Showing vs. Telling

As mentioned in class, our group has decided to create a commercial that satirizes everyone's worst fears regarding digital romances. Accordingly, we will be both showing and telling the testimonies of members of the e-Harmony site. That being said, I do believe that there are some cases where one (telling/showing) works better independent of the other; however, there are circumstances where when coupled together showing and telling makes a narrative so moving that it literally gives you goosebumps or stomach cramps from laughing so hard. The latter is what my group is going for. To achieve this we will video tape members telling their own testimonials (which could very interesting, raunchy, and just plain funny) and then show the interaction between the members and their new found "love interests" by bringing him or her into script as well.

Accordingly, whether the telling or showing is more advantageous will depend on our audience and which they prefer. Hopefully, by creating a digital narrative that does both we will be able to communicate our message to a larger audience.

Resources for digital romance

• video camera
  
• final cut pro
• iMovie
  

literacy in the new media age

I agree with Kress’s idea that the screen is becoming (has become?) a more potent medium than the page and that people are reshaping, remediating the look of the page to imitate the screen. Kress notes that “it is possible to see writing becoming subordinated to the logic of the visual in many or all of its uses,” and tries to refute three different objections to this claim. I find it hard to accept his refutations though. For example, he argues that most of the books currently being written and distributed are “collections of worksheets” whose aim is to “involve students in action around topics…”—in essence, not really books (7). Maybe I’m missing his point, but it seems like if you walk into any bookstore, you can see this is not really the case. Next, Kress implies that while “there is more writing than ever before,” that writing is done by “those who grew up in the era when writing was clearly the dominant mode” (7). In other words, young people are not the ones doing this writing. It seems quite the opposite to me. The digital age has made it so easy and appealing for young people to write, and many take advantage of the new digital media to express themselves politically, emotionally, culturally, etc. The writing may take a different form than traditional writing—blogs, fan fiction, instant messaging, e-mail, message boards, even posting comments on sites like myspace, facebook, youtube, etc.

Telling vs. Showing our Project

Today in class we discussed how our project will be a video comprised of movie clips, personal interviews, and statistics, all relating to online relationships. We hope to show the class the effects of online dating, how people percieve it, and what age range is most likely to use online dating.

When we show you our project, we hope to both entertain and inform you on this new era of online dating and relationships. The movies clips will help you realize how pop culture has taken hold of this phenomena and made into a money making venture. Also, the personal interviews will give a better insight into the way people percieve online relationships and if people actually think online dating is a valid way of forming new friendships.

As dicussed in our reading, the way things are presented helps with its effectiveness. By presenting our project in this "digital" way, rather than in a written paper for the class to read, hopefully people will be more prone to pay attention and form opinions on the topic we are discussing.

Access Media

Shaquette, Joni, and Morgan

The resources that we are going to use for the group will be Windows Movie Maker, Internet links and websites to find various commentaries, television to view the animated series (The Boondocks, Family Guy, and The Simpsons, and e-mail for group correspondence.

Resources

We have the following...

-movies; just got mail, must love dogs, because i said so
-video camera
-final cut pro

*may need a microphone

Chrissy, Molly, Candice, Cresswell

Ardi's Resources

I have a rediculous amount of software available because I own a graphic design business out of my home.

iMovie
iDVD
Macromedia Suite (Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, etc.)
Adobe Creative Suite 2 (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Acrobat professional)
Final Cut Pro (I think it's 8)

Just because I have all of this software doesn't mean I know how to use it. If anyone knows how to use Flash, I would love a basic tutorial.

Literacy In the New Media Age (1-34)

Although this reading was slightly confusing, I was able to decipher a few points that interested me. First off, the author seemed to understand the importance of language and its use in writing, but he seemed to think that books and other written texts would soon be totally overshadowed by digital texts. For example, he seems to think that books will become unimportant as the digital era continues to grow. People now seem to focus their learning on how to communicate on the computer, etc, rather than on paper.

I guess you could relate this to the idea of "literacy" as we have discussed in class. The author would most likely support the idea that literacy is now becoming a more broad term, because it now has to include literacy of the "digital means" rather than just reading and writing.

This reading was very in depth but hopefully I will have a more clear response after our class discussion of this material.

Literacy in the New Media

I felt Kress was trying to stress that as we move into a more digital society, we must still stress the importance of writing and language. Digital literacy is changing the way we teach our children, and the way they learn. As different cultures have adapted the alphabet, we must adapt our teaching of writing and language to the new digital culture.

