Dawn's Portfolio

English 117: Arguing on the Internet

When I first registered for ENGL117, I was intrigued by its promise of analysis on online discourse. All the English classes that I had previously taken were focused almost exclusively on books. This English class seemed different and more relevant to my daily life. I consumed a lot of writing on the internet, and I wanted to have a better understanding of how to create compelling rhetoric for the online space. I also wanted to understand the differences in strategies used between different forms of media. 

On the first day of class, I looked at the syllabus and felt a bit overwhelmed. I knew that I had little to no technical skills that would be helpful for assignments such as creating memes and gifs. As far as audio essays and podcasts, I had heard of audacity but never used it personally. Although I was a bit nervous, I was also excited to expand my skill set. 

This class taught me lessons in collaboration, adaptability, and patience.

My definition of collaboration has changed as a result of the projects that I did. I started to see collaboration in everything. My previous definition of collaboration was limited to direct, reciprocal relationships. However, now I see how people's work is often built upon that of others, especially online. I think that using someone else's format, a clip of them, or receiving feedback from them all constitute as collaboration. 

I learned a lot about how to adapt to various forms of media over the course of this class. It is easiest for me to express myself through words. After all, I've been doing that for almost all of my educational assignments for 14 years. But I had to push past my comfort zone, and learn how to express myself in other ways. I learned what strategies work best for textual media as opposed to auditory media as opposed to visual media. I learned to convey messages in all of those forms, and I think that this was really valuable. Being able to change how you communicate based on the situation is an essential skill that is difficult to teach and learn. 

I had to exercise a lot of patience throughout these projects. I did not anticipate how challenging this course would be for me. I'm not a very patient person. I tend to be someone who understands concepts with relative ease, and I typically pick up on things quickly. But, apparently, this does not extend to learning how to use computer programs as I found out this semester. I had to learn to be more patient and more understanding of myself. I had to give myself time and room to fail. I had to learn to be okay starting project over and to not be as frustrated when I was bad at something. 

Through completing these projects, I genuinely think that I grew as a person. 

---

Twitter Report

Our first assignment eased me into these new forms of media. Creating a blogpost was the closest thing to an essay that we did all semester. I had used Twitter before, but rarely. Nevertheless, I already had a Twitter account. Choosing a hashtag was hard simply because I was interested in so many things. For a brief moment, I used the hashtag #MondayMotivation because I wanted to see if it was truly full of motivating stories or if it was a hashtag primarily utilized by large companies to push their products. However, I decided that I wanted a more controversial hashtag. So, I chose the hashtag #Trump, hoping it would be divisive. 

Here is the spreadsheet where I collected and categorized Tweets. I also used this spreadsheet to create the graphs I used in my project

From that spreadsheet, I created a draft of my Twitter report. First I created a google doc where I put some of the main pieces of information. I then took that information and began creating my Twitter draft. I created and edited this draft over four days (based on the revision information). This is my first draft.

After I posted my draft, Professor Anderson gave me a paper copy of it with copy edits marked on it. These were primarily concerned with grammar and the way that I labeled my charts. I tried to edit my original draft but the website continually deleted my edits and would delete huge sections of work. I ended up creating a google doc with everything I wanted my final draft to contain. I then created a new posting.

This is my final report!

Between my rough draft and final draft, I adjusted the grammar, tightened up some sentences, and changed the wording in a few places. I also changed the descriptions of the charts and embedded a Tweet more neatly. 

This project taught me the value of patience. I spend probably three hours with all of my materials prepared and ready, simply unable to post them correctly. That was extremely frustrating. But that final moment when it all posted the way that I wanted it to, I felt incredible. I was so happy. Throughout this class, I would become very accustomed to this transition of feelings, from frustration to relief. 

This project also introduced me to the differences between online communication and typical essays. Through my analysis of Tweets, I learned that most included media in some form. The attached media was often intended to evoke emotion, add credibility, and to attract attention. I immediately applied this to my Twitter report when I included charts. I wanted mine to draw the eye of the viewer, to reinforce my ideas, and to put the information in an easily understandable form. I also was struck by the prevalence of pathos as the primary method of persuasion in Tweets. I was accustomed to most arguments being carried by logic or by the credibility of the author. But, it seemed as though on the internet, that was not the most efficient way to gain attention. 

