I’ve learned a lot throughout this semester. When I first signed up for this class, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It definitely wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t know what digital media was, let alone the digital world. This class definitely challenged me to step outside my comfort zone and try things I had never even heard of. The course caused me to think critically and apply the knowledge that I learned through the various readings, assignments, and projects.

Jenkins’ article, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, was the first article that we read and it’s interesting that it brought the course full circle. The list of eleven terms that Jenkins referenced really did apply to this course.

Play, according to Jenkins, is the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving. Project 1 required us to use play throughout it’s entirety. I, along with most of the class, had no experience working with wikis. In order to execute the project we had to problem solve to learn how to insert text, hyperlinks, images, videos, etc. into the wiki.

Performance, the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery, was shown. We demonstrated performance in this course through the Manovich reading. Manovich states that we are in the middle of a new media revolution, but we can apply performance to his reading because old media still plays a role in the creation of new media. As we explore various types of new media, we have to adopt the identity of old media in order to create and understand new media.

Simulation is the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes. Project 3 required a resume, Linkedin profile, experience map, and video resume that were all targeted toward the career that I want to pursue. Although it’s a class project, all of these will help me in the real world when applying for jobs that I want to pursue.

Appropriation, the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content, was shown in Project 2. For this project I took a picture found on a creative common (Flickr) and edited the image. I, then combined it with audio to create my own definition of digital writing.

Multitasking is the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details. I had to engage in a lot of multitasking when working on Project 3. Most of the components of this projects required much of the same information, but I had to change the way that I display that information to cater to each audience.

Distributed cognition is the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities. I utilized this concept throughout Project 2. I had never worked with AudioMemos, iMovie, or Photoshop Express before and used all three of these tools in the production of this project. I was able to expand my knowledge of editing software by teaching myself software that i had never used before.

Collective intelligence is the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal. This was used throughout Project 1. Although the wiki was not successful, it required us to work together as a class. We all had to pool our knowledge and the skills learning in this course to create project 1.

Judgment, the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources. I just judgment when using my Diigo account. The purpose of the Diigo account was to bookmarking websites that were relevant to the concepts learning throughout the course. I was to use judgment to figure out which sites were relevant and which weren’t.

Transmedia navigation is the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities. The digital world is ever-growing and changing everyday. This requires us to learn new technologies and adapt to how they fit into our world. By reading various articles on the digital world and creating our own digital media, we are able to learn and process this information and use it to create our own digital identities.

Networking is the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information. Networking is so important in the world that we live in, especially within the professional world. I utilized this through my Linkedin profile for project 3. This profile allows me to connection to to other people within the world of Public Relations and allow them to see the skills and abilities that I bring to the field. By being able to connect to hundreds of people at one, I am able to look for more opportunities within my chosen career path.

Negotiation is the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms. This was a big part of Project 1. In our class discussion about the project, many of us had differing opinions about the information that should go in the wiki and how that information should have been displayed. We had to listen to everyone’s input and respect their opinions even when we didn’t agree with it.

The three course outcomes that I used the most were appropriation, play, and distributed cognition. Throughout this course, I got to experiment with technologies that I had never used, expand my knowledge of the digital world, and create digital work that I am proud of. A few course outcomes that I would like to spend more time on would be networking and multitasking. I’ve always believed that it’s not what you know, but who you know and establishing that is all about networking. Networking is so important within the field that I want to study and the more that I get my name and abilities out, the more I will appeal to potential employers. As far as multitasking, it is important to utilize because it allows to us shift our focus when necessary. Not everything one does or produces is catered toward the same specific audience and being able to change things when needed is key.

I learned that new media is ever-evolving and that is consists of more than just what I thought it was before. Prior to taking this class I thought that new media was mostly based on social media. After what I’ve learned from this course, I learned that digital writing and the digital world consists of even simple things like remixing a video or using maps and timelines to account for personal experiences. I do believe that I am more educated based on this shift in perception because I now understand that digital media is a broader array of categories. I also have more skills to create digital media is various forms. This class showed me that I am not only a consumer of digital media, but also a producer of digital media.

