Fireside Chat Reflection

For my fireside chat presentation, I decided to tell my favorite story that my grandma has told me. I’m a strong believer in telling stories to communicate a message or idea or even teach a lesson. The moral of this story was to do what you know is right no matter what others think. These were both the beliefs that I wanted to touch on, and I wanted to do so subtly. That is why I started my presentation with my Grandma using her story to teach my aunt a lesson. I more overtly hit on the second belief/lesson when I looked and gestured at the audience while telling that my grandma said to my aunt “no matter what your friends say or do, you need to do what you know is right”. Then I continued, “and then she proceeded to tell her this story”. Both beliefs are highlighted in this moment.

The first time I practiced my story, I got feedback from some people and I realized that I wasn’t including enough details. I was familiar with parts of the story, such as why the keys were important, so I didn’t feel the need to explain, but others didn’t fully understand. To really drive their significance home, I realized I needed to set up why the keys were important, so the audience could fully understand the importance of the loss. I also had to emphasize why keys would seem cool enough for a kid to want to play with them. When telling stories, especially stories familiar to the storyteller, certain elements need to be stressed and well described to get the audience on the same page.

When practicing, I kept saying “grandpa” instead of “her dad”, and I was so worried about messing his up in the performance. I was so focused on telling the story right, when I got up and began telling the story, I got so into it that I forgot to go through my slides. Once I finished and realized I was holding the clicker, my heart sank because I forgot a key part of my presentation (no pun intended). On the slide, there was a picture of a keychain hanging on a wall. The keys were supposed to disappear when they were taken in the story. This further emphasizes their absence and my great grandpa’s reaction when he notices that they are gone. This element made my media incorporation more interactive and unique then just the still photo it ended up being. With live events, the unplanned and mistakes will happen. That’s part of the experience and you have to learn to roll with it.

I liked this assignment, it helped me find out more about who I am as a storyteller as well as what truly informs my beliefs. I enjoyed seeing what others presented and had to say. I also feel this was a good end to the semester as it used elements from past assignments such as creatively using media to aid our expressions.

Extra Credit Assignment

TMA 112 Extra Credit Assignment

            One of the things I would have loved to explore more in this class is how to create meaning or how to get an idea across through media. When creating our projects, we often times were trying to communicate an idea or make a point and it would have really helped if we better understood how to create and alter meaning in our pieces.

            This assignment I have created allows students to explore how they consume and interpret messages in the media as well as how to create meaning in media.

Assignment Description: "Each student will find a piece of existing media and discern it’s meaning through what they feel it is trying to communicate. Students must then ask and record what others believe the meaning is. They will then alter the piece to significantly change its meaning in order to communicate something entirely different. The meaning can be subtle or overt. Students are encouraged to use their unique artistic voice to communicate something that they feel strongly or passionate about. After completing it, they must ask others and record how they interpret the new piece."

            This assignment could go under the "exploring and experimenting" unit because the students are exploring the ways we engage with media and interpret it, and then experimenting with creating meaning. This assignment in a lot of ways goes along with the textual poaching assignment. It could also go under the “discerning and documenting” unit because students would be discerning messages and how we interact with the media. They are also documenting how others interpret and interact with media.  I feel this assignment would be important to do early on in the semester as it lays a foundation for the student to develop their own voice and better understand how to communicate and create meaning.

LINKS: 

This is an example of a project like the one I have created, The authors of this piece noticed that the audio was key to communicating certain feelings in the film, "The Shining", so they replaced the audio to give the scene a new feel and experiment with creating new meaning. Here is the original scene.

This is a clip of the Kuleshov effect, which shows one way to create meaning by juxtaposing images:

Here is part of a book that can be used for reading selections. There are some good sections that address being consumers of media as well as different ways meaning is created.