For your "revision class day" you need to be working on revising your mini assignments. This means you are actually taking them and doing the revision/editing you believe needs done to them so that they are ready for your portfolios. You need to take the class time to work on your revisions (thus why I am giving it you! ;-). The mini assignments might take you more time to revise than you major assignments so that's the main reason we are starting with them.
Once you work on them, you need to respond to this blog post.
Create a picture for me (using words) of what revision you did to your mini projects and why you choose to do them. Next connect your revision tactic with one or more previous readings we have done (think Sommers or Flecksenstein or anyone else that might connect to your tactic). And finally outline what's next--where are you going next with your portfolio?
Basically your post should give me a very detailed and specific idea of what you did today and where you will be going.
Due: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 by 6:00pm OR you will be considered absent (and yes this counts as an absence) and your work will be late.
Mini assignments and past blogs. I started with the first mini assignment we had in class ever. The 15 second pitch and the poster was for us to design and to show case rhetoric in everyday life. I choose this mini assignment for one of my revision projects because it was the very first one we did and I wanted the contrast from my first work coming in, to how much I have learned since then with this class.
ReplyDeleteWhen I looked at the fonts and photo I used, I saw potential for improving the poster. I originally did the mini assignment in Power point, and I wanted to stick with that because doing a book poster in word was a little challenging for me. I stuck with the photo of the microphone in the background, and instead of color I made it black and white. Then I made all of the text white except for the word audience. I wanted audience, for each letter to be a different color so that it displayed you may encounter different audiences in your use of rhetoric, so read this book and you will be prepared. I also played with the layout and changed the title to Always an Audience instead of Do You Know What To Say. The fonts and colors make the poster look a lot more sleek, and just the little pop of color in “Audience” catches your eye.
I kept my pitch the same it is …
“I want to demystify rhetoric and the rhetorical audience for everyday people to communicate more effectively."
This I think still encapsules what the book cover gets across now after being revised. It will teach everyday people to communicate effectively with knowing the background of rhetoric. They will learn to take into account when you have a variety of audiences.
I revised the piece before I wrote this, so in a way this is a mini reflection on my mini assignment revision. I looked back to what Yancey said in her Electronic Portfolio text, and she opens with saying that, “print and electronic portfolios historically have featured reflection as their center pieces”(5). This “picture of words” shows my process of revising my project, and the reflection I have from when the first time I did it to now. This is a small preview of my mini assignment and small section of my digital portfolio
Next with my portfolio, I plan on revising the two other mini assignments. I will start next with the keyword blog post. Then the reflection blog. After these are done, I will work on the main projects. After, the wix comes. I need to get the skeletal work done first, then play with the frills of wix. After all of this is completed, I will do my reflection. This needs to come last in my process of doing this digital portfolio.
Today I worked on my poem and my blog map. When I did my first blog map, I used images and posts from my own blog on Tumblr. I have used the same posts along with a couple of extras that have been quite popular and put them into a Prezi! I came up with the idea and I felt that that program would be absolutely perfect for something like that! It created the map for me and I just had to input the pictures and text and the colors. I am excited to be able to add this into my portfolio because I am the biggest fan of my blog. It is the epitome of myself, which I guess, is the point of blogging. But I really enjoyed it and it came out really nicely. I think this will show potential employers my ability to use my creativity to my (or their) advantage to create great visuals and exciting presentations. I enjoy being able to add my own flair to things as well (:
ReplyDeleteBecause I got my start at writing through poetry, I felt that it should be included. I think it is okay for professionals to see this so that it is known that my skills are multi-faceted. I have added two stanzas to it that add a couple of new ideas and make it more interesting. I think this will reflect my ability to come up with short, punchy pitches in my own creative way.
As far as my digital portfolio goes, I am going to use these to develop and showcase my work and myself as a creative individual who can use her creativity to create serious work. The order of these mini assignments will be done very purposefully. I will start with the poem, then to the blog map, then to my Brand New blog post, and end with my magazine article. I will present this in an evolutionary way to show improvement and development and my ability to work in several different mediums and towards several different audiences.
The fist mini assignment I have chosen to edit is my fractured fairytale which was an assignment having to do with Faigley. When I originally created my fairytale I used the very generic example on the first page of the website. What I picked up from this example was that this fractured fairytale was supposed to be about me and depicting myself to an audience by describing my interests in music, my hobbies, and my family. Therefore, I pulled up Microsoft Power Point; I set a picture of the Kings of Leon as my background and then started writing all over it in an unorganized fashion to depict my “go with the wind” personality. This time around by method in creating my fairytale was very different.
ReplyDeleteOne of my main objectives in creating my Digital Portfolio is to make the theme and visual aspects of my webpage cohesive. Since my webpage is going to be all about art, photography, and the creative process; I decided to recreate my fractured fairytale with Polaroid pictures. The idea behind the images that I have chosen to include correlate pretty well with the ideas I originally had for my fairytale but also include more of a conceptual demeanor. The fist image that I chose for this piece is from deviant art and is of orange balloons floating through that sky with fish tied to the end of the strings. The image is dusted with a sepia effect which makes it appear to be very dreamlike. The reason I chose this image is because I think that it really it sends a message about the link between dreaming and creating. Then to make sure that my over all image is balanced I duplicated this image which had an interesting effect because like I said before this image is a Polaroid so it has a white frame around it. Consequently, there is a white stripe going down the middle of my work. This is funny to me because I also like the white stripes but that was an unintentional outcome.
