Final Reflective Blog Post

Alright so this is my last time that i will be blogging for 1101. This class has been interesting and very fun. I was skeptical at the beginning of the year about how I was going to feel about doing blogs, but it actually wasn't that bad. I am not sure if i am going to continue to blog or if this will be it, but I do see that it is an interesting way to say how you feel.

This class has had many different things that other English classes have not. There have been many times this semester that I have felt a sense of "wobble". One of the biggest things that we did was that gave me wobble was the improve every morning. We would do simple tasks that would require you to think in a different way, but even though it was simple, it gave me some trouble. Different events would include us to say the first word that came to our mind and even though that sounds easy, sometimes i couldn't think of a word. A complete mind blank. I didn't know how to describe it.

There was another time that i felt "wobble" and this was when we would write to a prompt in class and spend about five minutes and then take a break. After that we would "go deeper" and write in more detail. This was something that would give me trouble because i would have to think about it in a different way to write in more detail.

All in all, i feel that this class has taught me to think in more detail and to think in a completely different way. It was very interesting and i had a great time working. I really enjoyed working with my writing group and enjoyed getting to know them. I hope you all have a great rest of your year and enjoy your holiday break.

Ethnography Blog Post

• What it was like for you to figure out what to write about.
• 
  
• It was interesting to see how our ideas changed throughout the project. This project was very interesting because there was really not too much guidance to it. Basically we were supposed to come up with all of ideas on our own and figure everything out.

• What it was like for you to revise your work.
• The way that we revised our work was based on what worked for us as a group. As we started the project, we had ideas of what we wanted to do, but they were not practical. So we ended up changing our ideas and then if that didn't work, we changed it again.

• What it was like for you work in a collaborative group.
• It was difficult for us to work as a group because both of my partners did not live on campus and there were many scheduling conflicts. What we had to do was work on everything in class and then divide it out and come back next class period and work on it again. I usually do not like to work like this, but it seemed to be the only way.

• What was it like for you to create an untraditional (not an essay) piece.



• I thought creating this project was a lot of fun and it opened my eyes to different ways of creating a project. Usually i will create some sort of a paper because that is easy, but for this project, we created a video. This project helped me to work on my editing skills in iMovie which is a mac product.

• What else do you want to say about this assignment
• I really enjoyed doing it. It was a lot of fun and i am glad that we had the opportunity to work on it. Not every group is perfect, but i feel that we were able to divide and complete the project.
• Everywhere is some of the inspirational ideas that we used for our video which you will see on Tuesday
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The Final Stretch of School

We are getting to that point where everyone is going to the library and studying up for their final exams. This is my first year with college finals and from what everyone tells me, it is going to be very difficult and i will be taking lots of energy drinks. I am not to sure if i believe this because ever since i have gotten to college, i have been spending a lot of my free time in the library studying. I feel like i know the information really well and i don't think i will be cramming everything in the final weeks of school. For two of my classes, i have to make some sort of presentation and present it to the class. Those two classes are English and my UCOL class. Both of those projects are completed and all i have to do now is present them. One of my classes is having a chapter test and i already have two of the three chapters memorized and then my last two classes have cumulative finals. Those two classes are math and chemistry. They are probably my strongest subjects. So i am not really to sure how hard this is going to be but i feel that i will be very prepared. Its hard to believe that school will be over in two weeks. I feel like this semester has flown by. I hope that everyone else has had a good first semester experience.


One of my friends took this picture of me in the library when i wasn't paying attention.

I don't know what to call this

I am not quite sure if anyone will see this other than my group but I need another blog and so I figured I would talk about it on here. I had kind of a bad weekend. I know its only Saturday, but I feel like my weekend starts on Thursday. This blog is going to be very vague, but in a way i feel that this class has changed me. It sounds kind of stupid to say that because it is an entry level freshman class, but when i got home last night, i was very sad. I want to talk about the full story with someone but i don't know who to do to. All the things I want to say, i type out and then realize that this will be permanent and then i mash my delete key. The only safe way for me to figure out my thoughts at the time was my writing into the say journal. I am not much of an emotional person and i am not much for writing my feelings, but i figured it was the only safe, judgement free place that i could write. I ended up writing a poem that expresses my feelings and is meant to go to someone, but i can't decide if that is a good choice. I spent so much time writing it and it felt like ten minutes. Its is the most true and to the heart thing i have ever written and i am too afraid how it will be taken. I know this blog does not have to much to do with you, but i just wanted to get a little bit on my problems off my chest. I don't know what kind of picture i want to end this with. I was going to post a picture of my day book but that is just a composition notebook. So in an attempt to lighten to mood a little, here is a funny picture i found a few weeks ago.

