Final Portfolio

Posted December 11th, 2007 by alex kane

Portfolio

As the semester comes to an end and I continue to struggle with my final exams, this course offers, as it has throughout the semester, a creative outlet and a modern take on a course that could easily have been a tired rehash of American Literature. Beginning with the play list and culminating with our video project, this class allowed me to use numerous mediums to discuss and develop my own view of literature. The fact that all work was posted online and the website provided an interactive public forum of sorts only further engaged me and stimulated the communal learning environment. The course itself pulled me in and I found myself being more and more involved with each project, as opposed to the typical dwindling effort one might expect throughout the semester. In fact, this course has truly been the only class on my schedule that I have actually enjoyed and will miss participating in. The environment of mutual respect and understanding helped me enjoy attending class and gave the class an appeal which I wish I would see in more classes.

I feel as though I have learned a lot in this class that I would not be able to obtain from the average English Course. First off, our use of technology has benefited me greatly in my understanding of the many uses this powerful medium contains. Between the blog I maintained and the projects I created with computer programs, I was introduced to many modern tools that I had not yet discovered. Although this technology often seemed set on halting my progress, by being forced to struggle with it and expand my technological boundaries I was able to grasp many new programs and increase my computer literacy, something that is very important in a constantly evolving world. I also feel as though I have learned an immense amount through a newfound ability to interpret literature by unfamiliar means. What I mean by this is, whereas before I had only looked at literature through the scope of writing formulaic papers, the projects we did allowed me to do similar interpretation but also forced me to use more creative vehicles in order to demonstrate my point. This not only made me think about what I was trying to convey with each project and how I, personally, defined literature, but it also promoted a more creative thought process in the search for literary representation and analysis.

Overall, I think this course provided a refreshing glimpse into the possibilities that one might find when they incorporate technology into teaching more traditional subjects. As I put together my final portfolio, I have realized that my only real regret is the fact that I never took the time to enjoy the projects created by my classmates. In the case of many of these, I had not yet taken the time to enjoy their work, and I’m glad I’ve gotten to do so while working on this portfolio. It’s interesting to see the differences in my interpretations of certain pieces of literature as compared to that of my peers. While I am not sure what my peers may think of my work, I did enjoy posting my work, for better or worse. While I have an outgoing personality, for some reason I have always been shy about sharing my work with others. While posting my projects online did make doing this easier, I was happy none the less that as the semester continued I began to let go of the stage fright that many of us experience. The ability of this class to alleviate fear of “making mistakes” and promote creativity and open mindedness made it a one of kind class. I enjoyed my experience thoroughly and hope everyone enjoys my work.

A few Blog Posts and Comments
While I enjoyed the ability to post my thoughts on particular stories and works, I feel as though Blogging was the one area of the class of which I did not take full advantage. While I often added entries and commented on my peers’ entries or works in the beginning of the semester, as the class went on I become so engrossed with my own projects that I often forgot this aspect of the class. I feel as though all of my posts and comments were well thought out and added to the discussions but I just didn’t do it often enough. Beyond this, I think my favorite part of the blogging process was seeing what other people had to say about certain stories and replying to them with my own interpretation. This often helped us all flesh out the stories and poems we read and provided a friendly, yet serious, medium through which we could share ideas. It was nice to get the opinions of others and view issues from a peer’s perspective. This is a very effective tool and one I wish other teachers would adopt. If I get enough time in the near future I’d like to create my own sports blog. Hopefully I can take what I learned through this class and apply it to one of my personal interests. Only time will tell.

A Death in Texas
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Hills like White Elephants comment
Rites of Passage interpretation
Lord of The Flies collage comment
Comment on Vietnam Video
Sleep comment- social commentary
MLK Comment

Playlist

Doing the playlist was one of the most rewarding, yet time consuming, projects I did this semester. Focusing on the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord, I spent a considerable amount of time researching his life and then attempted to choose songs which related to the changes in his life that occurred every 4 or 5 years. I attempted to incorporate songs of different genres in order to represent my own tastes in music, but soon found that raps songs most appropriately related to Escobar’s life story, so I attempted to integrate them appropriately while maintain some balance with the use of other genres .Also, in the original version I failed to include enough commentary on musical elements and forced the placements of some songs. Thanks to the comments and recommendations by Dan and “knottd”, I was able to correct many of the problems I had in my original playlist. The whole process of telling a story through the use of the lyrical and sonic elements of selected songs made the project challenging but also added a level of personal interest, especially for a music lover such as myself.

Pablo Escobar (Original)
Pablo Escobar (Final)

Collages

The collages were, to put it bluntly, my least favorite project. While I was originally very intrigued by the idea of creating a collage on a computer through image editing, the amount of trouble I had getting my collages to work correctly and look as intended led to massive frustration. While the program offered great possibilities, I never seemed to be able to keep it open long enough to take advantage of these capabilities. These technical problems actually led me to create a new character collage, which happens to be the one about which I feel the best. Originally, I created a character collage depicting Odysseus and a collage representing the poem “London”. I was not very proud of the original draft of either. The Odysseus collage merely lacked adequate color and contrast and seemed too chaotic to be understood by anyone other than myself. I attempted to alleviate these problems by reordering the pictures and alter dimensions, but I could not salvage the work. The London collage, on the other hand, actually showed promise. By eliminating some of the open space, adding the wall denouncing capitalism, and focusing on the striking nature of many of the images, I was able to more accurately portray the despair described in the poem and draw in the viewer. In order to complete the project I decided to create a collage representing Holden Caulfield in “The Catcher in the Rye”. I did Holden because as I thought back, “The Catcher in the Rye” came to mind as the first novel that truly affected me and I decided attempting to interpret his character would be both challenging and fun. Using a hectic Madison Square Garden as the background, I attempted to demonstrate the peace of mind Holden discovers when he thinks of himself as a catcher in the rye saving innocent children, such as his sister Phoebe, from the evils of the world. I also placed a private school in the background to show his movement away from the troubled years he spent bouncing from school to school. While I only created one version of this collage, I think it is by far the most polished and telling of the character.

Odysseus (Original)
Odysseus (Second)
London (Original)
London (Final)
Holden Caulfield

Annotations

Doing the annotations for Emily Dickinson’s poems was surprisingly interesting. While I have read Dickinson before, I was impressed by some of the poems we worked on that I had never before read. Due to the difficult nature of many of her poems, one of the hardest parts of the assignment was finding sections of the poem which I felt I was able to interpret. This exercise definitely forced me to spend time pondering and allow myself a little room for individuality in annotating the poems. While the exercise was more traditional than many of our projects, I enjoyed learning how to use wikipedia and felt I obtained a fairly strong grasp on almost all of the poems. As a side note, I may not have all of my posts but I did my best to find all the posts I did while not logged in.

This World is not conclusion- Plucks at a Twig of Evidence
The World is Not Conclusion- Crucifixion
The Tint I Cannot take- is Best- Guinea
The Tint I Cannot take- is Best- Cannot take
He Fumbles at Your Soul-Thunderbolt
A Light Exists in Spring- It almost speaks to you
Stuck was I, Yet not by Lightning- Venture
Stuck was I, Yet not by Lightning- Who mine Enemy?
The Tint I Cannot take- is Best- Cleopatra’s Company
The Tint I Cannot take- is Best- Graspless
I Started Early- Took my Dog- Dandelions
I Started Early- Took My Dog
I heard a fly buzz when I died- Blue
I’m Nobody! Who are You?
I’m Nobody! Who are You?- Dreary
I heard a fly buzz when I died- Fly
A Light Exists in Spring-Loss
My Life had stood- a Loaded Gun