After my background was created I chose another Polaroid to be my foreground. It still has a sepia effect but this image is a lot darker than the previous one. The image is of a leafless tree sitting in a beach at dusk. The most prominent figure in this image is of course the tree which is why I chose it. Trees are supposed to be symbolic of families; I have a very close knit family so this seemed appropriate since the fairytale is supposed to be related to my life. The beach is also a symbolic figure since I am from Miami and most of my summers have been spent at the beach. The sunset in the background of this image simply adds an effect on the tree that makes it so hauntingly beautiful.
The factors that both these images share are that they are Polaroids, they have a dream like quality, and they share color palates. As for the writing that it is included in this piece, it is very static. I have already change what I am going to say several times because I am not sure if I want to comment on the creative process or keep it the way the assignment was originally intended and talk about myself and who I am.
For my digital portfolio the two mini assignments that I plan on using are Mini assignment one, which is a book pitch to a publishing company suggesting that I be the one that sells the book and Mini Assignment Two, which was a manual for writing for the freshman student.
ReplyDeleteThe process for revision for these two projects was not that difficult, because both of them were originally completed under small time constraints- they weren’t my best. I began by taking out the parts of the project that I didn’t like, so for instance I changed the name of the publishing company that I created for the Mini Assignment two to a more suitable name, one that didn’t sound entirely made up. I started changing the font and colors of the project to appear my professional and suitable for a company presentation. Instead of the black pink and yellows I changed them to beige, blue and light purple and even enclosed a signature on the bottom of the spread to remind them that I was the one responsible for the work they see. The goal of the project was to influence the publishing company to hire me to advertise a new book; therefore I felt that by revising the unprofessional qualities in my poster I would be able to fully complete that task. I also added some information about how they could get the book in stores near them by creating a fictional national chain of bookstores that could help publicize its release.
For the second mini assignment, I created a PowerPoint presentation that I felt was a little lackluster for class wide distribution for freshman students. So I replaced the pictures to correct the pixilation on the slides so that they were clearer. The font was white and on that background it showed up cloudy, and unreadable, so I changed it to a red, and removed the “Bold” effect. In addition to changing the visual aspects of the PowerPoint, I also changed the wording of the slides so that they weren’t entirely too easy for the incoming freshman. I had one of my freshman classified mentees read it and they said it felt like they were reading a 9th grade project…Ouch. Well, of course I had to fix this, so I upped the ante on some of the wording of the slides, by including some examples and theories that they could draw upon to create their writings. I definitely could connect the things that I’ve done in my revisions to some of the things we’ve talked about and read in our class assignments. It relates first and foremost to Yancey, as she details that reflection and revision are very important aspects of creating a digital portfolio. Next with this portfolio I plan on revising and editing my main projects which I anticipate won’t be much because they include some previous peer review and edits. I have started playing around with the “Wix” and am confident that my digital portfolio will be up to par.
For today's online class day, I started the process of the revisions for my portfolio with the mini assignments I wanted to revisit and revise for the portfolio. The first mini assignment that I went back and edited was the personapoem we wrote early in the semester. I wanted to go back to it because I thought it would be most interesting to revisit an assignment from early in the semester when I had a less developed sense of composition.
ReplyDeleteI expanded the poem, adding a few stanzas, and trimmed out some lines that I felt weren't necessary and broke the tone that I was trying to cultivate within the poem. The revision on this assignment reminded me of the type of focus Sommers talked about in her article on responding to student writing. Specifically, it reminded me of her idea that when editing a first draft, rather than focusing on making smaller, minute changes line to line, the editing should focus on bigger picture ideas like coherence, meaning, and overall effectiveness. So I tried to focus on going back over it and seeing if I maintained the tone and message I wanted to convey in the poem, and I think I was successful in doing so.
The second assignment I went back and revised was the book poster. Truthfully, redid is a more accurate word for what I did, because I completely scrapped what I had previously and rebuilt it completely. The poster was our first in-class, under pressure mini assignment, and I ended up settling on my original idea due to lack of time more than any other factor. So when I went back to revise it, I took some time to think about the type of book poster I wanted to make, and I also switched to Microsoft Publisher instead of word so I could create a layout that would look more like a legitimate flyer than a quickly created microsoft word project. I came up with a new idea for a book to advertise that was more relatable to myself personally, and I thought would be more reflective of myself as a composer, both in the style of the poster and the content of the imagined book. Probably the one aspect of this portfolio that interests me most is finding ways to really work myself into these projects as much as I can so that the portfolio ultimately is an accurate representation of myself as a composer and thinker.
The last mini assignment I edited was the fractured fairy tale. The revision of this project made me think about Fleckenstein's piece on editing for coherence, specifically some of the advice she gives about taking a step back from your own writing to be able to fairly assess it. "To judge the success or failure of a particular passage requires the writer to step out of his or her shoes as a writer and examine the passage as a reader", Fleckenstein writes. When I first did the fractured fairytale, I struggled to come up with an idea, and revisiting it and taking Fleckenstein's advice to step back, I felt that it lacked depth and also failed to meet my personal goal of successful representation of myself as a composer, so I reworked it to include more depth and try to more meaningfully tell a story in the genre of the fractured fairytale rather than the more light-hearted approach I took originally.
The next step for me will be to sit down and begin looking at what revisions need to be made on my main assignments, and then to begin thinking about how I might design my wix. I have a rough idea of what I want to do to the main assignments already, so I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at moving forward.