Also i have realized that when you are happy, you enjoy the music you listen to. When you are sad, you understand the lyrics. Kind of  a weird thing when you listen to a song that has been on you phone for over a year and just now you understand the lyrics.

We are making a video!

Alright, so with our ethnography project, we have had many ideas about what we were going to do with it. Our first idea was to make a simple PowerPoint/Prezi. When we thought about Prezi, we thought that we might be able to make some kind of kinetic text thing (Where the words fall onto the screen). We thought that would be an interesting way of talking about our "journey" because they are not boring like a typical PowerPoint. This led us to doing research about making kinetic texts and we found out thy are actually very hard to do. Not only that, but they take a lot of time. So that kind of ruined that idea. Back to the drawing board. We started to think about other things that we could do that would be interesting. Oh and our topic was Objects, which is very vague. When we met on Thursday morning, we came us with the idea of walking around campus and filming us finding hidden texts and literacy's. We already knew of a couple places that we wanted to include in the video, so we just started to walk. When we did this, we came up with a 25 minute video and we were going to fast forward the parts where we are walking to the next destination. In thought, this would make about a 5 minute video. Well the program that i am using for this cant take a video that long and speed it up in a smooth way. This makes our video very rough and choppy; however, it looks exactly like a stop motion movie. I am using this idea and running with the ball. We are going to act like we made a stop motion movie which is when you take thousands of pictures and play them in a way that it looks like a video. It is really cool and very effective if done correctly. I am going to talk to Lacy about it to make sure that she approves, but i think we have made a big move in the right direction this week.

This is a video of one of my favorite stop motion videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ8ZWMlObGE

Ethnography Project Ideas

In class, we were asked a bunch of questions about our project that was meant to get us thinking about how we were going to go about doing this project. The questions and answers that were asked are listed below

1) What is your issue/message.... the so what of your project:
-We are going to talk about how this project will bring awareness to UNCC students about objects that hold literacy meanings on campus that they would normally not notice.
2) What are we definitely going to use
-Woods(House, Rock, Grave, Blacksmith Building,) Belk Tower, Echo Circle.
3) Who else cares about this or should care about this?  Where are they?  What public spaces do you find them in?

-New students, prospective student, current students, and visitors. They can come from anywhere and the  objects are placed in the center of public spaces to bring people together.

4) How can you infiltrate this space with your project? Be CREATIVE and don’t worry about if it is actually doable yet.

-Our project is the space and the space is inviting for anyone to enjoy. It is owned by nobody and anyone can use the space.

5) Now plan an enactment of the scenario to share ideas with the class.

-We can give a tour or add these locations to the already created tour of UNCC and show off all of these hidden locations/symbols to anybody that wants to go. We can also make a YouTube video. Have a chalk arrow that is drawn into the ground and don't say what it is for. Let curiosity take control of the students and then when they get to the end of the trail have the fact written into the ground.

Below is the picture of the grave site that I talked about in my last blog. This is in the woods by the east deck parking garage.

 

Annotated Bibilography

For out ethnography project, we went out and took a bunch of pictures of things that we saw around campus. There were all supposed to relate back to "Objects". We had no real direction to go about finding these things, so we just went and walked around until we found different things. We were looking for just abstract objects and things that most people would usually over look.

Belk Tower, Charlotte. 30 Oct 2012. Personal photograph by author. JPEG file

We all met up at Belk tower because it was something that everybody on campus knows and a central spot. We heard that the Belk tower was supposed to be a old style pen and an inc tray. We took a picture of this because we though that it was something that not many people would think about.

A Building that looks like a Camera.

There is another spot on campus that is a building. we walked around looking for this building but unfortunately  we couldn't find it. Supposedly is you look at this building from Google maps,  it looks exactly like a camera. We are going to continue to look around for this one.

Grave Site, Charlotte. 30 Oct 2012. Personal photograph by author. JPEG file.

Inside the garden by east deck there is a burial site that holds the founder or UNCC. I believe he name was something cone? i want to say Bonnie. I never would have though that this would be on campus and it was something very interesting, at least in my mind. 

As we continue to work on this project we find that there are a lot of hidden things on campus and we think that we are going to go about finding a lot of them and show them in our project.