iMovie Class Activity

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, I was not able to make nearly as much progress as I had hoped on my project by this point. I had a busier week in my other classes with a few papers coming up to work on, so I didn't have a good chunk of time to commit to my project.

On top of that, we had to put down my cat Dumpling yesterday. We've had her since I was 8 and she was just a kitten, so I knew her time was coming soon but it's still hard. I actually featured her in my LOLcat earlier in the semester. I thought I'd repost it in her honor. The picture really captures her feline spirit... she was the queen of the house no matter how hard you tried to make it otherwise.




Going back to my project... I ended up buying Indigo dye, which is different from what the tutorial I was planning on going off of uses. I went to Utrect on Farwell, and they had a very limited supply of dyes. Indigo seems a little more maintenance that what they used, but a little more versatile. The vat of dye can be kept for multiple uses along as it is sealed tightly to keep oxygen out. Also, Indigo is used to dye blue jeans. I'm hoping to be able to try that out in addition to dip dyeing t-shirts.

I'm also trying to sort out the logistics of the dyeing before I actually get started. I don't want to risk spilling on the floor which could stain and cost me my security deposit. I'm hoping the weather will be nice enough at some point this weekend to be able to do the dyeing on my back porch.

DIY Definition Prezi

Still a work in progress, but feel free to check it out!

DIY Definition on Prezi

DIY Definition

DIY at its simplest is an acronym, replacing the words “do it yourself.” In practice, it replaces as well. It replaces buying a product. It replaces the work of another person. It replaces the work of a factory full of people. It replaces the work of a machine. It replaces poorly used spare time spent in front of the TV with something creative and productive. It can be just a hobby, or a way of life.

DIY can take many forms. It could be a craft like knitting a sweater, refinishing a coffee table, or creating homemade birthday cards. It could be a little more complicated than that… like fixing up a used car. It could be growing fruits and vegetables and herbs in a backyard garden instead of buying produce from the supermarket. It could be making your own “frappuccino” or ranch dressing or peanut butter. These forms don’t necessarily have to result in a physical object… DIY is digital as well. It could be creating your own LOLcat. It could be editing a video. It could be creating your own iPhone app.

DIY is a process. It can require research, special skills, tools, materials, time, effort, trial and error. The skills could be a physical process like learning a knitting stitch or a painting technique. Your craft could require you learn how to use a tool like a power drill or pottery wheel. Digital craft requires a set of skills and tools as well, like learning how to use Photoshop or learning how to write the code for your own website. It could even be a mixture of both physical and digital processes, like covering a popular song from the instrumentals to the vocals, then shooting and editing a music video for it. Sometimes a project takes a lot of time, like restoring a vintage trunk. Sometimes the steps of a project or the materials or the process will effect the time it takes to complete a task, like having to put your project on pause so paint or glue can dry. There are times you’ll make mistakes and hit some proverbial road blocks- that’s part of the process. You’ll learn and grow and gain skills as you go. DIY is an experience.

DIY is a movement. It can shape lifestyles. It can be a platform for activism, commonly referred to as Craftivism. That might mean making as much of your daily essentials as possible in an attempt to free yourself from consumer culture- from growing all your food in a backyard garden to making your own soaps and shampoos. It could be making quilts for victims of a natural disaster halfway around the world. It could be creating moss “graffiti” with a message about your cause. Education can be DIY. A movement called Edupunk works on the idea of taking your education into your own hands. This could be teaching yourself software or a foreign language through online course and tutorials. It could even go as far as creating you own “college curriculum” using free resources.

DIY is a lot of things… it has many interpretations. But they require just one simple thing- that you do them yourself.

GUZZETTI et al. and ANDERSON/BALSAMO

It’s always interesting to do a little internet research about the writers and their work, but it was great not to have to this time- the writers did that for us by including self-authored bios in the preface. These were especially useful because they were written with the context of the article in mind.

