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9/8/16:  Write a healthy paragraph or so summarizing (in your own words) Fraser's key arguements abouit politics, culture, and the public sphere.  

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Social posmodernism: Byeond Identity Politics writen by Fraser has discussed a lot of key componetents regarding the rhelem of public writing.  In her text she discussed the three assusmption that writters should consider when writing for the public good.  The first assusmption is the "as if".  The "as if" is really for the writer to make sure that they see them self as equals rather than someone above or below the reader.  The second assumption is the idea of take the step away from rather competition.  And the third assumption is the pivates interests and private issues.  As writers in public sphere we should consider what type of effects that a peice that we complete could have on the public when necessarily dealing with a private matter.  Following Fraser's first assumption of "as if" she later supports it with the following statement: "subordinate groups sometimes cannot find the right voice or words to express their thoughts and when they do, they discvoer they are not heard" (p.289).  The interesting connection between the first assumption and this statement is that we as wrtiers consider ourselves equals and not the subordnate groups.  Knowing who are readers are along with the content and knowledge of the readers is critical in our analysis and writing of any text.  

9/12/16:  Without referedcing the book, list (in complete sentences) four things that you leanred about the writing process -- from inventing to editing-a radio stroy/podcost.  

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After reading the except from "On the Wire" composing a radio show is much like composing an essay but in audio form.  The first important take away from the reading is that if the person that you are interviewing is not opening up as much as you like then we as the interviewer should tell a personal story or narrative to make the person that we are interviewing open up and tell a personal narrative as well.  Secondly, we need an "if then" sequence.  Keep the person listening to what we are talking about.  If this happens then what happens after.  We want to listener to stay intriqued with what we are talking about.  Third is all about technique.  Make srue that the person you are interviewing if you are using a microphone (in instances of an audio essay or a radio show we will be using a microphone) is the propper distance from to make sure that nothing is muffled or you can't hear since it is too far away.  And the last is is make sure that you are taking notes during the interview.  You'll want to be refer back to them if you end up cutting in voice.  Having everything in cronological order will help once we go back and refer back to the audio.  

9/15/16: White a healthy paragraph in response to the following: what challnges did you face in trying to tell a story about yourself via this poem?  How did it make you reflect on your experiences, histories, identities?  How did you decide what you were comfortable sharing, and which detials about yourself would be most revealing in the storey of "you"?

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Writing the poem was actually nice being able to take a trip down memory lane at some point, thinking about my childhood.  The challening part was trying to think of how to answer every question without repeating myself over and over again with the same words and making sure that I got the points accross in a consice mannor.  Thinking back I was able to determine what experiences I was most comfortable sharing are the stories that some people know about me already.  Growing up in a household since seventh grade with just my mom after my folks got divorced, I was able to share that briefly in the I am From poem in the line about family dinners.  People without doubt had to be be listening to catch that one.  The most revealing, I must say is the the family dinners that totaled to eight everynight.  People always thought that I lived with my grandmother and my aunts and mom and sister all under one house; however, when they are right down the road (about a mile away) it just always made sense to us to not be there with them.  

9/19/16: Develop a list of questions you might want to ask Sana and Chanda in class on Thursday about what it's like to share one's story with others, about the kinds of questions one might want to ask--or not ask, and about what kinds of cultural sensitivities might be important in doing this kind of work.

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  • Can you describe, what is the most difficult type of question to answer?  For example, someone was to ask you a question and you just do not want to answer it.  How do you get around something like that? 

  • Are there any questions that you have been asked that make you really think about your past? 

  • Is there a level of discomfort that we should look for when we interview someone?

  • Is there something that we need to know about safety or legality regarding the questions not to ask?

9/26/16: Write a healthy paragraph or so detailing what you most want to remember – to take away from our conversation with Chanda and Sana.