Remediation (1-34) and Digital Narrative

Well, I'll agree with everyone else in saying this reading was certainly more philosophical than I imagined something about technology would be. But that irony goes along with the message that B&G are trying to get from us. Much of what the authors are discussing is the progress of media towards reality. To do this we must define what reality is, which turns out to be an interesting philosophical argument. The reading is dense but the way the authors go about the subject is appropriate. I thought the sentence on page 24 was very interesting: the authors write "the computer so far surpasses other technologies... that the history of earlier media has little relevance." This is so until further and inevitable, according to the authors, remediation of the computer itself. I thought the authors constructed very vivd examples of remediation. For instance, the movement from camera obscura, to manual camera, to digital camera is a good example of transparency. In theory, the basis of something as simple as a camera obscura is enough to base thousands of years of increased technology to replicate this archaic form of photorealism.


My example of a digital narrative is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGtmOyhq_mY
(A sad ending, I know)

Response to Literacy in the New Media Age (1-34)

In summarizing the selection of text from Literacy in the New Media Age, I would say that it is basically explaining how the medium of book is being replaced by the medium of screen, which is a shorthand term for new communication and information technologies. Also, the mode of writing is changing to the mode of image which means when an image is placed with text; the image is now vastly more important than the text. Transformations in mediums and modes is because of social, economical, communicational, and technological changes. Since messages are now being transmitted by images, the definition of the word literacy should change accordingly to accommodate this idea. Though books and writing are being taken over by others forms, they will always be present because they offer something unique that can't ever truly be replaced the the scree, music, images, soundtracks, etc.

Literacy in the New Media Age Response

Reading this passage was a little confusing. I found his definition of literacy--"term to use when we make messages using letters as the means of recording that message"--very different from the definitions we developed in class. He excludes other types of familiarity with media as types of "literacy" since literacy includes the idea of language. He defines language specifically as the use of the alphabet. He talks about the different use of the alphabet when combined with images or screens.

I thought it was really interesting that the world "literacy" doesn't exist in many languages--that it is unique to our social context. Why do other societies not include the idea of literacy when it comes to digital media?

a small stone in a wide river

I agree with April that the material was pretty dense. And I found it ironic that Kresser states that academic writing will start to disappear, yet continues to use what can easily only be described as "highly complex sentence syntax." However, in the midst of the verbosity, Kresser makes some good points. So, though it might not be what I was supposed to get out of it, I focused on one line in the third chapter. This struck me as particularly interesting (in light of the project that we have chosen to work on) can be found on page 17 when he notes that:

“Before, the power to produce messages for dissemination in the public domain lay with the few who had access to and control of the media for disseminating messages.”

This line called to mind our project about laptops being distributed in underdeveloped countries and the another group’s project about blogs done by women in the Middle East. But I wonder how it makes a difference what language is dominant to the technologies that are available. And how does that affect literacy?

Digital Narrative Example

I'm still not 100% sold on what digital literacy or a digital narrative are, but hopefully these links are examples of the narrative.

This link is about a day without the Burger King Whopper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epsgsfuIN4Y&feature=related

This link is the Facebook parody of eHarmony. Julie gets credit for showing me this and making me almost cry from laughter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHi-ZcvFV_0

Literacy in the New Media Age pp. 1-34

To be frank, this reading made me dizzy. I'm not sure if it was how the author kept using 's' in words where 'z' should be, if the information was dry, if I was just exhausted, or if it was a combination of all the above. At any rate, I somewhat got the gist of what he was trying to say.

He brings up interesting points about the importance of language and the discrepancy of how it is used and understood across various cultural and global groups. He also talked extensively about tone. Specifically, I found it interesting how he describes that people who write in Spanish place a question mark at the beginning of the sentence to alert the reader that the following sentence should be read or understood as a question. I took Spanish for years and never considered the idea that this punctuation placement could have been done for the purposes of literacy or comprehension. I look forward to the conversation in class to clarify my assumptions about this reading. Hopefully, my conclusions are not too far off base.

Ardi's Digital Narrative Links

1. Game Stop commercial featuring Guild Wars:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMB3xw-annc

2. Red v. Blue Commercial (Game Stop)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h8Lb4pxNm0&feature=related

3. Red v. Blue Archive - This is my main example of a digital narrative. A couple of guys got together and decided to make an "animated" series using scenes they shot from the popular video game Halo. If you are unfamiliar with Halo, here's a quick run down: The current incarnation of this game is Halo 3 for xbox 360. Almost no one plays this game as the solo first person shooter it intends to be. Instead, most players utilize the online capabilities of the xbox 360 and play against each other. You can get into teams and play against each other. The series is kind of a parody of this game, which fits in with our group project because we are making a mockumentary of online games and online chat rooms.
http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/archive/

