I’ve listened to 3 podcast:

This Podcast from IRL

Pranav and Tanuj

Germaine and Chloe

And took some Notes:

Do we worry too much about the effects technology has on our lives?

I don’t think we’ve worried about it too much. I think it’s just the right amount of attention. Because technology really is a big part of our life, could be super useful or super harmful. And it’s a new thing, and technology keep improving and changing, there’s a lot of uncertainty and opportunity. By paying attention to it, we can make maximise the good affects on lives and eliminate those bad effects.

In the partner podcast project, each pair created a podcast about a challenge they did that explore ideas about technology usage. You can listen to my podcast on my previous post. This project just came to an end. I’m going to reflect on it.

Mental Toughness

Three quotes from this article:

” intelligence only accounts for 30% of your achievement — and that’s at the extreme upper end…..it was grit — the perseverance and passion to achieve long–term goals — that made the difference.”

“Mental toughness is built through small wins. It’s the individual choices that we make on a daily basis that build our “mental toughness muscle.” We all want mental strength, but you can’t think your way to it. It’s your physical actions that prove your mental fortitude.”

“Motivation is fickle. Willpower comes and goes.”

I think these quotes link with my experiences in the podcast project because the project is sometimes fun, sometimes annoying to me. If I just follow my “motivation”, then my work would not be consistent, and it would create extra difficulty for my partner too. It‘s only when random interest became responsibility, that our work can be consistent and has good quality. Luckily, most of the time I can fulfil my responsibility and my final product is good. Also, personally I am very bad at music, but a great portion of the podcast is music. By watching tutorials and listen to other podcasts, I did the best I can and the music is okay. So I think it’s very true that intelligence can only determine maximum 30% of final success, metal strength is more important. This article is useful for the last three months of the year because it encourages me to be more consistent and choose to challenge myself. By practicing mental toughness, I can better prepare myself for the future.

Partner Agreement

Our partner agreement audio

By doing the project, I discovered another key element to a successful collaboration: to have the same goal. This is not covered in the original partner agreement. I think it might be good to add that in next time. So during the process, I was blaming(not explicitly) Rhea for not doing a better job. Latter on I realise that her goal is a bit lower than mine, so it make sense for her to do less than me. It’s just part of the collaboration. Looking back, I should have encourage and help her from the start. I should tell her my goal and explain to her what I actually hope she to do. What do I need most from a partner during a project? I need my partner to discuss with me about, everything, so I can form my idea more easily and be more confident in what I am doing. I need my partner to trust me. I know this because I can only accomplish things when my partner trust me and have active discussion with me. If we just look at the instruction and split it in half, I’m not going to do well. My mind would mess up. I just could not decide and could not get going. My collaboration style is to discuss everything together with my partner. Comparing to that, work distribution or verbal encouragement is not that important to me.

Emotion Skills

Original article for this image

My sharpest part in this project is the magnifier for taking a closer look at myself. Because I descry a lot of things about myself due to the project. For example I prefer texting and I tend to do last minute work. I think I need to spend more time using the scissors for cutting out distractions, because I easily get distracted by literally anything. But I don’t know exactly know how I can cut out distractions. If I master this, I can have more control over myself and it will help me with meeting deadlines.

We’ve long heard that the ways the web is tailored for each user—how we search, what we’re shown, who we read and follow— reinforces walls between us. Veronica Belmont investigates how social media can create, and can break, our filter bubbles. Link to the podcast: Social Bubble Bath

Quotes

“Everyone looked like me. Everyone thought pretty much like I thought, so, it was comfortable, you know.”—B.J. May

“When I think about us in Ferguson, if it were not for us like coming together, using social media as our own space, we wouldn’t have ever begun the protest.”—-DeRay Mckesson

“It’s really strange sometimes to look back at old videos of myself or current videos of my family and because, of course, there’s a part of my brain that knows exactly what they’re saying and where they’re coming from and why they think the way that they do. ” —–Megan Phelps-Roper

She was born into Westboro Baptist Church and lived in that social bubble for a long time. However, as she reached out online, she started to understand others and started to question her own belief. Then she left the church. This quote is interesting to me because I have this feeling too when I look back at my ideology in different stage of my life, and at my friends in China.

“The average online user who does not use social media, use somewhere in between one or two different sources of online news per week, whereas those who use social media are exposed to significantly more different sources of online news……In some ways, the very technologies that some people feared would lead us to filter bubbles, right now, at least as they have operated in recent years, seem in fact to have the opposite consequences.” —–Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

His team surveyed 70,000 people from 36 countries.

How the episode used the conventions, and to what effect?