 

After meeting with Chanda and Sana on Thursday, they provided us with some great information about them and their stories.  The specific questions that we generated in class were good guiding points.  The most important part that I wanted to take away is to remember they are people telling us about their life.  They are not storytellers because it is something that actually happened as opposed to a “story” as Sana suggested.  During emotional parts of the a person telling us about their life we want to make sure that we give them time.  Don’t touch them or apologize; rather let them soak it all in.  Silence in situations can be what we want and need.  The important factor here is if we leave the recording going we do not want to use that in in the actual audio essay.  Remember to give them power and give them credit.  Allow the person to take the direction of essay and we will ask the guiding questions for them.  Frame questions in ways that most appropriate without be accusatory and about family detainment.  PART II: … some of the feedback that I receiveved today for my audio essay is that the music in the background should be a little lower so we can hear the audio essay more.  As for content, my group seemed to enjoy the essay and stated, “I wish I grew up in the same town.”  It is promising to know that they enjoyed the essay.  For revisions I do plan on going back and recording it again to make sure that the quality of the sound is better.    

10/13/16

Part I: Summarize chapter 4, Keep or Kill: Story Structure, from Out on the Wire

Part 2: Part 2: If you have already recorded your interview, reflect on what this chapter might mean for your work creating the final text. Be specific in discussing the interview. If you have not yet recorded your interview, reflect on what this chapter might mean for how you conduct the interview and the kinds of questions you ask. Be specific in discussing.

 

Part I: Chapter 4 was an informative chapter discussing the importance of the structure of a story and placement of how things should and should not be spelled out for lack of a better term.  I liked the idea of how the author was discussing if you can’t decided to either start/use option A or option B you can use the both which will make it an interesting story line.  From there you can decide what to use once you write using A and B.  And the most important take away from the text in chapter four is that people need to be able to follow what you’re saying.  If people aren’t following your narrative there is no script for the reader to go back and read.  It is important that we keep understandable and get the point across without having the point missed. 

 

Part II: From only being able to see the first 20 minutes of the interview because of Bernard being late and me having night class… To be continued.  

10/24/16

 

Write a health paragraph in response to the following: why is sound metaphorized as the “Deep Sea” in Chapter 4 of Out on the Wire?  What is the metaphor meant to convey about how sound operates in a radio story?  How might we think about his in terms of our video stories?

 

As discussed in the text sound does a lot more than clarify who is standing where and who is doing what.  Sound will set the mood for the story with accompanying videos and/or photographs.  Sounds will build effects in shows.  The book used the example of car keys.  The jingle of the car keys makes the similar sounds to a solider running away.  The metaphor is meant to convey the message that the sea has so many resources in it that can be used as well as sound does.  Sound can play an effect in many ways and is a good resource to connect video and voice together.  It provides an additional effect.    

11/3/16

Create a section on your workspace page titled, “11/3/16”.  Without referring to your book, respond to the following questions (aim for a healthy paragraph for each question):

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  1. What is the primary purpose of the edit and what does the process involve (be specific)?

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

 

The primary purpose of editing is to take the “ugly baby” as the book refers to and make it something that is worth wild.  The editing process takes a long time because you have to figure out as an editor what is the best sequence, what is the best material, and how to mesh the material together to tell the story that you want is important.  With the editing process no one will get what he or she want on the first time.  You need to edit and then put it down watch and then revise.  The process of editing a video and audio is the same process of editing a piece of writing.  The process of editing is more complex than the actual writing process sometimes because when you write you write that make the makes the best sense for you – but when you go back and edit it may or may not make sense to the reader. 

 

Framing is a concept that those who do visuals and audios make the viewers focus on one particular object or focal point in a piece of work.  If there is too much going on in the background of a video then it could be a distraction to what is actually going on in the forefront of the narrative/picture.  TBC (to be continued).  

11/10/16

 

Create a new section on your workspace page titled “11/10/16.”  Write a healthy paragraph of so in response to each question:

 

  1. Summarize the primary feedback and you receive from your colleagues (How did they understand the purpose? What did they say about pacing? What were their primary suggestions for revisions?).   How do you think your group can address this feedback in your revisions?

