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Workspace
9/8/16
The public sphere, according to Fraser, is a collection of social views where people come together and express their own ideas.The public sphere expresses political and public opinions along with the concern for the common good of people. In the collection of talks, the common good is highly encouraged so everyone can work together to decide who and what is best for the common good of all. Fraser lists three relevant problems throughout her article which include assumption of equality, the problem of only having one public sphere, and public vs private topics. Whoever is dominant within the sphere decides what is talked about and solved and that shows to be an ongoing issue.
Photo by Madison Zammarelli
9/12/16
1.Not every broadcasting system always has their stories together and planned: When the main character first got invited to spend a week studying and oberserving the work of the radio station, she first noticed that at the beginning of the week nobody knew what their story would be about. It look a lot of brainstorming and exploration for the station to come up with the idea of interviewing "do-gooders."
2. Do not give the person you are interviewing the questions ahead of time: You want that person to give you a fresh answer and not have anything rehearsed. Every "do-gooder" interviewed was asked the questions on the spot so they gave answers that first came to their head.
3. The more questions asked, the better the person will remember the story or event they are describing: The interviewer asked the interviewee a lot of questions and with each one, for example the first lady interviewed about the bullet shot through her house leaving a hole in the wall, she remembered more parts to the story. She even showed a descriptive image of how she can fit her thumb in the hole in the wall that is still there. Even if the person being interviewed is holding back, if you share personal stories they may share personal stories with you too.
4.There are many people with important jobs that fit together the parts of a good story: Between the interviewer, the person editing, or someone writing, there is a whole team that works together to make the whole project work. For example, the person editing film has to take 12 hours of video footage used for interviews and break it down into only minutes. Only the most important pieces can and should be used when editing.
9/15/16
When creating my "I am from" poem, the hardest challenge was choosing what information to say. I chose to be semi-vague when expressing parts of my life because I feel sometimes it is good to leave the audience with questions or guesses about what you are talking about. I decided to choose a few key moments or words in my life that are a huge part of who I am today, rather than focusing on the little things. The hardest part about my poem would have to be sharing it with other people because I am not always necessarily open about my life and certain topics. Writing the poem was fun and enjoyable for me overall because it was nice to reflect on my childhood and the words and phrases came naturally to me once I had a strong idea of what I was going to be writing about.
9/19/16
-How do you decide what information you want to share with the public about your private life?
-How much information do you keep to yourself and not tell the public about?
-How have you found the strength to move forward with your life and live on your own?
-What has been the hardest part about living in America so far?
-If you were to live anywhere with your family where would you choose and why?
-What do you want to do with your life after you finish college?
-What are some fears you have when sharing your story?
9/26/16
One thing that first struck me when I saw Sana and saw how she interacts was how comfortable and collected she appeared. She embraced all questions and talked to us so casual like she would to her friends, as Chanda did the same. When Chanda and Sana were asked what questions should be avoided, both women did not seem to have much precautions except for safety concerning questions and just asked that every question be phrased in a respectful manner which I think was very important to remember. Another thing that was deemed important for me to remember is how the ladies shared that whenever they are invited to speak at an event or to speak with someone they expect the person or persons to already have prior knowledge on them so its not just them sharing their whole life story the entire time which I found interesting. The main lesson I walked away with was to treat the interviewees like a friend having a respectful and casual conversation because they have been through a lot and deserve a calm and cool conversation in a polite manner in which they can express themselves.
continued...
I enjoyed getting to explore different audio essays and see how unique people can make theirs. You learn something new about people and a little bit about their personalities through their style of choices in not only the words spoken but the background audio as well. Some audio essays surprise you because you don't expect it to sound the way it does or have the specific content it acquires. I like how some students strayed away from the poem and took it into their own category by talking about one main theme in their life. I was more comfortable and confident sticking with my poem but focusing on something specific or doing something else more creative seems to be fun and enjoyable as well.
10/13/16
Part 1: This chapter touches upon travelers meeting each other while a flight attendant being included in the story. The flight attendant has certain significance since she flies all the time and sees and experiences different areas and knows the many sides to many places. They share different stories and different life experiences and viewpoints. In the end the travelers get unexpected turns as they to learn the different stories to every place as they experience it for themselves as the story closes by a character sharing that sometimes you need to go to different places to find different sides or parts to yourself.