When I first starting going back and reviewing my mini assignments, I was quickly able to see how my work had dramatically changed throughout the semester. The first thing I began to notice was how basic and simple my earlier mini assignments were. Starting with the book ad I saw that I basically just put stuff on the page and had no planning at all for who or what I was designing this for. When I looked back on it I still liked my overall theme and idea for the poster, but the overall look of it could use some tweaking. I decided to change the background color because the light green color I had originally used isn’t very eye popping and it doesn’t strike the reader’s attention. Also the picture I used was very bland and black and white. I changed the photo to something more colorful and exciting that would actually mean something to the book’s subject. I decided to keep my pitch for the book because I felt as if my words were not the problem with the poster. I still believe that what I wrote did a good job at selling the book and presenting its overall idea. Just like Alexis said, I wanted to choose this mini assignment because I want to be able to portray how my work has progressed since we began this class. Although the original product was a little sketchy, I fill confident in it after I did my revisions.
ReplyDeleteThe next things I will do for my portfolio will be to finish revising the other mini assignments. But after that I want to go back and begin revising my main assignments. I did poorly on the newsletter, but I don’t want to leave it out of my portfolio. So in order to show all of my work I want to revise my newsletter and make the necessary changes needed to it in order to make it presentable.
I used this revision day to find the mini assignments I will be doing for my digital portfolio and revising them. The first mini assignment I picked out was the first mini assignment we did, which was to create a poster that sells a book on rhetoric. I chose to revise it by changing the color of the background and the text to make it more attention grabbing. Whereas the poster used to be white, it is now black and the text is white. It looks one hundred percent better. It didn't need much more revision other than that, so I moved on to my next mini assignment. I chose to use the blog post we did about editing and what it means to us. I liked that blog post because it came from personal experience and editing means alot to me. I edited out some sentences that were unnecessary and elaborated on how I edit works now. I threw in some terms like "substantive editing" which is something i actually used while revising my assignment :)
ReplyDeleteThe last mini assignment I chose was the glog I made on the guide to freshman composing. I edited that one the most. I added more text, changed the text box for the first step to make the background colored, and moved everything around. I made certain things bigger and rotated some arrows. I really want the glog to look good because it is an example of a program I used for the first time and how I made it work in an hour.
My portfolio means a lot to me right now because I want to send it to a potential internship opportunity at a major advertising company for this summer. I want to make it as amazing as possible. So next I will be revising my main assignments and then taking them to the digital studio for help using Wix. Im feeling confident about my website because I know its extremely important to my future and I know I'm going to work hard on it.
I began revising my mini assignments with my fractured fairy tale. This was actually one of my favorite things to do in this class. Despite how difficult it was at first to decide on a good story, I really enjoyed writing it. Of course, it was just a homework, so I did not put as much thought into it as I would a main assignment. So this time around, I thought about things that needed a little bit more support to make sense in the fractured fairy tale. The fairy tale I chose was Snow White. I modernized it so that the evil queen was not trying to kill her so that she would be the fairest in the land, but she was just trying to get her facebook deleted so that the queen would have the most facebook friends.
ReplyDeleteIn the story, I kept the magic mirror on the wall. But as I revised it, I felt that I needed to make this aspect more modern so I changed it to a “Magic Mirror Application”. I changed a lot of the wording so that it flowed better. I also spaced it out a little more. My first draft was very chunky and it was a little hard to follow because all of the characters speaking in the same paragraph. So I spaced it out so that each time a new character would speak, a new paragraph would start. This made reading it a lot easier, and a lot more flowy. I didn’t change the ending or the story line very much, but I feel that it was the little things that needed to be fixed in order for the story to make more sense.
For my second mini assignment, I worked on revising my Embedded Genre blog. I wrote my blog about my favorite band Green Day and the remediation of their album American Idiot into a broadway musical. As I read over it, I realized there was so much detail I left out. I figured it was a blog, and only needed to be 500 words, so I could leave all of that stuff out. But for my portfolio, I really wanted to polish it and add more descriptive details. So I made into more of a story, the story of me finally getting to see the musical in New York City. I described the city lights on the way to the theater. I described the marquee outside of it. I described how I used to see the scenes of the album in my head and how they came to life on stage. It made it sound more passionate. The audience can now tell how much I truly loved this experience. I am just going to have to work on how to put it into the website with the videos and pictures in the right spots. I edited it in word so I wasn’t able to do much with the media. I will figure this out when I actually start the website.
I have chosen my part of the Born Digital magazine as my third mini assignment for the digital portfolio. I designed three ads with my partner, Desmond. I wasn’t able to do very much with them because I do not have a good program to work with. I plan to visit the digital studio for this one and possibly use InDesign. Hopefully, this will make it look less like a class project and more like a real magazine ad. I want it to look really professional for potential employers so that they can see my skill in advertising, which is very important to what I want to do.
In doing my revisions, I referred back to Yancey’s chapter about On Reflection. This chapter, and entire book has helped me a lot in this class. She says she is “interested in reflection as a means of go[ing] beyond the text to include a sense of the ongoing conversations that texts enter into” (5). I looked at my old homeworks and blogs and went beyond the text that was there. I made things more descriptive. I drew pictures for my audience, so to speak.
Now to move forward, I will take what I learned about fixing my mini assignments to my main assignments. I will enhance my descriptions and make things flow a little bit better. I think I will also see if I can get a copy of my partners finished revisions of my newsletter for some extra help. I also need to work on matching the design of my website to fit my personal writing style. I think these things will come to me as I continue revising my work.
