When I first looked at the list of first-year-seminars, this one in particular immediately caught my eye. I am currently on the path towards majoring in journalism, so I was drawn to the "literature" element of the class, which greatly influenced by decision to take the class. I only briefly considered the "technology" component of the class, thinking that it would merely allow me to explore some elements of the computer I had not mastered before. Now that I have been in the class for awhile, and we have accomplished several projects, I have found that the "technology" part of the course has increasingly become more and more intriguing to me, and has become my main focus over the weeks of the class, as I have learned the most about this element.

As a class, we have had to delve deep into programs that I was not familiar with, such as Audacity and Photoshop. Both of these programs were completely new to me, and while they were a bit confusing, I feel like I have learned a lot about each. In order to create our podcasts, we had to work with Audacity. I found this assignment to be the most difficult, because I had never worked with sounds and music in such a way. The added component of recording my own voice was also difficult to get used to. I also really loved working with Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop was already on my computer when I received it, but I had never really looked at the program to understand how it worked. I loved making the collages, and I will definitely use this program in the future for other projects. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing, but if it hadn't been for this class, I honestly would probably not have tried to figure it out. I also really enjoyed working with html codes, something I had never really taken the time to explore. I am fascinated by the fact that html codes can make words italicized or bold, and even different colors! It is evident that the technological skills I'm learning in this class will be useful for a long time, and I will use them in the future; either for work in other classes or maybe even further down in my career path. They are the basic building blocks for educated computer-users, and as a class-member, I think the "technology" side of the course has been the most valuable to me.

As for the literature component of the class: literature has always been a passion of mine, but this class has opened up a different view of literature for me. It is apparent from looking at my work and my peers' work that technology can be used as a portal to view literature in completely new ways. Through technology, you can learn more about characters and delve deeper into their motivations and actions than if you were simply reading about them. Technology lets the reader explore the character in more ways than one: through playlists you can express a character through music, and through collages, you can visually express that character through images. Expressing characters and stories in this way forces the reader to think deeply about the character; it forces the reader to imagine the characters visually, to think about their motives, and to find a different outlet to illustrate these new views, other than through the written word.

Although I feel like I have learned more about computers over the past couple of months, it is probably because of the lack-of-experience I had in this department when I first came into the class. My point: I have learned and focused on both literature and computers, not as separate components, but as elements of a whole; I have worked with both in order to create a single project, whether it may be a podcast, a playlist, or a collage. As a whole, the class has introduced me to new ways in which I can express my thoughts and ideas, and has offered a different viewpoint on some of my favorite literature. What I find most rewarding about the class is that fact that I have discovered these views on my own. For example, no one told me how I should think about Jane Eyre in order to create a playlist about her, it was up to me to examine her character more thoroughly and find new ways to look at her, and express these views through music. As a student, I have always had a place to go if I need help, but most of the learning occurred through hours of trial and error. I think this method of self-learning has been the most rewarding for me.

Playlist

First Draft of my Playlist for Jane Eyre

I love music, but I had never thought about applying music to literature before this project. The concept of applying a playlist to literature was completely new to me, and I didn't know how the music would correspond to my character. I chose Jane Eyre, because it is one of my favorite books, and I admire Jane and the choices that she makes throughout the book. I initially thought it would be difficult to find songs that describe Jane, considering the time period in which she would have lived, but I discovered that the idea of a strong and independent woman is a timeless subject for musicians. I found several different genres of songs, including both slow songs and fast-paced songs, some love ballads, and some pop songs, and although the song types contrast greatly, I think that each one is essential in describing every aspect of Jane's character.

In order to determine if some of the songs fit Jane's character, I had to look at them from another angle. For instance, "One Girl Revolution" is a modern song, and it also has some modern verses. However, I really felt like the essence of the song described Jane's character perfectly. The band, Superchic(k), focuses more on rock music, and the singer is not your typical girl singer. However, she stands out from the other singers, and truly could be called a "One Girl Revolution." This is similar to Jane, who was stronger and more capable than most other women that would have lived during her time period. The song "One Girl Revolution" does fit Jane's character, however it is more of a modern take.