Timeline for Avatar Group

Timeline - Avatars Anonymous (Jennifer Salane, Sarah Stone, Ardi Alspach)

Sunday, January 27, 2008 - Group meeting at Jittery Joe’s

Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - Group meeting at Jittery Joe’s

Thursday, January 31, 2008 – Proposal Due

Sunday, February 10, 2008 (afternoon) - Group meeting at Ardi's House (compile "data")

Thursday, February 14, 2008 - First Draft Due

Sunday, February 17, 2008 (evening) - Group meeting at Ardi’s House (revise draft of project)

Thursday, February 21, 2008 - Final Draft Due

Sunday, February 24, 2008 (evening) - Group meeting at Jittery Joe’s (revise project if needed)

Tuesday, February 26, 2008- Final Project Due

Ardi's Response to Remediation

I guess I have a different perspective on this book because I used it as the jumping off point for my thesis. It seems weird to me that it has been almost two years since I graduated from MAPC, but it was really nice to go back and revisit the ideas I felt very strongly about as a student.

The core idea in my thesis dealt with the idea of helping the book evolve. The book itself has not changed much since the invention of the printing press, whereas other media have evolved at almost lightning speed in comparison. With the advent of the internet and with the advancement of computer technologies, a lot of scholars seem to be proclaiming that print is dead. I would rather say that print is not dead; it's just in a coma.

If we've been applying these ideas of remediation to all of the other media that exists, why can't we apply it to the book and to the printed page? My boyfriend (a graduate of the Graphic Communications program) went to a seminar where they talked about printing with light. If we have these amazing technologies, why aren't we seriously considering the evolution of the printed page? I'm not thinking of things like hand-held reading devices like the new Kindle on Amazon.com. I'm thinking of the refashioning of the pages themselves. People like the tangibility of the printed page, so let's make it something better. J.K. Rowling imagined a world where images photographs moved, and newspaper text continuously replaced itself on the page. I don't believe that the technology is beyond us. I believe that the book has been left behind in the excitement for other, "newer" media like the internet and the iPhone.

Remediation, as I see it, is learning from one technology to make another, more improved technology. It's all evolution. Take, for example, radio and tv. TV in it's earliest form was basically the audience being able to watch the radio announcers. TV then took that idea and ran with it. Now tv has also remediated other media in some instances. CNN reminds us of the front page of a major newspaper like USA Today because it has several different areas all with things going on simultaneously. This should also remind you of the frenetic, multitasking style of the internet. I feel like all of this has caused people to change and have shorter attention spans, but it could be the other way around as well. People are getting shorter and shorter attention spans, so now media has to keep up by giving us 5 minute bursts of information and then moving on to other things. Maybe this is why the book has been left behind. No one has the patience for it anymore.

Internet Speed at Jittery Joe's

My internet has been out at my house for a couple of days, so I decided to do the internet speed at Jittery Joe's.

Download speed: 1970 kbps
Upload speed: 303 kbps

I know we were supposed to do this before Tuesday, so I am sorry I am late. I wanted to do this assignment because I was really curious about how I added up to the rest of the world.

I have Northland Cable internet, and I would like to add how upset I am that local cable companies like this have a monopoly over cable internet service in the rural areas. My parents also have this problem where they live. Northland Cable has extremely bad customer service, but their internet service is at least faster than DSL. Not only should the united states have faster internet like the other countries, but there should be the ability to choose who you can get cable service from.

Literacy in the New Media Age response

While I was reading pages 1-34 of Literacy in the New Media Age, I noticed that Kress asked a lot of questions that were not always answered. The question that stuck out the most to me was on page 22, “Is the imagination that rests on word different to the imagination that rests on image?” Although I have taken Kress’ definition of literacy into consideration, I do not necessarily agree with it. I am going to attempt to answer this question to try and make sense of what I think literacy is and how words and images can work together.
As far as words and images are concerned, I think that imagination and interpretation are alive in both. When you read a book you think to yourself what the characters look like and what situations they are faced with happen. Although with images presented we sometimes have different interpretations, some images are not all they seem on the surface. Take a picture for instance. When you look at a still-life picture, especially one you did not take, you can create in your mind what you think was going on when the picture was taken, especially if the image portrays a person making a silly face or a sad face. Although you do not have to imagine what the person in the picture looks like, your imagination is still very much alive.
As technology improves, we need to realize that literacy is not just about reading words. Even if you are confronted with an image that has an intended purpose, what you think and imagine about the image will be true to you. The same has happened in the past with poems and novels.