Reflecting on Digital Writing

It's been an exciting, troubling, inspiring, and exhausting two weeks! The first week flew by with an enormous amount of new information being thrown my way. I was really excited about this class because I knew I wasn't up on all the new technologies that I could utilize both in and out of the classroom.

Our focus seemed to really be on how we could utilize these technologies within the classroom. However, I soon realized that I was focusing more on learning the software than expanding it for that use. I felt like I was being consumed with the technologies rather than the applications of those technologies. I've had conversations with other colleagues about this very issue. How much time do we devote to teaching the technology versus teaching the application? I've heard arguments that our youth is much more adept at the technology and we over estimate the time that might be involved in teaching the technology. I've also heard the argument that the youth only know certain aspects of technology and some software applications that we might employ would not be familiar to them. For instance, I wonder how many have used Garage Band or iMovie?

I truly don't think I've come any closer to an answer to these questions. When it came to certain software, such as Movie Maker and Audacity, I found them lacking in ease of use and features. I have talked about my struggles with this in other blog posts and on my Wiki. I have a feeling that I would need to adjust my approach to teaching with technology depending on the classroom I find myself in. For instance, I would have to adjust depending on what technology is available to my students and the age and experience of those students (I am certified to teach middle and high school English and also at the collegiate level).

I have a feeling that after I have time to digest all the information I've been exposed to and learned over the past two weeks, I'll be able to put it all in better perspective. I want to make that transition of learning the technology to applying it.

I want to send a heartfelt thank you to all my fellow students and instructors who were in this course with me. I was surrounded by people who were eager to learn from one another and it was a great atmosphere! Thank you all!

Last Saturday I spent 5 hours at my great-aunt Rita's house. She's my grandpa's older sister and has been a big part of my life since I can remember. She's 93 years old, still lives at home by herself, only takes one medication, and refuses to put air conditioning in her home. I've been checking on her through this extreme heat, but every time I ask her if she's alright she says, "Oh, this heat don't bother me none." And she means it. She's the toughest woman I've ever known. I got some good stories from her, but the best part was going through a boot box of very old pictures. I had planned on joining her story with my grandpa's for my digital story. I soon realized that I would have too much to put together for that to happen for this project. I'm planning to create another digital story for her later. I was able to get over 50 pictures from her, many of my grandpa that I was able to use for his digital story.

She was able to fill in a few of my questions left over from my grandpa's interview. I asked her why he wanted to get an education and work across the country. She said that back then people just went where the jobs were. Back then, there weren't many jobs in this area and people went where they had to. For many, that included the Civilian Conservation Corp. and military.

Their older brother, Bill, also went into the military. I knew that he was stationed in Pearle Harbor when it was bombed and that he never really talked about that time. She said he was saved that fateful day because he didn't go to breakfast that morning. Uncle Bill passed away a few years ago and I wish I could have spoke to him like I am Rita and grandpa. I didn't see him much growing up. I always remember him being very soft spoken, but would hear mumblings about his wilder days. He was in the military for 20 years and she had many pictures from his time in Hawaii and Japan. Here are a few that I thought were pretty neat.

 Waikiki Beach

 

  Bill on Golden Gate Bridge   1938

Bill - Tample Kobe, Japan  1956

My sister and I are going back to Rita's tomorrow to get more stories and go through more pictures. Rita said that she has many more boxes full of pictures and I'm really excited to see what we can find tomorrow. It was like a treasure hunt or gambling last week because I never knew what I was going to find next. I'll keep you all updated on the journey I'm taking with my family history/story.

Interviewing Grandpa

I was able to interview grandpa this afternoon. As I mentioned in an earlier post, his health isn't very good. He has someone staying with him 24/7 at his home because he's too weak to take care of himself. However, I talked with him for an hour and a half about his life and then we looked at some pictures after that. He can certainly still carry on a good conversation.

I tried to ask questions that would lead to a story for my digital writing piece. Of course, I've always loved listening to grandpa's stories, but I really wanted to find a purpose this afternoon. I wanted to know more about the hows and whys of his life. He's very hard of hearing and I have a feeling that half the time he just guesses at what you're saying but we got by. The longer I was talking with him the more I realized that the answers I hoped to learn were not going to come. He talked about what he did but not the why. I heard a lot of stories about where he traveled, what he'd seen, and stories about his friends. The friend stories is when he really lit up. He would laugh at the situations him and his friends would get into and that's when I started to really think about what's important.

Is it really important or a big mystery why he sought out education and left his home in order to make a living? Maybe. But I started thinking about my own life and the memories that I cherish. It's not the work that I've done that truly touches me. Don't get me wrong. I take some pride in a few of my accomplishments I've had over the years, but I have a deeper connection with the memories of family and friends. It could be the most pointless story like the time in high school when I was driving a couple of my friends around town and my car horn got stuck. I will still laugh hysterically at the whole incident, but really there was no great meaning to it in my life. It's just a great memory that I made with a couple of great friends.

So now I'm thinking I need to refocus my digital story as one that deals with relationships and why they are so important in our lives. I'm not sure. I'm going to talk to my Aunt Rita on Saturday morning. I know that she'll be more clear when I ask her specific questions just because I think she's in better health than grandpa is and she'll understand more of where I'm coming from. Maybe my digital story should be about my journey to find out more about these two important figures in my life and what I've learned. Yes. I think that might be where this heads.

