2. Group response to the in-class prompt, how might one express his/her full digital literacy?

3. Individual response with tentative thoughts about your creative project. *Keep in mind that this is a project of much smaller scope than the other ones--this one is mainly an opportunity for each person to express him/herself via digital means.* For the post, list your potential ideas for your creative project, listing both subject matter (what you'll talk about) and treatment (the medium/media you'll use to express yourself.)

What makes someone fully literate?

Our group felt the core component of being fully literate is comprehension. Information is understood based on the source it is received from. It is not just enough to read, but articulation and translation to others is crucial regardless of the medium used. We used Adobe Premiere in our group project. None of our group had used the software before, and it was a bit intimidating at first. We were able to find answers to the questions in the program and apply them to the applications in question. We were aware of the constraints of the media we were working with, and were able to navigate through them. By the end of the project we were all working in Premiere with confidence , and looking forward to using it in the future.

Susan Collins, Julie Ledbetter, Diana Thrasher

Full Digital Literacy

Vanessa, Molly, Anna, and Sharon:

Full Digital Literacy is: Being able to understand a new program, being able to communicate digitally with other people, and being able to produce a project that embodies many aspects of digital literacy (ex. Making a movie uses many aspects of digital technology; starting with creatively writing the script, adapting the film, editing, voice-overs, adding in youtube videos or other clips, and being able to share it, like on quicktime). Also, you have to be aware of the constraints of the media that you are working with.

Full Range of Digital Literacy

Our group decided that there are several ways to show full digital literacy. They include:

Explaining the concept to others
Creating something and explaining the components
Through the internet
Making it appealing to the audience
Knowing how to operate or maneuver different technologies including basics.
Understanding the message regardless of the medium but taking the medium into consideration.

Shaquette, Morgan, Meredyth

Group Posting from Today's Class

Ardi, Sarah, Jennifer, Chrissy

What makes someone fully literate (not digital)?
- Understanding what you are reading beyond just knowing the meaning of the words themselves. Understanding context.
- The way you are supposed to be reading it (how to approach the medium)
- Understanding how to be prepared to read what you’re about to read (needing to know historical and/or cultural context).
- Have to be open-minded or prepared to encounter things that you might not necessarily agree with.
- Being able to write so that other people can understand you and/or your message.

What are some outlets you can use to demonstrate your personal full digital literacy?
- actively engaging in communication in a digital environment.
- Personal blogs
- Collaborative blogs
- Myspace
- Facebook

You cannot be fully literate until you can “play” with the medium.
- cat blogs, catbook

What does it take to show digital literacy?
- actively engaging in communication in a digital environment.
- Be able to use digital applications both to send and receive messages and also be able to explain the use of the applications to others.

Bolter and Grusin 212-272

While I was reading these chapters, I was having difficulty in deciding what to reflect on, but I began thinking about my own personal interaction with the Internet and computers since I was first introduced to them.
I was introduced to computers when I was in grade school. We used them to play Number Munchers and Oregon Trail in order to learn about addition, subtraction, and multiplication, and the history of what happened on the Oregon Trail. These games were fun and educational. Once I got to middle school, we had the option of turning in assignments typed or hand-written, but we had to type our big papers. This is also when I was first introduced to the Internet, which my family did not have at first, but my best friend did. My friend had an AOL account and we would usually sign on under her screen name and chat with people. Some of our discussions with those people were sometimes inappropriate, but we still had fun. Chatting is discussed in this section of the book and I remembered what it felt like to go into a chat room at the age of 12 and tell people we were 16 or 17 and lie about what we looked like. As I transitioned to high school, my parents finally got the Internet and I had to teach them how to use it. My dad would get online to check his e-mail, which was the only thing he really did. I think he eventually joined a fantasy football league, which he did online. My mom created an e-mail account, but eventually began looking up flights and stuff like that. Now, especially since she is widowed, the Internet is her connection to people she would not normally see or talk to, and she also has started to play online games. While I was in high school I used the Internet for research and e-mail and I used computers to type papers. In my preparations for college, I got my first laptop. I took laptop classes as a freshman in college and I used the Internet, especially AIM, to keep in touch with all of my friends I left in Maryland and that went to other colleges. I also used my laptop for writing papers and creating other documents. Throughout the years I have become more and more dependent on computers. I now have a MySpace and Facebook page, three e-mail addresses, and I still use AIM from time-to-time. I can honestly say that I need my computer. Even though I have backed up my files, it seems like my entire adult life is on my computer. I have all four semesters of graduate school work on both of my laptops, as well as my resume, and even games. In conclusion, I not only use my computer for school and work, but also for fun, which I think was the point of this book, which is helping us realize things that we would not normally think about when it comes to various types of media.

Bolter & Grusin 212-271

I find it interesting that so many of you mentioned Skype in your responses to this weeks reading. I, too, thought of Skype as soon I closed my text. My boyfriend graduated from Clemson and moved to Virginia last year. He's 40 minutes from DC and needless to say, too far away for weekend roadtrips. It was really hard adjusting to the distance and the idea that the distance would remain an issue for a little over a year (I graduate on August 8th) proved almost too daunting of a task for us to take on. We tried aim, e-mail, and phone calls but the limited capabilities of these mediums individually proved inefficient for sustaining a healthy relationship. We were arguing a lot more than normal because a lot was being misconstrued via e-mail and instant messenger. It's amazing how much nonverbal communication influences our interpretation of messages. I had never heard of Skype but a colleague of my boyfriend recommended that we try it out (he too is in a long distance relationship). I can't begin to tell you how much I value what I once took for granted--seeing and hearing simultaneously while communicating. Now my boyfriend and I use Skype daily and while it's not the same as face-to-face conversations over white chocolate mochas at Starbucks, it's not the black and white text driven communication of aim either. On Skype I am able to communicate digitally with my boyfriend, interpret and over interpret (:-P) his tone of voice, and share links with him. It has allowed us to reconnect during a time where we're both experiencing a great deal of changes in our lives.