Part 2: Before starting our projects and recording the interviews, I did not have a large understanding on Congo. When researching more about the country and reading articles that talk about Congo, I found they all only mainly focused on one thing, the negatives. The media only focuses on the wars, poverty, and destruction that is occurring. I automatically conceived a single story about Congo and thought of it as a place of war and where the lives of the people are struggling. Obviously the person I interviewed, Vanessa, and her family left Congo to escape the war but after speaking to her life besides the war seemed okay. Her parents did fine in Congo growing up and they built their life, some family of hers still live there. When times in Congo got harder obviously her and her family left. This chapter touches upon and helps reflect on sharing someones story in a more accurate light and helping to teach us how to show the public multiple sides of a story. You don't want to always highlight the bad and stereotype or have the audience assume something about the persons place of origin. This will help when creating the final project piece because it will help me and my group members tell Vanessa's story in the way she remembers and lives it. Vanessa's story may also be more positive than others because she mainly spoke of her life now and her future plans. Another main factor that expresses the importance of not being subjected to a single story is the fact that Vanessa still loves her home country of Congo and plans to return back there someday.
10/24/16
Why sound is metaphorized as the "deep sea:"
When listening and hearing sound, we do not capture the entire context or the whole story or meaning. Just like the sea, there is more than just the surface, there is layers of meanings. We hear the words or tones or music being played but do not hear or understand the layers and background that went along with it.
What is the metaphor meant to convey about how sound operates in a radio story?
There are all different parts and levels that make up the sea just as the same as a radio story. It takes all the different layers of work to create one whole radio story.
How might we think about this in terms of our own video story?
Each refugee interviewed has a background and to every word they spoke in the interview, there is a whole story and layers to each part of their past and present they have shared with us. The sound and picture everyone will see is also just the outer layer but they do not see the depth or work below and behind it all.
11/3/16
Every piece of work you produce can act as like it is your baby. You worked so hard on the piece and you are so proud of it and you never want someone to tell you its bad, or in other words that your baby is ugly. You want your work to get positive criticism but it cannot always be that way. You need to take the negative criticism to make your work better. As hard as it is to hear your baby is ugly, sometimes it has to be said.
With framing and signposting, they are two important concepts when constructing an edit to create the final piece. Framing entitles taking the initial purpose and making a general structure around the story. When you are framing you are deciding how you want your work to be displayed. With signposting you are indicating the features and how you will be using them. Both concepts make the story more put together and entertaining for the viewers.
11/10/16
Overall based on everyones feedback, it seemed to have been made clear that everyone understood and got the theme that Vanessa's story would be primarily focused on her present and future. There was some feedback where a few people did not understand why she did not talk about her past or thought we did not include those parts but that was just Vanessa's wishes. A few people want the slides where text is written to be made longer while a few others did not like the slides where we had video footage of the campus (MNS for example). The majority of everyone commented on the ending of the video and liked how we chose to leave off on a positive note and end with Vanessa giving life advice and sharing some of the best lessons she learned. Some people also suggested music throughout the entire video instead of just the ending part. When going back to work on our video some more, I think my group can revisit the parts where we have video footage of the campus and decide the best way to portray it and to also work on our transitions. We can also focus on music and decide where we are going to go with that and work to make the entire video as a whole flow better.
When my outside viewer watched Vanessa's story, she was at first confused what the main theme of the video was and it took her a few seconds to realize what the video would talk about and what would be touched upon. My outside viewer said it was very clear this video was made to solely focus on Vanessa's life currently and her aspirations for the future and that she enjoyed the positivity from it. I think my group can take this advice and try and stress the theme of present and future life to make sure every audience member knows what is being talked about and to make sure people do not think this video is about Vanessa's past or should mention parts from her past.
11/14/16
Oral history is a way for creators to verbally speak out and have their audiences listen to the background and history of a certain topic. By doing this, you gain knowledge on what is being addressed and you now have an idea of what is going to be touched upon or presented to you within a project. When thinking of oral history as a co-constructed process of narrative composition that means that the oral history is a piece of the whole construction that it takes to create a project or the narrative composition.The oral history provided in The Olive Project gives a firm understanding of the background of the subject and the reason for doing this project. It helps the audience to understand a little bit about the author and gives you a general idea of the project as a whole. From watching the 3 minute video then going to the oral history, my understanding and knowledge on the topic changed.
The video made me confused and did not understand what was going on and it was hard to follow. The audio essay of the creator speaking giving us the history was very clear and concise and to the point, it explained what the video did not.