When I finished picking out songs for the playlist and typing up their descriptions, I thought that I was finished with all the hard work. I was wrong! Most of my time actually went into the appearance of the playlist. For instance, it took me awhile to find pictures to go with the songs. I also had to learn how to make the text bold, and how to change the font size. It also took some time to play around with aligning the text and images, so that the text was centered, but the image was either to the right or left of the text. I had to adjust some of the image sizes, so it took me awhile to play around with the height and width of some of the pictures. This was a new process for me, because I had never really experimented with any of this.

Although it took some trial-and-error, I was overall pleased with the outcome of my first draft!

Final Draft of my Playlist for Jane Eyre

For my final draft of my playlist, I decided to add more support to some of the songs by backing them up with examples from the text. It took me a while to find the specific quotes that I wanted, but I think that the quotes I chose really illustrate Jane's character. Each quote occurs at a different time period in her life, but they each express Jane's courage and strength throughout some of her toughest obstacles. Although I had supported the songs with an explanation in the first draft of my playlist, the quotes from the book worked to strengthen my arguments, and helped to intertwine the song with Jane more completely.

Podcast

First Draft of my Podcast

The podcast was definitely the most difficult assignment for me. There are so many things that go into a good podcast, it was hard to make everything sound good together as a whole.

Deciding my topic was fairly easy. I had never really listened to Dave Matthews Band before, but a lot of my friends liked them. I decided to look up some of their lyrics as a potential topic for my podcast, and I discovered that a lot of their lyrics are really deep and well-thought-out. Afterward, I listened to their music for the first time, and was completely blown away by their music and sound. I loved them, and knew they would make the perfect topic for my podcast. I did not anticipate how difficult it would be to put together the actual podcast, and to acquire the technological skills to do so.

After gathering a lot of DMB's song clips, I first had to choose which songs I wanted to play in my podcast, and exactly which lines I wanted my audience to hear. Then I had to learn the technical stuff: how to move songs around and envelope the songs, making them fade in and out at the perfect time, which was difficult. I needed more "meat" for my podcast than just DMB's song clips, but I could not find many interesting interview clips with any real substance. I ended up finding only a small amount of material I could use, and the quality of the interview clip was not that great, but I decided to use the clip anyways. I also had a difficult time deciding exactly where I should start and end the clip in my podcast.

Next, I had to record my own voice on my computer, and arrange it in Audacity. The actual recording of my voice was not much of a problem; I only had to re-record my voice a couple times to make sure that I said all of the right things. The trouble I found was that when I played back my voice recording, you could hear annoying background noises, such as the clicks of my mouse. Even worse, my voice sounded really soft, but all of the songs were really loud in comparison. This sharp contrast in volume sounded terrible in my podcast, and I did not even know where to begin in fixing this.

After spending a lot of my time moving clips around, putting them in order, and making sure that they flowed together, I decided that I had enough material to title it my "First Draft."

Second Draft of my Podcast

You might have noticed that I did not call this draft of my podcast my "final draft," but merely my "second draft." I am definitely not through working on my podcast, because I still think there is a lot that needs to be fixed. I tried using the "Compressor" effect on Audacity to fix the volume problem I was having, but I don't think it did much to help. I re-recorded ALL of my speaking parts, in an effort to eliminate those pesky clicking noises that occurred when I had previously recorded my voice. I also spoke more in my recordings, talking about the songs more, and explaining more of important lyrics within DMB's songs. If you hear the podcasts one after another, you should be able to detect subtle changes (hopefully), but I didn't make any drastic changes in my second draft. My podcast is a continual work-in-progress, and I hope to continue making it better in the future.

Collages

Character Collage

This collage is modeled after the character Stargirl in Jerry Spinelli's novel Stargirl. I read the book Stargirl a couple years ago, but it has always stood out in my mind, in part for its eccentricity, but also for the upstanding theme behind the piece of work. This was the first collage I had done, and also my first time working with Photoshop (which was very difficult to get used to). It took me hours to find the perfect pictures that I wanted to use in my collage. I had a specific idea of what I was going for, and I had a picture in my mind of the exact images that I wanted to incorporate into my collage. I ended up having to change my design several times, though, when I found pictures that weren't exactly what I was looking for. For example, I originally wanted a cactus to be apart of my background, but when I found a picture of the half-cactus, I decided to put it in the foreground, and use it to divide the picture into two parts. I had not originally planned for my collage to be divided into two parts, but when the images presented themselves, I decided to go with it and explore the possibilities.

