Week 2 Reflection

Last week was a good week. By that, I mean that I was able to complete my research and I have learned so much from it, more than I had expected. Before this project, I hadn't thought too much about how diverse the ideas on apathy and society were. I went into this project with a pre-existing idea of why I thought apathy existed, how affected people, what to do etc. I honestly thought that most of the research that I was going to do would just confirm or reinforce the ideas that I had already thought of myself. I was shocked when I heard or read some of the completely different ideas were out there. Not to say that I completely agree with all of them, but I think that this research has helped me to remember to have an open mind of the different ideas and theories of other people. Hearing some of these ideas that were contrasting to mine also helped me to rethink why I believed in what I believed in and to consider different points of view.

My main task for this week has been to work on the video. Upon my first look at after effects, I was a little bit intimidated by all of the different buttons and gadgets that were available to me. I tried a number of different methods when it came to learning how to use it, but I found that the best way for me was to simply practice and try things out. My main "teacher" for this editor (After Effects) was assorted Youtube clips with step by step instructions on how to do things as well as different variations and approaches to different techniques. I found that as I learned new things, I had a lot more fun doing my video.

     I think that the hardest part of making the video is just figuring out what to put in the video itself. I used cue cards to map out all of the possible scenes and then organized, added, and deleted cards as I saw the need to. I tried to incorporate all of my research on apathy and leadership into the video, but it was pretty difficult! I had some challenges deciding what was best to keep and what I shouldn't. I think that my indecisiveness came mostly from my desire to make the video the best that it can possible be. While it isn't a bad thing to take your time to make decisions, I think that there is a certain point when you need to draw the line and decide. In the end, I came up with a video outline that I think delivers my message well, even if it is a little bit cheesy ;)

Now, I am working on the animating of the video. While it has not been too difficult, it is very time consuming. I think that I need to be careful to manage my time wisely so that I will have time to complete it well.

Week 1 Reflection

I have decided to write this out as a post on the blog, despite the fact that my proposal stated that I would be using a journal. I do have a journal with my reflections in it, but with all of my scribbles and arrows, it isn't very easy to read. If you would like, I can post pictures for you to see, but for now I am just planning to write out my "good copy", here.

     I would like to start with the fact that I am very excited about this project. I know this will be our last one, and I am hoping to do something with my project that will make it a good ending to this course. As I mentioned in my proposal, my project is on the apathetic mentality of our society.

      For our proposals, I really enjoyed the new format that we tried, where we were able to pitch our project to a mini group. This more formal setting helped me to take the pitch more seriously and to put some preparation and thought into my pitch. Not to say that our proposal conference didn't require any planning, but the it did seem less formal. However, one of my favourite parts about the conference was the question and comment period after. Admittedly, I was a little bit nervous about this as I wasn't sure what questions would be asked or how I should answer them. Also, Ms Morrisette was in my group, which is pretty intimidating in itself ;). I didn't end up presenting due to an appointment that I had that day, but I learned a lot from watching other people answer questions. Some of the questions that my classmates were asked were difficult, and what I learned by watching people answer them was how to remain calm and take some time to think out a logical answer instead of scrambling for words and filling pauses with "um" and "uh".

     When it came time for my own presentation, I was less nervous than I had been the other day because I had an idea of how it would be. Nonetheless, there were certain questions that made me think for a little bit. I found that my challenge was not necessarily not having an answer, but not knowing how to fully articulate it. Ultimately, it is something that I still struggle with a little bit today. I think that the solution (or something that helps at least) is just practice and as I mentioned before, to just try and think through your thoughts a moment before you say them.

