#31 VLOG!!!! THE END!!!!

LAST POST # 30

Starting off on August 19, 2009, that being the first day of school, I have posted a total of twenty nine different posts, this will be my 30^th and second to last post on my media communications blog. All of my posts have covered the different areas that we studied in class this year. The different posts cover books, videos, vlogs, photo studies, epic movies, and the process of creating movies, just to name a few. It was interesting to review all of my posts, my very first post was funny, I can tell that I was nervous writing it and that I hadn’t figured out all the little details about blogger. But, from there on out my posts got better! The content referred to the topic of study and there was even some paragraphs that were mainly me analyzing the topic of study and comparing it to others; in addition the length of my posts started off short, but soon grew longer and longer. It seems like the further we got into the year the longer my blog posts got and the more useful information they contained. Also, they became more and more organized throughout the year. To me the most interesting sections were the photo section and the movie section. It was interesting to analyze the pictures and look deeper to detect clues of alteration. Some pictures were changed, and whoever did it did it very well, but others changed them and did a really bad job of it. Overall analyzing the different pictures and the different types of changes that had been done was very interesting.

My second favorite part about this class was the epic movie section. It wasn’t exactly the movies that we watched, but the different things involving the epic and the different types of screen shots. I had never been that involved in watching a movie before, but the Lord of the Rings was very interesting, especially with the different points that my fellow class mates pointed out. I do have to say that the movie was kind of creepy in addition to it’s epicness! The photo study and the movie studies were deffinately the most intreguing part of class for me. On the other hand the part of class that I disliked the most was the Digital Nation videos. These videos did not grab my interest like the other sections did. For your class next year I think you should have a weekly vlog or blog. This being just a type of digital journal of the class, without giving an actual assigned topic. I think this would be cool for students to just get on and write about what’s going on in the class freely, maybe it could be just a participation grade. Also I think in the future it would be easier for the students to stay organized if there was only one main networking source, mainly choose the wiki or blogger and not go back and forth between them. I think this would help to keep the assignments less confusing, so the students aren’t guessing which one and searching both of them for the assignment. Overall this class taught me a lot about our media and it has helped me to become more media literate. I often find myself thinking about a certain ad and what it really means and the different types of things they used to create it, that we learned about this year. This class was hectic and crazy at some points, but it was worth staying in it all year. It was a very cool class and had interesting information that was being taught. My teacher Mrs. Collins did an awesome job directing the class with the different topics and in addition to her, my fellow classmates always kept the class interesting!!

Book Post Part II

The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he was part of the group of authors known as the Lost Generation. The Great Gatsby was an interesting novel, it had many different meanings, and the whole novel is focused around the American Dream. A reader of this book could easily read it and understand it, without getting the second half of the text. The second half is wrapped up in the different representations of colors, symbols, and material goods. To start off, the novel’s base plot is a centered around two egg shape peninsula named West Egg and East Egg. East Egg was made up of people with “old” money, they inherited their money and have an abundance of it; while the people in West Egg have “new” money, they have come into their money as young entrepreneurs. All of the main characters live in either East or West Egg. Nick Carraway is the narrator of the book. He lives by himself in a small common house in between two mansions in West Egg. Nick’s next-door neighbor, Jay Gatsby was a very mysterious man, nobody really knew him. They all knew him as Gatsby, he held extravagant parties almost every night. Daisy and Tom Buchanan are married and live in East Egg. Daisy is Nick’s cousin, twice removed, Nick went to college with Tom; Tom was an extremely good lineman. Throughout the novel there were many different conflicts. Daisy was very conflicted with the true purpose of women, Gatsby was also conflicted about his feelings for his long lost lover, and Nick was always analyzing the characters of the people around him. In addition to internal conflicts, there were many external conflicts in particular Tom was involved in many of them. Tom was always bickering with Daisy, he didn’t like Gatsby, and then at one point he was fighting with Daisy and Gatsby in public at the same time. This book was full of messages connecting to greed, materialism, and it all connected back to the true meaning of the American Dreams.

I researched this book on Amazon.com and found that there were not many reviews, but the few that I read were very appreciative of Fitzgerald’s talent and the quality of his work. Mostly all the comments liked the book and talked about the shallowness of the characters. Many of the people that bought this book also bought The Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, and War and Piece. In addition, Amazon.com recommended Tender is the Night, The Sun Also Rises, and Of Mice and Men, which are all novels by authors from the Lost Generation.

