At the start of this course, I was terrified by the instant amount of work we received. However, slowly it all started to make sense. Starting from the very first comic strip we made all the way to our final project, everything built upon itself, allowing us as students to create some really interesting work. I think assignments like the blog posts and the socratic dialogue provided us with a bases on how to understand information that we had previously never learned and synthesis it into something that others could understand. While the readings were never easy for this class, they gave us a deep understanding of what participatory culture is and how to apply it to our projects.
Starting with my midterm project, I felt incredibly overwhelmed at the beginning. Just finding a topic alone was difficult. However, once I found something that I could put my passion behind, it all started falling into place. There is definitely a learning curve to using Weebly as a method to creating websites, but I think that project in particular came out well regardless of what the site looks like. The information is very telling of the state of the music industry due to streaming services, which is what I wanted to explore. My favorite part of that whole project was definitely the touring section, where I describe why touring is not a lucrative way to survive for all musicians. As someone who goes to concerts often, and has for almost ten years, it was really exciting to be able to learn the actual mechanics behind why some of my favorite artists were unable to continue making music because touring was not supporting them. The most challenging part of that whole project was just trying to narrow down which streaming services made the biggest impact and which ones were just another service, which taught me a lot about trying to find the relevant information in a sea of text. The only real thing I would change about that project would be the amount of time it took me, seeing as I had to restart my site twice because of complications. I think if it hadn’t taken me almost two months to do, I would have felt a lot more confident about the process going into the final project.
The final project came as something familiar, which was really nice and a direct result of doing the midterm project. While I didn’t chose to do a civic engagement project, feeling as though my topic led more towards research, I still feel like the information I found and the content I put forward was important to know. I think that project does a good job with deciphering the differences between the classes and how the middle class struggles to pay for their children’s higher education, which is something I don’t know if many people ever think about. My favorite part of my project is how I looked at the parental impact of higher education for middle class families. Coming from a middle class family, I could relate to a lot of it and it was interesting to learn that my family was not the only family struggling to put their children through some of the best universities in this country because of their social class. The most difficult parts of that project was definitely the video and the interactive teaching elements. I wanted to create a video that was informative but also entertaining to watch, which is how I landed on the concept of the drawing board video because they’re really interesting to watch, but also create a place for discussions of topics that might not be easy to film. The interactive teaching element of my project also gave me problems because I was not doing a civic engagement project, therefore I had to find the most relevant information from my project to put into activities, not just what I wanted people to take from my project and apply to their own lives. I’m not sure if this came across well or not, but I definitely tried my hardest on it considering the information I was dealing with.
Overall, I think this class is definitely one of those classes that a lot of people should take. Learning valuable skills such as how to build a website and how to create expansive projects within those websites is something that no other class offers at Emory to my knowledge, but is definitely a skill that is becoming more and more necessary in today’s society.
Starting with my midterm project, I felt incredibly overwhelmed at the beginning. Just finding a topic alone was difficult. However, once I found something that I could put my passion behind, it all started falling into place. There is definitely a learning curve to using Weebly as a method to creating websites, but I think that project in particular came out well regardless of what the site looks like. The information is very telling of the state of the music industry due to streaming services, which is what I wanted to explore. My favorite part of that whole project was definitely the touring section, where I describe why touring is not a lucrative way to survive for all musicians. As someone who goes to concerts often, and has for almost ten years, it was really exciting to be able to learn the actual mechanics behind why some of my favorite artists were unable to continue making music because touring was not supporting them. The most challenging part of that whole project was just trying to narrow down which streaming services made the biggest impact and which ones were just another service, which taught me a lot about trying to find the relevant information in a sea of text. The only real thing I would change about that project would be the amount of time it took me, seeing as I had to restart my site twice because of complications. I think if it hadn’t taken me almost two months to do, I would have felt a lot more confident about the process going into the final project.
The final project came as something familiar, which was really nice and a direct result of doing the midterm project. While I didn’t chose to do a civic engagement project, feeling as though my topic led more towards research, I still feel like the information I found and the content I put forward was important to know. I think that project does a good job with deciphering the differences between the classes and how the middle class struggles to pay for their children’s higher education, which is something I don’t know if many people ever think about. My favorite part of my project is how I looked at the parental impact of higher education for middle class families. Coming from a middle class family, I could relate to a lot of it and it was interesting to learn that my family was not the only family struggling to put their children through some of the best universities in this country because of their social class. The most difficult parts of that project was definitely the video and the interactive teaching elements. I wanted to create a video that was informative but also entertaining to watch, which is how I landed on the concept of the drawing board video because they’re really interesting to watch, but also create a place for discussions of topics that might not be easy to film. The interactive teaching element of my project also gave me problems because I was not doing a civic engagement project, therefore I had to find the most relevant information from my project to put into activities, not just what I wanted people to take from my project and apply to their own lives. I’m not sure if this came across well or not, but I definitely tried my hardest on it considering the information I was dealing with.
Overall, I think this class is definitely one of those classes that a lot of people should take. Learning valuable skills such as how to build a website and how to create expansive projects within those websites is something that no other class offers at Emory to my knowledge, but is definitely a skill that is becoming more and more necessary in today’s society.