OBJECTIVE – To create a new media essay.
This personal essay making use of new media was the final project for my “Reading, Writing, Speaking in the Digital Age” class with Ned Stuckey-French.
Part 1 – new media blog
Prior to the final project, I’d been tasked with assembling a blog about new media.
The description in our course syllabus read, “This will be a site where you explore an aspect of new media that interests you. You will update it and add at least six posts over several weeks during the course. This site should be seen as a way to communicate your thoughts about new media to your classmates and the instructors as that thinking evolves and as you search for a topic for your New Media Essay.”
I chose my personal WordPress blog as the platform, and my scheduled posts were about creating a Snippet (which would become my final project / new media essay). In my series of blog posts, I chronicled my process of creating the Snippet:
- Week 1 – Introductory Post
- Week 2 – Snippet – Getting Started
- Week 3 – Snippet – Brooke Reviews “Let Go”
- Week 4 – Snippet – Tools
- Week 5 – Snippet – Content & Layout
- Week 6 – Snippet – Multimedia
Part 2 – final new media essay
Building a Better Blog – Snippet
The project introduced me to the concept of multimodality. My essay needed to make use of images and hyperlinks and potentially sound and embedded video.
I learned a good bit about Snippet through my new media blog. I chose a topic, “Building a Better Blog” and began putting my Snippet together. I designed the cover and header images. I took screen shots to add as visuals. I used hyperlinks. My final project was a “how-to” of sorts.