Midterm Portfolio

My perspective from this point in the semester:

My experience in this class is one that I am grateful to have, if for no other reason than the fact that it has opened my eyes to all of the possibilities for the future. Though none of my projects so far are ones that I would publish, I have learned numerous skills that I can use many times in the future. Knowing how to use programs such as Audacity and GIMP, as well as having an understanding of HTML coding, opens more opportunities than I ever imagined for my personal English endeavors. I feel as though presenting our ideas in these more technologically advanced ways will allow everyone in this class to draw more attention to the English major once more. I know I have enjoyed the increase in my friends' interest in my work since I have been enrolled in this course. Rather than having a normal essay to present, I now have essays embedded in play-list, podcast, and even collage form in a sense. I believe that this small change in my friends' perspective of my major has made a potentially large impact on the future of English Studies and how I will present my materials from now on. My friends' sudden wish to know what my classmates and I are currently working on and if they can see our projects has renewed my optimism in the battle to save the studies which we hold so dear. I know I personally will continue to use the skills I have learned in this class and also let those skills lead me to more advanced methods of communicating English Studies with the rest of the world.

As excited as I am about the future this class has allowed me to see, I now must focus on the making and revisions of the projects that provoked these dreams:

My first project, the play-list, was on the character Cosette in Les Miserables. I enjoyed choosing the songs for the progression of this character even though it took quite some time to do so. My first submission of the Cosette play-list lacked variety. While learning to use HTML codes, I fell into a pattern and simply alternated music video and writing. After some feedback in class and my own review, I decided to add a few changes to the project by making it seem as if there were less of a pattern to it. My first revision included deleting the videos that did not exactly fit with the idea I was trying to portray. I then replaced them with song players that went along with the color scheme I set. I have more plans for revision soon that will entail descriptions of each song's tone and tempo relating to Cosette's character development.

Play-list: Cosette

My second project, the podcast, focused on one of my favorite and most certainly one of the most innovative musicians, Regina Spektor. Though I was not displeased with how my podcast turned out the first time, I knew from the beginning it could be better, but I struggled with what exactly needed to change. In an attempt to make it somewhat better I went back and added background music to certain portions. After hearing some sample podcasts in class recently, I have discovered a few more revisions I would like to make. Also, now that I have received some feedback, I feel as though, the next revision to the podcast will be better when I use excerpts from the interviews, rather than the entire interviews. I am sure that more than one revision will take place for this project. I found that presenting an audio essay was slightly more difficult for me than the first project, mostly because I was not overly comfortable with my own voice at the start of working on my podcast. Fortunately, I have become more comfortable with hearing myself, and I feel as though not being hindered by anxiety about how I sound will allow me to put together a better project, since I can already think of some rerecording I need to do. This project in particular has opened up many opportunities for me, because now that I have become more acquainted with Audacity, I have been using it for other projects and it has really added a new element to them.

Podcast: Regina Spektor's Conveyance of Emotion

As we all know, the collage was our most recent assignment and I found that GIMP was the hardest program to become acclimated with. I am still struggling with it as I have been trying to make revisions. With this project, I fear that I have added too many elements in an attempt to include all of the important aspects of the Yellow Wallpaper. Finding images to use for this project presented some difficulties for me in the beginning, but I soon was able to find the elements that allowed me to present the insane nature of the story. Though I feel as though I conveyed a sense of movement, I hope to find a way in my next revision to create more. I also plan to make the eyes show up more and perhaps removing or repositioning the baby. I do not feel like it is a very memorable part of the story. I am most excited about this project because it has probably been the most challenging for me, but as I am very visual, I feel as if I have a lot of potential here. I plan to continue working with the program and the project until it represents the Yellow Wallpaper the way I mean for it to.

Collage: The Yellow Wallpaper

My comments up to this point:

http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/1#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/11#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/40#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/44#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/91#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/92#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/95#comments
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/97#comments