---

Audio Essay

When we had the opportunity to create audio essays, I was immediately interested. I've listened to my fair share of youtube videos that are short, educational, and engaging. I was hoping that I would be able to create something similar. I knew early on that I wanted to do my audio essay on social media's effect on body image. I thought that this was an important topic and one that I could easily talk about for a long time. I have not personally struggled with body image issues, but I know a lot of people who have. I think that there's a stigma around admitting that social media negatively impacts you, and people are often quick to say that they are unaffected by the images that they spend all day looking at. I thought that it would be good to examine the effects of social media, even if they aren't obvious. 

I started to create my script but I didn't get far before realizing that I needed to first find additional audio clips to include. I wanted to form my script around the Youtube clips, instead of forcing them in awkwardly later. So, I found three clips and then wrote my script around them.

I then created my audio essay in audacity. I did this by recording myself speaking a section, then adding in the audio from a clip, then recording myself, etc. I included music at the beginning to ease the listener in, and I tried to keep the volume consistent across clips. I did not edit my voice very much. My housemate listened to me record my audio essay, and then listened to my play it back and said I sounded like one of those people on Youtube who taught educational concepts. I was surprised, but I didn't actually mind how it sounded. I also tried to record when my house was fairly empty and no one was cooking. So, there was minimal background noise. Here is a link to my draft:

The feedback that I received was that I should incorporate the same music at the end as I did at the beginning. So, I made that adjustment. Professor Anderson also played mine in front of the class. Hearing it played at that volume allowed me to really hear the inconsistences in the volume of the clips. So, I also went back through and really tried to edit it to make the volume more consistent. Additionally, I received feedback that some of the words were really fast. So, I slowed down some of the clips by adjusting the tempo (not the speed). I did not change the "speed" because that made all the voices a low pitch when I slowed them. I tried to do this really subtly, I didn't want it to be obvious that I slowed down some clips. Instead, I just changed them a little bit to make them slightly more reasonably paced. 

Here is my final audio essay:

This project opened my eyes to the differences between online forms of communication and classic forms of writing such as essays. I worked on adapting to convey information through an auditory form of media. I learned that people understand more, and are more engaged auditorily when sentences are shorter, and when there are not statistics or numbers included. I also learned that you have to work to keep an audience engaged by including other speakers. As someone who loves run-on sentences and numbers, this was a big shift for me. But it was a fun challenge. Being flexible in how you communicate is essential. Not only in more technical aspects like this, but also in aspects such as tone. 

I really enjoyed this project. I liked the amount of control I had over everything. I tend to obsess over details on assignments, so a project where that was a central aspect was nice. Also, making a project around something I felt passionate about made working on it feel less like work and more like something I did for fun. This taught me an important lesson - to really work hard to find something that I'm passionate about to base my projects around. My twitter report was fun, but I felt more engaged when I chose a topic that I really wanted to learn more about.

I did not directly collaborate with anyone for this project, but I did indirectly collaborate with three YouTubers. I used clips from three different people. I had to shape my project around their dialogue because I could not control what they said, and I wanted the narration to flow around the clips. I also had to put more work into editing due to the inclusion of their voices. However, it was definitely worth it. It made my audio essay more engaging and added credibility by including more perspectives. 

---

Podcast

Our next project was to create a podcast. I was looking forward to this project. When Amanda mentioned the possible topic of cancel culture, I was thrilled. Cancel culture was a topic that I could easily talk about for thirty minutes with one other person, talking with 5 people for 30 minutes seemed very do-able. 

We started by brainstorming subtopics and assigning them. This doc was our first effort at organizing this:

After that, we decided to flesh out the details a bit more in a new doc. We also decided to each talk about a specific example of canceling. In addition, we thought that it would be more engaging to have the later part of our podcast be more of a conversation. We included all of this in our final draft of our outline.

I also took a few notes regarding my specific person and section. I did not read straight off of this, but I did look at it before performing the podcast. 

The raw podcast that we recorded is here:

Reagan-AlexB-Amanda-Dawn-Dave

I was pleasantly surprised by my experience recording the podcast. I wasn't as stressed as I could have been, partially because of the conversational format of the podcast. Our group went first, and I was glad that we got it out of the way. The experience was very positive! It was cool to hear everyone's opinions. 

Editing the podcast draft was very difficult for me. Relinquishing some control, and accepting that I can't micromanage a 31-minute podcast with five people's voices was hard. I really tried to edit it and make everything perfect, to the extent that it took me five hours to edit the first six and a half minutes. I tried to cut out every like, um, kind of, etc. Any stumble over words or pause over .3 seconds I tried to remove. I tried to make the volume consistent across people, but this resulted in heightened background noise for some sections. It also resulted in strange moments of echo-ing. I reduced the background noise twice and it is still prevalent. I also cut out the silence at the beginning and end, and I faded the intro and outro music in and out respectively. 

