Tuesday, Feb 4

Submitted by iamdan on Thu, 01/30/2020 - 13:10

Read the articles linked below, and the add a comment in which you reflect on the articles in terms of your Video Report assignment:

 

     Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key 

     After Digital Storytelling: Video Composing in the New Media Age

Comments

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Submitted by SabrinaZirkle on Thu, 01/30/2020 - 16:54

As I was reading "Digitizing the Craft Article," I believed they did well to discuss how we think about the fluid and ambiguous nature of the creative process would impact how we examine the relationship between digital technology and creative writing. Last spring, I took a class in the Media and Journalism program called "Creative Strategy" in which we read, discussed, and wrote much about the creative process. I think while the creative process is not a clear, linear experience, I also believe that there are well-attested practices that can invigorate the process. Interestingly, one of the common threads was the importance of carving out time to distance oneself from the internet in order to give the mind time to think. If this is the case, than the digital impacts to creative writing go beyond the introduction of the word processor to the writing ritual. I also think that the internet lowers the bar of entry for publication of content, thus affecting the institutionalization of creative writing. In regards to the first article, I think it's hilarious because I'm actually a journalism major in an Irish literature class right now to fulfill one of my major requirements. I have learned that there are different modes of writing, and I'm okay with that.

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Submitted by Shawna Sheperd on Fri, 01/31/2020 - 02:41

I think it was a really important point in “Made not only in words..” that people ought to learn literacy in media studies as well to stay on top of the changing times. Not only are new jobs requiring more advanced knowledge of media literacy but it also seems to be a base requirement, an expectation that the younger people or generation understands the technology in a way to be productive. For my project, this article has motivated me even more the urgency of learning how to mash different genres and think critically in this new way that combines different elements of time and space. I think the point of canons of rhetoric -- working on the delivery end of a story is something that needs to be focused on, and how effective I can tell my project’s story. When reading the “After Digital Storytelling” article, I was comforted by this new media composing / nonlinear structured process in making a video making. The emphasis on remaining open to revision and redirection I think is important to keep in mind going forward, especially since my e-poetry project is going to need multiple attempts to get the story “right” through editing. I also think that paying attention to the effect that a combination of texts, images, and sounds produce will be essential to keep in mind.

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Submitted by emmakoslow on Sun, 02/02/2020 - 07:54

My video project is all about the origins of word processors and how they made writing in the humanities more collaborative. In the video, I hope to discuss and elaborate on how these word processors have affected everyday life in technology. I will also touch upon how the more accessible these software and mechanics are, the more people use them in their growing popularity. This is one of the points Yancey makes in the article, "Made Not Only in Words". This article is similar to the way my video will be organized as it goes through the origins of literacy media and how it has changed over the years and how it has affected humanities. It showed how growing trends and desire for accessible technology increases popularity in the latest invention or creation. People will download the latest word processors as part to access new features but also keep track of the latest models in order to stay up-to-date. I found several parallels that will help with organizing my video project. "After Digital Storytelling" takes a similar route that I also want to take, it talks more about the specific features of Digitial Storytelling software and its reaction from users. In the video, I want to go over different software and review the different features and how they connect to how users maybe have reacted during that time. 

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Submitted by natalie.p98 on Sun, 02/02/2020 - 22:54

In preparation for our upcoming video report, I found both of these readings useful and informative regarding the relationship between writing/storytelling and enhanced digital technology.

In Yancey’s “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key,” I think her emphasis on how writing as a medium has evolved struck me; writing (and reading) was not always accessible to the public until the printing press and cheaper paper were introduced into society, and it’s interesting to think about how these changes impact writing. More accessibility resulted in more widespread writing and reading, and you could relate this to a modern context—computers, etc. have caused a change in the way we all write as well. Digital platforms result in more growth regrading widespread writing and the transfer of information. As an information science and English major, it’s intriguing how much digital technology has impacted writing as a medium and who has access to what kinds of information; it’s something very prominent within our society, especially since there’s such a stress on digitalized formats.

