WORKSPACE

11/10/2016

11/17/2016

Part 1

This article was helpful to show us how technology can have such a strong impact on multimodal writing. Its form helps communicate its purpose through different techniques. Although multimodal writing is an enjoyable way to communicate with an audience, there is a lot of work that goes into the technology and production of the final piece. It is also important to bring different components of a story together in a sequential order so that it makes sense to the audience. There are multiple different sections in multimodal writing including the introduction.

Part 2

One of the ideas that I found most interesting was how she thought about how others thought of her definition of multimodal writing, I think this is interesting because it allows her to see where she can change and strengthen her definition. Another idea that I found interesting was that others around us influence how we think about the definition. This was interesting because everyone understands the definition differently with regards to their surroundings. For an example, someone at a different school, may think of it differently than us.

In the reading, Politics, Culture, and the Public Sphere, the main argument is about the public spehere. I noted that while reading the article, there were some common themes. "The public sphere is a site where social meanings are generated, circulated, contested and reconstructed." In other words, it is a place where the general public gathers to discuss ideas that have meaning, among one another. The writer explores both uses of the concept of the public sphere. Firstly, she discusses the democratic theory and then at its uses in the public setting. There is a common misconception among modern liberals, about how there should only be one public sphere. One of the most talked about issues was the misconception of social equality. Also in the article, it is discussed how there have been events which have exposed weakness in the modern liberal system of the public sphere.

9/8/2016

9/12/2016

Four thing I learned about what it takes to make a good radio story:

1.) The comics go into how to do a radio talk show. Specifically, to have a good talk show, the interviewer needs to know how to conduct interviews.

2.) There is a specific structure to doing a radio show. First, it begins with an anecdote and then a series of events. "this happened, then this happened and then this."

3.) There is a Moment of reflection about the series of events that happened while conducting the story. This allows for the listeners to reflect on what they heard throughout the entirety of the show.

4.) When doing an interview there are steps and rules that should be followed to make it clear to the listeners. The interview has to be clear so the listener can visualize what you are talking about. Getting personal will help capture the listener's attention.

9/12/2016

While trying to write the poem, I faced a couple challenges. For me, it was difficult to write about myself in a way that I have never really wrote about before. I thought this was difficult because it challenged me to explain my life to people without revealing where I am from exactly. When I first started it was difficult because there are some many great things about where I am from. I enjoyed the structure of this poem because almost everything in the poem is what makes me who I am.

Writing this helped me reflect on my past experience because it helped me visualize myself as a child. While writing this, I had some very distinct memories where I could almost scense what was happening, down to the very smell of something, like my mother's apple pie. I decided to write about things that are important to me now and from my childhood.

9/20/2016

Questions

List of questions you might want to ask Sana and Chanda...

Understanding that some topics might be diffcult to talk about, where do you think we should draw the line?
Do you think it is better to start off asking some background questions and then asking about how they seeked refugee, or the other way around?
What is more comfortable: a conversation or a question?
If you share your story with someone, does it bother you if they begin to get emotional?

9/26/2016

My feedback for the audio essay was to make it longer. In order to make it longer, my classmates suggested that I add detail onto certain lines in the poem. Every line doesn't have to have detail, but the lines I think are best should have some detail added onto them. My classmates also suggested that I remove the sounds from the background and add in some music to go along with the words. My next step is to change the music and do a new recording with the edited poem. One other thing they noticed was that the music/noise playing in the back ground was too loud and my voice wasn't loud enough.

10/13/2016

Part I

The main focus of Chapter four was the story structure. Sometimes when the story is not interesting enough, the listeners will lose interest in what you are talking about. This chapter also talks about how if a story goes too far off track, then people may forget what the point of the story is. Sometimes this could be confusing for the people listening and people might misunderstand what they are hearing. It is important to keep close to the point of your stories so the listeners can understand the importance of your story.

Part II

I think this chapter helped us realize that we need to stay close to the point when we are making the file. I think at some points during the interview, Celeia got a little off topic. The times when she got off topic can be places where we might need to cut it out of the video. I think this will help the listeners understand the story more clearly. I think the structure of our video will be key in helping the listers understand about her story.

10/24/2016

Part I

In chapter 4, from Out on the Wire, it talks about "deep sea." The deep sea is so large that there is so much to be heard. It is important to listen to what is important and to cut out what is not important or irrelevant. I understood that this means to only play sound where it is needed. What I got from the chapter was that sometimes it is not necessary to use music throughout the entire video. Sometimes, it is important to cut down music where it is not needed. Sound can have a big impact on things and it is important to use it correctly.

