https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17911125997236225/

Throughout the semester I’ve been extremely excited about the creativity factor involved with this course and applying it to our projects. When we began our first big project, the Instastory on a Professor or faculty member, I felt very comfortable in my abilities to take on the assignment and succeed. I love Instagram and use it as my main platform for social media — I believe it’s a great platform for digital storytelling as well. Being familiar with the app and, more important, the “story” aspect I was excited to create a documentary style interview by using the app’s features to my advantage. Instagram is what you make it, and I’ve found that the videos and story’s that use features such as stickers, polls, giffs, etc. which highlight and play on the videos or photos uploaded are the most intriguing. So, in thinking of my audience and subject (Professor Lunsford), I decided to surround my story around humor, as Lunsford is also a very comical character and would work well with this theme additionally. Instagram also makes it easy for you to stay organized or unified fonts, sizes and colors. So, between the comical aspect being pushed and set filters, text, etc. consistent throughout, the final Instastory proved to be both appealing and intriguing to audiences.

https://spark.adobe.com/video/4dZzltkMDtQdQ

When given the Dork Short assignment, I wanted to choose something based upon rating’s and then how I responded to using a new app. I searched top storytelling apps and read through reviews and even watched YouTube videos on how to use them before choosing mine. Once I chose Adobe Spark, I began playing around with the different features while also thinking of how my classmates would best understand the app, how it works and basically how to sell the device. To do this, I again played on humor as I’ve found if you can make someone laugh genuinely then you’ve reached them personally. So, when thinking about what I could do with the app vs. who I was presenting to, I stuck with the theme of “college life” in my example piece. We’re all a part of JMU and have similar experiences here as students, so with that in mind I played on what I have in common with my audience and the app’s provided styles of storytelling. One of the main ideas in creating such an app is to provide simple ways of getting a point across, and with a funny, relatable theme my example story presented as just that.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tC9u_Ov_cwjDRQ3OdIq7nqP_W2WavJfRal_cTopio4U/edit?usp=sharing

When writing up my midterm assignment, I had never used the LR guide before, so I went in with an open mind. I read through all the information provided and decided to first organize what I knew vs. what questions I had left about it. I based my outline on the Professor’s given guidelines and once my concerns were resolved or answered I moved forewords in collecting evidence and deciphering what went best where. I realized others in the class were all new to this as well, and messaged classmates if certain areas I felt stuck at. Reaching out to others, doing research on my own and gathering the information I had collectively made it easier to create a piece that I felt confidently reflected my work in the course thus far and as a whole.

https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17979255250111984/

I was very excited for our second Instastory as I’d enjoyed making the first one prior and now had that previous experienced to be proactive while prepping for this one. I assessed what went right vs. what difficulties were faced and based both on how I would conduct this second story. I wanted to continue using the Instagram-specific features but also focus more on the subject and what she really wanted to say/get across. This is due to the fact that the first project had to be cut down significantly and that meant we lost good content and had to take extra time to decipher, cut and unify clips. So, I first connected with my subject (WRTC major Kat) early on to find out the details of her story, what was most important to her and then create an outline to stick to and reference as a guide during the interview. This made conducting and gathering my content so much easier and saved me a lot of time. And so, the project finalized turned out neater, to-the-point and also entertaining/pleasing to the eye.

http://preview.shorthand.com/0OrJRQGOcSp2vT9s

After creating all these projects throughout the semester, I’ve become a lot more comfortable taking on storytelling devices even without prior knowledge or experience with a format. This was especially displayed in my Academic Writing Remix, where I had to learn an entirely different platform we were working with and decide how to use it to my Remix’s advantage. We conducted a prior project as to become more familiar using the layout and kind of gather ideas for what we’d like to do with our bigger, Remix project that followed. It helped me a lot, as I could then gather what worked, what didn’t, the differences between the two projects and how these collectively could help to create something I would be proud of. I decided to use similar features I had before, but then also tweak the additional media added based upon the write-up I was remixing. I also took our peer review after the first draft to heart and added a spin to my final draft by incorporating a personal poem at the end of the Remix before submission. Altogether, I was left with little to no doubt about any part of my work which viewed authentic and original to the end.