I apologize again for reposting, I definitely was confused there for a bit...
ReplyDeleteThe mini assignments I choose to include in my digital portfolio are the remediation of the “Love” blog post, my fractured fairytale, the book poster, and the blog post on “Catching Our Breath”. These required certain changes but different types of editing. For the remediation of the “Love” blog post, I need to take a picture of the physical project itself. Then using photographical improvement software, I intend on making that image as clear and composed as I possibly can in order for it to communicate the ideas behind the remediation. My fractured fairytale wouldn’t have benefitted form the same type of editing. Instead, I had to line-edit in order to fix any syntax and grammatical issues. As for the book poster, I decided to almost completely revise the final product, because I now have more than enough time to devote to its completion whereas we were on a strict deadline when I initially composed it. Lastly, it is difficult for me to revise a blog post because it has already been published. It is for this reason that I need to find out whether or not we can re=post a new version so that I can do so and include that one in my portfolio. If this is possible, I need to reformat the piece so that it looks well structured. I believe that is important because a blog post should look cohesive if I intend on including it in my portfolio.
I chose these four pieces for reasons specific to the theme of my digital portfolio. They display my creativity and dexterity in composing, without being too test-heavy. That way, most of what I have to say can be written in the reflection and introduction, also located in the digital portfolio.
My revisions were directly correlated with Sullivan and Eggleston’s “Before You Begin” piece on levels and purposes of editing. They stated “editorial tasks fall on a continuum, with proofreading at one end and substantive editing at the other” (Sullivan and Eggleston, 3). In editing my mini projects, I spanned from very specific details to general thematic and conceptual changes. This just reiterates the point of “the level of your edit will depend on several things—what the writing needs, what the budget will allow, how the writing will be used, and most important, what you’ve been asked to do” (Sullivan and Eggleston, 4).
My next step is to focus on the main projects in my digital portfolio. I have more editing to do to my own pieces in order to make them fit into the theme and audience parameters of the project. I intend on making those changes first, then moving on and starting my new project. As I mentioned in my design concept paper, I intend on doing a remediation of the “Wordle” blog post that we had to do for class. My next step as far as this part is concerned, is to choose a medium with which to work for this remediation, and basically plan out all of its elements. After that, I want to start looking online at wix.com and begin the layout of the website itself. Since I am often an indecisive person, I know that it will take a while to find a format that will work for me, so I think I should get started now if I hope to have this completed on time. After that, I need to revise and reflect on my theory of composing so that is in alignment with how I completed my projects and this portfolio. While doing all of this, I am continually reflecting on the steps I am taking to complete this project as well as critically thinking about its purpose for me in terms of both in this class and in the outside world.
The two mini-assignments I decided to work on are my “Users Guide to get an A on a Paper (using Zombies)” mini-assignment, and my Born Digital mini-assignment. I’ve also considered using my book poster in my portfolio, but after looking at it again, some work would be required to finish it up. I will probably end up going back to it if I have enough time before the due date.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at all my mini-assignments, my zombie user’s guide stuck out to me the most. I wanted to do so much with this when we were first turned it in. Instead of working with the old Photoshop file, I decided to start from scratch and redo the whole thing. I kept the dissolved red background and the black title bars but arranged them differently as I had them before. I tweaked the set up to look more like a triangle (to coincide with my triangle composition theory) but I may end up changing it in the end to look more like a flowchart than anything. I then did a google image search to look for some awesome looking zombies and photos of Emma Stone (Zombieland). I plan to crop out a few of these images and place them as beauty marks throughout the zombie guide. On a whim, I decided to do some research on Zombie posters. Midway through this second build I decided to scrap the whole idea again and go with an old-school zombie poster theme.
I was very satisfied with the result of my column in Born Digital. (Digital Flash.) However, when I tried to open up the project file from the discussion thread, there seemed to be something wrong with it. A lot of the magazine page just looked missing. What I decided to do was to redo the whole article page in Pages. As of right now, I’m working off a template but I plan to use my own color scheme, vectors and hopefully have it looking really nice. The editors did a great job with grammar and spelling and I didn’t have to go through and change anything in the article itself.
I wanted to explore the American Gangster mini-assignment a little bit more now that I have Pages installed on my computer. I ended up dumping the process since I can both design and have an article featured in my Born Digital mini-assignment. Going through my mini-assignments I’m reminded again of Yancey’s statement: ““the advance learner understands not only how knowledge is constructed, but also how to construct it himself or herself.” [Yancey, 10] Through my revision process, I’m attempting to reconstruct the knowledge I’ve built over the past few months.
As for my portfolio, I really want to explore the color scheme of my website. I want to see if its possible to make neon look professional. I mean, I’ve seen it done before. I want to see if I can achieve the same results, this is probably my main focus for my portfolio as of right now—just seeing if neon can pull it off. Next would be my video reflection, which I need to do more research on. I’ve pretty much set up my site map and where I want everything to be, all there is left now is to put it together!
The two mini assignments that I have decided to work with in my digital portfolio are the American Gangster assignment, and my fractured fairytale. When we were first assigned the newsletter project I was a little bit concerned on how I would go about all of this. Just like Alex said, editing has never been my strong point what so ever. I want to see what I am capable of doing with the American Gangster mini assignment that we did in class. I want to show within fixing this assignment that my capabilities of editing have improved immensely while being in WEPO this semester. With my second mini assignment the fractured fairytale, when the assignment was first presented I guess I was a little confused on what was being asked. I was under the impression that we needed to create our own fairytale, not go off of a regular fairytale that is already created. So I am going to tweak up my fairytale and make it what Kara originally asked for.