This morning's freewriting

Here's this morning's freewrite. Don't judge my chasing rabbits or bad grammar or no paragraphs. This is a freewrite people. So it was very hard for me to sleep last night because I kept thinking about what I was going to do with my photo essay. I went home and found a program on my home PC that is a movie maker program. I played with it for a short time and realized that it was much easier than programs I worked on yesterday. So I'm excited about trying more things with it. Unfortunetly I can't bring the program to work on here at school this week. I listened to the audio recordings of my Aunt Rita that my sister sent to me. They were good but not really what I was hoping for as far as a direction for my story. I have about 100 different ways I could go with it and I've got to narrow it down. I want to talk about how she's lived here her entire life except for a small portion during WWII when she lived in California and picked fruit in the orchards. Her brother, my grandpa, is 90 but in much worse shape than she is. He had a very different life. He's lived everywhere during his life and has many more cultural experiences. I started thinking how it would be neat to do a two perspective piece about the Ozarks, the U.S., something like that. I believe he has a master's degree. He worked as an oceanography in the Navy and helped put the first satelite in space. Rita graduated high school but never had additional education. She worked on the farm. She's an avid reader to this day and I would never consider her to be any less intelligent than grandpa. It would especially be neat to show the two perspectives of a brother and sister. Two paths that started out in the same place and time but took very different routes in life. The one thing that strikes me with grandpa, which I've never asked him before, is why, after living everywhere, did he and grandma move back here. I understand family is here but they had lived away for so long, weren't they used to the distance? Grandpa gets confused about things but it seems like when he talks about the past he's pretty clear about the memories. I really need to narrow down what I'm going to do. Do I want audio recordings? Do I just want photos? I'm pretty sure I'll do my own voiceover. The ligistics will be interesting to try and figure out since I've never done anything like this before. I think I'll go to Rita's Sunday and do a little interview and see what I can find out. Then next week I'll try to go to grandpa's and see how he's feeling and see what I can find out from him. Exciting stuff.

5 Frame Photo Essay

I was excited about starting this project this morning. I took pictures of my alarm clock at 6:38 a.m., my breakfast cereal, the traffic coming to school, Siceluff Hall where my class is, and my classroom. I had a difficult time finding a photo editing software that worked properly. I tried PhotoLive (a Windows-based program). No success. Then I signed myself up for a Flikr account. That wasn't much better. I couldn't really manipulate my slideshow or figure out how to do it. Kathy tried to help me, but like most people in this class, she's a Mac person and wasn't used to Flikr either. It looks as though I'm going to have to broaden my horizon and join the Mac frenzy that seems to be happening all over campus. I reverted to PowerPoint because I felt as though I didn't have the time to really learn Flikr in order to make something today. PowerPoint is fine, and I ended with a SHORT essay that definitely could be better but I think I have a better understanding of the time I'm going to have to put into making this something I'm proud of.

I did get an idea from watching two of the photo essays in class. I've been wanting to do something like this for my Aunt Rita who is 93 or 94 and now I'm obtaining the knowledge and some of the tools I will need to make it happen. I texted my sister, who has audio recordings of my aunt talking to us about things that have happened in her life. She texted them from her iPhone and now I'm in the process of trying to convert them into a format that I can manipulate. Wish me luck because this is about to send me over the edge! I went to login to the Mac computer and it wouldn't let me. After 3 times and then another student trying her login, she saw on the whiteboard that the computer I chose was the only one in the probably 30 computers that wouldn't work! And I'm supposed to switch to Macs why?

I'm excited about my photo essay assignment and plan to really work with this new technology. I think I just need to step back for a minute and realize that it's not going to come without some pain and discomfort on my part. However, it will definitely be worth it!

Podcasting 101

I attempted my first podcast today. I had to first download Audacity to my notebook in order to have the ability to record and edit an audio recording. I then had to download something else so that I could save my Audacity file as an MP3 file. The actual recording and interview went pretty smoothly once I got what I needed downloaded. I'll definitely have to practice on my editing skills. I really didn't have much time to play around with that aspect. At this point I'm also still trying to upload my podcast to the class Wiki. We'll see how that turns out soon....It has now been uploaded to the Wiki. This was actually an easy process after I logged myself into the Wiki and dealt with my computer locking up on me.

We both loved learning/using new software. Amanda used Garage Band for the Mac, whereas, Audacity is for PC users (i.e. me).

Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my first blog post! I've been trying to come up with something really cool or inspiring or fun to talk about for my first post, but I've come up empty. I think I'll just talk about a couple of things that have been on my mind.

First of all, you should know that I love sports and the Olympics have always been a favorite event for me. It's not just that it's the only time that we really get to watch different sports like swimming, diving, gymnastics, and track and field, though that is definitely one of the reasons. I like the camaraderie that not only the United States has, but the rest of the world has with each other. I always feel like no matter what else is going on in the world this is a time when we all cheer for greatness, no matter where a person is from. Granted, we always want our home country athletes to win, but that isn't always going to happen. The news media are good at covering the inspiring stories of more than just the Americans and I find myself rooting for others as well.

All of this being said, this week it was announced that the American uniforms for the Olympics were made in China, not the United States. How can this be?? I mean do we not have enough confidence in our own manufactures here to trust them with this task? Would it really benefit the economy to send it to China, so we don't have to pay as much for the production? I just don't get it! Where is our national pride? I'm not against China in any way; I'm just flabbergasted that the one event that should portray our nation's pride has been tarnished by some idiot who wanted to save a buck!

So, I'll get off my high horse now and focus on what my next week looks like. I'll be taking a course in digital writing, hence my blog. Needless to say, I'm very excited to explore the world of digital writing! I'd consider myself a very novice user in this area, but I'm hoping to expand my knowledge over the next two weeks. I hope you'll enjoy reading about my journey as well.