I can say I am quite happy with the overall video and outcome after watching it in class. I am glad at what we accomplished as a team and that we were able to work together quite well.
One of my favorite parts in the video is the intro and I'm pleased with how it turned out. I was inspired by the marvel intro's to their movies and thought it would be a good way to start the video presentation. The music I found in the background for the intro helped create the atmosphere too!
I felt the visuals i had generated where quite nice and looked good and was really happy and impressed by the work that Khang and Ron had with the research and video editing.
Although all was well in the end, there are still a few things that I felt would have made things easier or could be improved next time. One of the main things was that it took us a bit too long to actually get everything together and start the editing process. We ended up having to finish the video in one day which caused us some stress. One of the reasons why I believe it took so long was also because all three of us are from different groups and our timetables are different, this made it more difficult to actually meet up and discuss. We should have started on the video editing much sooner and that would have given us more time to process through it all.
I also feel that maybe we had concentrated too much on the video and its outcome too much, stressing about it when in fact the video was just the presentation part and not the actual mission part. It's something that I feel the majority of the whole class felt so its something to be aware of in the future for similar projects, to concentrate more on the content rather than the visual outcome to a certain degree.
When it comes to what my tasks where within the group I happy enough with generating the visuals and analyzing the text. Where I had struggled a bit was with the recording. I had first tried to record without and notes and just looking at the visual I had but gave up after re-recording a few times. I had then decided it would be much easier to make a script and read it rather than coming up with something on the spot. After writing up the script, I had to wait a few hours to borrow a friends microphone, which was a downside but I wanted to get a clearer sound recording for the video hence why I didn't record off my phone.
With the final outcome of the video I was happy with how it turned out overall. If I were to change some things, I would probably lower the background music as I felt it was a small bit too loud, but for the rest I was happy enough. I feel it was a good start and experience and from here we can continue to grow and produce even better videos for the future!
Friday 13 December 2019
Friday 6 December 2019
Mission 3 Product
Our final product for mission 3 was a video around 5 minutes in length. In this video he had included an intro, research, the analytics we made and a small clip showing how we made the video presentation.
As our team was split into each doing different task it made it easier to gain all the information we needed for the video. I was in charge of analyzing the text and getting visuals. Khang was in charge of research on text analysis and Ron was in charge of the video editing process. We started the video with an intro which I created by screen recording the screen while scrolling through a digital book. It gave it a cool effect to start off the video.
From there the video moves on to the research. Once Khang had researched on Text Analysis he recorded his voice on his phone reading out what he had found out. He then proceeded to make a PowerPoint with some information and visuals there. He then screen recorded the PowerPoint being presented in real time with the recording he had of his voice to sync them together. He sent the final product to Ron, which was then added to the final video.
After the research came my part, the Analytics and visuals created. For my part in the mission I first started by copy and pasting the whole text from the eBooks into separate word documents for each book. I did that for 5 books. 3 from Philip Pullman, whom I have read before and 2 from Stieg Larsson, whom I haven't read before.Once I had all 5 word documents it was a matter of copy and pasting the text into Voyant Tools to generate visuals and analytics about each text. I saved these Visuals and also screen recorded the full process for one of the books which was then put in the video and sped up. For the voice recording I had written down what I was going to say and borrowed a microphone off a friend to record the audio. I sent everything to Ron and he got started on the video editing.
Once the video editing was finished we checked it a few times to edit any mistakes and submitted it on time.
As our team was split into each doing different task it made it easier to gain all the information we needed for the video. I was in charge of analyzing the text and getting visuals. Khang was in charge of research on text analysis and Ron was in charge of the video editing process. We started the video with an intro which I created by screen recording the screen while scrolling through a digital book. It gave it a cool effect to start off the video.
From there the video moves on to the research. Once Khang had researched on Text Analysis he recorded his voice on his phone reading out what he had found out. He then proceeded to make a PowerPoint with some information and visuals there. He then screen recorded the PowerPoint being presented in real time with the recording he had of his voice to sync them together. He sent the final product to Ron, which was then added to the final video.