  2. Summarize the feedback that you received from your outside viewer.  (What did they understand about its purpose?  What were their take-aways? Where were they confused?). How do you think you and group can address this feedback in your revisions?

 

The feedback that we received from our colleagues in the class was helpful and constructive.  One of the piece of information and feedback that I wanted to focus on was in part regarding the resources that Bernard talked about.  In one part of our video we include Bernard talking about how Haiti is a place with a bunch of great resources for their citizens to use and cherish.  It isn’t the impoverished place as people make it out to be – and how the media portrays the country.  But then later in our video Bernard talked about only having one doctor for 17,000 people.  It seemed to contradict what he said earlier.  We also got feedback on the main purpose or theme of the video.  Whether or not we are telling his story or if we are talking a lot about his advocacy work.  That is something that we are going to have to focus on for the next revision.  I feel that having both parts and running with the “two themes” for lack of a better term would be beneficial because one sets the stage for another. 

 

The feedback that I received from an outside viewer is that she was astonished and surprised about how we are doing this for a writing class.  Since the viewer did not have any past content knowledge on refugees in New England she discussed the importance and how well we did in on putting the video together.  One piece of feedback that I did receive is actually something that we plan on doing which are the subtitles.  She stated that Bernard is well spoken; however, in places it was difficult to understand him.  She liked the flow and theme of the project. 

11/14/16

Part I: Write a healthy paragraph or so in response to the background reading.  Consider questions such as:

  • What is oral history?

  • What does it mean to think of oral history as “co-constructed process of narrative composition?”

  • What does it mean to attempt to “map coherence” onto the “disorder of lived experience?”

  • What are the implications of these questions/conundrums for our work in the Quest for Refuge project?

 

Oral history is an interesting way in telling some ones backstory.   Oral history is the way in how people will describe themselves, the challenges that they have seen in their lifetime, and who they are as a person.  Oral history is one way how we can tell a story without having any third parties involved (e.g., authors of a textbook, etc.).  Some implications that can come about when telling a story orally versus written out or even visually (with or without audio) is that you cannot see the persons facial expressions, you cannot understand the pain that the person might have been going through during their own history, etc.  In the Quest for Refuge project we are doing what the Olive Project has done except the focus is on the person we are interviewing where in her project you can tell that she is the one telling the story for the other person (from what we heard and seen). 

 

Part II: Write another couple of healthy paragraphs taking up the following questions:

  • How does this project help you think about multimodal composition?

  • How does this project help you think about writing for public audiences?

  • How does this project help you think about what it means to represent someone’s life?

  • How does this project help you think about how to communicate authorial meaning/purpose while communication the subjects purpose/life with integrity, in their authentic voice? 

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The Olive Project makes me think about multimodal composition in a few different ways.  The similarities between our composition in our class as compared to her project include being listed on a website with audio and visuals attached; however, where our project was strictly a video of our community partner, her project looked at her grandmother’s story.  Some of her stories were told with audio and a photograph where others were told with just a photograph and text.  One of the audios matched up with the text under the photograph, where some did not – I thought that was interesting.  Also, another interesting detail that I picked up on was that you couldn’t see the full transcript of the audio when the grandmother was talking… you could only see a small portion of it under the photograph. 

 

When thinking about public audiences and being able to represent someone’s life through audio and visuals, it must be done so in a way that is effective for the viewer but also respecting the person’s story that you are telling.  Since their story is being displayed in a public venue we must consider and think about what type of impact will this have on the person.  How will their life and their life story be displayed in a public setting and will the person appreciate that their story is being told respectfully?   

11/17/16

Create a new section on your Workspace page titled, “11/17/16”

Write a healthy paragraph or so in response to both of the following questions:

 

  1. What is the purpose of this article? How – or does – its form help communicate its purpose?

  2. What 2-3 concepts, ideas, or comments from the 2nd half of “What’s in a Name” did you find most interesting or though provoking or compelling?  Why?  In other words, what did you hear in the audio clips (discussing the audience oriented, contextual, historically situation, limited, multiple, precise, and relative nature of the terms multimodal, multimedia, news media, etc.) that you found interesting?     