In Fulwiler and Middleton’s “After Digital Storytelling: Video Composing in the New Media Age,” this particular quote stuck me: “In this new composing space, novices must make a variety of decisions about images, sounds and texts, and constantly address the effects that these create when synthesized. At the same time, they must also assess the evolving relationship among these new synthetic elements and adjust the progression of these to account for emerging narratives and themes.” This is something I’ll keep in mind when working on the upcoming video report; it’s important to recognize why we will use make certain decisions within the digital medium in relation to our narratives. I imagine most decisions I make within my video will relate to my digital humanities project either thematically or within the subject, so it’ll be interesting to think about how my decisions will be made and how they’ll impact the end product.

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Submitted by natalyv on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 04:25

In "Composition In A New Key," Yancey elaborates on the issue of determining what qualifies as "writing" during a new age of technology that allows the creation of new writing processes to compose work. The article relates to the idea within my DH report that was brought up by Grant Glass concerning the trouble distinguishing what is deemed "scholarly" work since the previous idea of scholarly work is being challenged with continuous developments in technology that prompt developments in fields like DIgital Humanities, permitting projects like the William Blake Archive to come to fruition and continue expanding. The expansion of definitions and ideas is brought about with advancing technology that advances the degree to which work can be produced in departments like the humanities or the DH, and the advancements result in a spreading of knowledge and ideas in a greater fashion than simply by handwritten work or published scholarly books. Yancey brings up the point that evolution arises in fields as a consequence of technology. The point correlates to my argument in the report that digitization or other powerful advancements benefit the humanities, or any field, and prompt further changes and evolutions. "After Digital Storytelling," relates to a previously made argument in class and in another article about critique and its importance as well as its downfalls, and since I am extremely unfamiliar with technology and applications needed to create video reports, critique and constructive criticism and advice should be openly accepted as it will give insight and assistance rather than simply picking apart a piece of work without reasoning and elaboration. 

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Submitted by phoebepowers on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 16:43

Literacy is already a subject in which I'm very interested, as throughout history a presence or a lack of literacy usually speaks to an area's level of education and progressivism. Furthermore, when measuring equality in society, literacy is a valuable tool used to measure equity. As Yancey speaks to in her article, literacy is experiencing a substantial shift in its meaning -- as society has begun a steady merge from physical print to electronic language, the concept of literacy itself has come into question. As this concept of literacy shifts, I believe it's crucial for schools to merge with it -- more specifically, more schools need Digital Humanities departments to help students learn online tools and built proficiency. The way society consumes information has shifted, so the way that we share and present information needs to shift as well. People are watching youtube videos, streaming services, using social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, etc. Therefore, we should equip the youth with a skillset to adequately use the full potential of the digital age.

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Submitted by Jane McGrail on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 18:32

For my digital humanities project report, I am profiling Project Gutenberg, which is an open access eBook resource. Both of these readings were helpful in guiding my thinking about how to transform my essay into a video project. Kathleen Blake Yancey’s article “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key” was particularly helpful for thinking about the relationship between reading and writing publics. Yancey articulates a brief history of the development of reading publics and she traces a parallel trajectory of the development of writing publics. Since my project is focusing on an open access eBook resource, I think it would be useful to discuss how reading publics are continuing to change with the growing popularity of eBooks. Project Gutenberg is slightly different than traditional eBook resources because it provides an unlimited number of free copies of books whose copyright has expired. eBooks have changed the way reading publics work and, as one of the first sources of eBooks, it makes sense to examine the role of Project Gutenberg in this trajectory of change.

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Submitted by cschnitz on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 19:42

My chosen digital humanities project, an AR 'book' of poetry called Between Page and Screen, and subsequent report engages on a direct, theoretical level many of the same maneuvers between media ecologies that these articles grapple with, the move between page and screen being the titular and most striking. Fulwiler and Middleton write in "After Digital Storytelling," that "the move from page to screen in our current information age is an epistemological shift that opens up new ways of reading, writing, representing and understanding that will, by necessity, be grounded in the ontological actions of the new media era" (Fulwiler and Middleton). The direction that they imply is that the movement from page to screen is a lateral jump—pages are the past and screens are our emergent present and future. I think Between Page and Screen both serves to provide evidence for and complicate this kind of claim, since it is a work that lies and relies explicitly within the present moment to be read and also a work that needs both page and screen. The discussion of video storytelling, though, serves to emphasize the dominance of the screen, which I think Between Page and Screen ultimately believes in too—the ability to record oneself reading on screen allows for a reading of the work that makes the screen the ultimately more important party (between page and screen) in the current media ecology. 