Barbara Guzzetti has worked as a professor of literary education for over 20 years. She is a baby boomer, and therefore did not come into contact with computers until her 20’s. Diana Welsh is a library assistant in the teen center at a public library. She has been creating DIY media of all sorts since elementary school- everything from playing in bands to writing fan fiction. Kate is a full time grad student. She actually went to school with Diana and created a zine with her. She has used zines as a way to speak up on ideas that are important to her, like social justice. She uses online media to make her voice heard.

One great point they brought up was the need to make school interesting to adolescents. This is a time of constant change for these students in so many aspects of their life. They suggest that this fact be celebrated. We should tailor education to the student, not the other way around. A great way to do so is through digital media. Why write on the chalkboard when you can show a powerpoint presentation with pictures, videos and diagrams? Why assign students a paper, when they could present their work as a video or in a blog?

I also liked the terms “digital native” and “digital migrant” (pg. 1) to describe those who grew up with computers and those who were born before that time and adopted the technology later. I am definitely a digital native. My family got our first computer when I was about four years old. I remember playing games on floppy discs, crazy! One of my favorite games was a drawing game of sorts that came as a trial version on our Apple computer. I first used the internet in elementary school. A friend of mine had AOL and I would “play” with it at her house until me and my sister finally convinced my mom to get a dial up connection at our house. I remember creating a little profile for my instant messenger account, which I guess would be my first experience with social media. Then MySpace came around. I remember spending hours designing my page, having no idea that I was actually sort of learning how to code html.

Throughout my college career, I have been given all sorts of DIY media projects. My first semester, I remember having to make a website-ish thing to supplement a research paper. In the past year or two especially, I have had classes with creative research projects instead of papers. Many of them encouraged me to pick a medium that I am not familiar with. Because of this, I discovered great tools like Prezi, which has become my presentation method of choice. I think these have been very beneficial, but shouldn’t completely replace formal academic writing.

Although I don’t completely love having to write all these blogs for class, I can definitely see their importance. It helps us to get familiar with a new medium to present our work, but also encourages us to produce higher quality work because it is a public forum and people will see it.

Edupunk

From what I gather, edupunk is both a movement and a type of person. As a movement it is the exploration of non-traditional forms of education. A person that is an edupunk is anyone who chooses a non-traditional route to education. As you can imagine, there are countless different variations on education within the edupunk movement.

Anya Kamenetz, the writer of DIY U as well as the edupunk website seems to be a major player in the movement. She is a writer by profession and in turn a speaker and an activist. She has written two books, Generation Debt and DIY U, and currently writes a column called “Life in Beta” for Fast Company Magazine. I would say all of the edupunks featured in the “Stories” section of the website are major players as well. By allowing their stories to be published, they serve as role models to aspiring edupunks and success stories to those who are cynical about the whole movement.

So what is edupunk working towards? I can see a few things stick out from the readings. I think one of the most important tailoring education to one’s personal needs. They stressing knowing how you best learn and choosing a course of study that compliments that. I feel like a lot of people my age end up picking a major because they know they can make a good living when they graduate. This may not necessarily fulfill them, but our society has us thinking we need to choose what is practical over what we are passionate about. Edupunks believe that following you passion can absolutely be practical.

Edupunk is also working towards a reducing the frequency of student debt. By educating students on alternative options, they can borrow money more wisely and use it more efficiently.

Finally, edupunk aims to break the misconception that education only happens in a school or university. As we saw in the resources section from DIY U, there are plenty of options online for independent study. Internships are not only a great resume builder but usually very educational.

Multiliteracties

The New London Group is a team of ten academics concerned about how the ever changing technologies of our current world effect our languages and how they are taught and used. The group came together in 1996 and are most famous for the article we just read. It is hard to find information on them as a whole, but it appears that they are from a variety of universities in both the US and the UK. Their focuses include education, linguistics, educational psychology, and technology.

As the title suggests, the main idea of this essay and theory is multiliteracies, or the idea that in our current society we need to be able to understand language in a few different contexts. These contexts can be related to social and cultural conditions, but also to the integration of technology into our lives. It is important to point out that literacy here is more than just learning how to read and write, it is a broader collection of skills and experiences necessary to function in multiple areas of society.

