#NMN Reflections

The #NMN course was challenging, funny, and practical. It made me think more critically, put my creative mind to the test, and expanded my knowledge about how to use digital technology to tell my stories.

I can surely say that all the readings and other resources (such as videos) impressed me. However, one of the materials that changed my way of thinking was @inanimatealice. This made me think about the idea of immersive learning. How powerful is the technology today, if it allows the viewer to directly participate in the story! Literally. It's true: @inanimatealice  convinced me to look online for more information about immersive learning as I wondered myself how easy would be to learn a new language, for example, if, just like Alice, we start travel around the world (she already shared with us bit of geography).

Perhaps I am a bit eccentric, but I imagine the future of learning depending 100% on New Media. Just like that:you go to your class, meet your teacher and classmates (their avatars, or their holograms, maybe) and the next minute you are with your class in Egypt, learning about the pyramids.

Did I change my thinking about new media?  Maybe a bit too much…

Finally, I was impressed about the power of new media in terms of protests and online activism. Although my petition Remove The Cyanide and Other Toxic Ingredients from Our Table Salt! didn’t benefit from traditional media endorsement as it was just a personal concern of mine, I still have gotten ten supporters. Yeeey! So, I can say that learning in this course how to create an online petition, helped reach my goal: “if some people will check the ingredients on the salt packages, and make the right choice when buying salt, this petition will make a difference”.

Kickstarter: Games, Clocks, and Bottles

Kickstarter. Crowdsourcing. Another way that people have found out to get out of anonymity online. This phenomenon is explained in the dictionary as being popular thanks to the internet: “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers” (Merriam-webster.com, 2015).

So, Kickstarter, as a crowdsource, is “a new way to fund creative projects” (Kickstarter.com, 2015) because on the internet, people “have complete control over and responsibility for their projects” (Kickstarter.com, 2015). In a blog article Yannig Roth’s (2012) suggests that crowdsourcing works because it complements the traditional co-creation -- “[the]creative and social collaboration process between producers and consumers, facilitated by the company (Piller et al., as cited in Roth, 2014). This might be true as many unsuccessful kickstarter projects seem to lack the “organisational knowledge” (Roth, 2014) that the traditional co-creation usually involves. When co-creation and crowdsourcing are blended together, they bring up to the surface nice and successful new media stories.

This idea is valid if we look at  the story of  Jaded Gamercast: Adepticon Double Date, a Kickstarter project created by Lange Grinevitch from Edmonton, AB, who succeeded to go way over his goal (159% funded). No doubt, this story succeeded on Kickstarter, mostly because his creator nicely blended the traditional co-creation with crowdsourcing: first, there is a clarity about what is being kickstarted: miniature gaming podcasts, called  Jaded Gamer Cast (offered for free 200+ episodes if the project reaches it’s goal); second, the creator calls backers to action through a simple story, using the internet crowdsourcing multimodality (videos and pictures).  

Another successful story is  'Time as Moments' Designer Clock created by Donald Papp from Edmonton, AB. The Kickstarter project was successfully funded (164%) as it promotes an ingenious and unique work of art, something practical and relatively cheap: “Each number becomes clearly defined only once each hour before becoming once again unclear. The design reflects time as moments.” The project is successful, although it is presented in an incredible simple way: there is only a picture of the clock and only a few words used for description. It is astonishing how the image speaks for itself and so, it gathers so many backers. Perhaps, if other forms of crowdsourcing have been used, such as videos, this project might have had gathered even more supporters. Again, like the previous project, this  stands out due to its clarity and simplicity. However, the elements of traditional co-creation (“social collaboration process …facilitated by a company”) are not present. The project succeeds only because the product is unique.

An example of unsuccessful project is  Living Necklaces! Beauty and Nature to Wear by Your Heart! created by Tara from Edmonton, AB. Although this project looks like one of a kind -- “[t]his empty necklace will contain a thriving, healthy moss or fern, keeping nature right over your heart!” -- the number of backers is 0. Why this is unsuccessful? Perhaps due to its’ lack of practicality– who would wear around his neck a bottle with a fern inside? Plus, the jewellery-plant will definitely die outside during the Edmonton’s winter months. Besides, there are no elements of “organizational knowledge” of a co-creation, and the multimodality (i.e. video) is also missing.  Perhaps,Tara’s project might have had chances of success among flower-lovers if the piece would have been designed for indoors, as an ornamental plant.