I was struck by the difference between podcasts and audio essays. An audio essay is all your work and no one else's. That makes it easier to scrap ideas by deleting sections in post-production. Along with that, it is easier to quickly rerecord a section in an audio essay. Differently, with our podcast, we only had one shot to record it. This, by nature, decreases your control over it. Also, in a podcast, it is much harder to go back and edit sections to match volume and tone, in part because there is just so much material. Additionally, podcasts include so many voices that all speak numerous times. Thus, it is difficult to make sure that the volume of each person stayed consistent across the podcast. 

I learned that podcasts would be easier to edit if they are recorded with everyone equidistant from the microphone, or if everyone had their own mike. They should be recorded without an audience to reduce background noise, in a closed and isolated room. 

Doing the podcast allowed me to really see the value of collaboration. Everyone had their own perspective on cancel culture, and it was awesome to be able to utilize each person's perspective to make an engaging product. I really liked our finished product, and I'm glad that we chose something where we had differing opinions. Hearing one perspective or one voice for 30 minutes could easily be monotonous but we managed to avoid that. 

Creating a podcast also forced me to be adaptable. I had to be able to react to what people said on the fly. I also had to be okay with changing how I edited it. I wanted it to be as polished as an audio essay, however, the forms of media are simply different. Spending an average of 45 minutes editing one minute's worth of footage is simply not sustainable. 

---

App

The next project that I completed was creating an app, I made a weather app. I really enjoyed this project! The argument that my app delivers is that people use their phones unnecessarily. This is the first project that I did in which the message is implicit as opposed to explicit. The app does not lay out my argument point by point. Instead, the user uses the app to know what the current weather is. Throughout their use of the app, they realize that using their phone to see the current weather is illogical and pointless. 

My first draft of this was actually part of a daily assignment. It is a very rough draft, it's really just displaying the concept. 

For the draft that I submitted, I attempted to make the app look more official. Professor Anderson said that the more believable it was, the more effective it would be. So, I looked at a bunch of weather apps. I noticed blue color schemes were prevalent. So, I made a blue artboard along with pastel colors that I intended to use for lettering. 

Here is my draft 

The feedback I received after that draft was that I should remove the phone even more. Take the phone out of it altogether, and maybe add photos. Additionally, I was told to try and make it look even more official. So, I added a login button. I also made 3 separate paths based on the weather conditions the user selected. I also told people to select the photo of their wrist that was most accurate, taking the phone out of it completely (previously it instructed the user to select the condition of their phone that was the most accurate). 

This is my final app

I was really proud of my app. I liked the idea of sending an implicit message, and I liked the way that mine worked. I was surprised because I don't consider myself a particularly creative person, but this class allowed me to access that part of myself. I also don't consider myself artistic but I really enjoyed designing the aesthetic parts of this app. I also thought it was cool that I created my artboard using a color palette that I found online. I essentially collaborated with a stranger without them even knowing. The internet makes collaboration so easy, and it greatly enhanced what I was able to do with this project, and with other projects such as my audio essay. Overall, this project allowed me to experiment with implicit messaging and allowed me to truly be creative.

Creating an app allowed me to understand the importance of visual arguments in persuasion. Previously, I had primarily used words to communicate my ideas. But, my app would have been unsuccessful if I had been unable to convince the user that they were utilizing a real app. Thus, I had to present it in a professional manner. I tried to be cognizant of everything, down to the color and font choice. This was really different as normally I create essays in the generic, accepted format. MLA headers, size 12 Times New Roman font in black, no highlight, double spaced. But here I realized how influential visual elements were.

---

Memes

The next project that I did was creating three memes. I had been excited about this assignment since the beginning of the semester. I browsed Reddit's meme subpage for probably two or three hours to properly prepare. I thought that I should start by thinking about three ideas or events to make memes about and then figure out what format was best for those.

The first meme idea I had was to make a meme about a bad call made at club nationals against my team. The important context here is that our player was fouled on a throw, but it was completed so play continued and we continued to flow into the endzone then a player on the other team insisted the disc go back because our player didn't say "Play on". No one actually uses that rule...because it isn't even a rule. I knew that this meme would be really niche but I trusted that I could at some point explain it to Professor Anderson (which I did in my portfolio video). I wanted to mock the player who made the call. Thus, I easily decided to use the mocking Spongebob meme. 