Part 1:

Online Professional Identity

Part 2:

Traditional Resume

In my traditional resume, I chose to make it like a standard resume, but very in depth.  For my headings, I used the Lucinda Calligraphy font, point 22 in my name heading, and point 14 in my other headings. I also made the heading font bold so it would stand out from the rest of the document and create visual hierarchy and distinguish between each sub-section of the resume. For the body content, I used Times New Roman, size 11 to allow it to be easily readable. I want this resume to catch the audience’s attention, but not distract them from my purpose. I kept the alignment simple, headings center aligned and body content left aligned, to keep the resume organized. I bolded my jobs and job titles so that is the first thing the audience sees; I want them to pay attention to my experience.

Scannable Resume

Five main criteria that are looked for within my future career path are:

1. Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Communications, Marketing, Journalism or Business

2. Experience: Experience in planning and implementing media relations, PR field, or Communications field.

3. Communication Skills: Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

4. Ability to function under inflexible deadlines

5. Creativity

Jobs Ads used

PR1, PR2, PR3

Cosmopolitan Magazine

Rhetorical Analysis

Cosmopolitan online magazine claims to be the “Online Women’s Magazine for Fashion, Sex, Advice, Dating Tips, and Celebrity News.” That right there is the purpose of this online magazine. Cosmopolitan wants to keep women happy and up-to-date on the topics that women are most interested in. The audience is adult women. I say adult women because the magazine does discuss very adult topics when it comes to sex and dating, that isn’t appropriate for younger girls to read. They obviously market to their audience by including women on their site and stories that matter to women.  Probably readers would be women about the age of 18. Occupation, power position, and education don’t play a large role in the market of this magazine because it addresses topics that all adult women can relate to. There is a large range of positions that the audience may have before reading this website because we are all raised differently and all have different opinions on issues of sex, dating, and fashion. The image is prompting the reader to try the new tips, tricks, and advice that they are recommending on the website.

Design Element Analysis

Emphasis: Emphasis is used to create a sense of visual hierarchy. Cosmopolitan is big, bright and bold at the top of the page and the most important stories are bigger than the rest of the stories.

Contrast: Color contrast is used to break up the stories and wording on the page. Size contrast is also used to draw attention to important information such as the title, important articles, and various tabs to navigate through the website.

Balance: The page is asymmetrically balanced. They are fitting a lot of information on the page making it look cluttered and unappealing to the eye. They are attempting to show the most popular articles, promotional advertisements, various quizzes, and other information. Color is also used to balance the site (pink, black, and white) and makes it look more uniform.

Alignment: The alignment is easily to follow on the site because related information is group together in rectangles. The empty space on the webpage is necessary, but seems distracting because there is so much going on throughout the site.

Repetition: The repetition of of rectangular shapes is used throughout the website to group the articles together. They use this to put the articles that are related together. It also makes the page easier to navigate. The repetition of colors make the website look more cohesive.

Flow: Verbal flow is used throughout the site in the traditional Western culture from left to right, top to bottom. Visual flow is used on this website creates an S pattern. This is useful because it dictates what images the audience’s eye goes to first.

Design & Rhetorical Analysis

These design elements meet the needs of the rhetorical elements by providing an easily navigable website.  It utilizes the design elements to focus on their women audience. It is a very busy website, but since women are more likely to pay attention to detail, they are more likely to read the various stories on the site.

The website uses photographs from their own photographers and videos from outside sources who are not cited.