One thing I found really interesting was how diverse our “common global language” of English has become. It’s something you know, you just don’t really think about. There are the obvious dialects like the English they speak in the UK or Australia, but also different versions spoken in different parts of our country. There are even different versions of written English, such as the abbreviated used when text messaging or tweeting. There are versions specific to certain industries, to academic communities and to cultural communities.

I also liked that they considered curriculum and lesson planning a “design.” The teacher designs a learning experience. They use the tern “redesign” instead of “reform.” The term “reform” has a more intense connotation, like the whole thing needs to be recreated from the start in a completely different way. “Redesign” seems to imply change as a state of evolution.

My post is late and we have already discussed this briefly in class, but if we had more time to discuss this reading I would be interested in the class’s learning experiences throughout the years. How has each of our individual education systems prepared (or failed to prepare) us for college, work, etc.?

Lessig and Ito

Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Harvard University, as well as the author of five books on law and technology. I have actually read his work before; I was assigned to read Free Culture in its entirety last semester for my New Media class. It is written in a way very similar to Free Culture, with plenty of well developed and explained real world examples. A common theme to these examples is the exploitation of copyright by the copyright holders themselves, using their power to intimidate the little guys. His main issue is the collateral damage caused by these copyright wars, that being limits to creativity. The people starting these wars are only concerned about money, but money is the least of most of these “offenders” concerns.

Mimi Ito is a cultural anthropologist, based at the University of California-Irvine. She was born in Japan and grew up back and forth between the US and Japan, before pursuing higher education at Harvard and then graduate work at Stanford. Most of her work focuses on digital media and how it changes relationships and communities. The piece we read was really fun, I really liked that it was originally a presentation. It was a very nice balance to Lessig’s piece, showing the products of the creativity from the remix culture Lessig hopes to protect.

Gabriel/Wagmister & Barbook/Schultz

Gabriel and Wagmister collaborated on this piece while working at UCLA. Gabriel, was born in Ethiopia and moved immigrated to the United States in his mid-twenties. He used his experiences growing up in a “third world” country to become an expert in the academic community on third world cinema. Wagmister is also part of UCLA’s academic community. Born in Argentina, his place of birth has greatly influenced his area of study as well. His work is film focused as well, with a focus in Latin American Culture and Art.

The piece we read focuses on less developed countries and how technology relates to that. To do so, they compared technology to weaving, a craft that many people in these developing countries are familiar with. At the same time, it simplifies technological terms and interfaces for people like me who have grown up with all of this technology but have not necessarily known it on a deeper level. We know how to use the internet, but only on a superficial level. I really liked the comparison of Photoshop to the actual physical process of developing and editing images. When you think of the tools and terminology used in both in relation to the physical processes they were modeled after it is a lot easier to obtain a broader understanding of the technology and also how to educated people in less developed countries about technology.

Barbrook and Schultz are both European scholars. Barbook has a doctorate degree in political science, and supplements media studies into his work. He is currently working and researching at the University of Westminster. Schultz on the other hand is German. He studied political science as well at the University of Amsterdam and earned a PhD from the University of Melbourne. He took an interest in media studies as well, and has lectured throughout eastern and central Europe. He seems to be big on community building and open-source information.

The Manifesto Barbrook and Schultz collaborated on has three sections, each focusing on a main idea. The first stresses the importance of creative labor in the creation and maintenance of the internet. The second analyzes the current media environment, leading up the creation of the European Digital Artists Network or EDAN for short. EDAN stresses collaboration and activism within the digital creative community. They hope to provide citizens with the tools and education needed to participate in a thriving digital community, including government installed broadband internet for all.