Besides searching for the perfect images to use in my collage, the most difficult thing I ran into while making my collage was Photoshop itself. It took me a long time to figure out how to layer images. I also had to figure out how to use tools such as the "magic wand" to extract the exact object I wanted within a picture. I also explored different effects, and played with the opacity of pictures to figure out exactly what looked good within the collage. Although the left side of the collage does have a lot going on, I think this, in a way, represents Stargirl's character. On the right side, a smiling girl is shown, with stars clearly visible behind her. From the outside, Stargirl may look like any normal girl, but in reality she is very different from the other girls in the novel. She takes long walks in the desert with her pet rat, loves sunflowers, plays her ukulele in the school cafeteria, and most importantly, is friendly to everyone she meets. Her vivacity and passion for life is evident in everything she does; she certainly is not afraid for others to see her true self. I think Stargirl's eccentricity is reflected in my collage, and overall I was pleased with the final result.

Story Collage

This collage is modeled after Taylor Swift's song "Love Story." Like my character collage, I also spent a lot of time looking for images for this collage. I knew that I wanted my collage to be modeled after a Taylor Swift song (she is my favorite artist!), but I was unsure which song of hers I should pick. After trying to find images for some of her other songs, I finally decided on "Love Story" because I am a romantic at heart, and I was really interested in creating an image to go along with the song. After I made my decision about the song, the images seemed to fall into place. The discovery of one image would spur a multitude of ideas for other images in my head, and so on, until I had completed the collage.

The song centers around a girl and a boy who have known each other since they were young, and who are forbidden to be together. Although most of the song is somber, the boy proposes to the girl in the end, and they live happily ever after. Throughout the song, Taylor says, "You'll be the prince and I'll be the princess," which is a major theme I wanted to focus on in the collage. I chose a little girl dressed up as a princess for the focal point of the work, and a fairy-tale-like castle is pictured behind her. Most of the song is somber, and I feel like this mood is reflected in the grey color scheme depicted throughout the collage. I chose a picture of a bride and groom, kissing,as one of the main focal points, and I chose to set the opacity to 100% to ensure that it would stand out. I wanted to emphasize the happy ending of the song through the kissing couple. My favorite part of the collage is the background image of the flowers. You may have to look close to see the flowers, but I thought they added a lot to the collage, in terms of imagery and framing. This happens to be my favorite work, of all of our projects. However, as Mr. Anderson pointed out, I could definitely work on the opacity of the girl's face and the castle in the background. I'm not quite sure what I can do to fix this, but hopefully I will have the chance to improve this part of the collage in the future!

Comments

This was the first comment I made on the website, in response to the short story "Cathedral."

Here, I responded to a post about the Rocket Summer, one of my favorite bands, about how their lyrics contain a poetic element.

I posted a blog entry on the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" to explain my strong reaction to this shocking short story.

Here, I responded to a post about the greatest poetic artist ever. I gave an example of one of Colbie Caillat's songs, posted a link to the music video, and explained how I thought that Colbie's lyrics contains several elements of poetry.

I also posted here on the same blog entry, but this time I shared my thoughts on Jason Mraz.

I responded to a post on rappers as poets. I think that Lupe Fiasco's lyrics are definitely poetic, because they contain many thought-out and deep meanings. I posted the lyrics to his song "Streets on Fire," and also posted the music video in my response.

I really liked Mark's reflection on his playlist, so I chose to respond to his post. His reflection was very well thought-out, and caused me to think about my own playlist.

I responded to a post on the short story "Barn Burning," by sharing my thoughts on the story, and also bringing up some of the questions I had while reading the story.

Here, I made a comment about the progress of my playlist, and the types of songs I was finding to describe Jane's character.

In this post, I wrote a response to Kevin's podcast about Third Eye Blind, because I thought he did a really good job.

I also loved Kelsey's podcast, and I told her what a great job she did in thiscomment.

Here, I gave my opinion on the collage "Sherrif Jack Carter."

In this comment, I offered my opinion on Kelsey's collage, and shared that I thought she had done a great job!

Here, I commented on Mark's collage.

To Be Continued..

To conclude, I think I've learned a TON in this class so far, both about literature and about computers/technology. It's evident that everything the class has learned so far will definitely benefit us in the long run. Right now, I don't view any of my projects as being completely finished, they are all still "works in progress," as I continue to learn about the materials, and have new ideas concerning the projects. For next semester, I think I need to continue to dedicate my time to these projects to make them better.