The Great Gatsby

Food Inc

The documentary Food Inc was very interesting. It put a whole new look on the industries that make up our nutritional status. It was an eye opener, I could relate to and disagreed with some of the acquisations made toward the beef industry. The showing of this video was perfect timing for the comments that I had in class, just a few days after we watched the movie Food Inc in class a video of the Beef Industry's response to the video was aired. We are in the process of watching it in class, but it is getting close to the end of the year and is very hectic!! I watched it on my own to scope out what the main points were. I really liked the way the response was set up. At the start it is rather boring to listen to the introduction, but after it gets into the main points it is interesting. It shows clips of the movie and then flips back to the panel of people representing the different areas of the beef industry and there reactions to it. In addition they pointed out more neutral points of the video. They started with one of the more famous pictures from the video, the one with the business men walking in there suits and breifcases to the factory. Our class talked about this shot quite a bit, it brought up many different interesting aspects. Overall this video taught me many things, not only with the different industries and the things that go into our food, but with how if you believe in something there is something out there that your can use to stand up against it. Luckily this retaliation video came out at the perfect time. But, in the end this has been a positive learning experience for me.

Food Inc

The movie Food Inc. was an interesting movie I think it had a lot of many good facts involving the food that is being produced and distributed throughout the United States, but I did not agree with a few of the facts that were used to degrade the beef industry.
In chapter one they brought up workers rights, which is a major issue our country; the workers that are often hired by the major companies don’t have any rights because more than not are illegal migrants. It is cheaper for the companies to hire illegal workers, as they need them, than for them to have legal workers on staff full time, which would include them having to provide benefits.

Chapter two was focused on the mass amount of corn in almost everything that we eat, which is crazy to think that 90% of our food has corn in it. A point was brought up pertaining to the knowledge of consumers and the amount of corn in everything, do the producers want the consumers to know, why don’t more people know. This is an interesting point, it doesn’t matter to the producers if the consumers know, the consumers aren’t buying the corn specifically from them, the companies and corporations are buying it from them and then selling it. I personally think that if the consumers would pay more attention to the world around them they would have to think about where all the corn was. In the summer time there is corn in a field wherever you look all over the world, why is it such a surprise to the consumers that there is corn in our food. The consumers could easily get on the internet and research corn and realize how much of it is in our food.
Chapter three brought up a very touchy issue involving the beef industry as a result of Kevin Kowlacyk’s death from diseased meat. The death of a young boy is a very sad thing to hear about as a result of the lack of responsibility from the USDA taking control. Once again in this chapter thProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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went back to corn and how too much corn is being fed to the cattle and that the right way to feed cattle is only grass. They say that our meat would be so much better if the cattle were grown on grass, it would be more organic meat. But, just because they are grown on grass doesn’t mean it’s organic. There is a time period of many years it takes for grass to technically be organic after being fertilized with manhandled fertilizer. In addition there is not enough grass to handle the large amounts of cattle that our consumers are demanding. There is a period of time when the grass has to recover and revitalize itself. In addition all of the grass that has the possibilities of feeding the cattle is being destroyed and turned into housing developments. Finally in different parts of the United States cattle cannot survive solely on grass through the winter.
Chapter four brought up the serious point of fast food and how cheap it is in comparison to healthy food. Fast food is cheaper due to the mass production of it, there is so much supply and demand for it that they can sell it cheaper to the consumers and still make a lot of money.
In Chapter five Eduardo Pena points out the fact that, “ We want to pay the cheapest price for our food. We don’t understand that it comes at a price.” I agree with him there are so many risks in the future for paying the cheap price now. The fattening unhealthy substances that are in the cheap food cause so many health risks and even lead to death from them for our future.
Chapter six brought up the interesting point of bigger companies owning the smaller companies, but still using their name in the selling process. They do this so they still keep the values and innocence of the smaller companies in their selling process.

This documentary has opened my eyes, but yet still has me in a little bit of disbelief. For the part of the documentary that I was knowledgeable at, the beef industry, there were parts that were inaccurate and false, which makes it hard for me to take the other information as fact and not doubt it. So taking that into consideration it has made me think about what I eat more, I have caught myself eating food and think about what is in it, but I haven’t stopped eating any specific food due to the documentary. Finally, to change things people can buy from companies that have good morals, buy from farmers markets, and eat out less.

Vlog #1

Digital Nations Blog

Relationships, the ongoing battle, which is larger over the Internet and social networking involving, parents than actual love relationships. The Internet battle of relationships mainly involves the “commenting war”. Commenting has brought up so many conflicts. There are so many people out there on the Internet that don’t take commenting serious. These people comment just to start a ruckus and get more people to look at whatever they are commenting on. Some people’s only purpose of commenting is to draw attention to the post, which is a good philosophy if the comments that draw the attention are positive. But if they are negative comments they can lead to worse things with bigger consequences. For example, one of the videos I watched actually told a story about commenting on Myspace. These girls posted negative comments just to start a fight. There was absolutely no reason for the rude comments, but in the end it actually lead to a physical fight at there school. After the fight and everything was out, seven girls were suspended for the fight. It is interesting what people will say if they are anonymous and there name is not right next to there comment. Some people turn into a total different person if their name is not out there. Some people care what is next to their name on the intranet and some people don’t. In this case these girls didn’t care, they were just doing it to start a fight.