I think that I want to use a map resume. Timelines are more common and you don’t really hear of people using map resumes often so I think it would be fun to use and try something different. For my video resume, I want to focus on the PR skills that I have acquired and how I’ve utilized them. Since I won’t be showing a picture of myself, I want to show an image (or multiple images) that represents the field that I want to go into. The key message that I want readers to get from my resumes are my skills in Public Relations and what else I can bring to the field. Details that I need to include would be experience that I have had in the field, classes to help me reach my goal of working in Public Relations, and what else I plan to do with my degree. I also want to include why I believe this field is important to me and why I believe it’s where I belong.

Video Resumes are a creative way that a job seeker can showcase their skills and abilities aside from using the traditional paper resume. If used in the correct manner, it can be helpful in getting a job, the same way that a traditional resume can. If used incorrectly, it can not only prevent the person seeking employment from getting a job, but can also give off the wrong impression of them.

The Good:

Video resumes allow you to show off your personality better than paper can. This can help show how you stand out from other candidates.

Show off your technology skills. You are able to play around with different technologies in your video to show your capabilities.

Allows you to highlight specific skills from your resume.

Makes the application more personal.

The Bad:

Timing. Since video resumes are usually 1-3 minutes long, there is only a short amount of time to tell your qualifications and impress the potential employer.

Weaknesses in Communication Skills. Since video resumes require you to be on camera, it can easily show any weaknesses within your verbal communication skills.

Comfort. Video resumes can allow you to become too comfortable and come off as unprofessional on camera.

Too much creativity can take away from the purpose of the video resume.

The Ugly:

Video resumes can cross the lines of personal and professional very quickly. Be careful of the information that is disclosed.

Reply to classmate: http://dsmit182.students.digitalodu.com/?p=355#comment-183

Personally, I believe that a script font represents me. Although, it can sometimes we hard to read, it allows you to quickly establish a time, period, or style and I feel that reflects my personality. Script fonts set a nice, fancy, and easy-going tone on the page. Mishka is a font that I think represents me well. Professionally, I think that a serif font represents me. Parma Petit, specifically, it’s still fancy and creative like a scripted font, but is easier to read which is important in professional settings and it isn’t too over the top. I think that I would also use color contrast in order to draw in my audience’s eye.

Project Description

How do you invasion the rhetorical situation for this project? What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What are the relative aspects of the context?

The rhetorical situation for this project is to spread the definition of digital writing. It’s purpose is to increase the interest in this class along with increasing the awareness of how digital writing impacts our lives. The audience is honestly anyone because digital writing plays a large role in the culture that we’re a part of, but more specifically it is geared towards students that could possibly take this class in the future.

Describe at least 3 ways you edited the image you used for your audio postcard.

First, I used Adobe Photoshop Express to edit the image. I cropped the writing that was at the bottom of the image and then I pixelate tool  the image to give it a more digitized effect. Finally, I used the fill light tool to lighten the image to brighten up all of the dark colors that the original image had. I didn’t use text on the image because I wanted to audience to focus more on the definition in the audio.

What elements of your audio postcard were you required to provide some form of citation? How did you cite it? Why does that citation format best meet the needs of your rhetorical situation?

Elements of my audio postcard that required citation would be the original image. I found the image on Flickr. I gave credit to the original owner in the Description box on my YouTube video. I thought that this image citation format best met the needs of my rhetorical situation because by not putting it in the video, I was able to stay true to the intent of the video and still give credit to the original owner.

Why and how do at least 3 aspects of your audio file meet the rhetorical situation?

The rhetorical purpose of this video is to inform others about digital writing. I used the audio file to reflect this by giving the definition of digital writing. Secondly, there are examples of what digital writing is within the audio file. This allows the audience to easily understand the definition. Thirdly, by recording the file in a quiet room, there was no room for distractions and allowed the message to get across clearly.

Why and how do at least 3 aspects of your image meet the rhetorical situation?

The image that I used meets the rhetorical situation by using eye catching colors, a pattern that pops to the eye, and by having a digitized look to it. The image itself represents the world and uses colors that stand out and cause the audience to actually stop and look at it. By enhancing the digitized look of it, the audience is able to better connect it to the definition in the audio file. Digital writing affects the world as we know it and I believe that this image reflects that.

