4/1

Digital Delivery Components: Distribution/Circulation + Access/Accessibility

1)My purpose for my video is to show the different opinions about sorority rush. Why it’s so prevalent at Miami, why people rush or dont rush here at Miami. My audience is other students that might consider rush if they didn’t before, or to just simply inform other students or even adults about why i feel so strongly affectionate for the Greek system here at Miami already.

2) I’m assuming my audience knows a LITTLE bit about the Greek system. But I intend to fully explain what sororities are, why we have them, how you get in them…fully explain it in case a member of my audience has never heard of them, only knows a little, or knows a lot.

3) I will publish my text on youtube and facebook probably. I’m not sure where else I would post it.

4) To ensure that I will get a wide viewing I might post it on a lot of my sorority sisters walls so that their friends see it and alot of people will view it that way.

5) The skills my audience will need to view my video is a computer.  I dont think there is any way for someone in the audience to see it without having the access to a computer.  However, most schools have computer labs if they dont have their own laptop.  If the audience doesn’t have a computer and isn’t in school but heard about it from friend, they could use their friends computer to view it. You also will have to know how to navigate the internet and have a facebook account to see it on facebook or know how to get to youtube to see it.

6) These requirements might limit some people but the majority of the people I’m intending to reach, miami students, are here and have a computer they can access.

7)those without a computer/access to a computer will be excluded.  I dont know how to fix that problem

8) The audience I want to include are students at miami and promote them or promote freshman next year to go Greek or to join Chi Omega.  We could even post it on my chi o website if it was good enough but that is doubtful 😛

Part 2: Grand Canyon clip

1) I think the background music is very effective for what the author is trying to convey.  At first I was wondering why the music was so sad and had such a somber feeling to it but once the author started talking about his family splitting up it all made sense to me.

2) The trip to the grand canyon with his family when he was younger: memories, funny pictures, the idea of a perfect family.  The split and divorce: listening to talk radio at night, shaking, being upset. Being older and married now: things are different and he’s going back to the grand canyon.  He still has sad thoughts and doesn’t think those old pictures are funny anymore.  Now instead of talk radio he listens to the sound of his unborn babies heart.

3) The images about the trip to the grand canyon go well with the narration.  Him talking about his family splitting and showing a family photo really adds emotion because it shows what their family used to be like.  His voice and sad tone at the beginning really doesn’t fit.

4) His voice and emotion at the end of the video when talking about the divorce is fitting but I think he should be more upbeat at the beginning.

5) I like the map as the background, it reminds us that this topic goes with the trip to the grand canyon and what happened afterwards.  The pictures are kind of awkwardly placed on the screen.

Add a comment April 1, 2010

Video Reflection Log 1

1) How I feel about my video is still nervous but less scared then before.  When we originally heard about this assignment I was scared to death.  I didn’t know how to come up with an idea, how to make the video, and was worried about all the work this will require.  After meeting with Hamlet, I feel a bit better about the video.  I have a topic and a somewhat idea of how I want to do it but i’m still nervous as to how i’m going to make time and put it all together.

2) I dont remember learning what the 5 components of digital delivery are yet

3) I have thought about different topics, talked to hamlet, narrowed it down, picked a topic, thought about different ways to organize my video.  Topic: sorority rush, why do people rush and why dont they?  I’m going to interview some people that are in sororities and others that didn’t rush. I’m also going to talk about my sorority and tell about it a bit and then show a video clip of poth and idk we’ll see where it goes.

4) I’m excited for this project! I actually think it’s going to become a LOT of fun!  I’m nervous about fitting it all in, but I think it’ll turn out really well and it’ll be something fun to show my sorority sisters.

5) I think i’m goin to start researching things about chi o and what people feel about sorority rush. It’ll be interesting to see what we learn in class tomorrow

Add a comment April 1, 2010

Video Clip Responses

Video One

1) There were all kinds of effects in this documentary.  There were sounds of music as well as the authors voiceover and the voices of the people being interviewed.  A strong point was when the Dr. spoke.  It really gave more depth to the procedure.  The only weakness I noticed was it was pretty much all talking.