In addition to commenting, the growing password conflict is a growing trend that mothers want their kids’ personal passwords to get onto their Facebook accounts. There were a lot of mothers that said they would just get on there if it was an emergency, but who isn’t tempted by something that could open them up to something so large? My personal feelings about this are that it all comes back to the original parenting. It is how the parents raised their kids and how much honesty and trust they built into their relationships with their kids. I think that parents should trust their kid to do what they think is right. There is a point in time when parent have to let their kids go and live there own life under their own personal control. Facebook is the beginning, letting the kids have a little freedom of judgment and grow to feel comfortable with control. This might actually help kids adjust sooner once they are out on their own.

Moving on to the correct main point of this blog, I am supposed to tell you about three other presentations given by my fellow classmates.

First I thought Reece and Chris's War Tech Presentation was very interesting. They explained how the military has a recruitment center in Pennsylvania that had 60 PCs and 19 XBox's and 3 simulators that were all free for the use of kids 13 years old and older. This is a place for kids to go and play war like video games and even be involved with simulators. This is a place for kids to learn about war and have the ability to ask any questions from recruiters at any time. This was very interesting to hear about this facility and hear about the conflicts that parents have with this facility. Second was the Virtual World by Willie, Cody, and Kinsey, was interesting to hear about all the different virtual worlds that any one person could be involved in. Kinsey specifically talked about second life and how you could live a whole different virtual life online. It gives people a second opportunity to live a life as a different person with a different personality. Willie and Cody finalized there presentation with the conflict of violent video games. This brought up a conflict in our class of how these video games affect kids in the long run. My personal opinion is that these video games actually teach you a lesson of what you don't actually do in real life on the streets. Finally, Learning by Cassie and Shane, this topic talked about how teachers have to start keeping up with the technology to be on top of the teaching "wave". Video games are a big way of teaching in this day and are in a way always at the top of the "wave" . It has come down to the fact that teachers have to compete with technology/video games to have the best teaching style. Overall this Digital Nation section was a very interesting section and it really opened my eyes to see even more things that technology has an affect on.

Vlog #4

VLOG 3

THE EPIC POST!!

For the past two months we have been studying epic movies. Half of that time we watched Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the other half we watched our own epic movie and made a presentation comparing our personal movie and Lord of the Rings. It has been an interesting experience. I had never watched the Lord of the Rings before, it was interesting, it wasn’t as appealing to me as others in my class, but it opened my eyes a little wider. It was really LONG, it really fulfilled the term epic. The movie that I compared to Lord of the Rings was Thelma and Louise. I had never thought of the movie as epic until I watched the Lord of the Rings, it amazed me to see how many traits each movie had in common.

First of all, Shane’s movie Princes Bride was a very good comparison. Shane had many parallels throughout his presentation. Starting with his epic hero, both Westley and Both of these characters had to complete a mission to save something or someone. Shane not only had character parallels he had scene parallels as well. He compared the formation of the fellowship to right before they raided the castle in Princess Bride. Shane did an awesome job at presenting, as he presented I could kind of visualize the scene that he was talking about even though I had never seen the movie. Throughout his whole presentation he had awesome pictures that were perfect for each slide.

Second, Ironman Reece’s comparison; it was interesting to listen to because it sounded like hknew his movie especially well and all of the input that he got from his fellow classmates. It was interesting to listen to all the different inputs and ideas about the movie. The graphics throughout the entire presentation were awesome. For example, when he put Gollom’s and Stane’s pictures against each other they related just in physical characteristics before he compared their personalities. Also, another time when he used this organization was when he put Sam’s picture against Rhodey’s both of them carried the same physical characteristics and held themselves the same way. I also thought it interesting when Reece talked about the supernatural forces. How he identified that there were no real supernatural, but he considered the suit and it’s abilities to enhance every part of Starks abilities except for his brain. The geographical setting was between Malibu and Afghanistan multiple times, which relates more to the geographical setting of Lord of the Ring. Even the sizes of the settings were parallels in this comparison.

My final choice was Justine’s movie Harry Potter. Her presentation had a lot of parallels, both character and location parallels. For example Justine paralleled Sam with both Hermione and Ron, they both filled the spot for Harry that Sam filled for Frodo. All three of them were loyal to their friend and stuck with them through thick and thin. I also like how Justine went farther to categorize Hagrid and Legolas as sub heroes. She said that Hagrid was one of the only adults that Harry was able to tell every thing to. She also said that Legolas as smart, loyal, and extremely talented with a bow!! Justine had great pictures and parallels throughout her entire presentation. It was also really cool to listen to her go back and forth between French and English.

This section was interesting and I learned a lot from it!!

Epic Movie Presentation

Thelma & Louise & Lord of the Rings

View more presentations from Shelby Leonhard.

VLOG #2

The Incredibly LONG WEIRD VLOG!!!!!