Saturday, April 30, 2016

Production Report 2

This post will do the same things as the previous production report. This time the section being shown is my first main idea.

This section I did not start detailing as much as the intro. I have a lot of main points I want to talk about so I want to try to talk casually first and see if that will work. I want to make it sound as organic as possible because I am doing the podcast genre. I feel like if I write too much of it out I am just going to be reading and talking instead of thinking and talking. I am not a good presenter so I think the audience would be able to pick up on this fairly easily,

The main realization I had when making this section is that I cannot just read my script. I will if I need to but I want to try to avoid it as much as possible. This would also give me more time to rethink my talking points and make the project more genuine.


Section 1: Writing before this semester

Strict rules

Objective all the time

No personal input

Meaningless work

No personal connection to work

All this leads to me making a generic product that'll meet criteria

I never practiced transferring my own thoughts to paper

Production Report 1

This blog post shows the content I've generated so far. It is a very rough cut. The portion presented is made of my first ideas about the project and will probably change.

Inrto

Hello, everyone. My name is Ben Macklin and this podcast is about my past semester in Sean Bottai's honors english class. Like most students this time of the year, I am reflecting over the past semester and thinking about how I did. While I was doing this I realized some major problems in my writing process. This was no surprise to me. Through this analysis, however, I realized what to watch out for next semester, in order to avoid some of the common pitfalls of writing like procrastinating and writers block.


I am doing a podcast for the last project. Since I'm doing this genre, I knew I needed to keep my intro short and too the point. In this rough draft I tried to get to the point but also provide enough background information. I know I will also have to add some kind of audio clip to keep the audience interested.


This content production was not too hard. This project we have a good idea about what we are going to talk about. The hardest part is deciding how to say it in the most effective way.

Production Schedule

Below is a tentative schedule of the next project. It marks the major steps I need to take. I already have a good idea of the direction I'm trying to go so I just need to make sure I get them done on time.



What is to be done
Location
Date
Resources
Look through old projects
Apartment
5/1
Laptop
Pick the best evidence
Apartment
5/1-5/2
Laptop
Write a script
Apartment
5/3
Laptop
Record
Apartment
5/3-5/4
Phone
Edit
Apartment
5/4-5/5
Laptop



Content Outline

This blog post is for the final project and is to produce an outline for the upcoming content production. I will show a rough outline with certain points illustrated like evidence.

My final genre is the podcast genre.

Intro.

Introduce myself, class, project set up, and establish self evaluation.

Address audience and relate topics to them.

Section 1: Writing before college

High school writing

Certain rules I thought I needed

No Freedom

What evidence proves:

The main point I am going to try to make in this section is the mind set I had going into the class. I want to analyze why I reacted to this course, so I have to analyze what I started with. Towards the end of the section I'm going to start to transition to the next one and talk about the differences between what I knew before and what happened in this class.

Section 2: This semester

Time management

Brainstorming

Best with project 3
- more freedom
- something I cared about

Getting better

What evidence proves:

In this section I'm going to use the analysis from the previous section and try to figure out why I did certain things this semester like procrastinate or having trouble brainstorming ideas. I also am going to analyze why I did better towards the end of the semester.

Section 3: Being honest with myself

Made better content when staying true to my ideas.

Harder to ignore deadline

Helps peer reviews

What evidence proves:

In the last section I want to take the reflection and try to make a claim about how I could get better. This claim will be to always be honest with myself about where I am at with a project or process in general. This claim can address problems like procrastinating, writer's block, peer reviews, and the overall quality of the content.


Closing section:

In this section I am mainly going to focus on how the reflection is able to help me make my bigger claim. I am going to stray away from talking about my process here because I already did that for most of the podcast. I want to stay focused on the claim so hopefully the audience will be inspired to do the same thing with their writing process.



Sunday, April 24, 2016

Peer Review for David Klebosky

In this blog post I'm going to review David Klebosky's project.


David Klebosky did a podcast for project 3. There was no title but here is a link to his draft.


I picked activity 6 to review David on because I am doing a podcast next week and I have yet to review one so I thought it'd be helpful.


David put a lot of effort into making his podcast funny. I know from an author's pov, it is hard to tell if the humor works. I gave David my opinions about the way he used humor and how it affected his overall podcast. I liked his humor and thought it kept my attention when there are no visuals or any other way to capture the audience's attention.

In the student's guide, I reviewed the sections about public arguments. I did this because I was concerned about if humor was the best way to handle a public argument. Considering that satire was the topic of his project, this was one of the best choices he made. I think it worked very well.


I feel like I say this every project but I always think its awesome when an author is not afraid to be funny or too personal. I think I had been taught too long that I should always write in a very objective pov but I would love to start to explore a more personal pov.

Reflection on Project 3

In this post I'm going to talk about project 3 and about some of the hardships. Maybe some good things.

The biggest success of this project was that I felt like I could be invested in it enough to make good content. I felt confident in the information I presented and the points I made. This was somewhat of a problem in the beginning.

I ended up having to shift my focus twice. I think this is because the issue of addiction is very general and I had a lot of knowledge about all the different components of it. I had a hard time leaving information out because I felt like I wasn't painting the entire picture. I was eventually able to focus on just the cause of addiction, because if you have a solid understanding of why addicts become addicts, the rest of the problem is pretty logical. I also do not do well with technology so it was pretty challenging to create a video and have it compete with other people in the class and on the internet.


Based on the experiences of this week, the next project will be a lot easier. I only have a podcast left and that is basically one part of my video project I did. I also listen to a good amount of podcasts so I feel a lot more comfortable with how the genre conventions will turn out.

I feel pretty good about my project. I am mostly confident in the content and information being presented but I am scared my genre conventions will take a hit.

Editorial Report B

In this blog post I will do the same thing as in Editorial Report B, except for a different section of my project.

Here is the unedited version of my closing section:


While there are a lot of aspects of the drug war that should be considered when creating a new policy, one thing is for certain, and that is that the current polices in place do not effectively help someone suffering from drug addiction. If more people can get educated on the reasons behind addiction, and become more skeptical of the people put in power, we can force an important civil rights movement and provide legitimate help to those that need it

Here is my edited version:

The process of becoming fulfilled or happy is daunting even for someone not addicted to anything. Not everyone is going to find happiness in the same things, as there are billions of people on this planet. The human brain is one of the most complex things on Earth, changing and making itself better through millions of years of evolution. The problem of addiction is extremely complicated, involving various emotional components as well as physical and environmental. The solution of throwing addicts in jail through prohibition is a naïve, unsympathetic attempt to help everyone else besides the actual addict. 


With the new age of the internet, and in a world where it’s becoming harder and harder to hide the truth, it is our responsibility to seek it. Even if you don’t feel compelled to help these people, it takes little effort to have an open mind and reevaluate the cards on the table so that future generations can start from a solid, truthful base. 

During this audio I show pictures of people in prison and also people being happy to appeal to the audiences emotions. 



There was a big shift in content for this section. The first draft I focused more on the drug war and why it's bad. The edited version still addresses the issue but from less of a political pov and more of a philosophical or civil rights pov. I did this to reflect my video more accurately. I focus a lot on the experiences of addicts and the emotional components, not as much about policy. 


Again, form changed a lot for this section as before I had no pictures or audio and in the edited version I do. There is not very much to compare form wise because the first draft did not have any of the key components of a video essay.