     This week I have started with research component of my project. I have seen a numerous amount of TED talks (eg. Simon Sinek: Start with Why, Dave Meslin: Antidote to Apathy), as well as read multiple articles in books and online. I was a little bit surprised at how many new things that I got from the things that I had already read or seen before. As an example, I have seen this particular Simon Sinek talk multiple times before (both in class and at home) and wasn't expecting too much out of it. However, I ended up noticing many things that I hadn't necessarily payed close attention to before. I was curious as to why this was. Did I just not pay too much attention before or was there another reason? Admittedly, as I repeatedly watched this video throughout my school year, I began to lose interest in it, so this could have been part of the reason. I think that the main reason though, was because I had a different mindset when I was watching the video this time. When I was doing my research, I was specifically looking for ways to make my video more persuasive, inspiring, interesting etc. So when I saw all of the different ways that Simon Sinek's ideas could apply directly to my video, I looked deeper and more intensely into the video than I had previously.

    I haven't yet started with the actual making of my video, but I plan to start later in the week. I am excited, though a bit anxious, to see how it will turn out.

Project 2 Presentation

As I have mentioned before, I had decided to try a new method of presentation called kinetic typography. I hope that you enjoy and feel free to leave questions and comments. Thank you!

PS. Sorry about the minute of blank video at the end :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH5he4fdaw8&feature=youtu.be

Project 2 Process

Project Proposal

http://talissasprojectdesignblog.blogspot.ca/2014/06/project-proposal-2.html

Research
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NPiDVfvCEYMH0PBmj2QmBm1XAp8j4yAamOy-o4Mv1Js/edit?usp=sharing

Rubric
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b9VOduRbK-KiHFlzXFLFno4RIs8FQo8xp-Qlpkaq_Hg/edit?usp=sharing

Pictures From Process

These photos show the video layout plan. There are 3 different versions that I came up with. I ended up choosing the middle one.

Final Weekly Reflection

1. My first big "take away" was keeping calm when things go wrong. I've mentioned this multiple times in previous posts, but I am what you would call a perfectionist. When issues came up in the editing of our video, I'm not going to lie- I was pretty panicked. Thankfully, Andrew was very calm in all of these situations and his attitude encouraged me to stop worrying and focus on coming up with solutions. Being stressed when things go wrong doesn't help me to come up with solutions, and likely doesn't help the people that you are working with either (haha, sorry Andrew). This lesson will hopefully improve my collaboration skills, so that I can more effectively work with others (and on my own) to problem solve in the future.

     My second biggest learning was in my communication skills. We both had some miscommunications during our time working with each other. One example was when Andrew thought that we were presenting our project to only our class, while I was under the impression that we were presenting to another class as well. Thankfully, we caught it in time, otherwise this could have lead to other issues down the road. I think that we were both a little bit surprised that we had had such a miscommunication. We talked quite a bit, and thought that we were both on the same page. So how had we ended up having such different ideas of what we were doing? I think that this happened because when we talked, we would discuss what we were doing or where we were going without double checking to make sure that we had both come to the same conclusion or that we had heard everything correctly. This mistake helped us both to remember to clarify and confirm our plans in the future. I think that this will not just help me in future projects, but whenever I am talking with other people in general.

2.One of our biggest challenges was definitely during the editing of our video. We were using a new editor that neither of us were familiar with, so we didn't anticipate some of the little "quirks" that it had. To name a couple examples, it wouldn't accept certain images and it had a very large watermark that appeared in the middle of the published video. The second issue was pretty easy to solve. We were able to find a solution relatively easily. However, the first issue required a little bit more thinking. We had to consider all of our options (eg. changing the format, not including the images at all etc) and try and choose the one that would be best for our project. In the end, we decided that the images were essential to the video and Andrew used another software to convert the file into one that would be acceptable to our editor. I learned a bit about how to convert files and what to do in this sort of situation, but beyond that I learned about finding creative solutions to issues instead of just "googling" what to do. Although it was a bit nerve wracking at the time, I am very glad that we got to work through all of our issues together because it will be a great help in future problem solving.