Bolter and Grusin 160-195

While the idea of mediated space applies to both theme parks and virtual realities, I was most interested in the section that talked about the way Disney remediated folk stories and classic music. For example, the author says, "It [Snow White} was wildly successful and prompted Disney to try a further and even more ambitious remediation, Fantasia, in which he sought to create a multimedia form that would popularize classical music while it elevated animation."

This reminds me of the "remakes" of older movies or Shakespeare into modern day films--the way a story can be remediated to appeal to a different audience. Fantasia sparked a new interest in classical music to an audience through a remediated version. Likewise, movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, Lord of the Rings, and spoofs on the Cinderella story make audiences re-interested in familiar material. It isn't the suspense of an unknown ending, but rather the fascination of a new media representing old things in a fresh way.

Week 9 Reading

While I was completing this reading I had a few thoughts. The main chunk that dealt with telecommunication made me realize what a big part of our society it is. Nearly all of the companies I interned with this past summer incorported telecommunication into their daily work schedule. Wenner Media especially used it. I was a copy editing intern and would frequently watch the people I worked under use this tool to their advantage. Whether it was to communicate with other magazines or with other people inside the company. It got me to thinking about how much we would all benefit from using it. I also spent a lot of time this summer doing research. I found that the research I did on television (watching tivoed programs and taking notes on celebrities) proved to be more revealing than actually going out into Times Square and polling real people on topics that included celebrities. Not only was the information more useful when taken from television but the responses more elaborate. I couldn't figure out whether or not the fact that television is more useful than real life responses from people is a positive or a negative thing. Either way the reading was extensive but I took personal experience out of it.

Week 9 Reading

I was so excited to see that Susan related the reading to Skype. That is the first thing I though about as well, because I use it everyday to talk to my best friend in Italy. I find myself so intrigued by this process becasue it is like I am having a conversation face to face even though she is thousands of miles away. Skpe encompases everything I need to communicate with her, so I don't have to worry about using a phone, email, or any other form of communication....it is all available through Skpe.

Also in the reading, I was interested in how with ubiquitous computing we do not have to change points of views, because the computer adjusts to fit our needs. This is sooooo TRUE! It is funny to think about because when searching for things or trying to operate new things on the computer, I can literally put in what I am thinking about and the computer seems to "know/understand" what I am referring to. In this book it describes this as the computer wanting to "affect what it monitors (p.219)."

Overall this was an extensive reading, but it really allowed me to connect what I do everyday digitally to what we have been talking about with Remediation.

Bolter and Grusin, 212-271

When media converge ...

Why are we not embracing this technology en masse? Teleconferencing is now available to pert' near everyone who's online, yet it's not widely used. For instance, I once, not so long ago, worked in a computer lab -- a COMPUTER lab -- that conducted its staff meetings at 8 o'clock on Monday mornings, about an hour from where I lived. As it happened, I had no cause to be in the city of my employment again until approximately 5:30 on Monday evenings, so I proposed that I attend staff meetings via teleconference. Proposal: Denied. WHY??? Why would we not (especially in a work setting based on technology) embrace this? I've no idea. However, it's interesting to consider how the convergence of telephone, television and computer has impacted the travel industry.

Until recently, I was enrolled in a grad Creative Inquiry involving locally grown foods, and a group of students from Cornell University joined us. They flew down for some statewide field research from Jan. 3 through Jan. 5, and for the first month thereafter, we did conference calling (telephone only). The class is now engaged in video teleconferencing. Vast difference.

Then there's the joy of seeing your best friend's baby at play, who's now 2 and whom you haven't yet had the privilege of meeting, and who will now recognize your face when you finally do show up in Bonita Beach, Fla.! Aunt Joni!!!!

Response to Bolter & Grusin (212-271)

“Convergence is the mutual remediation of at least three important technologies—telephone, television, and computer—each of which is a hybrid of technical, social, and economic practice and each of which offers its own path to immediacy” (224)

Bolter and Grusin’s discussion of the convergence of the telephone, television and computer made me think of Skype, which I use a lot to talk to my sister who is currently living in London. The program combines these three media into one, offering immediacy to the users. Not only can my sister and I talk in real time, we can also see each other via web cams and chat through its instant messaging feature. In one of my classes earlier this semester, we had a guest speaker talk to us from California through Skype. In combination with the Skype video call, the guest speaker used Oracle to show us a powerpoint presentation from his computer. Although there were a few glitches with the video feed and the powerpoint presentation, it was as if the guest speaker was actually in the class with us.

On another note, I realized this weekend that I cannot use my computer or watch TV without considering the concepts we’ve been discussing in this class. Yesterday I was watching a few friends play the Lost video game and I found myself thinking about the ways in which the video game is a remediation of the television show. When they were at a particularly difficult part of the game, they considered rewatching certain episodes to see if it might provide some insight about how to proceed in the game. It was interesting to see how the game differed from the show, how the game introduced new characters and the voices the game used for characters from the show.