cemily1 – Spring 2015 Class Blogs

What I did/Why I did it

cemily1 — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:00:58 +0000

Today in class I started to transfer all my pictures and captions over from my presentation, which I’ll be showing in class, to an actual fake Instagram account. It has been pretty funny because as I’ve been going, random people have been liking the pictures and following the account. I still need to create fake accounts for Jem, Atticus, Dill and Calpurnia because I want them to like and comment on some of Scout’s posts, but once that’s done, I should be all ready to present!

In class work day

cemily1 — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 15:06:51 +0000

Today in class I worked on making the template for my fake Instagram account and adding pictures. I thought this would be a relatively quick process because I found a template online that I liked, but it didn’t really look authentic when I started putting pictures in so I kind of had to alter that template more than I thought I would to make my own. That took the majority of the class, and then it was pretty fun to start adding the pictures, comments and captions in. I think my goal is to finish this by Saturday but also to go back and look for really good quotes online to use in the comments/captions section to make the Instagram as close to the character’s and the book as possible, while still being able to have some of my own humor added in.

Remix Peer Review Day

cemily1 — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:35:29 +0000

It was great to be able to hear some feedback on my project from my peers in class who have never seen my mock-up before. They definitely provided a lot of positive feedback, but I still have a lot to do.

Some of my strengths was that I had a good organizational structure and they liked that I utilized actual quotes from the book to have conversations between the characters in the book in the comments section of my Instagram.

I didn’t really know how to make the Instagram other than making a fake Instagram account, but one of my group members found a really cool Instagram template online that I think might be easier for transferring the information in my mock-up to that, and for the sake of presenting.

After getting this feedback, I’m going to start making the Instagram using the template. I also need to be really careful about citing my photos, quotes and other resources. My goal is to finish all this by Friday so I don’t have to worry about this project too much any more!

Remix

cemily1 — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 14:56:19 +0000

What I did today and why I did it:

Today in class I continued working on my mock up for my project. I think I’m almost done telling the story, but what I’m trying to do now is to add comments on Scout’s pictures from the other characters to help tell the story. I’ve been looking up direct quotes each character said in the book to use as some of my quotes. I think this will help me overcome the obstacle I’ve been having about trying to find each character’s voice. This has been a lot of fun to work on because I feel like I’m falling in love with the book and the characters all over again.

Remix- what I did/why I did it

cemily1 — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 15:04:04 +0000

Today in class I continued working on my story board for my To Kill a Mockingbird remix story. Last class, I started organizing my pictures and writing captions in a word document, but today I decided to switch over to using Google Slides so it would be easier to share and continue working on. So far, I have 15 pictures that I want to upload to Scout’s Instagram when I’m ready, but I’m only about halfway through the actual story so I’m expecting to have at least 25 posts on Scout’s Instagram by the time I’m done. The most challenging part of this is making sure I’m finding Scout’s voice.

Remix Timeline

cemily1 — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 14:27:27 +0000

Here is my tentative timeline for completing my remix project.

4/13- Make outline for finishing project, begin writing script

4/15- Continue/finish writing script, begin collecting images

4/17-Continue collecting images, begin writing image captions from Scout’s point of view

4/20- Continue writing image captions, be ready to sign up for a presentation (aim for presenting on 5/1)

4/22- Have images and captions compiled in a word document so there will be enough ready for peer feedback

4/24- Given peer feedback, start uploading the pictures and captions onto the fake Instagram

4/29- Project complete, ready to present

5/6- Project will be submitted

To Kill a Mockingbird

cemily1 — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 14:59:52 +0000

I have decided to remix one of my favorite books, To Kill a Mockingbird. I want to make a fake Instagram from Scout’s point of view where she takes her “followers” through the summer that the book takes place in by using pictures and witty captions. I would ideally like for the Instagram to start when Dill comes into town, but then also capture the kid’s interest in Boo Radley’s house and the court case.

Sources

1. I am definitely planning on using Sparknotes to get a refresher on the plot, since its been a while since I’ve read the book.

2. I’m also planning on using Pinterest to find decorative pictures of quotes from the book, because what girl doesn’t Instagram an inspiration quote every once in a while??? Scout definitely isn’t above that.

3. I also think I’m going to use the To Kill a Mockingbird IMDB page for pictures and video clips.

This project is going to be a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to it!

Remix brainstorming

cemily1 — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 14:58:52 +0000

Although we did not meet in class today, I spent some time this morning reviewing the remix assignment. Something I noticed in the examples we were given to look at is that my favorite remix projects were the ones that took a really different approach to a story, or ones that incorporated a lot of multimedia elements, like graphics, sound, text, ect.

Some of my favorites that I looked at today was the Hunger Games Time Magazine project because of how unique it was and because I love reading magazines. The Don Quixote project incorporated humor and was actually quite cute and the Little Red Riding Hood one was cool because it looked like a crime board that you would see in an SVU episode. The Same Love and the Chamber of PostSecrets were definitely my favorites though. They were, in my opinion, extremely unique. I thought the Same Love project especially was really remarkable and took a historical event rather than a fairy tale store to retell in an interesting way, and I liked that the student made a montage of different news clips to tell an amazing and important story.

I usually didn’t enjoy the stories that didn’t have any sound as much or were more text heavy. They just weren’t interesting to look at. I definitely need to think more about wha I want to make my story about, but I think I want to try to do the something similar to the Same Love project and maybe retell a social movement or historical event. I just need a little more time to think, but hopefully by the time we get to class on Monday I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do.

Feel better, Traci!

Presentations- Day 2

cemily1 — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 15:09:09 +0000

I think the interface that was presented today that I would find most useful was Natalie’s on Trello. Organization is something I’m always striving for and I like looking for new methods of becoming organized. I could see myself making normal to-do lists on this for my day-to-day activities and then moving tasks over to a completed menu when I finish something. It would be really gratifying to see my to-do list shrink as my finished list grows and would probably motivate me to work even harder.

Shanks Water Maintenance Hijinx day

cemily1 — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 15:10:52 +0000

Today instead of having class, I spent time working on my interface project at home. I am confident that I have finished writing my web essay after going down the checklist a few times to cross everything off the list, but what I’m mostly worried about is my presentation. I have a lot of things I want to say and am worried about not having enough time to say it all or forgetting to say something. Because of the 1/1/15 method, there isn’t a lot of room to put words on the screen as reminders of what to say, so I’m trying to do that with pictures. I’ve still be messing around with my interface, WhenInTime, and have decided to try to embed my practice timeline onto this post for fun, and since I will talk about its sharing capabilities but haven’t actually tried sharing a timeline yet. Here it is–

http://whenintime.com/HTimeline.aspx?tlurl=/tl/cemily1/the_story_of_my_lyfeeeeee/

Hm….so I copied the embed code expecting there to be some kind of preview or something on my clog of some sort, but all it shows is the URL, which is ugly. I’d rather just make a hyperlink to the URL my interface gave me instead of using the embed code. That looks a lot nicer.

Before Friday, I will solidify my presentation so that I feel confident going in front of the class and read over my web essay one more time to make sure I’ve hit everything and to make sure everything makes sense.