3.

a) During our "Dream it" stage, I think that we worked fairly well. We came up with our proposal very efficiently and collaborated equally throughout. When it comes to the quality of our proposal, I think that it was pretty good for the most part. We were missing a couple of small things (eg. how we were going to document our process),but once it was pointed out, it was easily added. Other than that, our proposal was fairly detailed and had some good thought and depth in it.

b) For the "Do it" stage, we had both good and bad moments. We got our research done ahead of schedule and we found it to be thorough and complete as well. However, after that we did get a little bit distracted and didn't make as much progress as we should have in the next few days, but we did get back on track once we realized how much time we were wasting. During this process, we did have a few communication errors (mainly regarding the method of presentation), but thankfully they were caught before any major setbacks occurred. I found that we worked very well together as partners and I learned a lot from working with Andrew!

c) As I mentioned in my last post, I have looked back to find that a lot of my reflections are more a description of what I did with some reflections mixed into it. Although I don't necessarily think that it's a bad think to recount what you did, I would have liked to see more reflection involved. Something that I have also noticed about my reflections is the length. Again, this isn't a bad thing as long as I remember quality over quantity (which I don't always, but I'm working on it :)) However, the length has allowed for most of my reflections to be very detailed and thorough. The "reflection" parts of my reflections were generally pretty thoughtful. I know I put my best effort in all of my reflections.

d) The video in our presentation was not as good as we would have hoped. It had multiple issues with it that resulted in it not being as convincing as we had planned (eg. watermark, mismatched speech). Once the video was done, we did a better job with the prezi portion. Our prezi looked pretty good and for the most part we had our presentation memorized. We looked pretty at ease while we were presenting, though I think that a few of our points were a little bit confusing and could have been made clearer. However, I think that the best part of presentation was the discussion afterwards. I liked how we both had equal opportunity to answer questions. I find that it is sometimes hard to equally divide an unplanned portion of a presentation, but I think that we did it pretty well. Thinking about the answers that we gave, for the most part we answered the questions well. Although not every answer was perfect, I know that we tried to the best of our abilities to give complete and detailed answers for each question. I also liked how we kept the focus on our project instead of trailing off ( though not all tangents are bad) because it helped us to be able to answer as many questions about our project as possible.

e) When I think about our original purpose for the project, which was to bring awareness to the influence in media, I feel that we accomplished what we set out to do. Did everything turn out exactly the way we had planned? No, but I think that the details of what we did matter less (though not unimportant) as long as we fulfilled our intention. All of the challenges that we had along the way helped us to learn and grow from our mistakes so that we could do better in the future. 

Maker Faire?

Hi Talissa
Hope you get to the Maker Faire and if you do take pictures so I can see what it is all about!

Have a great weekend!

Ms Lees

Project Proposal #2

What:

      The topic of my project is the  "I don't care" or apathetic mentality of today's society. For the first part, I plan to do some research on what it is, why it exists, and how it affects today's society. I already have a few books in minds that would help me with my research (eg. Free the Children by Craig and Marc Kielburger) as well as a handful of TED talks and videos.

    I am trying a new method of presenting my research to the class. Thinking back to last semester's English class, I remember one student doing their genius hour project on kinetic typography. This is essentially the coordination of animated words to an audio of a  preset presentation. When I saw the result of his project, it looked very professional and clean, as well as interesting to watch. I plan to use Adobe After Effects to create this video, which I have already downloaded.

Why:

       I am passionate about this topic because I think that this mentality is at the root of a lot of the issues within today's society. Issues such as the environment (just as an example) are worsened because people don't think that it will affect them of they don't think that they can make a difference. Therefore, if we were to try and change this, it would help improve a lot of different aspects of our community and society.

I chose to do a kinetic typography video because it is something that is new and it's something that I am interested in trying. I think that it is something that is creative and has the ability to engage people in a way that is different to typical presentation methods.

Documentation
     I am going to record my process in a journal/scrapbook. I will do my weekly reflections inside it and post pictures of it on my blog. 

Timeline:

Research will be done in the first 2-3 days. In the remaining days, I will work on my presentation.