Creativity, Originality, Imagination

Stories can only tell so much with words. This class helped me to understand the values of using visuals to help an audience understand a story better. When preparing for the academic remix project, we played around shorthand to show a day in the life of something or someone. I had no idea on how to show a day in my life with pictures that were able to progress the “story” smoothly. In the our class we had a day where we discussed photo taking and photo editing as a tool to shape a picture to tell a story. After doing the shorthand assignment, I looked through my peers finished products and saw some things that I could have done better. I realized that observing how others take on an assignment and create their final projects I am able to take in some of the skills and strategies that they used and incorporating it into a project that is still my own but growing the knowledge and skills I had to do the assignment.

Confidence and Independence

I had no idea what to expect when I first walked into this class. When I was told that this class was more of an independent creative learning style I was nervous but also quite excited. I loved working with digital media and was intrigued with what we were going to be getting into. However, with knowing my luck, I was afraid of attempting creativity on my own because I felt insecure about a lot of my projects. Using the “I like, I wish, I wonder” eased my mind a bit because it allowed for my peers and I to critique each other’s projects in a way that is helpful rather than harmful. With the first Instagram assignment we did in class to practice using the platform, we were in groups. I was very hesitant to give my input on how to film certain locations or people. I wasn’t confident enough that my peers would not fully reject or even say “that’s a bad idea”. When we began our major Instagram assignment, I then felt more confident in working with a classmate by stating things in a “I wonder” format.

Reflection

The main difficulty I had with this class is trying to write observations relating to digital storytelling and keeping up with it. I originally didn’t understand what I could type up as an observation but after a couple explanations in each class I figured out that I was to write about anything that I observed that could correlate back to creating digital stories. At first, I would observe things that we did in class like the wallet assignment where I learned to receive feedback and think from the perspective of the client. I then used this skill during my mini internship where the small makeup company encompasses a type of online persona and having to gain the information to embody that same persona and manage their social media content.