Week 8

I am not actually familiar with many multimedia tools. This class has been full of new and completely different modes for me. I decided to try an take a different approach for this blog post then since I don't have anything particularly helpful to add to the repertoire of multimedia methods. Instead, I tried to think of what I do in my life that represents multimedia. I started with the concept of photoshop since I work with images much more often then I work with audio. Something that I am constantly looking at and occasionally posting to is instagram. This is a form of social media that ties together images, text and even video sometimes.

Within instagram, what I like to do is create collages of multiple photos, possibly add a filter and mess around with the look of the image and then add a caption that captures the concept of the collage. Some people also choose to use hashtags to emphasize their feelings about the picture that they have just posted. Its a way of sharing photos with your friends though multimedia.

Week Seven

Here is my screencast! I was a little nervous about technical difficulties and stuff but it ended up working out really easily. Screencast-O-Matic is a very cool tool. 

http://screencast-o-matic.com/watch/c2nZD0no38

Week six

Our assignment this week was to take the challenge described in the Maryland Media Study. We were supposed to spend an entire day without networked media. That meant no phone, internet or other networked media device. Unfortunately for my job I have to use the phone and the internet and I work most nights of the week. The one day I don't work is reserved for homework and I am currently working on a research project. All this really did make me realize how consistently I am on networked media. So, with that said. It was absolutely impossible for me to complete this challenge. I did want to give it a try though so I set Wednesday as the day since I didn't have work until 4pm. I told myself that from the moment that I woke up in the morning to when I went to work I would stay off of networked media. It was definitely difficult. I had to hide my phone to keep myself from cheating and turn the internet off on my computer so that there was no way I could break down and do it. I had to stay very busy that day. I realized what a time filling just looking at my phone is. Anytime I am bored or not doing anything I go through my phone and do the same routine: check messages, check email, check instagram, look at Facebook for a little bit and then either check the weather or how my stocks are doing.

This challenge definitely made me more creative with my time. I cleaned my house and packed for a trip that still wasn't happening for two days. I took a walk down the beach, which is something that I should definitely strive to do more often since I will probably never get the chance to live this close again for a while if ever.

When I finally broke the media barrier I was at work so it actually wasn't very exciting and by the time I got back to my computer late that night, the shock from not going on the internet for so long had already worn off. It was a very interesting and enlightening experience that made it glaringly apparent how attached I am to all of the features that my smart phone has to offer.

Week Five

Right now we are working on the photoshop project. I have spent the week trying to think of what my theme will be to tie my photos together. It wasn't until I started working on my Tagxedo image that I figured out what my theme was. I lost my grandpa this year, just a couple months ago, and I was out of the country when it happened. I didn't get the chance to go to his memorial with the rest of my family since I was still in Argentina, so I never had a chance to celebrate him properly. I feel like this project gives me the perfect opportunity to finally celebrate him. I had already made a "c" with my letter photo completely randomly and luckily that will be easy to apply to this theme. His last name was "Casby" and that is my middle name so it represents how we are related. Then for my meme I can either do something about baseball or sailboats because those were his two passions. I decided on my theme when I realized that I could use taxgedo to turn all of the words that I think of when I think of my grandpa into the shape of a sailboat. I think that Tagxedo is such a cool program. I didn't even know that it existed before this class so it is another great example of a great tool that this class introduced me to. I am very excited to keep working on this project.