Project 2: Final Draft

project description:

How do you invasion the rhetorical situation for this project? What is the purpose? Who is the audience? What are relative aspects of the context?

The purpose for this project is to enlighten people or refresh people’s memory on what digital writing is.  Since the professor mentioned showing this audio postcard around for next year the main audience will most likely be students who are interested in taking the course during it’s next offering.  Another smaller audience could be someone enrolled in another digital writing course who is simply surfing the internet looking for outside sources.  In the end the largest audience for this project is going to be students.

Describe at least 3 ways in which you edited the image you used for your audio postcard.

To start off I decided to edit the image using Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, which is similar to PhotoShop Express Editor except Adobe PhotoShop Elements offers more options as far as photo editing goes.  The first way I edited my photo was by using an effect called ‘photo stacking,’ which takes a single photo and breaks it into several smaller snapshots to make it resemble a collage.  Next, I used another effect option called ‘blur’ to help the image fall into the background.  The final way I edited the image was by adding text.  The text was able to stand out thanks to the ‘blur’ effect because it kept the background image from being too busy.

What elements of your audio postcard were you required to provide some form of citation. How did you cite it? Why does that citation format best meet the needs of your rhetorical situation?

First, I had to find an image that allowed for remixing so I used Compfight to locate the image.  I was then required to give credit to the original owner of the image and I gave credit to the owner in the description of the YouTube video.  The citation was as simple as a link to the original photo that I found on Flickr.  In this case since I did not actually make a movie and used a still image I felt that including the citation in the project description worked best rather than throwing in another image at the end to include the citation.

Why and how do at least 3 aspects of your audio file (at least one of which must be an aspect of the audio/aural nature of the file) meet the rhetoric situation?

The rhetoric situation for this project is to teach and inform the audience.  The first way the audio file meets this aspect is by providing the audience with a general definition of what digital writing is.  Second, the audio file provides examples of digital writing which helps the audience draw a connection with the definition.  The third way the audio file meets the rhetoric situation is because it is straight forward.  The audio is not crowded with a bunch of background noise that may distract the audience.

Why and how do at least 3 aspects of your image (at least one of which much be an edited aspect of the image) meet the rhetorical situation?

One of the purposes of the project was to possibly gather interest for the course next time it was offered so the image meets this by being eye catching.  The bright colors and zig zag lines draw the viewer’s eyes and makes them interested in what is going on.  Another way the image helps the situation is by representing the writing in the digital world.  Digital writing is everywhere and sometimes has no rhyme or reason, which can be seen in the blurred lines in the image.  The last way the image meets the situation is how it was edited.  I used the ‘blur’ option to tone it down a bit in order to add the phrase “Digital Writing” so that the audience would have an idea of what the image was dealing with.

reflective letter:

What are you most proud of in the entire project?

Honestly the entire project is something I am proud of, but if I have to narrow it down to one thing it would have to be adding the audio to the image.  I’ve had some practice with editing images before so it was really neat to be able to add the audio along with the image.

What do you wish you had time to further expand, include, or revise in the project?

Overall I felt the project turned out well, but if I would have had more time I probably would have worked more on the editing of the image.  Although the image did turn out well I feel like I still could have done more to get it up to par.

What technologies did you use to complete this project? Why were they appropriate?

For the audio I used Audacity which was really easy to understand and made recording the audio clip simple.  I used Adobe PhotoShop Elements 11 to edit the image.  I went with this version of PhotoShop because it offered a few more options for photo effects than PhotoShop Express Editor, but wasn’t overwhelming like the full version of PhotoShop was.  To put the audio together with the image I used iMovie because I was able to find easy to follow instructions on YouTube about how to convert and upload the project when I was finished.

When did you get stuck while working on the project? How did you overcome your problem?

I ran into problems when it came time to actually editing my image.  I had all of these great ideas, but when it came down to actually making them work I had some issues.  Ultimately in order to get over this little speed bump I just explored the options offered within the program until I had the image edited close to what I originally had in mind.

What did you learn about yourself as a digital writer?
Discuss at least three of the course outcomes you feel you worked towards with this assignment. Provide evidence of your learning by pointing to specific aspects of the project.

The main course outcome that was addressed was appropriation, which requires one to remix content.  This outcome was satisfied because the main part of the project was to find an image with a creative commons license and edit, or remix.

 

 

Original Image

Remixed Image

 

 

 

The next course outcome addressed during this project was multitasking, which means having the ability to see what’s going on and focus on the most important details. This outcome was an important one because during almost every aspect of the project I was working on more than one thing.  When I was selecting an image I was thinking about how to edit it, and then when I was editing a photo I was thinking about how to add text onto the image.

The third and final course outcome that was touched on while working on this project was networking because I was required to look into outside sources to find programs to use and also to find tutorials on how to use the programs of choice.

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