Cover Letter
I have never been the person to enjoy writing long papers or scholarly essays, but talking English 149 with professor Anderson completely transformed what I thought constitutes scholarly writing. What grasped my attention the first day of class was the passion that professor Anderson had towards media and using literature creatively through different mediums that I had not yet been exposed to.
When I received the course syllabus the first day of class, I knew that this class was unique compared to many stereotypical English courses. I was immediately intrigued by the types of software we would be using and the projects that I would have the opportunity to embark on for the first time. One of the biggest challenges for me in this course was to take what I had learned throughout my life on scholarly writing, adapt to new ways of composing and apply that to multimedia projects. My experience of doing just that has inspired me to build my portfolio around the overarching theme of transforming literature to media.
What the first week of this course really forced me to engage with was what literature actually is compared to the definition I had in my head. Before this course I thought of literature as something that is written or read in print like papers, books and magazines. I had not previously thought of videos, social media postings or audio to be considered literature. Every single definition I could Google of literature pointed to the idea that literature had to be written. Through engaging with the topics of this course I have learned that the idea that literature is only something in writing could not be further from the truth in my opinion. I critically engaged with each one of these projects just like I would have when going about writing a paper and, on some projects, even more. I am very thankful that this course taught me that literature can take on so many forms and each one carries a great amount of value.
This course really hit the spot with me personally because I spent most of my time thinking critically and engaging with literature in a creative way and less time grinding over long readings or extensive papers. The way this class was structured fostered my creativity and critical thinking and I am excited to use this portfolio to display the excitement I had for this course and the diligence I put into each project.
Audio Essay and Podcast
As I stated in my cover letter, I had been playing with the idea in my head about what constitutes literature and how that has transitioned with the introduction of new technology and digital media. When the audio essay assignment was posted I had no doubt in my mind that I wanted to explore the ideas within the topic "transitions in literature". Not only did I believe that would make for an interesting conversation topic, I saw transitions in literature and transforming traditional print to media as my main theme for the course.
Audacity is an audio editing tool that I had the opportunity to explore through both my audio essay and podcast. I found this tool to be the toughest editing tool that I have used in this course, but personally the most rewarding given the plethora of editing features the software contains, many of them I touch on in my reflection video.
I started out with writing a script for my audio essay. Being later in the semester, my script writing skills at this point had greatly improved with the guidance and constant feedback from professor Anderson. I used scholarly sources and wove in expert audio from YouTube clips and Ted Talks about how the world of literature has transitioned due to advancements in technology. Adding these pieces allowed for greater support in my audio essay as well as added appeal for my audience.
In my reflection video below, I go into further detail on the specific feedback I received on my draft, but overall, the biggest improvement I needed to focus on was the main theme of my audio essay. This challenged me to think critically on how to make my audio essay have a clear focus for audience members to follow. In my reflection video I explain the process I went through to improve my script and the importance that research and collaboration played in my audio essay project.
I felt that the podcast was an excellent change of pace and an opportunity to build on previous projects I had completed in the course previously. I found it to be more casual than the audio essay and a good opportunity to collaborate with a partner to expand on the idea of transitions in literature, a topic I was very interested in. Below are my notes I used while conducting the podcast.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with a partner during this project and composing the project with someone else and only completing one draft gave me a different perspective as opposed to some of the other projects in this course. I hope my excitement for this project came across well!
Audio Essay and Podcast Reflection Video
My favorite part of the projects in this course was the ability to produce a reflection video to give my analysis of the projects I completed and what I learned. Below is the reflection video I produced on my audio essay and podcast where I emphasized the importance of research and collaboration in the creation of both projects and how the audio essay and podcast projects related back to my main theme of the course that is transforming literature to media.
Social Media Postings 
Memes, gifs and Instagram stories have become an extremely popular way to share messages and spread humor to family, friends and followers. Before this course I had not been exposed to either of those types of media and the extent I had used Instagram was to post pictures with family and friends. Prior to this course, I never thought that Instagram postings could be seen as literature, but after completing the social media projects I had a different outlook on the creativity and critical thinking skills they required.
Memes
In my audio essay above I addressed memes and their widespread popularity. The fact that the word meme had been Googled more than Jesus, in my mind really displayed the extreme rise in popularity. I tried my hand at a making a humorous meme and an artistic meme.
Gifs
Gifs in my mind added a new level to memes. I thought of gifs as memes with motion and went about creating a humorous and artistic meme.
Instagram Stories
I feel that I found one of my favorite projects in the Instagram story project. I was very passionate about both projects that I produced Instagram stories on.
The multiple video Instagram story allowed me to engage with a topic that has been in the news frequently. Concussions in football have been widespread for decades, but only recently have gained media attention. The goal of my multiple video story was to spread awareness for concussions in football and the lifelong affects they have on victims.
