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Workspace

9.8.2016

I feel that Fraser makes many great arguments within the reading. She mentions that a public sphere allows other to voice public opinions on important topics. Public sphere is place where people can talk and develop their ideas or interests relating to politics and the public. Within the reading it talks about how within the public sphere there are many different cultural values and social differences which is a problem with there only being one public sphere. Equality is assumed within society, which is wrong because there are many different diversities and culture. Fraser believes that there should be more than one to accommodate for the diversity. The topic of culture and democracy is mentioned in relation to the public sphere

9.12.16

What I read last night in the book made me realize how much work actually goes into organizing something like a radio show. For example I learned that the stories have to be told in a certain way in order to grasp and keep readers attention. They need to be told like a story with a beginning, middle, end a climax a problem, a resolution. I also learned that when interviewing others it is important to make them feel comfortable and if you open up to them they are more likely to open up to you. In this section they were talking about do-gooder stories and there was slight concern about all of the stories having the same tone. Each story on the radio show is timed so that they know how much time to allocate to each story to be sure they don’t run out of time. I also learned that planning for a show like that actually takes months with finding the stories developing them and then telling them.

9.15.16

I faced a few challenges when writing this poem; there were certain criteria that I had trouble thinking of. For example I struggles remembering a family saying I had to really think back to when I was younger and what I could remember that made an impression on me. I even had to ask my mom for a few ideas of things that her or my dad used to say to me. Writing this really made me reflect on how all of these experiences have made some sort of impact on my life, good and bad they all shape who I am. In writing this I reflected on how I acted during these experiences and why I thought these specific memories were the ones I thought of as shaping me. Some of them were unexpected or things I hadn't thought about in years. I was hesitant in mentioning that my mom was sick when I was growing up, its very personal and its not just my private information; it is also hers, but this event in my life has been one of the most life changing. When she was sick it caused me to really grow up, I had to take care of my brother while my dad worked a lot to help with the bills of chemotherapy. I really enjoyed this assignment I think it was a great way to get to know others as well.

9.19.16

  • Does sharing your story get easier over time?

  • Is there something about your situation that you have not spoken about to anyone yet something that is too hard to express

  • Have you even been somewhat forced to open up about something you would have rather not.

  • Do you think more needs to be done about educating people on these types or crises and what would you suggest?  

  • What is something I could do to make people more comfortable when interviewing if I feel that they are uncomfotable?

9.26.16

I found the talk we had last Thursday with our guest speakers very informative. What I found most useful was their experiences when being interviewed. What they would appreciate an interviewer doing and what things that have happened in an interview that bothered them. A question was asked about what should be done by an interviewer if the person the are interviewing gets emotional. The response was to give them a minute to collect themselves, don’t push them or try to console them. It was also mentioned to learn the culture differences because in some cases it wouldn’t be accepted for a male to console and touch a woman. One thing that was mentioned a lot was to respect who you are interviewing and to not exploit them. When someone gets emotional it is because their life events have had a big impact on them, they went though something tragic and difficult. It is important for the interviewer to allow them to be sad but to be sure not to exploit or use their “weakness” for further gain.

10.13.16

 

In chapter 4 “Keep or Kill” they talk about structure and how to put a story together in useful way. They talk about the organization and how things should be laid out so that it is easy to follow. They talk about needing to make sure that the reader can comprehend what you are trying to portray, creating a scene that viewers can visualize and describing as much as possible. I think this chapter had a lot of good tips to give on structuring a story.

 

We had out interview with Clement and I think it went very well. Clement is a man who knows what he wants to share and how to share it. Due to previous knowledge of Clement and his family we were aware of his work with woman for their rights in the DRC. This chapter gave me some ideas on how I would like to structure the interview. I want to focus on Clements work with woman form before he left The Congo as well as describing the experience him and his family had to endure and how it connects to all the work he and his wife were doing. I also would like to finish the interview with the work Clement does here for refuge children education.

10.24.16

 

In chapter 4 they talk about sound. I didn’t find this chapter too helpful. They mention that sound help see and visualize things that are hidden. Seeing into the depths of the story (like seeing down the deep sea). This chapter shows that sound is very important to make sure that the listeners can feel emotion and more than they would if there were no sounds. The metaphor of the deep sea and sounds is related because sounds can help the listener find deeper meaning from the story.

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11.3.16
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The primary purpose of editing is to make sure that the purpose and themes of the video or text or whatever is being edited is accurately portrayed. It is to make sure that the feel of the text flows as well as keeping the viewers attention and for making the edits match the text itself. We learned about checking for accuracy, having a bigger picture. All of these things are important in editing.
 
The two concepts the chapter details in storytelling are framing and signposting. Framing is crating a focal point using visuals and audios. Framing everything around the point you want to get across. This is important to make the story more compelling because having a theme or moral of the story is the point of a story and you need to make sure that is clearly establishes.
 