ReplyDeleteWhile fixing the American gangster assignment, there are a various amount of things I will make sure all correct. However, in editing it is more than just the grammatical errors in which we have learned! Since we did the project in class, I felt rushed. I never do my best work when I am rushed and I was only in charge of the images of the project. But I am going to start over from scratch, and do the whole thing by myself. I feel like my layout of the images with the American Gangster could have been a lot better than the job I did that day, and I want to put it into a magazine article all by myself with the images and the content. I am going to make sure that all of the content is written as it should be, and change the necessary changes that it needs to flow better. As far as my fracture fairytale goes, I am going to pick a new fairytale. I am thinking either, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, or Pinochio. I am still deciding between the three. I am going to write out 3 of them tomorrow morning, and see which one I like the best.
Following all of this, I am going to start my digital portfolio. I have already created an idea of what the main page is going to look like I am just still trying to figure out colors. I am going to use the program Wix to develop my digital portfolio. It is easier than most programs to use, it’s fun and creative, and most importantly: FREE! I started the layout of it today of what I want it to look like. I am having a hard time picking what I want each link to say and be. My major assignments I am going to include on my portfolio will be my remediation project, and my newsletter. I think with all four of these assignments, people will be able to get an idea of what kind of composer, editor, and person that I am. The fractured fairytale and editing project will show the way to my composing side of creativity, and the remediation project and my newsletter will show the kind of creativity I can come up with. All in all it will be a lot of work, but I am quite excited about putting all of this together! It shouts the type of composer that I am, which I always try to reach out to friends, family, and peers into realizing the capabilities and possibilities that I have for my future.
I started working on the second mini assignment that we had in class, where we had to make a presentation for middle school kids on their composing style. I did the presentation in PowerPoint and the first thing I looked to revise was the layout I chose. I chose a very colorful yet not too busy design, which after trying out a few different ones I decided to stay with it. It is just eye catching enough without being over the top and just structured enough to keep it from looking dull. I was happy with it. I fixed typos throughout the presentation and made sure that the composing process model was much more visually appealing and added an arrow to make sure that it flowed. I added a final slide as well because before it didn’t really feel like it ended.
ReplyDeleteThe Friends blog post that I made needed a lot of work. It was just sort of thrown together at the last minute and was not very cohesive. I pretty much just edited it down and added more information. More pictures as well. I am pretty sure I am going to remediate this for my “new “ project, possibly a video or something. It is probably bad that I have not decided yet but it is all a bit overwhelming right now.
I figured out how much more friends influenced pop culture. Everyone always associates these actors with these characters that they played, some of them this is all they are known as. I am thinking of going further in depth to each character and the actor’s career. Maybe I will make that into a youtube video. Yeah, that seems like a good idea. Maybe a short thing on each character and then what effect they had on the pop culture world and if they are still around and kicking.
Ok so I started doing that and made some informational slides in paint and then imported them into Picasa ( what I am going to use to make the video). Just info about the show as of now and a few things that it is known for. More the stuff that I already used in my post but now it is on a video.
The first time I did the Valentine's day activity, I was satisfied with my final product, but I was having so much fun exploring the different ways of editing the photo on picnik that I decided to do a little more work on it. Also, I think with the time given, my expression wasn't as clear as I hoped, so decided to change the text so that it better illustrates the point I was making.
ReplyDeleteThe first in class mini assignment we did was one of my favorites. And it, along with other graphic assignments needed to be put in pdf form so that they'd be easier to share.
I think the celebrity obituary was a fun assignment that will catch the eye of employers. I worked on it some more today until I was satisfied with my editing job. But instead of having it in a plain format, for my digital portfolio, I'm going to put it in a more illustrated text and attempt to display the marks I've made.
I'm enjoying the process of editing. In a way, it's what I've been wanting to do all along. I was never completely happy about the assignments I turned in because I was required to finish them in such a short amount of time. Sommers says, "Students are commanded to edit and develop at the same time; the remarkable contradiction of developing a paragraph after editing the sentences in it represents the confusion we encountered in our teachers' commenting styles" (Sommers, 151) Reading this, I can see the connection between the structure of this class and proper teaching of composition and editing. Forcing me to develop for such quick deadlines without an emphasis on editing has allowed me to better recognize the two processes. As a result, my focus is improved and the final product of each is better constructed. Focusing on composition allowed me to compose better. Now, focusing on the editing is helping me to edit better. Not only that, but I'm finding the process pleasing. Being able to reflect back on them and confront the mistakes I made the first time around and bring them to their final state is comforting. The time between first composing these projects and now, editing them, allows me almost to view them from outside of myself. They are a part of my past now and instead of developing and editing at the same time, I'm reflecting back and recognizing the corrections right away. I feel like I'm receiving closure from editing these assignments.
