Initially, I registered for this course because I needed to fulfill a gen-ed requirement, and upon reading the course title I was genuinely intrigued. However, when I read the course description, I did not know what to expect as it seemed like a course where we would be comparing classical argumentative styles with more recent internet rhetoric. However, the course was nothing like I imagined as it was a lot more applicable and hands- on.
Right from the first project, I realized that this was not going to be an ordinary class, but a class where I would be able to explore various tools and different ways to convey a message. One of the most thoughtful and underrated parts of the course for me was attempting to find a topic that fits the project and interested me at the same time. Although, the theme of the class was about internet rhetoric, we never had specific topics about which to complete these projects about. Thus, we had what seemed like an infinite number of topics to choose from. This was just one of many challenges as for most of the projects, we used various softwares which I had never used and some which I had never even heard of. Towards the beginning of the projects, I would sometimes become frustrated as the tools we used were not always intuitive and different from Microsoft products I was accustomed to using. But as I continued to use the tools and became more familiar with them, I realized how useful they really were.By the time I was wrapping up these projects using these softwares became fun and interesting. The most important lessons I will remember from this class was learning how to adapt and overcome challenges, which is not what I expected at all. Now I will reflect on my projects individually.
Twitter Report
Our first project was the Twitter Report. For this, we had to research a hashtag on Twitter using a software called TAGS. This software helped us capture the latest tweets that users created using the respective hashtags we chose. For my topic, I chose the hashtag "Tariffs" because I wanted to use a topic that was related to my major and I could learn from. I researched five different topics for each tweet in order to gauge what the tweet was about and the purpose of the tweet.
Figure 1
Figure 1 is from my initial draft of the rationale behind every tweet. Notice that I messed up a few times on the x- axis of the graph as I had two separate topics for "Political and Economic" and "Economic and Political," which should of just been combined into one. When using the TAGS software in Google Sheets, I had not realized that it would take everything I wrote literally, so if I wrote "political" instead of "Political" two separate categories would be created.Upon revision of the project, the graphs were the major changes I made along with a few sentences in the actual report as well. Figure 2 shows the changes I made to Figure 1 in my revised submission of the project. I really liked this project being the first on of the semester as I had no idea that I would use excel/google sheets in this class. As someone who is going into the business world after college, the tools I learned in this class through this assignment will definitely be beneficial for me moving forward. In fact, I have already used the chart- making techniques I learned through this assignment for another course.
Audio Essay and Podcast
The next two projects, the audio essay and the podcast, relied heavily on communication. The essential aspect I learned from these projects is how differently we can communicate our ideas through the same mode of communication. Both the audio essay and the podcast relied exclusively on sound and appealing to the listeners ears. Although they have same mode of communication, both of these projects are vastly different regarding how the listeners take them in. An audio essay has a more serious and scripted tone to it; whereas, the podcast has more of a joyous and casual tone to it.
For my audio essay, I decided to choose a fun topic which interested me, thus I chose NBA Twitter. I did not record the initial script I created so I cannot show you how different that would sound compared to my final revision. However, I have placed the original draft of my script below, so you guys can compare how much it changed from the beginning to final recording. The draft I recorded was essentially one that was already almost completely revised, thus the difference between the recorded draft and revised project is minimal as I just changed up a sentence at the end of the essay. My initial script only contained one sound byte, and that was the Mean Tweets one you can hear in the middle of the essay. I went back and added the Turkish commentary at the beginning of the essay because I felt that it would immediately hook the listener. Towards the end of the essay I decided to use another clip from the NBA draft in order to capture the essence of the message I wanted to convey. I wanted to remind the listeners of the classic way we used to consume information through T.V. and radio and how that way has lost its touch in way as we are able to receive information much faster now. Because I was discussing a topic which I had vast knowledge of, this project came relatively easy to me compared to some of the other ones. Writing the script was not difficult as I could talk about this topic for ages. The challenging part about this project, just like most other projects was learning how to use the Audacity software. Once I was able to figure that out, I was able to complete the project easily.
Initial Script:
http://altscholarship.com/argunet/sites/default/files/2019-09/Audio%20essay-%20NBA%20Twitter.docx
Initial Audio Essay:
Final Audio Essay:
The podcast was one of my favorite projects in the course as it was the only one that forced us to collaborate with peers. As a frequent listener of podcasts, I understand that the beauty of podcasts comes from not only the topic, but also the chemistry among the hosts. It should flow naturally,and even if it is scripted, it should not sound like it is. The hosts should have specific flow and organized outline about what they will talk about, but I believe the reason why podcasts are so popular now is because of the authenticity and how they come off naturally. I believe that our group was able to successfully do this as we were able to bounce our ideas off of one another as we all brought unique perspectives to the table. The diversity in our group at first presented challenges, but once we overcame this we were able to create a podcast which everyone was passionate about. I did not edit much of the podcast as I did not feel there was much work to be done. I removed a couple of extra seconds from the beginning and the end of the podcast since it was not actual podcast content. I also amplified the sound and attempted to reduce some of the background noise. During the recording of the podcast, I had to cough, so I attempted to lower the sound of the cough, but could not do so without hindering the sound of the person talking.
Revised Podcast:
One of the premier challenges that our group had was picking a topic which we could all converse about, because we did not want the podcast to seem like a question answer session. Since all of us had varied interests about what we should make our podcast about, it took us some time to come to a conclusion regarding the topic. We wanted everyone to believe in the project, and not force it upon everyone, thus we needed to incorporate ideas from everybody. We ended up discussing the toxicity of social media and internet culture. We decided that everyone should have a special subtopic that they were interested in, within this broad theme. This helped the podcast flow naturally as every person was able to discuss their respective subtopics, and everyone else was able to give their input on the topics as well.