After the research came my part, the Analytics and visuals created. For my part in the mission I first started by copy and pasting the whole text from the eBooks into separate word documents for each book. I did that for 5 books. 3 from Philip Pullman, whom I have read before and 2 from Stieg Larsson, whom I haven't read before.Once I had all 5 word documents it was a matter of copy and pasting the text into Voyant Tools to generate visuals and analytics about each text. I saved these Visuals and also screen recorded the full process for one of the books which was then put in the video and sped up. For the voice recording I had written down what I was going to say and borrowed a microphone off a friend to record the audio. I sent everything to Ron and he got started on the video editing.
Once the video editing was finished we checked it a few times to edit any mistakes and submitted it on time.
Friday 29 November 2019
Mission 3 Process
After looking through the missions available for mission 3, I decided to go for Text Analysis. I chose this mission as I used to read a lot when I was a younger (not that I'm old now 😂) and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about analyzing text. My teammates for this mission are Ron and Khang.
Our goals for this mission are:
> Learn how computers can assist in analyzing literary texts
> Practice using different tools for text analysis
> Learn how to compare and distinguish between different types of software-driven analysis
> Practice applying insights gained through software-driven analysis within a critical analysis of text
The product we hope to have finished by the end of the mission is a roughly 5 minute video presenting what we have researched and analysed. We have split the tasks between ourselves. I will be doing the analyzing parts on 2 authors. Philip Pullman which is an author I know and have read his trilogy, His Dark Materials, two times. The other author being Stieg Larsson, who I don't know as well and haven't read his books before. I will be using Voyant Tools to analyze the texts from the books that these authors have wrote.
Ron will be in charge of editing the video, taking all the resources and information we gather to present it through video format. Khang will be in charge of researching all about text analysis, the different tools and how they assist in analyzing literary texts.
The resources that will help us with this mission are going to be; Goggle for all our researching needs. We will be using Voyant Tools, which is also found on google to analyze the text, it is a free web application that is usable and available for anyone to use. We will also be using Adobe Premier Pro for video editing and Adobe Auditions if we need to edit sound.
Our goals for this mission are:
> Learn how computers can assist in analyzing literary texts
> Practice using different tools for text analysis
> Learn how to compare and distinguish between different types of software-driven analysis
> Practice applying insights gained through software-driven analysis within a critical analysis of text
The product we hope to have finished by the end of the mission is a roughly 5 minute video presenting what we have researched and analysed. We have split the tasks between ourselves. I will be doing the analyzing parts on 2 authors. Philip Pullman which is an author I know and have read his trilogy, His Dark Materials, two times. The other author being Stieg Larsson, who I don't know as well and haven't read his books before. I will be using Voyant Tools to analyze the texts from the books that these authors have wrote.
Ron will be in charge of editing the video, taking all the resources and information we gather to present it through video format. Khang will be in charge of researching all about text analysis, the different tools and how they assist in analyzing literary texts.
The resources that will help us with this mission are going to be; Goggle for all our researching needs. We will be using Voyant Tools, which is also found on google to analyze the text, it is a free web application that is usable and available for anyone to use. We will also be using Adobe Premier Pro for video editing and Adobe Auditions if we need to edit sound.
Friday 15 November 2019
Mission 2 Reflection
Come the end of mission 2, we have finished presenting and showcase all that we have learned. I felt like the presentation went quite well. Like I had guessed at the start, the mission we picked was more unique with not a lot of people picking it. We were also the only ones in our group presenting with StorymapJS and presenting in that way. I feel the presentation itself went quite well and we were able to answer the questions received to the best of our abilities. We received a great response and definitely some interest when they heard about dissecting the phone as its something you don't see every day.
While the information we gathered was quite good I felt like there was opportunity to delve even further. It was tough finding information in general as companies don't usually give out a lot of information in regards to where they source their materials or the like of the exact mine and location the materials come from. It would have been a pretty interesting thing to know the details to such an extent but I feel it is not something that can be done easily in a two/three week period just by searching online.
Ways that I think we could find these details out if we ever need to again in the future and we have more time would be to send emails back and forth with the companies involved, research and read into all the information available online. Even possibly going all the way to lets say China where Oneplus and BBK Electronics, who owns Oneplus have their headquarters. I feel and would think that being there in person would allow you to access more information.