These three kickstarter projects, make me believe that crowdsourcing nicely complements the traditional co-creation. However, crowdsourcing projects can stand by themselves without traditional co-creation as long as the projects are unique and presented with clarity, simplicity through new media multimodality.

References

Kickstarter.com,. (2015). What is Kickstarter — Kickstarter. Retrieved 27 March 2015, from https://www.kickstarter.com/hello?ref=footer

Merriam-webster.com,. (2015). crowdsourcing | the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. Retrieved 27 March 2015, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing

Roth, Y. (May 2012). “Crowdsourcing and CoCreation are Complementary”. Innovation Excellence.

http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/05/31/crowdsourcingandcocreationar

ecomplementary/

Remove The Cyanide and Other Toxic Ingredients from Our Table Salt!

Check your salt ingredients. Does this contain more than Sodium Chloride (salt) and iodine? Probably, yes. 

While iodine is a good agent, contributing toward optimum endocrine health, table salt may also contain harmful agents -- sugar, dextrose (glucose) -- known to increase the blood sugar levels in diabetics, and toxic chemicals -- cyanide, aluminium, bleach.

Although several studies have indicated that the continued use of refined salt will expose the consumer to aluminium, cyanide and/or bleach toxicity, this dangerous product is still on our tables because manufactures want to secure their profits, selling a long shelf life table salt with poisonous ingredients. This issue bothers me for a while, especially because I have noticed that people who usually are conscious about reading the ingredients on a food product, they omit to check what their salt box contains. This is because they expect the salt to be exactly what the name implies.

Reading about online activism throughout the course, I realised that social media is really capable of “rearticulating solidarity across the world” (Kennedy, 2011). For instance, according to Pew Research Center, “31% of social media users have used the tools to encourage other people to take action on a political or social issue that is important to them” (Rainie et al., para. 7).  Moreover, a report about #Occupy movement indicates that “77.3% [participants] posted about Occupy via Facebook”; and “62.1% signed a petition” (Constanza-Chock, 2012, fig. 3, p. 5). These numbers speak for themselves: They indicate the powerful influence the online activism has nowadays.

For that reason, I took this opportunity to write a petition to address the salt table issue. Ok. Maybe this subject is not so interesting as the #Occupy subject is, yet if you think that every one of us consumes salt with every meal, it is essential to be sure that this will not kill us.

https://www.change.org/p/the-public-health-agency-of-canada-stop-the-cyanide-aluminium-and-bleach-poisoning-with-table-salt

I am aware that this petition might not reach its 100 signatures target. Yet, if some people will check the ingredients on the salt packages, and make the right choice when buying salt, this petition will make a difference. And why not? Maybe, someday, because of our informed choice, all the salt brands will be safe for consumption. It is time to act! Sign this petition! “[The] ‘real’ change can only come from outside the representative democratic system” (Juris, 2012, p. 261). 

References

 (2015). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXeUIYyDE0g

Corriher, C. (2015). The Truth About Table Salt and The Chemical Industry.Healthwyze.org. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/115-the-truth-about-table-salt-and-the-chemical-industry.html

Costanza-Chock, S. (2013). Mic Check! Media Practices in the Occupy Movement: Social Movement Studies. Retrieved March 13 http://web.mit.edu/schock/www//docs/pubs/mic-check-2012-costanza-chock.pdf. 

Juris, J. (2012). “Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and Emerging Logics of Aggregation.” American Ethnologist, (2), 259. doi:10.1111/j.15481425.2012.01362.