Class Photoshop Work

Here's the progress I made on a Photoshop tutorial I found here: http://www.pixelonomics.com/how-to-design-a-geometric-poster-in-photoshop/

Jenkins- Part 2

A major topic throughout Chapter 6 of Jenkins’s book is a shift in the way people get their political information. It is moving away from the mainstream broadcast and adopting a more narrowcast, grassroots approach. This phenomenon is mainly seen in the younger generations. A great way to think about it is push vs. pull. The old way, push media, releases information to a large audience. They information is therefore created for a broad range of opinions and not very specific. A pull medium puts the information out there, but does not assume it will reach a large audience. Those who are interested will seek out the information and “pull” it for their use. Broadcast news would therefore be a push medium, while the Internet is a pull medium.

Interestingly though, Facebook and Twitter have so many users that they can almost function as a broadcast medium. In the past couple of days, the KONY 2012 video has gone viral. Over 32, 000,000 (and counting) have viewed the 30-minute video since it was uploaded Monday. Most of them are young people who don’t normally keep up with world news, a lot of them are not even old enough to vote. Jenkins quotes another author, David Buckingham, who wrote a book called The Making of Citizens, who said,“children and youth feel powerless in their everyday lives and, as a consequence, have difficulty imagining how they might power in a politically meaningful fashion”. These people are donating money, signing a petition, and organizing events- all via social media. They are learning that their social networks can be a lot more powerful than they realized. I have participated in their campaign, reposting the video and encouraging my networks to watch it. But I think it is important to question it as well. I am giving the whole issue critical thought, researching and forming my own beliefs.

I anticipate a lot of political content on Facebook and Twitter as the election draws closer. I agree that it is a great way to reach the young people, but I hope that my generation doesn’t just vote just because everyone is telling them to, without educating themselves.

From reading these chapters, I have come to find convergence culture a bit complicated. But I can see that its main strength is that it is a participatory culture. We are no longer just talked at via television; anyone can now take part in the conversation. I think digital craft and DIY are very much a part of convergence culture- they are a creative way to join the conversation.

Jenkins- Part 1

Henry Jenkins is currently the Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Before that he created and directed the Comparative Media Studies graduate program at MIT. He describes himself as “prolific as hell.” He has a very active mind, which shows in his lengthy and frequent blog posts as well as his list of published work.

When reading his introduction, I had to keep reminding myself what class I was reading for. It is extremely similar in topic and theme to what I have been reading for my Writing for Social Media class. Towards the end of the introduction, when he explained what he would discuss in the chapters to come, it became clearer how this relates to DIY culture. The chapter we read focuses on the amateur filmmaker culture surrounding the Star Wars phenomenon- they are certainly a sub-culture or DIY culture.

One idea I find important is folk culture, which developed through sharing and interpreting. Ownership was not a concern, most folk songs for example cannot be traced to single songwriter. Our modern mass media was built on borrowings from folk culture and in turn this new convergence culture Jenkins is discussing will be built on material from the media conglomerates who have controlled the mass media in recent years. Of course, this will be difficult as these conglomerates are more about making money than developing a culture. As we have read in the chapter, they are not ready and willing to give up the rights to their intellectual property and on the rare occasion that they do so, it is on their own strict terms.

As for my project, I have finished up most of the prep work I needed to do. I have all my materials- a blank scrapbook, decorative paper, tape, markers, pens and of course photos. I have a general idea of how I plan to organize the content, so my next step is to fill in the details. In the next few days I plan to finalize the photos I will be using and work on my hand-drawn type. I want to assign each group of photos a page as well, I will probably paper clip the photos and decorative paper to the pages to help me organize it. Then finally I can get to the fun part- experimenting with layouts and gluing everything in place.

Fasenfest and Berry

FASENFEST:

I am not at all surprised that Harriet Fasenfest lives in Portland, Oregon. From what she reveals about herself and her beliefs in the reading, she definitely fits the Portland stereotype. That being environmentally conscious, with a desire for self-sustainability (in a personal and local context) and distaste for consumer culture.

Like the reading by Greer from last class, Fasenfest focuses on her introduction into the subculture she is discussing. She goes back and reviews the events in her life that have brought her to this change in lifestyle. By explaining how she got here, she makes herself more relatable to her readers. These readers are obviously interested in her lifestyle, but most likely beginners. This book seems to be a how-to guide to the householding lifestyle that she leads. She makes a few historical time references, the shop she owned in the 1980’s and how by the turn of the century consumer culture had been taken to a whole new level which she was not comfortable with.

