Today I started to publish Jo’s blogs. As someone who loves to write this was the most exciting for me. All the ideas are drafted but now I get to use her voice, that I have mixed with my own to bring one of my favorite character’s to life. I think my biggest challenge is not to get too crazy with writing the blogs that it detaches from my time on the website. I know they are both important to make this a great project, but I can already see myself writing mini novels instead of blogs.

To Do:

Put a word limit on my posts. I want my audience to grasp her story and be hooked with her details. I do not want them to stop reading due to excessive length.

Today worked on creating all the tweets for each character. This was more overwhelming than I thought it would be. I overlooked planning the corresponding messages between the characters and when it came time to tweet I was a little flustered. I eventually got the hang of emulating each character the best I could and only focuses on the sisters as supporting advice.

I did the twitter as I thought it was a good way to show that Jo is a 2015 girl and wanted her character to seem more realistic. I have thought about only including the tweets to show support and not actually linking them on her media page. I decided this was a cop-out and to push myself to create the most unique website for little women I can I want to have a full portfolio. Guess I better get back at it!

Today worked on creating all the tweets for each character. This was more overwhelming than I thought it would be. I overlooked planning the corresponding messages between the characters and when it came time to tweet I was a little flustered. I eventually got the hang of emulating each character the best I could and only focuses on the sisters as supporting advice.

I did the twitter as I thought it was a good way to show that Jo is a 2015 girl and wanted her character to seem more realistic. I have thought about only including the tweets to show support and not actually linking them on her media page. I decided this was a cop-out and to push myself to create the most unique website for little women I can I want to have a full portfolio. Guess I better get back at it!

Today we peer edited in groups of three and received feedback on our projects so far. I am a huge planner and therefore have planned out every detail on paper to show my group. I also showed them the shell of my blog and focused on my media page. I knew it wasn’t looking correct and my group agreed the content was needed but the visuals were lacking.

My revised plan is to put a Little Women quote on my media page to fill up some room and then to think about if the links to each source is necessary. I might still use the media as screen shots for evidence in blog posts and have the media page as if it were real. My group thought this was a way to get the point across of Jo as a 2015 girl without stretching myself too thin. They also steered me in the right direction in terms of Weebly. I was focusing on the content which is great but as this is a media class my group was able to bring me back in balance. I now know I want to write my planned blogs but really let my design and clean look be an asset to make them shine. I am going to focus on looking up Weebly tools and use sidebars to make it an working and accessible blog.

Today I made the twitters of the four sisters Jo, Amy, Beth, and Meg. I started to tweet for them and strategically planned out the Tweets of the three sisters that will act as “evidence” for Jo’s blogs. I started to set up Instagram accounts for Jo and Amy as they would be the two characters most likely to have pictures to post. I am now looking into ways to have the sisters comment on Jo’s blog to show the interaction between the family.

Why I Did It?

After playing around with the design of my Weebley site I decided to make a website where a page can be devoted to Jo’s media. This is why I put so much focus into that today as it now is receiving a bigger spotlight. In order to bring this story to life I want the blog to be interactive. I have done this by making the characters in Jo’s life play an active role. For modern 2015 I thought social media was the best way!

Documentation

I plan to document my sources for the project as I go along. Right now I have made a table on word where I can list the link and the exact picture. For my final project I plan to use photo-credits in the bottom right hand corner as a real blog site would do. To me this is clean looking while still providing the necessary information.

Today I created an outline for my remix project. This shows the outline of my Weebley and what I plan to do to create the 2015 blog of Jo March. I sketched the pages for the blog post and contacts. It will be linear so it will show the most recent blog. However, on the side there will be listed blogs so people can jump to what they would like to read without having to scroll. I also sketched the about me page to show the other parts of Jo’s blog. This will give some backstory that will explain the content of the blog posts.

I wanted to show how I plant to organize the layout. This has helped me also learn how I want to display content and connect it to the original story so everyone can understand. I included the Twitter feed to show the use of outside media. This helped me to remember that this blog is a dimensional and “real” girl. I thought this made the story come to life more in the 2015 setting.

What I Did

Today I started on my remix project. I have changed my idea to be a modern blog by Jo March, the protagonist in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. I want to make this story in 2015 and will document her move to NYC to become a writer. Today I focused on setting up her blog, creating the images to represent her, and looking at tools to correspond.

Why I Did It?

I created a Weebley blog to try a new source other than the class WordPress blog. I have made a website on Weebley and like their set up a lot. I wanted to use new sources to give myself a wide variety of knowledge. I spent a while choosing the theme and look of the blog. This was important as it is the face of the project and has to represent the character in order to make the entire project feel believable.

I am pitching my project on Sherlock Holmes. There is a lot to cover in this series so I am going to chose one case and declassify it. I hope that through this one case I will also be able to show the defining features of Holmes and his relatiosnhip with Watson. I want to create a digital cork board to display this. On the board I will pin sticky note clues, my written news stories, photographs, and charts showing their investigation.

I believe that really going in-depth with the content will make this digital project effective. The news clippings will be written by me and produces on indesign. Since it is a modern interpretation of the classic 1890 setting I hope to use digital media, such as twitter, as evidence. I am interested in looking toward ways to integrate every digital media strategy possible to bring this story to life.

What makes a good remix

I think a good remix is made through finding an innovative way to change a story enough to make it interesting without removing the beloved aspect that makes it unrecognizable. I should be able to recognize the story and know the next step but be surprised with how it is presented when I flip the page. Other great remixes leave the story in it’s original form but create more of it. For example, the Time Magazine devoted to the Hunger Games made the story seem real and gave the backdrop and detail for the reader to believe the story was a part of their life.

What makes a good digital story

Out of the 12 examples the best in my eyes was “What Happened to Little Red Ridding Hood?” I like how this digital story was creative by honing in on one aspect of the plot, red riding hood’s disappearance, to tell the entire story. By using a prezi the story was able to incorporate many different digital aspects as “evidence” such as Instagram and twitter. The use of the sticky note even made this seem more like a cork board case. I think this can be directly compared against the Beauty and the Beast Facebook. That was also an innovative digital strategy that made the same attempt to utilize more than one digital device on one project. Beauty and the Beast was not as polished of a look and therefore discouraged me from wanting to look into the project more. Riding hood also did a better job at connecting the social media devices to the overall tool as evidence of the story whereas Beauty and the Beast used the tools as the only story telling.

Stories I am considering

I am interested in creating a story through a digital scrapbook or a blog site. I like focusing on the written word rather than intense drawings. I am thinking of using my favorite classic stories such as Little Women and Sherlock Holmes. With Sherlock I would want to do police write ups on his cases or maybe even make News clippings on a website to show his work as you would find detectives bulletin boards.

Little Women would be fun to modernize through a blog. I could see doing Jo’s blog where her original story is brought to 2015. I would make her interests demonstrate the feminist movement and her dad’s service in the middle east as opposed to the Civil War. Since the primary other characters are her three sisters I would make them comment on her blog or re-post social media accounts.

Today we had the final presentation and therefor our final pick of the most interesting interface. I think that FetchNotes sounded like it could be a useful and interesting tool with a bit of tweaking. As someone who likes to have schedules and notes visually and electronically thins appealed to me a lot. I liked the use of a hashtag to interchange and connect notes. The website does not seem as user friendly to me but as Maya said the app can travel as I go. In such a hectic life having reminders on my phone would be such a blessing and reassurance to keep me on track.