My greatest focus, as part of this closure, is bringing everything together. Not just figuratively, but literally into one place, in the form of an electronic portfolio. My process of editing, though separate, is all working to connect these separate projects into one medium, one voice, one style. Using wix.com, all these styles will coalesce to represent my identity as a composer. That's a lot of pressure. But that completion I've been longing to feel for every project I've done will finally be achieved. I need to keep this same approach of editing with the rest of my projects and try not to get worn out. I need to start looking at color schemes and playing with the layout for my eportfolio. And last, I'll need to make sure all of my portfolio is together. At last, I truly comprehend how this is a "Writing and Editing in Print and Online" class. It took reflecting back on the semester for me to see this. This is the ultimate example of the effectiveness of editing in retrospect. The time away allows me to see the important parts a lot clearer.
For the revision day I mostly worked on my Valentines Day "What Love Means" blog. I have to agree with Alex above me who said they were satisfied with their finished product at first. When I revisited the video I had made, I still enjoyed the concept I used and the idea I had, but there was something missing. Structure. The video was fun and interesting to watch but there was no point to it. This I felt like needed work, and decided that I would do that for a revision. I had to figure out a message or structure that the video could outline. Since the video is clearly about love and movies, I decided to showcase not just videos that were my favorite scenes from movies but also different types of love. This would make my video longer than the original, but oh well. I watched the video for about 3 times making notes of what I thought could have been fixed or altered, then started with simpler tasks like cutting clips to flow better. Finally I inserted the new clips and bits that I wanted to add. I would link this revision style to Yancey's theory of moving through several different steps of editing before finishing the final product. Next I will be working on the book promotion poster and the "Born Digital" Assignment. When it comes to that assignment, its mostly things like making the magazine look more cohesive since Alex, Stacey and I were very pressured to finish it at the end of class that day.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started my "revision class day" I was started off considering which mini assignments I wanted to include. When considering which mini assignments to revise and include I thought about what I want my digital portfolio to convey. Since I want this portfolio to function for prospective employers in the EWM and art world there needs to be focus on the visual as well as rhetorical elements of my projects.
ReplyDeleteToday I decided to work with the first mini assignment and the remediation blog post. The first mini assignment, the book cover and pitch, is nice to include because it is a revision of the first project I created in WEPO. I want to include this because it will show where I began and it was a visual project. I originally created the book cover in Pages. I used an image that depicted a heart versus a brain, beneath these images are the words "chaos vs. order". I titled the book Revolutionary Rhetoric and used the slogan "Which are you going to choose?" (raising the question as to whether our rhetoric should be chaotic or orderly). I liked the core concept of my book cover, but today I decided to revise the cover in Indesign. Indesign is a useful and appropriate program for a book cover because that is the intended purpose of Indesign. I used the same image for the cover, I also kept the author's name and the name of the publishing company. I am unsure as to whether or not "What are you going to choose?" is a sufficient way to convey that the book will break the predetermined rules of rhetoric, hence the title Revolutionary Rhetoric. I am still brain storming a new slogan for the book. Aesthetically, I changed the font of the book cover. I kept the subdued color scheme, but made the cover an antique cream color instead of white. I decided that the contrast between the slate and the antique beige, tan, and cream was nice. The book is breaking traditions of the past (antique) and bringing about revolutionary modern ideas (gray is often associated with modern design). As far as the pitch for the book I tentatively have decided it will be, "I want to break the orderly boundaries of rhetoric and revolutionize with chaotic creativity."
In addition to the first mini assignment, I also worked on the remediaiton blog post today. I wrote my remediaiton post about Glee. I want to include this in my digital portfolio because everything about Glee is recent. When working in a field of communications it is important to always be up to date on what is going on in the world of media. Glee is extremely popular right now so it shows that I am somewhat in the know, as far as pop culture. I remediated this blog into a Prezi. I started with the video of FSU acapella group All Night Yahtzee. Acapella clubs started in the the 1850's. The prezi documents the remediaiton of original acapella clubs to Glee the television show. Glee then became a lifestyle for fanatics who refer to themselves as Gleeks. This then led to other remediations of Glee, such as glee apparel and Glee live. Prezi is a nice way to present this because you can use a horizontal medium to show the progression from an Acapella group to Glee and all of Glee's remediations. I am still undecided about the other 2 mini assignments that I want to include. I know that I want them to have a visual aspect as well as a rhetorical one, just as the book cover and the Glee Prezi have.
I look forward to working on the rest of the digital portfolio. I thought that it would be difficult to marry the two purposes I want my digital portfolio to have. So far I think that the visual aspects of the projects will help support both the functions I want my digital portfolio. I think between the art exhibit layout and the way I am fashioning the projects with emphasis on visual aspects will make for a successful digital portfolio.
Today, my goal was to rework my mini assignments/blogs which were the poem, Let’s Catch our Breath blog and the fractured fairytale, starting with the poem. First of all, I included the poem for a few reasons—it shows what goes through my head during the composing process which I think really tells a lot about who I am as a composer; and second, it is a genre that is much different from the other prose writing I decided to put into my portfolio and therefore will demonstrate the variety of skill-sets that I have in the multimedia sphere. Because I want to try and incorporate a diversity of multimedia in my project to encompass my abilities as a composer, I decided to manipulate my poem into a Vuvox presentation. There were some challenges translating the words into a comprehensive photomontage, but overall I think the visual enhances the overall message of my poem in my composition process. I think my revision adds to the work I have done because it allows more space for creativity, and allows me to practice editing skills. Also, I think relating pictures to words is a big way to communicate ideas in the 21st century since people have become accustomed to watching their information being relayed to them (like on tv news). I mostly took photos from google that tied into key words from the poem when creating the collage like “kaleidoscope,” “unorganized” and “muse.” Since I mentioned Jack Johnson in my poem, I decided he would play in the background (which also shows some of my personality). Besides that, I felt I really wanted to grab the senses of viewers, so I incorporated a string of Polaroid images because I think they work perfectly with my snapshot poem. There are still some details that I will revisit to make the presentation more fluid before adding the work to my wix page.