BERRY:

Wikipedia lists Wendell Berry’s occupation(s) as farmer, writer, and academic. He is 77 years old and was born in Kentucky. Most people born on a farm tend to farm for life, but he took a different path earning a bachelor’s and master’s in English from the University of Kentucky, completing a creative writing program at Stanford University, teaching at New York University before finally returning to his alma mater to teach creative writing.

Berry takes a much more economic approach to agriculture, and writes about the industry and market as a whole instead of his personal experiences with it. The audience for this piece is not primarily for farmers, but for people in agribusiness. He is writing to explain to them that they think they know how to regulate this industry, but in reality are making some grave mistakes. As with the Fasenfest reading, the rise of consumer culture and big business is a pivotal historical event affecting the farming industry.

CRAFT?

I can definitely see farming as a craft. It takes a certain set of skills, patience and passion. From this comes something tangible, food. Fasenfest’s backyard garden could definitely be seen as craftivism as well. Like many craftivists, one of the major reasons Fasenfest gardens is to detach herself from consumer culture. She is crafting in a nostalgic way, going back to a time when a family grew all the food they needed to survive. Only after feeding themselves would the sell their surplus. Although the act of backyard subsistence farming alone can be seen as activism, she takes it further by publishing a book instructing other interested gardeners to do the same as well as teaching classes at a householding education center called Preserve in Portland.

Craftivism and Photoshop

Betsy Greer reveals a lot about herself in Craftivist History. The history is very much a memoir of how Greer became involved with crafting and activism, eventually combining the word and “releasing it to the world”. It traces the roots of the word and its meaning to her time in New York City, how she liked her job but needed something more, she wanted to create and make a difference. According to her website she has since received a Master’s degree is Sociology from Goldsmiths College in London and has written and contributed to many books.

Although she has been credited in many circles with coining the phrase and even the idea of “craftivism” she does not position herself as so in this reading. She saw it more of something that already existed, but just needed a name. She had even heard the word used before once, but it needed to become more widespread. She simply released the word into the world. (Pg. 179) I would assume the main purpose of writing this was to clarify her intentions concerning craftivism and it’s meaning to her.

September 11^th had a major effect on her work as well. She used crafting as an outlet for activism as well as personal comfort. With the surge of activism of all sorts that naturally follows such a disaster, the craftivism community began to grow, as people wanted a way to express their beliefs in a creative unique way.

The second reading, Craft Hard Die Free by Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch, is a lot more technical than Greer’s. They do not focus on their own personal experience in the world of craftivism, but rather the community as a whole. Further research reveals that they are both based in Alberta, Canada, which makes sense of some of the examples used. Anthea Black is very active in the LGBT arts community there, while Nicole Burisch seems to be more present in academic and craft culture circles.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, they seem to want to expose their readers to the craftivism community as a whole and all of its diversity. They provide and analyze examples from a variety of artists as well the views of the artists on their craftivism. Greer’s essay was more about her experiences with craftivism, while this one is about the Craftivist community.

I must say, I had fun with the LOLcat. I actually used my own cat, Dumpling, looking sassy all dressed up for Christmas. But honestly, the most difficult part for me was having to spell the words wrong to fit the LOLcat unofficial guidelines. I have used Photoshop before, so this activity was extremely easy for me. On the flow scale of frustrating to boring, I was more towards the boring end of the continuum. I am actually working on a project for another class that is much more fitted to skill level, so I will use that as a reference point instead.

One connection I find between my scrapbooking project and Photoshop is the concept of layers. In scrapbooking you physically layer paper, photos and text to create your image, in Photoshop your layers are digital. In both cases layers can be a great tool creatively, but organizing them can get a bit frustrating. I see both activities as puzzle-like. They require thought, planning and time. You might not know what the end result will be until you get there. They’re both a creative challenge, and I enjoy both activities.