App Arguments
For our app arguments, we had to use Adobe XD, which helped us create boards that represented various screens for our apps. I had previously used this software in a previous class, so I was familiar with some of the basics of it; however most of the function we needed for the class, I never learned about or forgotten. Although I was not a complete novice when it came to Adobe XD, the bulk of the project was still new to me. As the week we conducted this project was a very busy one for me, I decided to keep this one simple; however, I was still able to pick a topic that I was passionate about. I had read an article earlier which contained arguments why high- school should start later on in the day, and I immediately knew that I wanted to do a project concerning this topic. I looked at the upcoming projects for the course, and figured that this may be my only chance to create a well- versed and creative argument about this topic.
The first time I submitted the project, it could not be opened by anyone but me, so I was not able to receive much feedback about this project. Thus, I did not really revise the project much; however, I did make some logistical changes. In my initial draft I could not figure out how to move to the next screen by clicking on the previous screen. After consulting with classmates, I was able to link the screens with one another and make the project much more cohesive. I also learned how to link specific aspects on one screen to the next screen. For example on each page, I had an image or a meme and made it so that you can only move on to the next screen by clicking the image or the meme. I also was able to change the color scheme a little bit to make it more appealing. The major themes for this project was information, as this was the most obviously informative project I conducted in this class. Most of the screens in this app argument had various informative screens catering to a different aspect of high-school start times. I decided to incorporate the challenges of delaying the start times in order to make it seem like a true objective argument.
Draft: https://xd.adobe.com/spec/909387d2-9afd-4f28-4a5f-c7dedf0b0f29-e6a2/
Revised: https://xd.adobe.com/view/cdeaf171-08e9-45fe-63d3-22953817ac5a-bbdb/
Memes
I was most excited about this project because I come across several memes on social media. What I failed to grasp was how difficult it would be to actually use Photoshop. As someone who knows several people who have used this software to create memes and images, I thought it would be rather simple. However, that was not the case. Photoshop proved to be challenging and even with the tutorials it forced to think outside the box and be creative.
I created the first meme in order to be humorous and express my frustrations with the UNC football team I had at the time. I used a common template that I had seen used several times before on social media. An issue I encountered in both the first and third meme was finding a color which worked with the background. For the Pikachu meme, I tried several colors and could not find one that fit perfectly, so I decided to use Carolina Blue, since the tweet was UNC- related. The second meme also used a common template in which Drake shows his dismay for one statement and his approval for the next. This meme was supposed to be about internet culture and this argument fit the narrative. The final meme was the only meme in which I did not use a template and wanted to focus on an important issue that I genuinely care about. It was very difficult to find a good color scheme with this as the recycling logo matches the background color.
I really like this meme that my classmate did because it formed a relevant argument without using a pre- existing template. They used a very simple picture and displayed a valid message on it. The fact that such a powerful message was conveyed in a few words also intrigued me. The picture and the message appealed directly to the readers emotions in order to convey the message.
Animated Gifs
This was definitely the most difficult project I did in this class. Using Photshop was hard enough as it was for simple images, but having to create gifs made it even harder. Creating and incorporating layers into the gif made it extremely difficult to be able to make simple changes. I believe that I really struggled in this project because of the different layers that these gifs created. I had trouble understanding the role of the layers and how to incorporate text into them.
I decided to use this as my first gif because it related to ta topic that was heavily in the news at the time. For the actual gif, we had to use a Snagit editor in order to capture the bit from the video in order to create the gif. This gif was supposed to be about 3 seconds long, so it was challenging to capture a perfect 3 second clip that would fit perfectly with the argument.Of course, as you can probably tell that I am a huge UNC fan and wanted to portray a clip from a UNC game. This clip was actually from a highlight video of a game I attended, and thought it would work great for this project.
For the second gif, I used a common template from the show Friends, where one of the characters is showing a great deal of excitement. This gif was created right after class registration had begun and several student were struggling to get into the classes that they wanted. I struggled creating this meme as I could not figure out a way for the text to show throughout the gif. Initially, when I tried to put the text next to a specific layer, it would show up on the screen for a split- second (making it impossible for anyone to read) and then disappear. For this gif, I had to put the text layer at the very top in Photoshop, so that the words can be scene throughout and not just at the end like they did in the first gif.
Throughout this project, I had to adapt to a different style of the same software which was Photshop. I could not use the same aspects of the tool that I had used when creating my memes, as gifs were more complex than that. Thus, I had to adapt and deviate from the way I was accustomed to using the software into a more effective manner.
Portfolio Video
The final task in this class was the portfolio video. We had to discuss a couple of projects we did and I decided to discuss the Twitter Report and Meme Argument because I felt that those were the two most applicable ones. My original draft of the video was incredibly long and tedious and it also seemed a bit mundane. I decided to change it up a little bit and focus on graphs and images more as opposed to texts. I realized that in my initial recording, I was talking about certain aspects of the project for too long, thus I decided to be more terse in the revised version. I feel that the video was a good way for people to gain a visual into the specific softwares we used as opposed to just seeing a screenshot of them.
Initial Draft: https://youtu.be/2poFQJi5Js4
Final Video: https://youtu.be/UO3tFub4k7c
As you guys saw, the projects in this class required creativity, collaboration, and the ability to adapt to the challenges we faced. They also gave me exposure to different tools and softwares which I had never used or even heard of before. However, I can see myself using these past this course both for leisure and school/work- related purposes. I really want to thank the professor and all of my classmates who helped me complete these projects, most of which I am proud of!
That's the end of the Portfolio. Hope y'all enjoyed!!