This episode followed the convention. It contains all the parts and has a very good structure. It’s pre-intro bumper has a nice background music, and quotes from people about their opinion on social bubble. This part sounds nice, and light on information, make audience interested in the topic. The standard intro is very brief, kind of acts like a transition between the introduction and the detailed content. The chunked segments contains 4 separate stories, presented in the form of interviewing. These stories provide real life story about social bubble can have different effects in different situations. The episode also has a standard outro at the end. Except there’s a joke at the very end to relax down the audience after discussing about social bubble.

What about this episode helps you pick the challenge to try out?

Social bubble can be easily broke by connect with someone outside of your normal social circle. One man in the episode unfollowed everyone on his twitter account, and then follow someone who has completely different opinion and experience. He was very happy to be able to see both sides by doing that. There’s one challenge similar to this, “Change up your media diet and watch one video from one of these Youtubers every day”. However, I don’t think that’s what I need. In real life, everyone’s ideas are so conflicting: school VS parents, friends in international school VS friends in China. So conflicting that I can’t even form my opinion. I really need a social bubble online. I need that group of people to let me know that I’m not alone. I need to rest in those bubbles, to see people can actually think the same and do the same. However, this challenge only ask to watch video, doesn’t say I can’t do what I am originally doing, so this is still okay for me.

What new questions do you have as the result of thinking about this episode? 

• People form social bubbles because they are naturally similar to some people and different than the others; or is this people live in a bubble, which makes them similar to some people and different that the others?
• When you try to break a bubble and live outside the social bubble, how do you make sure that you are not swapping one bubble for another? Is social bubble just unavoidable as long as we are social?

Intro:

We have been studying stop motion unit since the end of November, for our digital perspective course. This blog post records down the whole process.

Stop Motion Notes-taking

(with the trial stop motion film is linked on the last slide)

On these slides, we watched a few stop motion films and took notes on them. Then we made a trial stop motion in class. On the last slide, there’s a photo of reflection sheet and also a link that would lead to our stop motion. The purpose is just for practice, not a full project. This challenge helps us to understand what stop motion is about and what does creating it feel like. I also learnt some basic skills and gained experience, which helped when I am creating the final project (thunderstorm story) later on.

Storyboards and Plan

Now we get into pairs to create the stop motion project; I paired up with Winnie. We first need to make a detailed plan.

Reflection on collaboration

• To what extent did you honor your original partner agreement?
  • We very much exactly followed the partner agreement. And it does help a lot to make things clear beforehand. In our partner agreement, the most important points are: don’t do work at mid-night; Remind each other to do work; do everything together; equal work distribution; be positive; plan well and have discussion; stay and work after school. We successfully carried out everything! The partner agreement really helps to have a positive anticipation and confidence in our collaboration and also made it easier to give out advice.
• Looking back now, what is one thing you should have added to that agreement and how could that help future collaborations?
  • I think our collaboration is perfect. Maybe we should get rid of “do everything together”. Our original intention is to ensure we both contribute and that the final product is the way we both want it to be. It does help with that, but we also wasted a bit time for this. For example editing and some drawing, you really only need one person at a time, the other person is just kind of waiting beside. Which make us less efficient.
• What did you bring to this collaboration? How well was your partner able to rely on you?
  • Work Distribution: I did most of the drawing and Winnie did most of the editing. But we were working together for the whole time, giving ideas and help. For example when I’m drawing, Winnie will help me to erase the board; and when Winnie is editing, I found the raining sound, and I also check with her about the sequence of each photo.
• What can you do to be more reliable in future projects?
  • Give opinions + listen to opinions
  • respect deadline
  • Do things that are in my skill sets and trust my partners for the rest
  • Always say the good aspects about our progression and collaboration

On The Set Day

All of the photos taken for making the stop motion.

We spent 3 afternoon and 1 class period to get these done. 103 photos in total.

The finished Video – Thunderstorm Story

The background music came from here: Youtube link. Other sound effects are just from iMovie.

Reflection on the original rationale

(The original rational is on the slide 5 and 6 of the “storyboards and plan” slides)

How well did you communicate what you hoped to communicate in the final film? How do you know?

I think the actual story, what really happened, is not presented clearly in the video. I know the original written piece, so I can make connection between the video and the vignette, and they quit match. However, if someone only watched the video, it’s hard for them to know what exactly happened in the story.

I know this because when I showed this to my friends, all of them thought that the girl jumped out of the building, but later on she appears again which doesn’t make sense. It actually is that the girl looks out the window and see someone jumping out of the building. Then the girl was really frightened and realise that she can not always neglect problems and run away, otherwise she might end up like the person who died.