2) A. Describes herself and her four sister. aa. compares herself to her sisters-the things she likes, things she doesn’t like. B. Introduces eyelid surgery and what it means. bb. Interviews a surgeon and the surgeon explains about the surgery and why people get it. C. Interviews people cc. One girl had gotten it and explained why she did and it was mainly because her friends and family did it. Another girl, Audrey, describes why she doesn’t like the surgery.  She thinks it is conforming to the culture and just doing it because models do it. D. surgeon talks more about the surgery E. shows different newspaper clippings about the double eyelid surgery. F. is it abandoning your culture? ff. the people interviewed showed their opinions of it they think it is abandoning your culture and customs. G. how do you bring up your self esteem without having the surgery? gg. talk about it more. know that you are okay without it. H. the author comes on the screen and shows what her eyelids would look like if she got the surgery.  Showed pictures of eyes like hers.  She is chinese-vietnamese. She concludes that she doesnt want to get the surgery because she is scared and because she realized she doesn’t need it.

3) I think the way it was organized was really helpful.  She introduced the surgery and debate, showed how other people thought about it, showed the opinion of a surgeon, and concluded with her own thoughts about the subject.  I think it’s important to introduce the subject, explain it, and then give your own opinions.

4) I think the exerpts of movie, interview clips were very effective in this video.  It shows a real life example of how people feel about the subject.  Also, having the opinion of the surgeon helps explain the process too.  If she were to just explain it and make a decision it wouldn’t have enough depth to it.

Video two

1) This video has the use of a voiceover from the author and all movie clips.  I dont think this was as effective as the first video.  The video clip were helpful tools, but I think she could have enhanced her video by including interviews of people and what they feel about the stereotypes of asian accents. A strong point in the video was the first my fair lady video clip.  Weak points were the use of too many video clips; you get lost.

2) A. starts out with a video clip from my fair lady.  aa. explains that the movie says women can do anything they want if they try very hard. ab. having an accent gets in the way. B. shows exerpts of different accents that people have in real life.  C. asks the question: how much accent is too much accent? D. Explains her dilemma.  She doesn’t know what to do with her accent.  She came to the United States at a young age and has been working on her accent for 8 years.  She still doesn’t see a change in it though. Shows a video clip from a class of immigrants trying to learn English. E. explains why she doesn’t like the stereotypes that go with different cultures.  Explains how she doesn’t like that men associate Vietnamese with prostitutes. ee. shows video clips of these stereotypes. F. shows pictures and explains powerful asian women in the world and shows their contribution to the world. G. encourages the audience to help change the stereotypes of asian women.

3) I think the way the narration was done was effective I just think the way the video was setup could have been a bit better.  This could have happened if she took out some of the movie clips and added in more interviews.  It doesn’t really flow because all the movie clips clumped together causes the audience to get lost.

4) The feel of this video would be different without all the video clips.  I think the author should leave some of them but add in more interviews.  It also would have been effective if an older Vietnamese woman had spoken about being hurt by the stereotypes she faced while growing up. I think some of the video clips were effective, the author could have just changed it a little bit more to make it better.

1 comment March 28, 2010

Post project reflection Inquiry ii

1) My final inquiry question for my essay was “Why are women more publically criticized for their virginity or lack there of?”  I think on a scale of 1-5, I think my essay is a 5 effort of explaining my research question.  Obviously it wasn’t completely answered because there is a greater amount of information out there that I didn’t include in my paper, but I think I did a good job answering a lot of the questions.  After doing a great amount of research, I feel I learned a lot about why this standard exists.