This meme is characterized by the image of mocking Spongebob and a mix of upper and lower case letters. The words are coming from the person you are mocking. In this meme, the person saying, "But did you say play on" is being mocked. 

 

 

 

 

The next meme I created was a meta-meme. A meme about creating memes. I thought back to a class discussion we had about the creation of memes. Professor Anderson said that he had not realized how much memes were about sharing formats and jokes across the internet. I wanted to build on that idea of people all using the same format. So, I used the classic Drake meme format to do it.

 

The Drake format is broken up into two parts. The top image is accompanied by a phrase that is "bad" or "rejected". In this case, it's "creating your own meme format". The bottom image is the phrase that is "good" or "accepted". This is, "using a  preexisting format". I clearly borrowed this format, again driving home the point that most people borrow formats from others. 

 

 

 

For my last meme, I wanted to create an image based on a pun. I decided to create a meme based on my college team winning regionals last year and making Nationals. Nationals was located in round rock. I remembered that I had a cactus image downloaded from a prior class activity. Thus, I decided to use the pun "Cactus in Round Rock" (a play on "catch us in Round Rock").

I edited the image to put my teammates' heads on the cacti spikes and on some of the shrubbery. I then just put the pun in black text on the bottom of the image as a caption. 

I later chose this image to edit because I thought I could include another teammate's head, and I wanted to incorporate my coaches somehow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here you can see that I added my coach's faces overlaying the mountains. I also added another teammate's head onto the center cactus. I readjusted another person's head. Finally, this time I exported it with 256 colors to make it pop instead of the 64 I had previously used. 

 

 

 

 

I learned a lot from making memes. First and foremost, I learned how to use photoshop. Photoshop is still very challenging for me to use, but I think that I've learned a fair amount about it. It was so frustrating to know what I wanted to make and simply be unable to create it. I would look up tons of Youtube videos to learn about it, and still be confused an hour later. 

But I think that in the end, I was successful! My memes get their messages across and look how I want them to! This project reinforced the idea of mutual ownership on the internet. No one person "owns" a meme format. One person made it, and then thousands of other people created memes using the same format. It's collaborative, and it really is exciting to be a part of even for a short amount of time.

I also became acutely aware of the amount of information needed to fully understand a meme. I created some very niche memes that only 50-ish people would understand. People that aren't in the "in-group" simply lack enough information to even know what my meme is saying. There were times when I was browsing Reddit's meme subpage when I didn't understand the memes since I was in the "out-group." 

 

 

 

 

This is a meme that my classmate made about middle-aged women on Facebook who tend to ignore scientific evidence that contradicts their points. I really like this meme. It demonstrates how dismissive a lot of these people are. They don't even consider the evidence, they just hold strong to their own points. 

 

 

 

 

Creating memes allowed me to be creative. I could choose any format, or create my own, to express a joke or argument. This was really freeing and exciting. I had a lot of fun creating these images. However, it was also really hard for me. Photoshop is certainly not my strong suit, so I had to be patient. I tried out making a few other memes, and they just didn't end up the way that I wanted them to be. So, I decided to restart, and I'm really glad that I made that decision. I tend to fully dedicate myself to whatever I choose to do, so I never want to admit defeat by giving up. But sometimes it's better to be patient and not force a bad idea. I am working on learning that this is not the same as giving up. I was glad that this class gave me an opportunity to see that. Thus, this project definitely helped me learn the value of patience. 

---

GIFs

Our last project was creating GIFs! I was excited about this project but also nervous because I knew my photoshop skills were lacking. I was eventually able to create three GIFs. This process continued to force me to be patient. I knew what I wanted things to look like in my head, but getting that to translate through photoshop into an actual GIF was difficult. But it was definitely worth it!

My first GIF was the argument GIF. It shows Connect Carolina hitting someone with a blue square. The blue square is supposed to emulate the blue squares shown when classes are full when you try and register. This often catches students off guard because you think the class will be open, but right as you register so do hundreds of others and boom, classes become closed. This GIF was really hard for me to make. Trying to get the blue square to follow the punch was really difficult and took me hours. 