However I still think this is successfully, because with 2 sentence of explanation, everything make sense again. This amount of misunderstanding is good already for us, since we are all beginners in stop motion. Moreover, the emotion and tone is represented very well in the video, have the potential to leave a mark in people’s hearts. Even myself would sometimes feel shocked when I watch the video. The highlights is obviously the parts where there’s a thunder or lighting. We did put many effort into creating this effect too.

ATL reflection

Slides on Video Preparation

iMovie Rough Draft Process

Link to my video draft 

The most important thing I need to work on to improve my film during next lesson:

• add text explanation(e.g. “2 hours later”)
• some parts of my talking is not clear, I need to retake some audio. And edit audio in general.
• maybe: add B-roll + fun elements + different editing skill + music

My final film is meant to be 2-3 minutes, this means I need to cut down a little unimportant seconds from various sections to make the film more compacted.

Of my FIVE statements about social media, the one that is the trickiest to communicate in the video is phones make us exercise less since make us unhappy. I say this because this statement is basically saying that I need to be “unhappily addicted to phone”, which is obviously tricky and contradictory. If I want to show that I’m addicted, then I need to show that the phone make me happy, but at the same time I need to show that the phone make me unhappy.

Link to my final video 

ATL Reflection

Self-Management:

I need to improve my time management, since I am struggling to meet deadlines. I’m good with easy tasks but I struggled to get start on the difficult task. I alway trying to do the work the night before deadline, for example the draft movie. Then on the next lesson I realized that the draft movie will affect my following work, but I’m not satisfied it. Then I need to continue with the old task and do not have time to do the new task. I kind of fall into a bad loop: I’m behind for once, and then I’m behind every time. To get out of the loop, I should find an extra time to work on Dper. I should have done it earlier. Also, I should set goals and expectations that are not difficult for me, so I will actually do it. Instead of setting a high goal and give up. I organized material very effectively, both physical material and digital.  I saved my footage in two locations(local and drive). We always keep our storyboards and notes together and never lose any of them. I put all digital resources(slides, video, notes) in Google folders. They are all very easy to find and it helped when I try to put everything in one piece.

Collaboration and communication:

I contributed a lot of ideas in the discussion of target chart. My partner is sean when filming. We have different goals on what the final video should be. We had a lot of discussion while drawing the storyboards(it’s obvious because his pencil mark is darker…). And I organize things into the Google Slides. The final filming is in the middle of our ideas, which shows that our collaboration is successful because we all contributed and agreed. One challenge would be that there’s no one filming for us, so we need to put the phone on a table and the angle of shot and the sound weren’t good. But we worked together and finished. I am being optimistic by liking my final result. I think we did good on communicating the 5 statements in the video. We tried to do it “show not tell”, which made the it slightly harder for viewers to get the information, but it also made the idea more consumable. If you look at the video and the 5 statements at the same time, it’s clear that we are communicating these.

My group: Megna, Sige, Stuti

I listened to:

Audio File(Eric, Doris, Gloria)

Daniel/Tanuj/Gwenda

Are social media rules different from the regular rules of how to engage with friends in person? Why or why not?

I think the exact rules are different because the method of communication is different. For example @someone is the person is in a photo that you just post; this won’t apply to engage with friends in person. However, the central idea is the same, which is to respect and think of your friends for what ever you are doing.

Sunday Sketches by Christoph Niemann

Christoph is really creative. The art work combined two dimensional drawings and 3 dimensional daily objects. For example the image above is one of the artwork. It included two different sized white tape as the two wheels of bicycle. The size difference created the sense of perspective (close and far), which is a very smart way of doing an artwork. I learned that we should think out of the box. Many normal objects, if we look at them in another angle, they can be very special.

Imagination is an amazing ability that people have. Life is sometimes boring, but with imagination, there will be a lot of fun in life. When I was younger, I used to imagining faces on different objects or natural scenes. But now, I became more practical and only believe what physically exist. These art work made me remember of the childhood time. When the world in my eyes is not the “real” world. And remind me about the importance to pick up imagination again.

These art works also proved that a good design is always simple. Visual art is a trick done to our vision. A specific combination of forms, colours, lines and shapes, will bring people a specific feeling and emotion. Therefore we are able to express ourselves and spread ideas through art works. Christoph Niemann is clearly very good at using the different elements of art. By taking photograph at a specific angle, you can mislead someone’s understanding. Which shows the weakness of what we see as “truth”. Therefore, we should always remember to stay open-minded towards what is “truth”, and be ready to change our previous understanding.