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Submitted by KaylaGibson on Mon, 02/03/2020 - 21:49

Much of the Yancey article reminded me of the tenants we often discuss in my Information Visualization course—that is, before you can appropriately choose how to display certain information/data, you must first ascertain what the best medium will be (pg. 311). There is the expected concepts such as understanding your audience, wherein you have to consider their knowledge of the info resource you plan to use (aka whether they will understand and decode its meaning as you intend them to, as well as how they will perceive certain colors, symbols, and logos. However, Yancey adds another layer—consider what might “transfer” from one medium to the other (311). In our latest assignment, for example, we have to consider how we’re going to tell our story without the comfort of a simple, typed narrative. Instead, we have to consider how to translate aspects of it to video and keep in mind how this may unintentionally change the meaning if we’re not careful and aware. For my project, D&D Beyond, I’m considering if I want to make visuals that go along with my dramatic narrative, which may be difficult as there is no specific art for the characters in the story. Another option is to use thematic backgrounds and overlay some key text blurbs. For example, in one portion of the story, a character is watching a book as words appear—this may be fun to replicate in video format almost like we did in the Google Doc in one of our in class assignments. 

In the Digital Storytelling article,I enjoyed the authors’ challenge to the more traditional concept of how a story or meaning is “found” through a process of linear steps—write, film, edit (44). They argue, through examples of students’ adventures in first-time filmmaking, that the process is much more complex. While they are not the first to argue this point, they give plenty of examples (and even reference the vast and tumultuous sea that is YouTube) of how and why they believe the stiffness of a three-step process is harmful to creativity. As a creator myself, I often find that the best ideas, meanings, and even methods often arise either out of hardship (e.g., I didn’t have access to ___, so I used ___ instead, and it turned out better) or out of pure discovery. It hardly feels like there is a moment where a project is done and perfect without the option to go back and make it better. On top of that, sometimes you learn more about something from failing than from succeeding. You can learn much about how to successfully portray a story in a text format if you try to translate to video and realize what does and doesn’t work for video. It makes you realize what about the story isn’t working in video, which then makes you realize what and why those things work for text. I’m interested to see what I’ll learn about my narrative as I try to translate it to video, as I’m currently unsure whether some of my original ideas—including interview clips from D&D Beyond creators—will even fit in now that I’ve written a more creative story piece. On a side note, the clickable citations were such a nice feature, and I hope to see the concept catch on in future scholarly documents!

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Submitted by ifsmith on Tue, 02/04/2020 - 02:42

The "After Digital Storytelling" reading made me think a lot about how I want to approach the video component of our assignment. I had definitely thought a lot about how I was going to directly "translate" my written report into a video, but the authors of the piece show how that isn't necessarily the best mode for utilizing the technologies I have access to. I liked their idea of "iterative" work and "non-linearity." The authors write that using different modes can result in "surprising epiphanies that can happen in the process of synthesizing." I related to this as something that occurs during my writing/research process. I will often research for a project and then iteratively return to those articles and texts while I am writing. The word-processor makes it possible for writing to be non-linear. Especially with poetry, I will write notes for a poem in a word document and put it in a folder. Then sometimes I will go back and combine all of these notes together based on a common theme and then listen to a particular song and a poem might emerge. This process wouldn't be possible without the synthesizing of modes that a computer allows. 

A question I had about this reading is: How is their "personal narrative digital essay" different from modern day movies? What distinguishes a digital humanities essay from an experimental film? Does this divide matter?

The composition piece made a compelling argument about how English departments and teachers can move forward in light of the emergence of a "writing public" and the decline of English departments as valued departments in the university and outside world. The authors write that the traditional mode of teaching (teacher as giver of knowledge and reviewer of writing) can be condescending or patronizing. I liked thinking about the first English class (ENG105) as a gateway instead of gatekeeping. I think UNC does a really good job of this, or at least in my ENG105 class I felt like the learning was centered around review and revision, not around producing a finalized piece. 

One question I had was about the perspective from "tech" departments. How could departments like CompSci incorporate composition and creativity into their curriculums? 

