http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7960789
I knew that this class was going to be a challenge for me; however, its real challenge struck me on the first day of class. I knew that I wasn’t too savvy with new digital media, but my classmates made me feel as though I should have never stepped foot in the classroom. Blogs…I had never blogged in my life or heard of any of the sites that everyone was discussing. For one of the first times in my life I felt completely speechless, like I had nothing intelligent to contribute to the conversation. But, I wasn’t about to back down from this challenge. I had goals that I planned to achieve in this multimodal course before it was over–not only for my Publishing major but also for my own personal skills with new technologies. Unfortunately, I don’t think I got as much out of this class as I could have to my health issues throughout the semester. This greatly affected my contribution toward the final project. I felt slightly left out and not very useful throughout the process of creating this project due to my long absence. This was upsetting to me because I really needed the experience to better accomplish my goals. I did learn some things through group mates and other classmates, however. As a publishing major, it is extremely important to be familiar with several different types of media in order to be more successful, which is one of the reasons why I signed up for this course. I new that my knowledge of new technologies was not up-to-par, so I hoped that by taking this class I would be able to better work with different medias, such as creating websites, creating video and audio clips, giving more interesting presentations of material, and, finally, how to edit all of these materials to make them the most effective for the viewing audience. Although I’m no expert now, I have worked with so many new and different programs that I feel so much more experienced and knowledgeable involving these new media technologies. One reason that I really enjoyed this class is because it was very similar to another class that I greatly enjoyed–visible rhetoric. I really liked seeing the rhetorical effects of multimodal pieces, which are extremely effective since they hit almost all of your senses at once. This importance of rhetoric later showed in our final project when we analyzed the Levi’s commercial for its effect on consumers. I thought that this course fit well with the mass communications classes that I’m taking in that I feel as though this rhetoric uses the art of persuasion, like advertisements and commercials. With an upcoming internship for Country Financial in public affairs, this art of persuasion will be important to attract consumers in commercial scripts, on the web page, in press releases, and any other marketing devices. The best thing that I thought we did throughout this class was observing several different kinds of multimodal pieces. I appreciated this, first of all, because I didn’t really know what a multimodal composition was, and second of all, because it showed how using multiple forms of media can be effective for certain purposes. This has become even more apparent to me ever since we began our pitches for the final project. Hearing everyone’s ideas and how they wanted to execute their purpose was completely intriguing and really opened my eyes to creativity. I feel that this class has affected my creativity. I used to be creative in writing–making up stories and characters–but now I have a more practical and useful creativity using new technology to reach a mass audience. As much as I hate to admit it…writing fiction is not as appreciated these days…most people hardly touch a book nowadays. So, I’m glad that I have learned new ways to present my creativity in a fashion that will be of interest to this generation. I’m also happy that I have learned to use new technologies–things that I have never heard of before, such as prezi and Google docs. Even though I am not a master of these programs, the fact that I know that they exist and how to at least get started with them only aids my creativity for any further projects that I pursue in my life. And, finally, I’m impressed with how I am trying to portray this reflection. I wanted to just write an essay style piece and leave it at that, but I knew that that would not be the most interesting thing. However, I didn’t want to reach too far beyond my limits, so I picked a program, such as this, that interested me and learned the basics and decided to use it in order to present this portfolio reflection. I’m very impressed with my progress in this class, yet I wish that my illness did not take away from so much time that I could have been in the class and working with my group. I found it very difficult to fit in with my group members and really contribute because I had been gone so long and there was a lack of communication and information to me while I was away from campus. If I had any regrets from this class it would have been when I missed because missing so much time from the final project really took away some great learning experiences as well as leadership and group work opportunities. All in all, I thought it was an interesting class that really kept me on my toes and kept my critical and creative thinking skills in full force.
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