I chose to remix Anne of Green Gables. It’s kind of a long novel but it’s in chronological order, organized by events, so I’ll only be using some of them. Anne is a red-headed adopted orphan girl in Canada and throughout the book she’s getting into accidents and making mistakes and causing catastrophes. My idea for the project is to create a FBI file/criminal record for her recording all of the things she accidentally did in the novel like they are crimes. I’ll be using photo editing and word processing software but I’ll present the final project in PDF format.

My 3 sources are:

Blackford, Holly Virginia. 100 Years of Anne with an “e”: The Centennial Study of Anne of Green Gables. Calgary: U of Calgary, 2009. Print.

Gammel, Irene, and Benjamin Lefebvre. Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2010. Print.

Macdonald, Kate, and Barbara DiLella. The Anne of Green Gables Cookbook. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1985. Print.

Today we talked a lot about the project so I didn’t have much time to work but all the ideas that were thrown out were really helpful. I looked through all the Story Remix possibilities and I narrowed down and chose which story I want to work with to Anne of Green Gables. From there I did some research on Canada’s criminal records and began looking for my 3 sources on/about Anne of Green Gables.

Why I Did It:

I looked extensively through all the project ideas because I only had a vague idea of what story I wanted to use and no idea of which digital media, but looking through that list helped me decide. I chose Anne of Green Gables because looking through the list it hit me that I could record all of her accidents and catastrophes as a criminal record. I researched Canada’s criminal records because that is where Anne lives in the book and I want it to look realistic. I looked for sources because we need 3 by Wednesday.

I thought the strongest projects in the list of examples were the ones that actually mixed up how the story was told. Of course you can “re-tell” or “re-think” a story by communicating it using a different form of digital media but some of the projects I thought were just summarizing the plot of the original story using some sort of neat application. The best projects seemed to be the ones that, using a new application or form of media, changed around the story and told it from a different perspective or in a different light. Of course common elements were maintained (characters, locations, etc.) but a lot was different and these made for a great remix.

What makes a good digital story:

I think they key to making a good digital story is finding a digital medium that not only works for telling your story but also adds to the flow and theme you have going. The telling of the Rapunzel story was a good project and the video of her narration and Twitter screenshots were fine, but the Prezi of “Around the World in 80 Days” really stood out to me because he’s following the trip of the character going around the world and the way the Prezi application works complements the scenario of flying from one location to another on a map. I think another important aspect is detail and time: The Hunger Games magazine was very detailed in a couple pages because that person obviously knew how that application worked; the Don Quixote video on the other hand had a very, very narrow scope and I think because the author put so much time into the video-making they didn’t have the opportunity to make it longer, tell it more creatively, or include more scenes.

Stories I am considering:

I really want to use a story that I like and that I’m really familiar with so I can do more experimenting with the actual application and re-tell it in a really creative way. My favorite genres are romantic/sentimental novels or really just older books with young girls as the main character, so I am considering doing something with Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Anne of Green Gables, or Little Women. I honestly have no idea yet what kind of media I want to use because I think it really depends on which story I choose to tell.

Today I split my screen with MindMup opened in Firefox in on the left and a Word document with my web essay outline on the right, just taking more notes on specific areas like audience, purpose, author, etc.

Why I Did It:

Friday I need to have my rough draft of the web essay so I’m hoping that as I’ll soon be finishing this outline it will be very easy to just create sentences from the notes I took and have my web essay ready for peer review.

Today I didn’t have much time to work because I read over the assignment instructions and details for Project 3 on the website. After I had a pretty good idea I reviewed my schedule and downloaded the Apple app MindMup to my iPhone.

Why I Did It:

I had to review the assignment toremember what all the pieces were that I needed to work on and get a general idea of the project’s goals again. I looked over my schedule from the blog post before spring break to remind myself of what I could be working on today. I got the MindMup app on my iPhone to explore that a bit and see what the major differences were from the online version. I wanted to see if any features were offered in one form and not the other.