Reflective Letter

What are you most proud of in the entire project?

I’m quite proud of this entire project. I have had little practice with editing image and had no practice with working with recording audio files and putting both together to make a video. There were some frustrations when working on this project, but I’m glad that it all came together. The thing that I am most proud of would have to be getting the audio to work within the image. That was a big struggle for me and I’m glad that I got it all figured out.

What do you wish you had time to further expand, include, or revise in the project?

I wish I had more time to edit the image in this project. Although I’m happy with how things turned out, I wish I would have more time to work on the image. I feel that it got a bit stretched out in the editing process and looks wider than I intended it to look.

What technologies did you use to complete this project? Why were they appropriate?

For this project, I used Adobe Photoshop Express to edit the image.  For the audio, I originally used Audacity to record the audio, but then switched to Audio Memos. I found Audio Memos to work better for me. To combine the audio and the image, I used iMovie and I used YouTube to publish the video. These technologies were appropriate because they allowed to me edit an image, record audio, and put them both together to form a video on digital writing.

When did you get stuck while working on the project? How did you overcome your problem?

I got stuck while working on this project when I had to convert the Audacity file to an mp3 file. I was able to find instructions to show me how to do it, but even after I downloaded the encoding file that the instructions required, I still wasn’t able to get the file to convert. I was able to overcome this problem by downloading Audio Memos on my iPhone and using that the record the audio. I was then able to email the audio to myself and use it for the project. I had also never used iMovie before so I had to play around with the program in order to combine the image and audio.

What did you learn about yourself as a digital writer?

I learned that there are still a lot of technologies out that I have yet to experience. I’ve always believed that I have been digitally in tune, but there are a lot that I can still learn. I also learned that I’m good at figuring things out as I go along. I had to so with almost all of the technologies that I used and think I did so successfully.

Discuss at least three of the course outcomes you feel you worked towards with this assignment. Provide evidence of your learning by pointing to specific aspects of the project.

The main course outcome that I worked towards with this assignment was networking. Since I hadn’t had much experience using these technologies, I had to search for information on the technologies and teach myself everything as I went along. I has to use a lot of trial and error to get it right.  The second course outcome that I used was distributed cognition. I expanded my knowledge of digital technology by working with this assignment. Now, I can use these tools for future projects that I have. Lastly, I used multitasking throughout this assignment. I had to always be thinking of the bigger picture; how the image would connect to the audio; how combining both would get the message across to the audience, etc.

Rhetorical Analysis

The audience of this advertisement is drinkers of Mountain Dew and potential drinkers of Mountain Dew. It is also geared towards fans of Lil Wayne. The purpose of the ad is to get people to buy Mountain Dew and also support Lil Wayne and his music.

Design Analysis

This ad uses verbal flow in the typical way we use it in our Western culture. We are reading it from left to right and it is easy to read to get the point across to the audience. The ad uses good visual flow by flowing the words along with Lil Wayne’s body. This works to support the rhetorical analysis of the ad because it focuses the eye on the main part of the ad, the “Dew”, and then the secondary component of the ad’s purpose, Lil Wayne. Contrast is also used by contrasting a bright white font against the black and white of the picture. It causes the audience’s eye to go right to the point of the image, Mountain Dew.

This activity definitely freaked me out a bit. I searched my name on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, only expecting my Facebook profile to come up. I was able to find myself on the first page of each site. What surprised me was that I was able to find multiple images of myself on Google, including on from my job’s website that I forgot was available online. That also scared me. For some reason it seems different to me when a picture of me is on my Facebook profile, but when it comes up in  Google search, I get nervous. I was pleased that there is only one search engine that I appear on multiple times, along with pictures of me. It makes me rethink having different online sources that I’m part of because I’m not so sure I want my life to be so searchable.