 

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Submitted by Mason Laney on Tue, 02/04/2020 - 05:18

In After Digital Storytelling, Fulwiler and Middleton discuss the ways in which traditional linear composition techniques, such as the popular model created by the CDS, may not be the best suited to our current 21st century digital landscape. They explain how models such as these, which tend to include a carefully preplanned script and a focus on text, may limit some of the creativity that video could potentially allow. This reminded me of my experience working on some of my own personal multimedia projects. I have often found that in the process of creating something, I get inspired halfway through to do something that I hadn't initially thought of. I think especially when working with digital video, where there are a lot of simultaneous visual and audio elements, it can be beneficial to leave the door open to new ideas in case you think of something else you could do that would be cool. This made me think a lot about my video project on Wikipedia. While I already had a good idea of how the video was going to go, I want to leave room for creativity instead of just having it be my essay read aloud with images and charts on screen. I'm not a very creative person, so my end result may end up looking like that anyway, but the article reminded me that I have the opportunity to go in different directions with this project if I so wish.

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Submitted by alexmorton on Tue, 02/04/2020 - 13:16

I think the most important aspect of both pieces was change. Both authors create an argument surrounding technology and the ever-evolving digitized world we’ve been thrust into. More importantly, they argue that these new outlets create fear in those who don’t want to change.

In “Made Not Only in Words,” Yancey explains just how public and accessible new media and composing has become. Writing evolves alongside technology and realizing that this progression allows for new, engaging creations has become a focal point in literacy. Barring a nuclear winter, technology isn’t going away. Realizing this and allowing ourselves to experience literacy media in a fully involved way, despite the pushback felt by those who preach pen and paper, can provide enormous benefits. Yancey introduces and interesting argument, focusing on what people, and more specifically students, are NOT asked to do. This points out how much students miss out on simply because digital literacy isn’t fully understood or widespread.

In “After Digital Storytelling,” the authors discuss the non-linearization of media production and emphasize how open to change digital storytelling needs to be to develop appropriately. The quote “new processes intrinsically tied to new technologies has come to light” illustrates a similar point to that of Yancey; these new processes and modes of communication have only recently been allowed to develop to a greater extent. In the future, allowing digital storytelling and digital literacy to evolve creates a society of creation rather than one of normality or linearization. 

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Submitted by agose on Wed, 02/05/2020 - 22:52

While “Made Not Only in Words” primarily discusses the discipline of English and the necessary changes needed to make the academic field catch up to and live within a 21st century world, I think many of Yancey’s points apply to the historical discipline and therefore the way I think about both telling and teaching history. I found her argument that we are experiencing with new technologies and the internet a similar process to the 19th century and the development of the reading public, a very convincing and useful model to think with. A turn towards the digital is often a very contentious and frightening thing in humanistic disciplines. However, embracing this change and the intertextuality of mediums and genres is the natural way knowledge evolves. Fulwiler and Middleton offer a solution through digital storytelling, which allows the layering and compositing of medium and meaning as well as the recursivity of creation and editing, which meets the need of our new technological environment. And so far as my video project, I think these articles have gotten me to think about how the games that I am analyzing are somewhat examples of this disruption. Combining image, text, and video in the present and the past through individuals and their ancestors all within a machine called the Animus. A project on Assassin’s Creed and its pedagogical uses deserves a form of digital storytelling to relate its history disrupting its narrative while still instructing just as it does to the historical narrative.

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Submitted by mari98 on Thu, 02/06/2020 - 15:11

Yancey's writing about outside and inside genres was very interesting. I think it's very relatable especially today. I read a lot from outside sources; such as apps and blogs. I don't think outside sources are streamed for education; however, I think students can definitely learn from outside sources. Additionally, I believe that it's the school's job to teach students how to communicate properly ---- such as grammar, rhetoric etc.---- but I also know that students are heavily influenced by friends and they communicate heavily with friends in person as well as in social media. Reading this article has allowed me to think about how I'm going to organize my video with composition of images and words. The second article has got me thinking of what I should include in my video to make it more effective. More images? More words? More videos? I like seeing images with a description so I believe that I'll be including images, and videos with a clear narration explaining what's going on.

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