Kennedy, M. (2011). Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Historical Frames: 2011, 1989, 1968. Jadaliyya.com. Retrieved 2 April 2015, from http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/2853/arab-spring-occupy-wall-street-and-historical-fram

Louix Dor Dempriey Foundation,. (2011). The Difference Between Refined Salt and Unrefined Salt - Louix Dor Dempriey Foundation. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://www.louix.org/the-difference-between-refined-salt-and-unrefined-salt/

NaturalNews,. (2015). Confront Salt Confusion. Retrieved 15 March 2015, from http://www.naturalnews.com/026080_salt_sodium_health.html#ixzz3UIjunn4G

Rainie, L., Smith, A., Lehman Schlozman, K.,Brady, H & Verba, S. (2012). “Social Media and Political Engagement,” Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/

Social Movements: Mass-media versus Social Media

Social media is more than Slacktivism. Social movements, such as The Twitter Revolutions, (see Arab Spring, Tunisia, Moldova) are solid proofs that the capability of everyday people to circulate information and opinion online, in real time, can mobilize public opinion, and even overthrow political regimes. Hence, social media are extremely powerful, especially because they bring something new on the scene of protest : the peer-to-peer communication. This is perhaps the most important aspect about social movements -- choosing to protest on social media, people bypass the doubtful interests of mass-media, owned and controlled by a few people.

Accordingly, I do not agree with Robert Putnam, cited by Christensen (2011) when he argues that “citizens are becoming ‘lonely bowlers’ who no longer interact socially, and as a consequence no longer willing to take part in political matters “ (para. 8). He then argues that “the media — particularly TV but also the Internet — have helped decrease stocks of social capital, and thereby also the willingness among citizens to engage in political activities” (Putnam, cited by Christensen, 2011 para. 8). He is wrong. Twitter Revolutions indicate the contrary. Furthermore, as mentioned, it is a big difference between social media and mass-media due to the peer-to-peer communication brought by the latter; moreover, if before one may have been a ‘lonely bowler’ watching TV, now he can easily find like-minded people on social media, and set up a Twitter Revolution.

By the same token, it is not relevant that studies have found that“[o]n Twitter, political talk is highly partisan, where users’ clusters are characterized by homogeneous views and are linked to information sources” (Wihbey, 2013). It is not relevant because political talk is not supposed to be objective. It never was. It is supposed to bring forward debates based on ideas that will eventually improve the community’s life as a whole.

References

Christensen, H. (2011). Political activities on the Internet: Slacktivism or political participation by other means?. First Monday, 16(2). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3336/2767

Wihbey, J. (2013). Pew Research: Twitter reaction to events often at odds with overall public opinion. Journalist's Resource. Retrieved 9 March 2015, from http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digital-democracy/pew-research-twitter-reaction-events-odds-overall-public-opinion#sthash.ws7YuaIG.dpuf

Analysis: Narcissism and Selfies

What is a Selfie? 

Whatever your feelings are -- bored, excited, sad, happy, etc. you can record them with a selfie, and let the picture do the talking. Whatever your news are -- cut your hair, pierced your nose, got a new tattoo – selfies can speak for you louder than words. If you want to make a duck face – whatever that may suggest– you can snap a selfie and share it on social media.
 Hence, a selfie simply means a photograph of yourself, clicked by you. “[The selfie] is a genuine image, created privately with minimal filtration” (browntourage.com, 2014). The selfie is so popular that recently the term has been added in the Oxford Dictionary and named the term of the year in 2013: “Selfie (informal)-- A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media” (‘selfie’, 2015). “The “ie” at the end makes selfie a diminutive, which generally implies some affection and familiarity. [Thus], a selfie is a ‘little’ self, an aspect of identity”(Rutledge, 2013). Or else, “selfies . . .are about awareness of our own self-awareness (blog.oup.com, 2013).
From this standpoint, there are numerous people wondering whether the selfie is not a product of too much self-awareness: “Taking selfies is routinely derided as narcissistic, a procedure of solipsistic self-regard in which one obsesses over one’s own image” (Horning, 2014). Hence, the purpose of this article is to explore five variations of selfies, based on photo content and details, in order to get the whole picture in terms of the selfie meaning, and to appreciate if, indeed, its popularity is related to narcissism.

Curating a story: Pinterest

Scrapbooking, journaling, and curating on Pinterest. It is a first day for everything. Today, I have found out that curating  on Pininterest is a nice experience: colorful, creative, engaging.