 

The purpose of the article is to discuss the importance and the different ways in which an author can present information in different formats.  Originally, the author presented her information in forms of a Prezi.  After finding out that Prezi can only handle one audio file (compared to the fifty one) that she actually needed – it was determined that that it wasn’t the best format to use to convey the message.  The importance about her writing that specific part in her piece shows that there are a lot of steps to the process of creating a multimodal piece.  Additionally, other parts of the website/project discuss how visuals and audio goes a long way as compared to standard alphabetic text (standard formatted essay).

 

In the second half of the “What’s your Name” I found it interesting how some of the different authors/interviewees that she talked with had different definitions for some of the same vocabulary that we use throughout our class and life (e.g., new media and digital).  Additionally, another part that I found to be interesting while listening and reading in the second half of the project was the DMP (Digital Media Project).  This part was particularly interesting because it related to a lot with what we are doing in class to tell Bernard’s story.  While some of the information was implicitly suggested other information made explicit sense and we were able to draw the connection between the text/audio to what we were doing in class.   

11/21/16

Create a new section on your Workspace page titled “11/21/16.”  Write a healthy paragraph or so in response to each of the following:

  1. Describe – in some detail – your contributions to the video project.  What, specifically did you do to contributions to the work of making this video?  How do you feel about your contributions? 

  2. What about the video most pleases and displeases you?

  3. Given what you now know, if you had the opportunity to do this project again, what would you do differently? 

 

My contributions to the video from the beginning included filming what I could for the video before my night class (which was about twenty minutes).  While I wish I were able to see the entire interview I was able to get an understanding about Bernard as I made the log.  Since I did not get to stay for the entire interview, best practice for me was to pick up the slack, hence the log.  In addition, Amie, Cara, and I collectively worked on the project together in terms of actually putting it together (however I must give Amie credit for a lot of the work.) The video was housed on her laptop so at times she would put in extra hours (e.g., first round of captions).  After receiving feedback from Prof. Reynolds we would all meet again.  The idea came up to record a few parts of campus, which I facilitated with Cara.  We drove around campus and over the Mt. Hope bridges (however, the bridge was unsuccessful and too shaky) parts of the video of campus came out nice.  Our group as a whole worked with Justin from Marketing and Communications to help with his project as well.  Collectively our group worked together and having worked on a project together before it made things easy for us.    

 

I think our video came our really nicely done.  The quality and length of the video are better than amateur, in my opinion.  The only thing that I wish we had in our video that we were not afforded was a different background other than a white screen.  But some may argue that the white screen looks much better than a background that you cannot control with people walking around. 

 

In terms for suggestions for the future, I would have talked about consistency and formatting earlier as a group.  I think the idea about having the same fonts and transitions is a good idea especially since they are being shown in the same presentation but with people almost completely done with their project it would have been difficult to change everything to match.     

Part B: Create a new section on your Workspace page titled “12/5/16.” Write a healthy paragraph or so in response to each of the following questions:

 

  1. What did you see in the final reflections you reviewed today that you admire and want to emulate? How can you draw on those examples in your revisions to your Final Reflection?

 

  1. What is your plan for moving forward with your final reflection? What do you still need to accomplish and how will you go about it?

 

 

In the two that I saw today I liked how one of the projects was laid out in a blog format.  I made it easy to understand and follow.  The reason I liked the blog the most is because you can pick where you want to start where as compared to our project it is very fixed and formatted in a way that you must follow the way we have it set up.  This is something that we might want to change; yet still keeping our audio attached to the text.  If we were to change the set up of the website then that would require us to then rethink the purpose and structure of the rest of the website. 

 

We need to meet as a group again and determine what we want to do after reviewing other websites.  I think that if we were to change anything we should all agree (which happens pretty easy in our group).  It is difficult to say what to change right now because I like what we have and I like what other groups have as well.  

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