Another piece of information that is of a similar case would be the life of a worker, working in a factory for Oneplus. While we did search for a first person view on how it would be for a person that works for Oneplus, we were unable to find those details. In our presentation we talked about the life of workers on a more general tone and it was also that of a place where they weren't treated as nice as it should be. I hope it is not the case everywhere and especially for Oneplus as I am a big fan of their products and currently use the Oneplus 6T.
While the information we gathered was quite good I felt like there was opportunity to delve even further. It was tough finding information in general as companies don't usually give out a lot of information in regards to where they source their materials or the like of the exact mine and location the materials come from. It would have been a pretty interesting thing to know the details to such an extent but I feel it is not something that can be done easily in a two/three week period just by searching online.
Ways that I think we could find these details out if we ever need to again in the future and we have more time would be to send emails back and forth with the companies involved, research and read into all the information available online. Even possibly going all the way to lets say China where Oneplus and BBK Electronics, who owns Oneplus have their headquarters. I feel and would think that being there in person would allow you to access more information.
Another piece of information that is of a similar case would be the life of a worker, working in a factory for Oneplus. While we did search for a first person view on how it would be for a person that works for Oneplus, we were unable to find those details. In our presentation we talked about the life of workers on a more general tone and it was also that of a place where they weren't treated as nice as it should be. I hope it is not the case everywhere and especially for Oneplus as I am a big fan of their products and currently use the Oneplus 6T.
Friday 1 November 2019
Mission 2 Product
Our final product for Mission 2 was a presentation in StorymapJS were we shared what we found out while trying to backtrack the old Oneplus 3t. This presentation shows the journey that the phone has most likely been on from being in my possession all the way to the factory it was made of the mine where the components where mined from.
We then took the photos and the information we had researched and used a program called StorymapJS to make a presentation. What StorymapJS basically does is select a map that is already available or upload your own and you can select points on the map where you want to talk about. We started on in Dublin, Ireland where I have the phone. We moved our way up to Poland where the phone was distributed from. Next was India where the phone was assembled. And after that came China where Oneplus is located and where they manufacture and store most of their products.
The information we found on the components we chose was:
> The battery is a lithium-ion battery and is made mostly from Nickel, Cobalt and Manganese
> The Camera Lens is made from sapphire crystal
> The Casing is mostly from metal such as Aluminium and Manganese
> The Screen is made from Tin and Idium and the glass to cover
The StorymapJS presentation can be found here
The first thing we did was meet up to dissect the phone, I brought my phone repair kit and old phone from home and followed a YouTube tutorial i had previously watched to open up the phone again and dissect it into its smaller pieces. We then took a few photos of these components. We chose four components to research into more and backtrack them to their source as best as possible. These components where: The Battery, The Camera Lens, The Casing and The screen.
We then took the photos and the information we had researched and used a program called StorymapJS to make a presentation. What StorymapJS basically does is select a map that is already available or upload your own and you can select points on the map where you want to talk about. We started on in Dublin, Ireland where I have the phone. We moved our way up to Poland where the phone was distributed from. Next was India where the phone was assembled. And after that came China where Oneplus is located and where they manufacture and store most of their products.
The information we found on the components we chose was:
> The battery is a lithium-ion battery and is made mostly from Nickel, Cobalt and Manganese
> The Camera Lens is made from sapphire crystal
> The Casing is mostly from metal such as Aluminium and Manganese
> The Screen is made from Tin and Idium and the glass to cover
The StorymapJS presentation can be found here
Friday 25 October 2019
Mission 2 Process
After looking through the mission available for mission 2 I decided to do Working for the Web! I found this to be the most interesting out of the options and it wasn't something that majority of people where doing such as Meme's. For this mission I partnered up with Edward who also had an interest in the Working for the Web mission. We communicated across a few different platforms such as Slack and Whatsapp.
Our goals for this mission are:
> Learn about the invisible labor issues around technology, particularly around race and gender
> Share an awareness to other about this through a presentation
The end product we hope to achieve by the end of the mission is a power-point showing and explaining what we found out when researching how workers work for the web physically by making the devices or components but also how maybe we work for the web by using these devices and giving away data.
There were a few ways to do this and we decided after researching and brainstorming to go about back tracking an old phone of mine. We will dissect the phone of try to backtrack it back to where it was made, to even where the components for the phone are sourced.
When it come to the resources for this mission. We will research about the phone, the company itself which is Oneplus and try to backtrack using google and what information we can find there. Another resource is my old phone which we will dissect and also the tools used to dissect the phone which luckily I also have.
