Toolkit 1 down – 2 to go..yeay!

The one thing I can say about this class is that I always enjoyed it in retrospect. Simple – when I was doing the work in the field I cursed and cursed, but once the results were out I was really glad I did it. Another thing I really enjoyed (and was also frustrated by) was the unexpectedness of things. A rainy day when you want to take pictures, interviewees who don’t say too much, unexpectedly helpful people, all of it!

I had come in to this class expecting much lesser than I got. But I feel so much more confident about some things that I had no idea about before. I came into this class after a web design class and was riding high on the ‘I want to know more about this online stuff’ wave. I am so glad this class went beyond my expectations. Now I want to learn even more about the online medium. I really wish we had gotten to learn flash too. That would have been a pretty good learning experience.

I know for a fact that all the things I learned in this class will be more helpful in reality than any of the research papers I wrote!

I am really excited about learning to make soundslides. I feel like going out and making soundslides of every single thing! Overall, though I was a little apprehensive about the fieldwork involved due to some practical issues I faced I am very glad I stuck with it.

Final Package Done – The Water Wars Story

My third sound slides and final story package both are something that I can be proud of. The first couple of attempts were just that – attempts. Trials. Errors. However, by the time I got round to this final one I knew what kind of pictures looked good, what kind of sound actually made an impact. That is not to say that I managed to get the perfect pictures and sound; just that now I know what to expect from myself. Here goes nothing: Click on the image to view my final story package

The funniest thing about the very first sound slides attempt was that ‘my mom liked it’. It was this very same parent of mine who confessed a few days ago “The third one was much much better than the first”. Well, thank you mom!

Well here’s what I thought of the individual aspects of the final package.

Pictures:

They are beautiful but dangerous creatures! Rule of thumb – a nice vacation picture that adorns your walls at home is most unlikely to win an award. The getting down on your back rule applies. In my story package, there is a picture of a boat marooned on the dry shore of Lake Lanier. That part of the shore was a) Down a slope which could only be scrambled down literally on your back. Try doing that with an expensive camera and it adds a new dimension to mental trauma. But it was definitely worth it because that picture has a fence with a no trespassing sign, a marooned boat and a shoreline – all telling a story.

Sound:

First time around no natural sound, second time – very bad interview sound and third time around respectable sound. One of the biggest practical issues I had to grapple with for the sound was how many times you have to go to a certain place to get the perfect sound. It is kind of tough to achieve when you don’t have a car. But gathering and editing sound was probably the most underestimated part of this semester for me – in terms of how much work it would be. Overall, the sound for the final package was gathered from three different water bodies. All for 30 seconds!

Map:

As mentioned in the previous post, creating the map for the story package can be easy if only you do it a few times before the actual thing. It is easy; just takes practice. The decision to create a map instead of a data chart was simple. The best way to explain this three state dispute was to trace the river path along the states and map the major water consumers. There is also an excellent CNN interactive map on the issue.

Overall, the final story package felt like I knew what I needed to do to get good results. The only part I needed to work on was getting exactly what I wanted. I am sure that will improve with time a practice. I really wish we had another fou months of this so I could churn out some more ‘decent’ ones.

The Google Maps Class – Lost and found!

When we started out learning how to create the google maps I thought it would be so very simple. I mean, I figured since google made everything else so easy this would be a cinch! I didn’t know what hit me when professor McAdams started talking about spreadsheets, latitudes and longitudes. Just when I was recovering I was hit by getting HTML code for that darned thing. I am not a dud when it comes to HTML. I’ve dabbled a fair bit in website design just like some of my other grad school colleagues. So, as the class went on I started thinking this wasn’t going to be so bad.

What I had essentially gathered was that I had to find the latitutes and longitudes for the places I wanted to show on the map, put them into google maps; google would then generate a code for me (for those map locations), which I would have to paste into my HTML in Dreamweaver. NOW it was starting to make sense.

But the biggest mistake I made was not creating the map when the lesson was fresh in my mind. The most important thing on my mind was the soundslides 3 assignment. When I did finally get around to creating the maps I was as blank as a fake gun! I knew I was supposed to know this but I didn’t. I drudged through the instructions and got it done.  Th funniest thing was that when I was done with it, I felt like I had just had a deja vu of the entire class. So, my ten cents of advice to anyone planning in creating a map is DO IT THE INSTANT YOU LEARN IT.