Signposting is used to show your audience how you want your project to come across and telling them when to pay attention and when things are important.
11.10.16
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A lot of the feedback we got had to do with the editing of the project although it seems our reviews agree that the video is coming along. Some people mentioned that we should add some informational slides which we do plan on adding. We felt that we had so much information from Clement; too much to put in the video so we agreed to cut a lot of the background information and summarize it on a slide. One reviewer mentioned that the video needs to be broken up more but then he mentioned the back slides we have as transitions I feel this breaks up the story; we don’t want to break it up too much that it seems like different topics. Most of our peers who reviewed our video mention the need for music. I agree I think music would really help appeal to pathos and cause an emotional reaction.
 
 
I had my friend from outside the class view our video to get feedback.  They were pretty clear on the purpose of bringing attention and providing knowledge about refugees and how and why they need our help. They took away a lot from his story itself and understanding the harsh realizations that refugees face. They also wished that we had more information slides which will be put in the final video; they feel this would clarify things. I think we can address the feedback by adding info slides, music and making sure the video flows.

11.14.16 

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Part I:
Oral history is a story told orally by someone who knows the history or has experienced it personally. When telling someone’s oral history it is important to keep things in chronological order to keep the listener from becoming confused. In the olive story the granddaughter needs to make sure that both narratives tell the oral history. These questions surround the same issues we may have when working on our own creations for the refugee project. We need to make sure our community members story is told in the correct order and make sure that our portrayal of their story is truthful and is what they want to tell.
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Part II:
 
This project shows how there is not just one way to tell a story. They use oral recordings, pictures as well as small quotes describing the main focus of those recordings. This website makes it almost hard for listeners to follow the life story; but I enjoy that it is jumbles because when you think of stories and events in your life you don’t think of them in chronological order. There are certain words when telling a story that remind you of something else, this creator displays that using the red words from one story to lead to another. This project reminds me that when telling someone’s story, it should be told realistically even if its boring or dull its what happened and it needs to be told truthfully and not embellished. Hearing the woman’s actual voice recoded gave the story authenticity hearing tone, and giggles, and the slight mess-ups in the speech gives it a real feeling. Listening to the woman tell her story shows her purpose because it can not be changed the way it could be if it were all represented through text.
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11.17.16

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This article is about explaining multimodal and media and multimedia. Its purpose is to inform people of these terms and how they all work together.

This article provided realistic information and expectations about developing a website; specifically focusing on the “A technical Journey” portion of this site. I enjoyed reading about the technological journey because I can relate to it because of the project we have been working on. I think most of what she mentions provides realistic expectations to have when composing something of this nature. ​This article portrays the importance of understanding the different terms of intellectual fields of multimodal communication. At first I did not like the way that it was set up but after sometime I thought that the way it is organized helps the purpose.

 

 

Referring to the second half of the article something I found interesting is the many different views on “New media” I think that many people think of different topics when this is brought up. There is no true definition of new media and I think that is what makes it a great thing. I found listening to the audio interesting that the participants had different feeling and definitions of the terms they were discussing. I think a lot of what they were talking about relates to class and what we are working on. It was interesting to see how they connect the different topics.

11.21.16
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When working on the video project some of my contributions were attending each group meeting, downloading and uploading all drafts of the video along the way and just working as a group to talk through the editing process for this video. Each group members pulled their own weight in this project and I think we are all proud of how it turned out.
 
In reference to the video I really enjoyed the beginning title scene with Clements voice in the background. I think it really sets the tone for the video and get the viewer to feel the way we want them to feel initially. I don’t think there is any part of the video I am displeased with besides some minor glitches because of how the video was cut and edited.
 
Doing the project again I would try and direct the interview in each direction we wanted it to go for out video. We went into the interview with good questions and the answers provided us with great insight. If we had developed more specific questions for the interview I feel the editing and cutting process would be easier because we wouldn’t have to cut as much unnecessary information as we did. Over all I loved this project and I am very appreciative of my group and that everyone put in a great amount of time and work.

12.5.16 

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Although I was not required to view other final reflections I took it upon myself to view them for inspiration. I have been struggling to focus my ideas and what I learned in this course. After viewing some of the reflections I feel I have a bit more of an understanding of how I might want to organize my own reflection. I admired that one group choose to use the guiding questions and answer them each individually with text as well as audio all on one website. I also likes that most pieces I saw were easy to follow and understand and I feel they would be even if I was not part of the class. I can draw on those examples by seeing what direction my classmates went in their organization for the final reflection. Some created a new site, come added to their original site both ways did a good job explaining the course and the outcomes.

 

Moving forward I need to focus on my organization of my reflection. I want to talk about the interview process, the planning and the interview itself and how my group tried to make sure that Clement was comfortable. I think I will do this by providing an example from the unedited video of us telling clement he does not have to share anything he is uncomfortable with. I then want to talk about the editing process and why we chose to do certain things. For this I would like to do an audio as well as showing visually with our final video what we chose. My final reflection needs a lot of work. I think my biggest issue is getting organized in my head of how I would like to portray the learning objectives and how I learned them through this process. I think to accomplish this I am going to dive into the reflection. So far I have made 2 outlines and each time I feel that it is still unorganized.

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