“Curation is the act of individuals with a passion for a content area to find, contextualize, and organize information. Curators provide a consistent update regarding what's interesting, happening, and cool in their focus” (Rosenbaum & Rosenbaum, 2012). Thus, I used Pinterest to “sav[e] and shar[e] stories [I found] around the web” (Perez, 2015), focusing my attention towards materials related to what I liked most throughout the course: digital literature and storytelling. It was fun! #digitalliterature

Follow Adela's board Digital Literature #NMN on Pinterest.

I used this opportunity, to ‘talk’ a bit about digital storytelling. #digitalstorytelling

I found interesting that some consider one cannot write a story on Twitter (using only a few characters), and the word curator  used on Pinterest is a bit exaggerated. For instance, this seem to upset  Harold Koda, an “actual curator” (Tahltan_channel_surfer, 2012): “The very meaning of the word [curator] is starting to change, and that makes me crazy” (Tahltan_channel_surfer, 2012).  I appreciate Koda’s opinion, but I also appreciate that if 70 million users on Pinterest are embracing the change, there is little he can do about it -- especially, in an era when “content is currency” and “creation, optimization, distribution, and curation”(Nicholasbrealey.com, 2015) are key in succeeding online.

References

Nicholasbrealey.com,. (2015). Content is Currency. Retrieved 14 February 2015, from http://nicholasbrealey.com/boston/content-is-currency.html

Perez, S. (2015). Pinterest Appeals To Publishers With New Article Pins, Pushes To Become A Bookmarking & “Read It Later” Service. TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 February 2015, from http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/24/pinterest-article-pins/

Rosenbaum, S., & Rosenbaum, S. (2012). Content Curators Are The New Superheros Of The Web. Fast Company. Retrieved 13 February 2015, from http://www.fastcompany.com/1834177/content-curators-are-new-superheros-web

Tahltan_channel_surfer, P. (2012). a-machine-to-return-the-songs-to-the-land: http://hermitagemuseum.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/an-open-letter-to-everyone-using-the-word-curate-incorrectly-on-the-internet/. Aboriginalcuratorinresidence.blogspot.ca. Retrieved 13 February 2015, from http://aboriginalcuratorinresidence.blogspot.ca/2012/05/httphermitagemuseumwordpresscom20111004.html

A Facebook Story

A book full of stories. From status updates to news feeds, Facebook unfolds stories about the real-world, in real time. The authors all have faces and names, but who had the idea first to make up a story, matters less. It is just like how my grandma use to tell: the story is more interesting than the author. This makes me believe that Facebook is a new form of folklore, a digital lore: “Folklore (or lore) consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs included in the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group.” (Mayor, 2000).

Facebook is a fantastic journey. Challenging and immersive. I am enjoying being part of it, participating in, and sometimes, creating it. I am interacting with some of its authors, who happens to be in my friends’ list. Sometimes we are using one picture or one word to tell an entire story. I enjoy looking up for the story of the day. I am looking for it in the news, in my friends feeds, and in their comments. When I find it, I like to put a little contribution to it: a comment, a thumb up, a share. Facebook is changing its face every day. 

These 20 Amazing Photos Will Make You Want to Visit Romania

I don’t remember the foreword or the first chapter, and I cannot foresee how the book will end. I am just enjoying the online storyline.

Reference:

Mayor, A. (2000). Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient Greece and Rome. Folklore, 111(1), 123-138. doi:10.1080/001558700360924

Twitter fiction. Why do we tweet?

 Bird whisper:

Twitter fiction means addiction.

 Haiku choice in  bird’s voice.

Twitter and Haiku. Two inventions. Why do we need them? Story, nature (birds), strict structure.