2) At the beginning of this class I wanted to learn what rhetoric is and how to use it, and I also wanted to learn how to express myself more effectively in my writing.  At this point in the semester, I feel I have learned these things and exceeded greatly beyond them.  I feel I can explain a lot about rhetoric and understand how it is used in writing, as well as visual images.  Through the help of the discussion questions, blog posts, and papers, I have learned how to express myself in my writing. I think my writing has matured a great deal since the beginning of the class.  My paper has a few aspects of rhetoric in it when I explicitly explain the cartoon I found on the Rebellious Arab website.  I explain the colors, the layout, the lines, and the contrast of the titles.  I also express my opinions when I talk about how I feel about this stereotype placed on women.  I’ve learned how to channel my opinions into affective words.

3) The rhetorical considerations and choices I made in this essay was the include a picture and explicitly explain it.

4)The most difficult part of the essay was getting research information and figuring out how to place it effectively into my paper.  The easiest part was the intro and the conclusion when I expressed my own opinions alot.

5)Adding quotes into my paper worked well, but it was a bit difficult to get the paper to flow around them.

6) If I could go back and change something about my piece, I would add my opinion on things a bit more and maybe include more personal interviews.

7) The strengths of my piece are the quotes and how they relate to the topic, my description of the cartoon, and my conclusion.  I think I leave the audience pondering a lot of things.

8)The advice I would give someone writing this piece in the future would be to research first, and then layout your paper.  It was hard to find things that went along with my paragraphs and how I had them setup.  If you find good quotes to use, form a paragraph around that.

9)I think I discovered knew knowledge when writing this inquiry.  I’d had previous opinions similar to what I researched, but I learned a greater amount about this topic.  I learned what virginity was viewed as in the past and gained some insight as to why men think their women should be virgins even if they are not one.

10)After researching this topic, I became even angrier at the men population.  Obviously not all men think this way, but the fact that many men out there think it is okay to sleep around and still expect their women to be virgins is rediculous.  I learned more about how women and men were viewed in the past and how they are viewed now.  I also gained insight as to what women feel about men and how men feel about women.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment.  Even though the paper writing process was difficult, I learned alot and enjoyed writing it.

Add a comment March 24, 2010

3/4 WOL questions

3) I think it would be very hard to a culture like this to change their social norms. If gender responsibilities were changed without anyone caring, i think the tribe would be very liberated.  There is so much pressure placed upon the Chief and the men under the Chief to get all the work done, decisions made, and fights fought in battle.  I think a woman as Chief could do just as good a job as a man, but the Chief is supposed to be incredibly strong in battle as well as strong minded.  The woman would have to be very strong, as well as smart and a good leader, to be a good Chief.

4) The polygamy aspect of the Nambikwara tribe does apply to modern pay politics.  People in government positions have been known to cheat on their wives.  These mistresses would be the “other wives” to the Nambikwara tribe.  It wouldn’t get passed, and people would know if the president was to marry someone else, and it is very illegal to do that in most places.  However, it’s happened many times that these men have cheated on their wives.  For example, Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary when he was in office.  I think this pattern is very gender linked.  It’s been proven over time that many men think they can get away with things that women can’t.  It’s socially accepted for the male chiefs to have “other wives” but if a woman was chief, I don’t think the men or the other people in the tribe woud allow that to go on.

5) Some of the chiefs responsibilites are to organize departures, choose itenerary, decree where and for how long they will stop, what expeditions they will go on, where they will hunt, where they will collect, where they will scavenge, and also deals with relations with neighbor tribes. The chief cant decide who will be chief after him.  The members of the tribe all have to agree who the next person will be.  This way the whole tribe is satisfied with the decision.  Consent is such an importance to the maintenance of power because if leaders make decisions on their own and dont include the public, the public will be upset and try to get rid of that leader.  If the public has input on decisions, the entire community will be happier.  I dont think awarding consent in our society is as linked to gender as it is in the Nambikwara tribe.  Men and women have a pretty equal voice in the public voting rights.  Our society has started to award consent to women leaders.  There hasn’t been a woman president yet, but I think we are headed in that direction.  There are women senators, etc. that are respected.  It’s hard to say if our society would give consent to a homosexual, transvestite, or transsexual person.  Some people might and others might stick to their conservative viewpoints.  Some people think changing the world and opening it up to new ideas is a good thing.  Whereas, others want to keep the traditional aspects of our country alive and what it was based upon.