The multiple image story allowed me to show my audience the natural beauty of my family’s favorite vacation spot. St. Simons Island, Georgia is a small coastal island town in southeast Georgia that is only an hour and a half away from my hometown. For the project I overlaid description words to go along with the images which I felt gave the overall product more depth.
Overall, the social media assignments were another opportunity to use a new medium to display my composing and creativity skills to express literature in an original method advancing the theme of transforming literature to media. Like I said earlier, before I would never have thought of Instagram postings as literature, but I came to learn through the process of composing just how much thought was needed to successfully create these projects. What really convinced me that these types of postings could be literature how the overlaying of words onto the projects greatly changed the meaning and the audiences' understanding.
Video Poem and Social Media Reflection Video
The social media postings also allowed me to experiment with Adobe Photoshop. With Adobe Photoshop I found the creativity opportunities endless and I reflected on that in my reflection video. For the video poem, which I specifically touch on in the next portion of my portfolio, I used Adobe Premiere Rush to bring my project to life through video editing features I also display in my reflection video.
I used the opportunity of creating a reflection video to give an in-depth assessment on the composing techniques I used, personal takeaways from the projects and a reflection on how these projects advanced my theme for the course of transforming literature to media.
Video Poem Practice Assignment
At the beginning of our semester we were tasked with the creation of the video poem. I wanted to include this improv video poem that I created because I used inspiration from it for the creation of my video poem.
Video Poem
To finish off my portfolio, I want to reflect on my semester in this course and my takeaways from the video poem project. This past year I transferred to UNC and it has been by far the best decision of my life. I wanted to reflect the joy that I have towards UNC and the Chapel Hill community in my video. Like I mentioned in my reflection video above I was looking for a poem that expressed a theme of unity, support and collaboration that I have seen so clearly in my time so far at UNC. I felt the poem Coming Together by Robert Longley really supported the overall theme I was looking for.
To go about creating my rough draft, I placed the beautiful UNC landscape in the background with peaceful music to give the video a perfect mood.
I received very positive feedback from playing my video poem in class, but I had a few things that were suggested, and I felt needed improvement. I touched on these pieces further in my reflection video above. First, my focus for the final draft was to add intrigue to a couple of the scenes in the video that seemed stale and boring. I added more movement and action in replacement of those scenes to add intrigue for my audience. Secondly, I felt that the ending needed to be more complete. The ending to the draft came all of the sudden. To fix this I created a fade out both auditorily and visually.
Please enjoy the final draft of my video poem!
Overall, I feel that this project advanced my theme of this course the most. Using literature that one created for print and adding it into a video allowed for greater intrigue and creativity. I feel that the three layers in this project, audio, video and print, allowed for greater enjoyment and the ability for the video poem to tell a deeper story than the print poem would have been able to communicate. With the addition of UNC themed video and upbeat peaceful music, I was able to communicate to my audience the positive togetherness and collaboration that I have seen throughout my time at UNC!
Final Thoughts 
To conclude, multimedia composition with professor Anderson was an excellent course for me because I was able to advance my skills in analyzing literature in new ways and bolster my creativity skills. Throughout this course one clear theme was in my head from start to finish and that was transforming literature to media. Many people still think of literature as something that has to be written down. I have come to realize through this course that statement could not be further from the truth. Rich and scholastic literature can come from video poems, graphics, video and audio. I hope that I was able to communicate that throughout this portfolio.
One doesn’t have to resort to writing long papers or studying hours on end for exams to gain knowledge. I can safely say that in this course I learned so much more about literature and composing than any other English class I have taken, and it has opened my eyes to the possibilities not only within the world of literature, but in the world of education.
Other Course Activity
- Assignments and Comments on Readings
-
I gave Professor Anderson my podcast schedule
I provided a reflection on the print to audio transition article that professor Anderson posted.
I created two to three questions to begin my audio essay.
I wrote a plan for my audio essay.
I wrote a reflection on a podcast I listened two titled "The Tale of Two Soundscapes."
I wrote a response and posted a meme in reflection to a word play article on memes.
I wrote a reflection on the RIP: A Remix Manifesto documentary.
I wrote a response to the reflection videos professor Anderson posted as examples.
I wrote a reflection on an animated gif reading and posted an example of my own.
I posted a reflection on my E-poetry reading.
I posted a reflection on a meme reading.
I posted a response and picture to the visual strategy reading.
- Comments to Classmates and Peer Feedback
-
I gave Casie feedback on her audio essay draft.
I gave Dillon feedback on his audio essay draft.
I gave Kaylie feedback on her audio essay draft.
I gave Pearce feedback on his audio essay draft.
I completed a peer review of Sam's video poem draft.
I completed a peer review of Jaquez's video poem draft.
Audacity Improv Audio
Practice Gif