Haiku Japanese poems follow a certain organization (three lines, totaling 17 syllables). Twitter: not more than 140 characters. I am just thinking now: tweeting is what the birds do when they feel safe in the forest -they will only stop if they spot a threat! People, on the contrary, will set up a #TwitterRevolution.  Why do we tweet? It is handier for humans, I guess… Twitter has 200 million active users. Among these, some of them are preoccupied with #Twitterfiction. By the way, #twitterfiction has been first mentioned in 2008:

It means:

 I am still looking to see why people use Twitter:

Ruth Page, in her Twitter research says that “finding information from people you never met in the offline world is really attractive” (BBC Radio Leicester Interview, 2011). Andrew Fitzgerald says that it is attractive to use the social media, because Twitter allows “fictional characters [to] engage with the real world” (2013). My opinion is that the engagement is bidirectional: real world is immersed in virtual reality, and vice versa. However, both worlds are realities to me. Another reason: people  use Twitter because “we are still hungry for narrative. New mediums aren’t destroying fiction, they’re allowing us to innovate even more on how we create and consume our stories” (King, 2013). Isn’t it awesome that we can write haiku on Twitter?

Digital haiku tweet cuckoo.

Fictional birdie

Follows a tree.

References:

Andrew Fitzgerald (October 2013).Adventures in Twitter Fiction.Ted Talks. Retrieved from:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ZzmqDMhi0

Rita J. King, (2013).How Twitter is Reshaping the Future of Storytelling.

Retrieved from: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682122/howtwitterisreshapingthefutureofstorytelling

Page, R. (2011). BBC Radio Leicester Interview with Ruth Page on her Twitter

Research. Retrieved from: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/english/people/ruthpage

In my story, Alice is in Edmonton and she is 20. The pictures I have used in my video were created with Paper Artist, an application on my android phone. Although, it's been quite a busy day to figure how to remove the animoto watermark, finally Alice is alive, telling her 30 seconds story. Here it is:
alice

Creative machines?

There is a reason for the “persistence of the past”. And it is not always a bad thing. It’s ok for the past to be persistent, even if it is outmoded. It is how it’s supposed to be. Sheldon and his text-adventure game story tells something: He lacks the creativity if this is not delivered by present technology-- not having a visual map in front of his eyes, he does not realize that “going North” three times will bring the same result.

To me, Sheldon is representative of the modern man completely absorbed by technology: without visual representations fed by external sources, he can’t see the forest for the trees. By the way, why it is necessary to play laughing machines when something funny happens in the movie? Do we need technical assistance to figure out when to laugh? Aren’t we like Sheldon?

Well, if we don’t take away what is good from the past, will be difficult to be creative in building a future, even with the best technology at hand. That is why I liked Elizabeth Eisenstein’s  persistence of the past idea because the expression “blocks of text get moved by punching keys” reminds me of some  XIV century great invention: The keyboard we are using these days are, in fact, some mini-copies of the Guttenberg’s movable type. The old printing press was not used to represent smiley faces or other emoticons, but the books were embellished with flowers, birds, fruits, human faces. 

A nice  handwritten letter was also created with imagination: To express their passion, excitement or anger,  people cared to use different ink colours, to include flowers or other graphic representations in their writings. They used their hands and brains to create something. 

The past remains persistent because human nature does not change in space or time. We just change the tools to express ourselves.

I just hope that modern tools will not transform us in 24 h/day couch-potatoes. I hope that will find the right balance between text and visual, computer and brain, technology and human thinking.

Digital literacy & Me (Adela Popescu)

Here is my podcast

listen to ‘Digital Literacy & Me’ on audioBoom

Reflections…

 It was a good exercise for me. This digital material made me think about changing. It made me think back, and noticed how I let myself changed over time by technology. Nothing stays the same, especially, in the digital era: things are changing, and we are changing with them. Listen to my podcast and see what I mean!

I used audacity to record myself, a great open-source tool that I am using frequently, and it never lets me down; audioboom.com also worked perfectly for my purposes -- very user-friendly for a first time user.The open-source tools, such as these, make the digital world  awesome(r): save time, money, and allow us to be experts from the comfort of our home.

Here is the community I’ve mentioned in my presentation, aquarius.net: http://aquarius.net/directory/

And here is a capture of my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/adela.simboteanu

When I think of new media, I have this visual representation in my mind:

Lastly, the bird present in my audioboom profile picture is my quaker parrot, Bambi.