Add a comment March 24, 2010

Inquiry 2 Prospectus

I’ve decided my research question for inquiry 2 is: how does the role of men in the past influence how the world views what is “appropriate” and “inappropriate” for sexual encounters depending on gender.  This topic is interesting to me because I think it will help answer my question of why when girls have sex with a lot of people they are viewed as skanky and men are viewed as studs if they do the same thing.  i think it is important for me to research this to understand more about how men were in the past and how they are in the world now. It will also help me to understand why men might be overprotective of their daughters but let their sons do whatever they want. This steriotype always bothered me, but learning how men’s role in society was in the past might help me to understand why this steriotype still exists today.  My purpose for choosing this inquiry is because of those previous reasons as well as this topic has always kind of bothered me.  I never had any answers and I think it would be interesting to learn more about it so I have a greater understanding of why things are how they are.  I hope to discover reasons as to why the world thinks this way and why it IS okay by society for men to sleep around but for women not to.  The sources I might use will be sources about men and women interacting in much earlier past as well as articles about men and women interacting in the present time.  I think I’ll find most of these sources online. I might need help as to knowing which books to look for to find information about this topic. When i go about doing research, I will begin online trying to find sources that have information pertaining to my topic, then try to find books, and then interview someone and use their opinions about this topic to use in my paper.  I also had two people write on my computer about this topic so I might try to use their opinions in my paper as well.  I think this paper won’t sound too much like a research paper because so much of it is analysis of what people say about the topic and what people think about this.

I’m not exactly positive of what I want to do for my paper, but I’m starting to get an idea of how I want to focus it.

2 comments March 2, 2010

Final topic for inquiry ii

I’ve decided my final topic for my research paper is the concept of why women are skanks if they sleep with a lot of people but men are studs.  I think there are a lot of different angles I can take to write this paper. One angle is why this steriotype came to be. I could do research about what men thought their role in society was and talk about the inferiority that women had.  Women back in the day were looked at as “inferior” to men.  The men had the government roles and control of the countries and women were used only at their disposal.  Men could have as many women that they wanted, whenever they wanted and no one thought differently of it.  This way of life has passed down to modern times.  Alot of men think they are better than women and that they can do whatever they want.  I think it is rediculous that men think its okay for them to go out and get trashed and do stuff with women but there is “no way in hell” their daughter is going to be let out of the house.  That is SUCH a double standard.  I dont exactly know how I’m going to research that aspect of this inquiry.  I guess I could look up roles of fathers with daughters, as well as men’s role in society and what they feel about sexuality.

Questions I have about this topic are: 1) What was the role of men in ancient times? 2) where did women fit into that? 3) how this idea of men being able to have many women has translated to modern times 4) what makes it okay for dads to be overprotective of daughters but not their sons? 5) What is considered skanky to people and what is not.

I think this topic is researchable because there is alot of information out there about men and women’s roles in society. There is alot also about women and men in olden times so that could be related to those times as well as modern times.  I think this topic is talked about alot therefore it would be easy to gather information about it from different sources analyzing cultural trends with men and women.

Add a comment February 24, 2010

Potential Inquiry 2

1) cheerleader steriotype

2) Image of actresses in hollywood

3) Why girls have to “be skinny”

4) Virgin complex

5) “Animal House” frats

6) Classic Sorority girls

7) Why are boys “studs” but girls “skanks”

8) At what point do you become a slut?

9) Dieting

10) Does Proactive REALLY work?

