http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A8uW5x9yl5g
Project Description
For my rhetorical situation I felt since we were just defining a phrase targeting an audience becomes difficult. With a phrase though there are different ways to describe it as I used some words that some might consider jargon. I feel my use of jargon probably cut the age range my audience down ,however, I would venture to say the use of jargon would help the kind of people who are looking into starting digital writing if they feel they know the jargon. I decided that simple image with a simple yet effective was the most effective way of fulfilling the project requirements. When creating a piece of digital writing the best thing to do is consider your writing against a rubric. If all digital writing was put up to the rubric for this project I feel the digital writing land scape would improve dramatically. The image I chose was a simple one asking the question I was answering. The image was originally on a bright yellow background with red lettering which made it hard to read. By altering the brightness and color values this was easily corrected to be easily readable. I then put a soft light filter in the middle to draw attention to the text rather than the two people. I also cropped the sides slightly to get rid of excess negative space. The best part is all this can be done for free at pixlr.com. I needed to cite the image but I got it off of flickr.com in the commons where it was up for free use. I just cited in the project description on you tube to properly attribute it. I was trying to define a phrase and that has never been hard for me what was hard about the audio part and where I will lose my audience is I hate my recorded voice. I tried to eliminate the background noise but I tried in four separate places trying to eliminate background noise. I watched a few tutorials on how to eliminate the static noise and still no success. I also used different laptops and mic with no avail. I guess this is why studios spend so much money on sound equipment as it is not an easy thing to pick up. I used audacity for my audio recording and they do have a remove noise function which works decently but you can still here the static in my voice. The audio matches my audience as I am aiming at people who have a rough idea what digital writing is but are not completely sure if they are capable of digital writing. The simplistic editing adds to the element that you too could digital write. I was not persuading anyone to digital write in the sense of persuasive language rather in the sense of odds are you already digital write. The easy editing also allows for people to realize they too could go on pixlr and sue creative common pictures to help better compliment their message. Overall, the project was easy due to the freedom it allowed. Odds are most of the students knew these tools were out there but never played with them. Creating a project that allowed for students to research and test different free software is highly beneficial. If we were told to use this audio program, this image editor, and then this movie maker we would only learn about 3 programs. I ended up playing with a few image editors as I am not a huge fan of photoshop. I feel photoshop is great if your a graphic designer if you just need to quickly edit something the start up time on photoshop will kill your productivity. Hence pixlr is a great alternative for simple fixes and basic image editing. I was happy I got to incorporate different software programs potential into my project as open source developers deserve more credit for the amazing programs they create for free
Reflective Letter
I am most proud of it being done. Is that too sarcastic of an answer? It is at least honest in the fact that I am pleased with the end product minus the audio. If I had time to improve on anything it would have been finding a silent room and removing the background noise but even in a closet I failed to not have background static. I used pixlr.com, audacity,and windows movie maker to complete this project along with using open office to type the reflection. I felt these were appropriate as they are free to use and have a low learning curve which means anyone can be introduced to them and start digital writing. I only got stuck twice once I mentioned enough with the audio the second was uploading to YouTube. It did not want to recognize the original move format I had it in and converting it took more time than I though then that file uploaded incorrectly hence I had to find a new format and repeat the process. Eventually it worked so that was overcame with just practicing patience which I’m not great at. I from this project I will stick with writing. I much prefer to have my work read than to read out loud. I hate my own voice probably cause I hear it too much which is why I love that writing is a great medium for communication. This project also taught some key course outcomes such as appropriation, play, and distributed cognition. The assignment was essentially nothing more than a practice in appropriation as we edited an image and rephrased the definition of digital writing to avoid plagiarism laws sadly this is what most major media networks do to fill their scheduling. We were also tasked with a problem where by experimenting with tools we were able to solve said problem in this case finishing project #2 this is where play was involved in this project. Finally, distributed cognition is one of my favorite terms the idea that tools we use are an extension of ourselves it makes it sound as if a person is plugged into the matrix. None the less the ability for us to use tools to improve our mental abilities is a great skill for digital writers to know as the more software someone is familiar with more they are capable of in digital writing.