Viewing this website and The Olive Project, it was first very confusing and challenging to navigate. When thinking of multimodal composition, this technique is clearly very unique and reminds the audience that there are many ways in which creators can produce and display their work. When writing for public audiences on the other hand, it is good to keep in mind that your work needs to be easily accessible and easy to understand and grasp, otherwise people will not be interested or want to take the time to understand and view it.
When you are composing a project on someones life, it is always highly important to think about the image you are presenting of the person/ subject and their life. You want to portray their legacy in the best way possible and honor their lifetime. This project did shine a lot of light on the life of the grandmother and gave very descriptive and important key moments/details in her life. When trying to present the grandmothers story on the other hand, it was hard to follow specific stories and hard to keep up with what was being discussed. This project as a whole makes me think about how clear communication is vital within projects because if the author does not have a clear connection and understanding with the audience, the audience will not follow or be as impressed with the work.
11/17/16
The purpose of this article is to express different ways in which people consider multimodal and what they are working with. It addresses how certain texts were created and explores the underlying creation to certain things like for example what makes up your name or whats in a name. Different scholars were interviewed to find out how each one defines certain terms and how they are applied in a classroom because given as an example, if you ask ten people to describe a certain term or word you may all get different answers or interpretations.
One audio I listened to was from a teacher discussing how she explains to her family what assignments she is having her students do. She does not use the term multimodal instead she says she is having them create audio essays or written compositions so it is easier for people to understand. Another audio I listened to that I found interesting was that a teacher calls multimodal digital writing. He compares his profession to a ham sandwich because he states he would like it if people gave him approval and money to teach that ham sandwich. Another audio talks about multimedia and communication technologies but yet she refers to herself as technologically challenged and how she has been heavily influenced by people in cyberculture theory. All of these audios were completely different and highly interesting but served a purpose of sharing their methods of communication and are thought provoking making you think of something in a different light. Each had an audience and each author thought carefully on what language to use to the audience and how to clearly explain things.
11/21/16
During the entire process of creating the video project, my group members and I all worked together, with the same or different parts, to make the video a success. I started off the project with creating a list of questions to ask the community member. After that it was time to actually ask her the questions and interview her and during that process I copied down everything she said and took notes to help in greater detail with the project. When it came to putting the footage together and editing, we all worked together to decide what to cut out and what to include. I listened to the whole video once we had the parts together and made a video script, copying down everything said, to create the subtitles. We all did things together like taking footage of different scenery of the school and putting the entire video together. I feel happy with my contributions and feel as if we all had important roles and purposes within this assignment.
When reflecting on this video and thinking of how it turned out, I am overall pleased with the final product. At first it was hard to get the main theme of Vanessa's present and future ambitions across and it was hard when everyone had information about their community members past but my group did not. We had to learn to work with what we were given and respect that her past was not to be mentioned. In the end I believe we did a good job working with all the information we were provided with and the video actually turned out to be very positive and inspirational focusing on the success and good things in Vanessa's life.
If I had the opportunity to do this project again, something I would do differently would be to gain more knowledge about iMovie and all the editing techniques it offered. The one challenge for me was understanding the technology so I would want to improve my skills there in order to make videos created better. Also when referring to the actual piece and story telling, I would try to portray my community members story in a more creative way.
12/5/16
When reviewing final reflections, I highly enjoyed and admired how unique each one was. Comparing my own draft and the two other drafts I viewed, I liked how each one fits the prompt and what this final reflection is supposed to be about yet at the same time showcases work and what was learned in different ways. I think each persons final reflection will showcase a little bit of their personality and what they took away from this class which to me is very expressive and gets you to see the writer on a personal level. One thing I saw on both reflections that is not on mine is examples of audio essays. I have no included an audio essay yet but that is something I may want to consider because I do believe they are very effective and make work more personal to hear the writer speak their own words.
When moving forward in my final reflection, I plan to add a little bit more text to each tab on my site. I plan to neaten it up and revise it to make sure I completed all of the learning outcomes and prompts I am supposed to be completing. I also plan on maybe recording my own voice speaking my main paragraph to add some more multimodal modes in there to include an audio essay. I am also considering adding captions to my personal photos, as seen in The Olive Project, to give a brief description so the audience can understand each photo and be effected by the meaning of each one because every photo has a personal story behind it or when it was taken.