Add a comment February 23, 2010

Post Project Reflection for Inquiry I

Approaching this assignment, I was very nervous.  Seeing as how I hadn’t previously used rhetoric when analyzing things I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to apply that.  However, once I learned what rhetoric was I had a better idea upon how to approach the assignment.  I still was nervous as to what I would say and how I could possibly make the paper 4-6 pages.

My strategy for approaching this assignment was to view the image multiple times, try to figure out what the image was trying to portray, find elements in that picture, and create a thesis.  I thought once I analyzed the picture enough I would be able to formulate a thesis and topics that I could write about in depth.

The most difficult part of this assignment was knowing how “in depth” was enough.  I didn’t want to be only summarizing the picture and hoped to critically analyze the image.  The hardest part of that was critically analyzing the “themes” or “underlying meanings” because they can be interpreted in so many different ways.  The easiest part of the assignment was describing the colors in the image.  Color is an easy thing to describe and obtain emotions out of.

Going through the image and picking out elements to work with went well, but writing critically about them was a bit more difficult.  I really had to think before I wrote to find ideas as to the underlying meanings.

If I could go back and change something about my piece, I would add a more diverse vocabulary to my paper.  I feel like I repeated the same words alot in the composition.  I also would add more creative transition words.

I feel the strengths of my piece are my intro and conclusion.  I think I wrote those well with diverse word choice and attention grabbers.  The weak part of my paper is the body because I feel I use the same words a lot and it could have been more creative.

I would give the advice to a future student that they should edit their paper many times and change wording around a lot to make it more creative.  Also analyze the picture longer before starting to formulate the composition.

I really enjoyed the group collaboration time.  It was really helpful to get the input of someone outside of myself.  my partner gave me different viewpoints and ideas to add to my paper that I wouldn’t have thought of myself first.

I would rate my experience with close critical analysis as a 8 out of 10.  I think I got the main ideas and learned how to analyze an artifact.  Although, there are more things that I could have done to enhance my paper as well as learning more about how to critically analyze something.

Creating a pictorial argument is more difficult than a standard essay; although, I think writing a pictorial argument was more entertaining.  Even though this assignment was difficult at times, it interested me and I wanted to keep making it better.  With standard essays, you get bored looking up information and citing it; even if the standard layout is easier.

Add a comment February 15, 2010

Audience and Framing

1) The line of sight of the 3 men draws the audience into the center of the screen towards the girl. There are splits as to where sun on the sidewalk appears and shows that the men on the right are looking away from the sun area into the area where Sara is. There is also a split in Sara’s attire by skin shown in between her shirt and pants.  This causes the audience to look towards her body. Also, since they are traveling along a building it causes the audience to look up towards the high rises in the distance.

2) The lighting in this picture causes the audience to look towards the girl.  Even though the lighting on the outside of the sidewalk is lighter, when you look at the man in the picture this causes the audience to look back at the girl because that is where he is looking.  The models are staged in a position that is trying to get the audience to focus on their focal point as well.  If the models were facing the opposite direction this would keep the audience to see where the models were looking.  We are supposed to be looking at the girl, as they are.  The photographer is most likely behind the girl and up a bit.

3) I wouldn’t view this picture to have such a strong meaning when looking at it if it was in black and white.  The focal point of the men wouldn’t be as obvious if they were in black and white.  The men are in bright colors and this causes the audience to look at them but then we see where they are looking so our eyes are directed back towards the girl.  The color choice suggests the audience is a younger group of individuals that would have their attention caught by brighter colors.  The colors also portray that there is an important meaning to this picture that shouldn’t be missed.

4) Due to the framing and the elements in this picture, I think the audience is young females.  This picture is supposed to show women that they are always looked at by men in certain situations.  The way we carry ourselves and the way we dress ourselves effect if we will be “preyed” upon by men.  We should always be aware of our surroundings and know that a situation like this picture could occur.  The use of the girl showing skin on her stomach also portrays this message by showing girls that if you dress this way, you will attract the attention of men of all ages and types.

Add a comment February 2, 2010