The second GIF I created is a screen capture of me creating an image of snails with chefs hats, with the caption slow cookers. I saw a meme with cooking turtles and a similar caption, so I wanted to create my own version. In that way, I collaborated with someone! I like that you can see the steps I went through to create the meme. It took me a long time practicing creating this image before I actually recorded myself doing it, I didn't want to mess up really badly in my GIF and I didn't want to take too long. In the end, I like the way this GIF turned out!

My last GIF was my creative expression GIF. I came across this really cool photo of an underwater scene and I wanted to add movement and change the color of the background. But because the fish was part of the original photo, it was incredibly hard to try and get the fish to move. So, instead, I just added more fish. It looks like it's just tracing the path of one fish. This is the GIF that I decided to edit. 

To revise my creative GIF, I decided to take the original idea and transform it. I created a GIF of a butterfly flying through a field of flowers. This takes the idea of moving an animal through a scene but actually makes it look significantly more realistic. Through this process, I learned that scrapping ideas and starting over is okay. I'm a really stubborn person, and I like to fully commit to the things that I do. But sometimes changing your idea to make it better is okay. 

Out of all my classmates' GIFs, I liked this one the most: http://altscholarship.com/argunet/node/277

It has the same effect that I wanted my creative expression GIF to have. But, hers is definitely more polished and looks cooler. It was really hard for me to come to terms with not being particularly good at Photoshop. Simple tasks take me so long, much longer than everyone else in the class. When Professor Anderson would ask if everyone was at the same point as the class activity, I was almost never there. It just took me so, so long. It's hard to not compare my GIFs with those my classmates created. But you can't compare art, and I suppose that the essence of a creative expression GIF is art.

Even though not having grades in ENGL117 is really stressful for me, I think that that helps foster a less competitive atmosphere and one that is more focused on collaboration. I asked a lot of my classmates for help during class on photoshop, and they were really helpful. 

---

Comments

Leaving and receiving comments was helpful because it allowed me to reflect on my own work by reflecting on others. It was also helpful in terms of understanding readings and getting out the most important details from them. I would read the article, create my own response, then read over my classmates' posts. If I wanted to revisit an article, I often would read over my own comment and those of my classmates again instead of re-reading the whole article. This is another way that I indirectly collaborated with my classmates. 

Here are links to all the pages that I commented on:

Gif argument:https://giphy…

twitter analysis

Daniel:

first attempt

From Print to Audio

(No subject)

Topic: The Role of Social…

tweets

trying to make a gif

Pizzagate

Clips for Cancel Culture

Thing to avoid, things to emmulate ((*emulate))

image

https://xd.adobe.com/view…

Baby We Were Born To Tweet - Response

Photoshop + article

flower

Analyzing "The Hashtag is Ruining English Language"

Practice with XD

---

Portfolio Video

I was excited to create my portfolio video because I wanted a chance to reflect and look back on what I had done. I initially created a storyboard that featured my Twitter report. However, I thought more about each project individually and decided that I wanted to feature the assignments that I learned the most from. The assignments I grew the most from were the ones that pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to compose visual and auditory media. I created a script that I recorded myself reading from. I did not have a specific plan set for my visual elements as I moved away from the initial storyboard that I created. But, I was easily able to find clips that corresponded to the audio. 

My draft of my portfolio is here: 

When I put the video together in Rush, my clips somehow all sized down. So, in my edit, I resized the clips in order to have the visual elements to be more clear and appealing. I also included the audio of a Youtuber speaking during the section dedicated to my audio essay. Lastly, I changed the visuals when I was talking about creating a color board so that the viewer could see the process. 

My final video portfolio is here: 

This was the first project that we made all semester that included both audio and moving visuals. Creating this project taught me that the complexity of both the visuals and audio could not be too high at the same time. If both were complex, the audience would get lost. However, including both allowed me to display concepts in multiple ways at once which hammered in the points I was making.

My video portfolio took a lot of patience. Snagit and Rush, the two programs that I used, were simplistic. However, creating a video that I was happy with simply took time. I spent six to seven hours in total working on the draft of my first video. I wanted to make it something that I was proud of. 

---

ENGL117 taught me a variety of skills including Photoshop, Adobe Rush, XD, SnagIt, et cetera. But I think that the lessons in collaboration, adaptability, and patience were really what I got out of this class. This class is different than every other class I have ever taken - down to submitting a portfolio instead of having tests, quizzes, and/or essays. I think that creating a collaborative class environment is extremely difficult in our hypercompetitive educational system. But I think that those skills fostered in this classes' environment are essential in daily life. I think that I learned a lot throughout this class, and I'm so glad that I took it.