A REFLECTION OF THE SEMESTER.
At the beginning of the semester, I thought I had at least a decent grasp of what melodrama is. But I would soon find out that wasn't the case. Just from the first day, hearing about the multiple characteristics that makes melodrama what it is completely blew away my preconceived notions of the subject. A mere reading of Harry Potter was put into a different perspective and I was intrigued.
Readings of Singer and Williams allowed me to even better understand melodrama as it pertained to modernity and society in general. The works of these authors made it easier to reflect on the Communist Manifesto, coupled with the work of Anker. Engagement with these texts showed me how melodrama is really used everyday to spur people into action. This allowed me to create my own manifesto for a topic of my choice, one that I cared about. I never thought I'd be able to do something like that in a college course; I was probably too used to the formulaic essay writing widely used in educational institutions these days.
The Jungle wiki assignment was a little confusing to me at first because I didn't understand how differently I must write for a wiki to be effective. My article had to go through a couple of revisions but I think it actually helped me learn the concise, direct fashion in which digital publications should be written.
Watching The Birth of a Nation was not really a pleasant experience to be honest; it was actually pretty shocking to say the least. But I guess that was the power of its melodramatic grip on the viewer. It showed me how black and white the use of melodrama could be, completely boiled down to the classic example of white hats vs. black hats.
It was at this point in the course that I realized the work we would be doing was much more involved than I expected. I was not able to manage my time well enough, and so my work in this class began to suffer. The style of learning utilized in this class was, I will admit, much more engaging than other classes I have taken. However, more engagement with the material obviously requires more time, which I just did not have with three science courses on my plate.
The research hypertext was the bulk of my work in this course and I thought it was enjoyable. Creating a website by itself is a fairly fun task, but creating a website on a topic that I actually cared about made it all the more easy to complete. It made me realize that in many of the courses I have taken in the past, I had to write essays and essays and essays about random topics that I just really didn't give a damn about. This project felt different, and if I hadn't been under such a time constraint over the semester, it probably would have turned out much better. Overall I am still proud of the work I put in on this hypertext and it really showed me how to do effective research and how effective digital publication can be. The tactical media project was a fun little tie into the whole hypertext, showing how in a digital publication, the means of getting your message across can be diversified on many levels. Hopefully the point gets across in the faux news report I did.
Although I may not have been able to complete all the work, I am proud of what I have learned and what I have accomplished in this course. In addition to the assignments I described, I wrote 21 web pages comprising 3421 words, which was converted into a linear, printable version of 2743 words.
Readings of Singer and Williams allowed me to even better understand melodrama as it pertained to modernity and society in general. The works of these authors made it easier to reflect on the Communist Manifesto, coupled with the work of Anker. Engagement with these texts showed me how melodrama is really used everyday to spur people into action. This allowed me to create my own manifesto for a topic of my choice, one that I cared about. I never thought I'd be able to do something like that in a college course; I was probably too used to the formulaic essay writing widely used in educational institutions these days.
The Jungle wiki assignment was a little confusing to me at first because I didn't understand how differently I must write for a wiki to be effective. My article had to go through a couple of revisions but I think it actually helped me learn the concise, direct fashion in which digital publications should be written.
Watching The Birth of a Nation was not really a pleasant experience to be honest; it was actually pretty shocking to say the least. But I guess that was the power of its melodramatic grip on the viewer. It showed me how black and white the use of melodrama could be, completely boiled down to the classic example of white hats vs. black hats.
It was at this point in the course that I realized the work we would be doing was much more involved than I expected. I was not able to manage my time well enough, and so my work in this class began to suffer. The style of learning utilized in this class was, I will admit, much more engaging than other classes I have taken. However, more engagement with the material obviously requires more time, which I just did not have with three science courses on my plate.
The research hypertext was the bulk of my work in this course and I thought it was enjoyable. Creating a website by itself is a fairly fun task, but creating a website on a topic that I actually cared about made it all the more easy to complete. It made me realize that in many of the courses I have taken in the past, I had to write essays and essays and essays about random topics that I just really didn't give a damn about. This project felt different, and if I hadn't been under such a time constraint over the semester, it probably would have turned out much better. Overall I am still proud of the work I put in on this hypertext and it really showed me how to do effective research and how effective digital publication can be. The tactical media project was a fun little tie into the whole hypertext, showing how in a digital publication, the means of getting your message across can be diversified on many levels. Hopefully the point gets across in the faux news report I did.
Although I may not have been able to complete all the work, I am proud of what I have learned and what I have accomplished in this course. In addition to the assignments I described, I wrote 21 web pages comprising 3421 words, which was converted into a linear, printable version of 2743 words.