ReplyDeleteNext, I moved on to the “Let’s Catch our Breath” blog which was created in Word, and which I kept in a Word document for the revision process. I included this because it summarizes what I think are the most important things we have learned so far and my thoughts on composing. I also thought it would be a good assignment to tackle was because I was originally unhappy with how mine turned out and saw a lot of room for improvement. When revising, I first edited my work by changing sentence structure, extrapolating on ideas, and manipulating pictures and the basic layout so it was more put together. I changed the bright colors to a more subdued color palette that will correspond with my overall colors in the website—( they are white, black red and blue so far but I have a feeling I may change my mind in the future). I wanted to make sure the work didn’t read so much like a reflection as a collection of theories in blog form, because I am going to have a actual reflection in the website, so I played with the language to make it more informative yet still relaxed. Next, I added a little more theory, since we have covered more theorists since then. For example, I added what I’ve taken from our editing theorists because editing is probably the most important and most enjoyable aspect of composing. I included a section on ways to edit using Eggleston’s idea of the first pass, second pass, etc when editing because that is a tool I have used myself and find to be a necessary process in editing. In that way, I kind of fused my blog on editing with my let’s catch our breath and transformed it into a layout reminiscent of a magazine—which if it works out, will correspond to the theme of a magazine in my overall website.
I found myself being majorly influenced by Sommers idea that composers “edit and develop at the same time” because that has been what this assignment is all about. After this work session, I am eager to move on to my editing project and newsletter, as well as the third mini project to see what I can do in terms of revisions. I need to finalize my plan for the magazine layout, and bring it all together cohesively.
The design concept map helped a lot with the revision of the mini assignments I have done so far. Today, the first mini assignment I revised was the book poster. The only parts that are the same is the black background, the title of “It’s How You Say It.”, the phrase being “Rhetoric is the KEY to getting what you want: the art of PERSUASIVNESS!” and the “Coming Fall 2011!” It sounds like a lot is the same, but it looks very different. For one, I used the first slide for a power point presentation to make it. I figured this would be more effective because it allows you to have a picture as the background, unlike word. It also allowed me to have the title box and the subtitle box. The picture is completely different. I don’t know if anyone has ever seen the pictures online, there are a million, that all have the same general idea. They are the ones with the black background with a picture in the middle, and then underneath the picture, there is a big word, and underneath that, smaller words that give it a kind of “urban dictionary” type definition. I sort of modeled mine after that. Since I am playing off the word “persuasion”, I made a picture of both a dog and cat facing inwards slightly toward each other, looking up with “puppy dog eyes” and their hands put together like they are begging, or “persuading” something out of their owners. Underneath, the big word is “Rhetoric” and underneath is the definition, “The key to getting what you want: the art of persuasiveness!” Underneath that, it says when it is coming out. I used bright colors that stand out against both the picture and the black that surrounds the text. I used both the “glow” and “reflect” effect on all of the words on the poster besides the title. The title is in bright red, and goes diagonal across the picture without covering anything important. I put the author’s name and publishing company on the top border as some books do. I’m not very clever with thinking up fake names; I used my friends name before. But I named the author “Oceana Flame” because I figure both the ocean and fire are so awesome that they undoubtedly catch everyone’s attention who witnesses them. They are elements of the earth as well. I named the publishing company “Firework Publishing Co.” because fireworks incorporate fire, and I had incorporated fireworks in one of my blogs about rhetoric because the sight of them sparks interest and awe. I think this poster is a lot more attractive than my previous one, and is more intriguing to the audience.
ReplyDeleteThe second mini assignment I revised was mini assignment three, the genre activity. I got a little creative with this one. The only things I altered in the original messages was in the e-mail to my professor, I explained what time I got into the accident so she would know it was before her class time. Also, in the e-mail to Grandma, I was a little bit more emotional and tried to skate around the fact that I had been texting and driving. Here’s the twist: I added a response from each of them; my grandma, professor, and best friend. I gave each little message or paragraph a letter and switched them around the page. At the top of the page under the title of “Genre Activity”, I explain to put the letters into the groups they belong, the groups being the e-mail to grandma, the e-mail to the professor, and the text message to my best friend. The answers are at the bottom. I figured any type of medium like a magazine, web site, etc. normally has little games and quizzes to add an element of fun.
The last mini assignment I revised today was my fractured fairytale. I kept my original idea of the fractured fairy tale: the plot basically starts off like Little Red Riding Hood. She is headed to her grandma’s house to take her some soup because she is sick. She encounters the wolf in the woods, and he is in grandma’s place when Red Riding Hood arrives. However, it takes a twist when the wolf falls in love with her, kisses her, and turns back into a prince. I got this idea from the frog prince, and other fairy tales of the kind. Even Beauty and the Beast could work. I added a few phrases to help with the flow, but did major adding when the wolf decides he’s in love with her. In the original one, it just happened too fast, she gave in immediately and kissed him. This time, I added some confusion about his love, and determination to let her grandma out. He tells her he will let her out if she will listen, and as she hears his story she doesn’t even change her mind, but he kisses her off guard and they ended up being each other’s true love. I also added a few images to help make it look more like a fairy tale.
