Composing Technologies

                What I discovered throughout the semester is that there is a whole world of composing technologies of which I was unaware. Audacity, Drop box, Jaycut, Hot Gloo, Zotero, Vuvox are just a few programs freely available on the internet. I currently use Dropbox and Zotero on a daily basis. In fact, I now use Dropbox as backup online storage for many of my documents. I attempted to work with Jaycut but found that it was much easier to work with Windows Movie Maker because of ease of access. Jaycut is for online use only therefore, I found it slower and more difficult to use. For DMP#2, I attempted to use Vuvox but I found the technology to be lacking. Also, the site was having serious issues and there were some students who were struggling to gain access to their work.

                For my second DMP project, I focused on refining my skills at “movie making” and used Windows Movie Maker to create my film. I discovered many aspects to it that I had missed the first time around and I found it incredibly easy to work with. In refining this project for my final webtext, it was merely cutting and pasting, moving images around, and shortening the amount of time an image was shown during the film to re-create the film in a more clear and concise manner.

               I found that my composing process to be quite different from the manner in which I tend to compose a text. First of all, I had to make sure that I didn’t get wrapped up in the visual images. Some of the images were so powerful that they can actually speak for themselves. In fact, the idea that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very poignant. I had to make sure that my narrative was tightly focused and that the images used were specific. I wanted my audience to “get it” but I also wanted to give my audience space to comprehend the story on their own terms.

               Overall, composing with new technologies is a wonderful way to create a narrative. I intend on creating projects for my students whereby they employ at least one aspect of visual technology to create a story. It broadens one’s perspective of the overall objective and offers emotional aspects to the work that are more difficult to create in a text-only composition.