You are currently browsing the daily archive for April 3rd, 2008.
For the Final Project I want to document the upcoming trips I have planned. I’m going to Seattle in a couple weeks and then down to LA in early May. I’ll also most likely be spending a weekend in Monterey or San Francisco. I’m trying to plan as much weekend traveling as I can before I graduate! I think it would be interesting to document my trips on my digital camera and then edit each trip into an episode for my vlog. I just hope it’s not too difficult!
Final Project Proposal
My plan for my final project is to share my story with viewers about what it has been like for me to grow up practicing Judaism. I was born and raised within a very traditional “Jewish” family home. Both my grandparents are Holocaust survivors and I am so proud to share their story of honor, strength, and courage with my peers. More specifically, I practice Reform-Judaism and attend temple survives quite often, along with celebrating all the traditional holidays. During my first semester in college I had hurtful things spoken to me about being Jewish. I hope that everyone listens to my story and my experiences with an open and non-judgmental mind. I look forward to completing this story because it gives me a chance to do research on what I believe in, which ultimately teaches me things about Judaism I may have never known!
We the Media 3
As our class get’s closer to finishing up Dan Gillmor’s book “We the Media,” I am beginning to learn more than I ever knew about new media. In chapters 7, 8, and 9, Gillmor discusses topics such as Indymedia, online data gathering websites, and the new ways the media misleads the public. Before reading Gillmor’s book I had never heard the term “Indymedia.” It was very interesting to read that Indymedia is an alternative kind of media which began in 1999 by a “group of antiglobalization activists who wanted to cover the Seattle World Trade Organization meeting in ways traditional media would not” (paperback copy, pg. 145). Incredibly, the effort of Indymedia has brought highly regarded results to the public. Wiki along with Indymedia is another term I was unfamiliar with until reading Gillmor’s book. A form of online data gathering is known as “The Wiki.” According to Gillmor “Wikipedia is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age,” and absolutely understandable considering the millions of people that refer to wikipedia.com for credible information. I agree with Gillmor point regarding why Wikipedia is such a valuable resource to people. The articles within Wikipedia “tend to be neutral in tone [even] when the topic is controversial, [however Wikipedia] will explain the varying viewpoints in addition to offering the basic facts” (paperback copy, pg. 148). I believe Wikipedia is a website/database that is extremely user friendly and contains great information. Lastly, I found Gillmor’s discussion on misleading media to be the most fascinating. I always knew the media tried to manipulate its audience, but Gillmor explains why and how the trickery is actually done. “Backdrops of urban settings behind anchor people” are not the only ways in which media is misleading (paperback copy, pg. 178). “Spinning” is another process journalists have become accustomed to (paperback copy, pg. 184). Gillmor explains that PR firms use spinning often. Spinning is often directed at the audience in such a way that causes a change in perception to possibly “[favor] oneself or one’s client or cause” (paperback copy, pg. 184). Gillmor constantly discusses new ideas for why new media has positive and negative effects on our world. I so far have learned a great deal from Dan Gillmor’s book and I look forward to continuing to become more knowledgeable about new media.