ReplyDeleteI think reading Sullivan and Eggleston’s “Before You Begin” probably served as the most effective reading for revising today. It includes the different kinds of editing, which is exactly what I do. I always read the whole thing through once to understand a general idea of what it is about, then correct grammatical and mechanical errors, and finally look at the phrasing and think of how certain things can be changed to sound and read better. They also explain the importance to be aware of who your audience is. This is especially important to this project because of the audience switch to the entire body of this department, and not just freshmen in college. It’s difficult sometimes to edit and revise your own work. I think Sullivan and Eggleston provide many tools and general hints to get past that and people to take an objective view and improve whatever it is you are editing.
I have a lot to do yet for this portfolio. However, I think the system and plan of the project is helping a lot. Having to create a concept design map and post a blog with our revisions to our mini assignments makes us do little things at a time to spread it out so we can do the best work as possible. I still plan on revising both the “Take a Breath” blog and the Prezi I created for mini assignment two. Then I will move on to the two main assignments and new project. Once I finish revising whatever I need to on those, I will finally begin to create my website using wix.com
Mini assignment revision
ReplyDeleteThe mini assignments I have chosen to revise for my portfolio are the Valentine’s day collage, a blog post and the table of contents for the class Born Digital magazine. Today with the time outside of class I was able to work on the table of contents for the magazine since it needed the most work. When I was working on the table of contents originally I was working under the pressure of a twenty minute time crunch. Originally I have envisioned two pages, large pictures from the feature articles, and the rest of the smaller articles scattered about the pages. I also wanted the layout to be just like something you would see in any printed magazine you saw yourself.
So today I took a look at what I had turned in. The first thing I chose to change was the coloring. The original piece was only black and white, and I really wanted the pages to pop more. I decided to use a little bit of blue and green accents along with the black and white and grey to highlight certain areas and articles. I changed the color of the fonts of the titles to these colors also so they weren’t all in black. The pictures were a lot more difficult to deal with, which is why they didn’t work well with the original piece. Since I am working with Word to create the pages, working with images is difficult. It takes time to place everything where you want it, and ive learned that you must be careful where you place things because that can send the image everywhere except where you want it. Once the images were in place I rearranged all of the text boxes. I spread everything from the one page that it was onto two pages. That’s all I was able to get to today because I had class before and after this class, and then track practice. Later on tonight I will continue to move things around until they are exactly where I want them.
As for the other pieces, the blog post I have chosen is the pop culture post. I had a lot of fun creating this, so I think im going to add a little more to it. I might also play with the fonts again and bold some of the key words in the post.
For the Valentine’s Day collage I need to get a photo of the project to put online. I haven’t decided what I am going to do with it, but I might put the blog post we did before it in my portfolio as well so people can understand what we were doing with remediation.
Looking at all of this today I have thought about all of the other assignments we have done so far. Time is very limited for me, but if I find extra time I want to work with some of the other assignments from the beginning of class as well.
For all of the projects I am going to add explanations so viewers can see and understand the work that I have done in class this semester.
The key to creating this digital portfolio is going to be to take a little bit at a time. I tend to get a little too overwhelmed with big projects, but if I make a plan and stick to it I will be headed down a good direction to completing it with time to spare, hopefully. Therefore, during this on-line class day to work on our mini assignments, I worked on the aspect of the fractured fairytale and poem assignment. I want to use the fractured fairytale story in my portfolio because I feel it is a good representation of my work as a composer. However, I really needed to revise it a lot. For the one I turned in for class, I did a fractured story of Cinderella. However, for the next draft I did not want to include just the story of Cinderella, but two fairytales. I think that makes it a lot more interesting. I have now included two fairytales: Cinderella and the Prince and the Pea. I turned Cinderella into a boy. And it tells his story from that perspective. But then, the story turns into the Prince and the Pea fairytale where his brother sticks the pea in the mattress so Cinder, the boy, can’t have the princess. But, little does the brother know that the princess is not a real princess. Anyway, it was a solid revision that I think will be much better suited for my portfolio.
ReplyDeleteMy poem is the next project I attempted to tackle. When I re-read it, I realized there were some things that needed to be changed, since I have changed my view of composing over the course of this class. My poem was from the point of view of a pen, and I played around with some other objects I liked, but it just wasn’t as fitting as with a pen. I deleted and added some lines to make it longer, and I also made it have a more meaningful ending. I really liked how we could be as creative as we wanted with that project and I want to portray that in my portfolio.
Also during this time, I mapped out a timeline of when I am going to get things done. That way, I will not wait until the last minute to do things. For each week, I have set out a goal for each project. Of course a lot of them will overlap and I will have to rework it some, but for the most part, I feel if I stick with this, it won’t be hard to do. Therefore, from this point forward, I am going to be focusing on the revisions of my mini assignments for the rest of this week. I want to have all three revised, or at least have the significant changes done. Little baby steps are how this project is going to get done. I need to be working on it at just one day at a time.
While revising my project, I kept in mind Yancey’s article about the electronic portfolio where she says that the portfolio allows students to “practice self-assessment in reflection…and, through analyzing their own reflections and the feedback of others, students become more knowledgeable about the progress of their own learning” (195). That is what I want this portfolio to be about. I want to reflect on my work and track the progress of all that I have learned this semester. While I can’t show all projects and everything I’ve learned, I want to use Yancey’s definition of the portfolio and do it to the best of my ability.