Part II

This chapter helps with our interview because it can help us conduct the sound that we will be playing throughout the entire video. The sound will help convey a theme throughout our video. It will help us create a theme for our video without making it sounds like there is too much noise going on in the background. For our video, I think it will be important to use sound at places where Cecelia is showing emotion.

11/3/2016

What is the primary purpose of the edit and what does the process involve?

The primary purpose of the edit is to revise the first draft. The first draft you do will not be presentable, the more you edit it, the more it will become clear. The edit will usually happen on a draft that is close to finalizing. During this time, it is important to note what you need to fix. Once you have had some other people edit your work, they will give you helpful feedback to help improve. They explain that after multiple edits, you will reach a "masterpiece." It will flow very nicely because of all the edits. While editing, you need to ask yourself questions about the setup of the context.

The chapter details two important concepts in storytelling: framing and "singposting." Explain both concepts and how they function to make the story more compelling.

Both of these functions are to create a story. Framing is important because it gives the listeners a good idea of what is going to be told. Framing gives the audience an overview of what they are going to hear about. Signposting provides a lot of information to provide information in a short amount of time. When you try to catch the audience's attention, you use signposting to get their attention.

The feedback we received from our classmates recommended that we switch around the way we display the questions in the video. Someone recommended that we put music along with the questions to change the sounds throughout the video. If we had some music playing, it wouldn't go from being silent to Cecelia talking. From a couple people we received feedback suggesting that we add something following her story of the war. This will make it seem like our video doesn't end as abruptly. I think this feedback was very helpful to us because we were unsure about where to go from this point. The feedback is going to help our video go into a clearer direction.

From my outside viewer I received feedback regarding how the video was setup. Since I did not give her any information about the video, prior to watching, I think she might have been somewhat confused while she watched it. She kept pausing it and asking me questions about what Cecelia was saying. She suggested that we definitely add subtitles. To address this feedback, we will add in subtitles (as planned) and focus more about making it a comprehensive storyline. (she was born in liberia, became a refugee, moved to U.S. etc.)

11/14/2016

Part 1

Oral history is the collection of history using sounds and recordings of people who have knowledge of prior life events. This is a co-constructed process because it is a narrative between two different people. Since one person is asking the questions and the other is telling the story in detail, it makes it a co-constructed process. To map cohere means that it is sometime difficult to comprehend what the story is talking about. For our work with the refugee project, I think it is important because we have to be able to convey a message through our work.

Part 2

The Olive project made me think of multimodal writing in a different way. One thing in particular that I noticed about the Olive project's website was that it easy to navigate. I thought it was difficult to find where to go on the website. The project showed me that when writing for a public audience, it is important to include thorough detail so that the audience can easily comprehend the stories. This project changed how I think about representing someones life because it was somewhat unorganized. The website was not easy to navigate, and I think this was helpful to give the audience an overview of her life without knowing exactly when some of these events took place. This project was helpful because the creator showed us how these key words all tie into one another and her life fit together almost as if it were a puzzle.

11/21/2016

1.) To contribute to the project, I worked with finding segments from the interview that went together to tell her story as a whole. I think this was difficult because we had about an hour worth of footage and we had to cut it down to as close to five minutes as we could. I think we accomplished a good story line for the video. I enjoyed watching the video after it was completed and seeing how Cecelia's story went together and how she adjusted in the U.S.

2.) One thing I enjoyed about the video was how it tells a story. It begins with talking about her hardship in Liberia and then it progresses to talking about her experience living in the U.S. One thing I do not like about the video is that it is hard to understand what she is saying. The viewer has to read all of the subtitles in order to understand what is going on in the video.

3.) If I had the opportunity to do this project again, I would like to focus more on our closing question about "what advice would you give someone living in a similar situation to your experience?" I think this question shows a lot because it could give refugees hope if they are uncertain about what is going to happen.

11/17/2016

Part B

1.) Since I did not review others work, I looked at some of the websites from the other section. On one of the websites, they had the slideshow instead of scrolling down the page. I liked this because it gives the viewer time to fully comprehend what they are seeing before moving onto the next slide. In my revisions to the final reflection, I will use this feature and put different clips from the video and explain the different modes used on the slides.

2.) For moving forward with the reflection, I plan to make the website more of an experience rather than just something to look at. I want to incorporate text and video into my website. I will take clips from the refugee video and show how the different modes of multimodal writing apply to the specific section of the video.