> Learn about the invisible labor issues around technology, particularly around race and gender
> Share an awareness to other about this through a presentation
The end product we hope to achieve by the end of the mission is a power-point showing and explaining what we found out when researching how workers work for the web physically by making the devices or components but also how maybe we work for the web by using these devices and giving away data.
There were a few ways to do this and we decided after researching and brainstorming to go about back tracking an old phone of mine. We will dissect the phone of try to backtrack it back to where it was made, to even where the components for the phone are sourced.
When it come to the resources for this mission. We will research about the phone, the company itself which is Oneplus and try to backtrack using google and what information we can find there. Another resource is my old phone which we will dissect and also the tools used to dissect the phone which luckily I also have.
Friday 18 October 2019
Mission 1 Reflection
So we have finally presented our interactive fictional story and here's my reflection on how mission 1 went by. I have learned quite a lot in regards to interactive fiction. Basically an interactive fiction is a story or what started out as some of the first computer games, where the reader or player gets to decide the outcome and makes choices that affect the ending of the story or game. A cave explorer named Will Crowther created the first interactive game in 1976. It was first called ADVENT but was later renamed Colossal Cave and it was a game that was based on his cave adventures. It was later developed even further by another guy called Don Woods, after getting Will's permission. From there on Interactive Fiction became to spread all over the internet. Nowadays it has even been developed further to the point where they have made movies on Netflix such as 'Bandersnatch' where you can see the choices you made play out on the screen.
I discovered quite a bit about the mission and enjoyed the process. Coming up with the story was a small challenge in itself where Nadine and I had to plan it out carefully as the story has to be as simple as possible to allow choices to be made but also interesting enough so that the audience or reader is still captivated by the story. I felt that we have done a pretty decent job at that since the story was something that majority of our classmates could relate to as it involved college and our courses being integrated into the story.
Working in a team, i believe was also a success. We managed to find what our strengths were and split up the work based on that, where we both came up with the story draft or skeleton and Nadine went on to write it up in a more story telling way and I worked more on the technical side of things, inputting the story into twine and coding up the answers.
I found working with Twine to write up the story as being a success. It took me a bit of time experimenting and researching on how to write up stories and code up the choices but i got the hang of it quite fast as the coding language was similar to one i had previously studied a few years ago. That was a big help and let us speed up the process. I liked the twine program most out of all the others as it had the visual diagram where you can see all the parts if the story. I feel this helped a lot as i could see what was happening at all times and it was easy to follow. I definitely recommend twine for such projects and would gladly us it again in the future.
Overall I believe our project went quite well. I was happy with the end result and would rate it as being a good project. I wouldn't give it all the way to excellent for the reason that I felt like we could have maybe researched more on the history of Interactive Fiction and its impact on society then and now. We concentrated more on us creating a story, which we did end up doing quite well in the end.
I discovered quite a bit about the mission and enjoyed the process. Coming up with the story was a small challenge in itself where Nadine and I had to plan it out carefully as the story has to be as simple as possible to allow choices to be made but also interesting enough so that the audience or reader is still captivated by the story. I felt that we have done a pretty decent job at that since the story was something that majority of our classmates could relate to as it involved college and our courses being integrated into the story.
Working in a team, i believe was also a success. We managed to find what our strengths were and split up the work based on that, where we both came up with the story draft or skeleton and Nadine went on to write it up in a more story telling way and I worked more on the technical side of things, inputting the story into twine and coding up the answers.
I found working with Twine to write up the story as being a success. It took me a bit of time experimenting and researching on how to write up stories and code up the choices but i got the hang of it quite fast as the coding language was similar to one i had previously studied a few years ago. That was a big help and let us speed up the process. I liked the twine program most out of all the others as it had the visual diagram where you can see all the parts if the story. I feel this helped a lot as i could see what was happening at all times and it was easy to follow. I definitely recommend twine for such projects and would gladly us it again in the future.
Overall I believe our project went quite well. I was happy with the end result and would rate it as being a good project. I wouldn't give it all the way to excellent for the reason that I felt like we could have maybe researched more on the history of Interactive Fiction and its impact on society then and now. We concentrated more on us creating a story, which we did end up doing quite well in the end.
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