V-Day Loves!!!

My Visual Essay

I wanted to post my visual essay here, so that you could see what I was talking about, but I have yet to find a way to do that so you will just have to look at this one... :)

Here are my reflections after having made mine:

I can build (and have done so) a computer from bottom up. I selected each piece of hardware that went into it, choosing sound and video cards based of their processing abilities and clarity and a case based on its aesthetic appeal. Yet, when working on this essay, I had scanner issues that were only overcome by employing a friend to help. I also used iMovie for the first time and was able to navigate my way through this program and didn’t feel limited by its features or my lack of experience with it until I tried to upload my finished product. The file was too big for youtube, but there is a feature built into iMovie so that with a meager two clicks it is on youtube and ready to go. However, there isn’t a built in fall back for files that are too big, there seems to be no way to brake the film into smaller chucks to be viewed in parts, as is the youtube way.

This left me in the old place of being at the third level of literacy, where I was question the technology I had, looking for ways to use technology I had in ways it wasn’t meant to be used but would accomplish what I was trying to do, and creating technology all while not even being functional literate given my scanner issues.

Essay issues :( and my Worst/Best for 2/7

So I have spent the weekend working on this visual essay, and all is not going well in the land of Gin. This first iMovie I made somehow got lost, I am sure it was user error, but these things happen. I am not to worried about the lost, as the new one is far better than the the older one. So I guess that is a perk of my exploration into new Mac features.

I have also been struggling with the question of what to write and what visuals to use. Not having been the most literate kid in the bunch until quite recently and not living anywhere near my family leaves me with limited visuals. I did however find a bunch of great pics and such that I wanted to uses, after having settled on a story line. Which only led me to one more issue, I don't have a scanner and didn't have a way to use the stuff I had rummaged up.

Nicole, dear sweet Nicole offered me the use of her scanner, and I spent Sat. night at her place scanning away. The first attempt was scanning them to my Mac, which didn't work at all, and I still have no idea why. The second was scanning them to her laptop and then transferring them via a USB drive to my Mac. Nicole scanned the first few images, and then I took over. After my pile of 90 or so items had been scanned, Nicole tried to transfer them only to find that everything that I had scanned didn't get saved. So after all that wasted time, Nicole quite nicely did the rest of the scanning for me and at midnight I headed home with a laptop full of baby pics.

My best friend came over later in the evening, and this morning as I worked on my essay, he quite eagerly told me everything I was doing wrong. Geeerrr, I love that boy, but I had finaly felt like it was going well. At least I know I have someone to give me feedback once it is done.

Worst - This little cold I have been trying to fight all day, it is wearing me out and yet I can't sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, makes reading hard....poor Selber he feels so unloved.

Best - All the cuddle/hangout time with the best friend this weekend.

Trying to add a video

Just trying to add a video before Wed so I know that I can. We saw this in English 530, thought some of you might find it funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDv2ssf8iyA

I may have been too hard on Selfe...

It was Jennifer’s (her blog) comment that the length of the history provided may have been an intentional way of illustrating how much work had gone into getting all these classrooms this technology and how much money had been spent, and how in the end, the classroom conditions were basically the same, that made me start rethinking the Selfe essay.  “Wiring the schools had not saved them. The problems with America’s public schools – disparate funding, social promotion, bloated class size, crumbling infrastructure, lack of standers – have nothing to do with technology. Consequently, no amount of technology will lead to the educational revolution prophesied by President Clintion and others” (Selfe 146).   The more I thought about it, the more this writing strategy seemed to work.  There were 145 pages of explanation of what was done to reach this educational revolution, and because we weren’t paying attention to the real problems (and the real solutions our schools needed) none of it panned out to anything.  We had spent all the time, effort, and money, and because we focused it in the wrong places and ways, our schools had seen no real benefit.   The issue wasn’t that these students didn’t have access to the internet; it is that through our own lack of funding and involvement they had a real lack of access to education.   

Worst/Best Jan 25th

Worst - Not sure that I had one, maybe having to leave a great dinner with great friends early...but I left for good reasons so it is hard to call that a bad thing

Best - My DSL working at long last and enjoying my DSL with the best friend

Maya, Selfe, and I

Chapter Six “The Role of Parents” was the chapter that seemed to fall the farthest from what was the presumed goal of being enlightening. The chapter opens strong, “You can sit with your child and prompt him to show you something…you’re getting close to the kid and gaining insight into ways of learning…is fosters the relationship between you and the kid (Everson qtd in Selfe 98).” On the following two pages Selfe continues on to give experts of computer magazines suggesting the parents can coach, support and act as positive role models for their kids, but it is with this introduction of the computer magazines that Selfe seems to loose track of the role and the power of a parent.  Selfe reduces this role to being a binary system of either the good, providing parent or the bad, non-providing parent.  Selfe claims that this is what the advertisements of the time did, which is no different than what any other advertisement does when selling products meant for kids, but then does it herself by reducing the parents role to that of the agents to the cause, meaning that the parent only seem to have played a role in this situation by providing the needed funding.  In reality the parents role went (and goes) far beyond funding, as was suggested at the opening of the chapter and then somehow moved past far to quickly. 

 For another look at this Chapter see Josh's blog here, he also talks about the idea that this good/bad parent marketing is not new or exclusive to this industry.