Be Your Own Webdesigner

Wix is currently a website that I am exploring on my off time. It is a free web design builder that is HTML free. There are quite a large number of features and apps to use for this site - making it become completely customizable. It takes some serious sit down time to make something easy for user to use and still be productive though. From it I noticed that there are a few drawbacks to being 100% customizable - it takes exhausting amount of time. However Wix is a very usable once you have learned all of the options that Wix makes available to you - for free or a fee - and have mapped out a design that you want for the site. I find this site difficult for myself to use, possibly due to lack of an immediate need and uncertainty of what exactly creates an effective website - but it does give me a certain appreciation to those who use coding to build a website from scratch because Wix's program allows you to start off with a template to build off of.

Why I know more current events than my parents

Friends from around the world, unlimited knowledge at your fingertips, and opinions dying to be shared spread around the internet like wildfire. I don't watch the news - but I know more about issues around the world than my parents. Odd coming from a nineteen year old, but apparently I am not the only one of my peers who want to have a voice on what is happening in the world we live in - issues that go beyond the assumed marijuana laws. Thanks to sites like Tumblr and Youtube I am hearing what old media news sites filter out, and hearing what people may age have to say about what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, about the research going in to bringing back extinct species, and the depletion of honey bees in the world (that could mean our end). New media has allowed us to have an opinion and to share it with hundreds of people, it's also enabled the ability to know more about the world we live in (possibly things that news stations don't want us to be aware of - an example might be corrupt cops).

Tackk your ideas

On a quest to find a handy tool to help me with a class project I came along a site that I think, and hope, to use more often. The website is called Tackk. I used this site to create an example press kit as a detail in a project of mine. However, this site has many more uses - be it very customizable, yet still easy to use and understand. During my initial interaction with the tool one idea I came to the idea that this would be an interesting tool to create a storyboard, and have the option to share it with others who use the site (it can be found by how you tag the Tackk board). I'm not a wonderful drawer myself, but I do find inspiration from photos that I spot on the web. Storyboarding, flyers, press kits are just a few uses I saw from a glimpse at this site - I'm sure there are other uses that can be found from this site, and you can see the other ideas that people have found for the website.

Let's Be Superheroes!

No this isn't going to be a consecutive post about my love for Marvel, but it could quite easily. Actually, I'm going to be talking about the change in old medias. Copyright is still something many creators are scared to venture near, but in some cases it's a lot less strict than it has been in the past. Copyright prevents fans from creating content inspired by this copyrighted material - imagine how sad if the laws were a lot stricter in the current world we live in. We wouldn't have videos like Harry Potter Puppet Pals, which is very easy to tell was fan-inspired by the Harry Potter series or even the Kid Vader Volkswagon commercial from a few years ago. I know I personally could be in a lot of trouble, as someone who picked up her writing 'hobby' by taking on already canon characters from television.

Media has been the inspiration for young creators - it's our trampoline, how we get momentum. If it weren't for television I would be wandering around my college campus trying to figure out what it is that I want to do but TV brought me back to writing, something I did when I was younger but I lost my confidence to create stories.

I'm done with my tangent now, maybe. The point that I am attempting to address is that with stricter policies on copyrighted material, and pretty much everything is copyrighted these days, people are less reluctant to be apart of something ... like a fandom. Who would want to be apart of something where they are restricted in how involved they can be. What if I want to make a fan video, art, fiction, whatever I can come up with, to celebrate this thing that I love so much - I want to be apart of the journey or even create my own inspired by the mythology, world, or characters, that this one franchise has developed.

Now to my title - so abstractly titled "Let's Be Superheroes!" It's not about actually being a super hero, but if you want to be - more power to you, I will definitely not hold you back in that endeavor, but it's about being able to insert yourself in a franchise - to create something for it based solely on your passion and creative abilities to manipulate someone else's idea and merge it with your own to create a "whole new world".

The Biggest Bigger Picture

Transmedia storytelling seems to be a growing phenomenon - no complaints from me. It brings a story to life, if you let it. Marvel is a big one that I know is catching onto this budding new style, and by far it's one of my favorites but I'm pretty biased - I'll be watching Marvel in my grave. Transmedia is storytelling through multiple platforms, but this isn't the same story being told from theaters to web series - they are all little puzzle pieces. Again to the topic of Marvel, they have their film franchise (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, etc. whatever they come up with next ) All of their stories connect, hence why we have to sit through what feels like 20 minutes of credits to watch not one but two sneak peaks which will connect all of our favorite heroes together for the next Avengers film. But Marvel takes it one step more with the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which gives us an eye into the agency behind our heroes, thanks to our 'back from the dead' Agent Phil Coulson. Last night's episode was a major game changer, no spoilers here - I'll let you watch it, but it tied in with Captain America: The Winter Soldier which was released this last Friday. As I was watching it I was glad I rushed to the movie theater on Friday, I had a feeling I would've been spoiled in the next week or so - I felt bad for those who hadn't, but this way is definitely one way to get people rushing to the theaters opening weekend and make the newest Marvel film number one in the world and break records.
As a writer, this is a style of writing I want to learn more about - and learn how to do it well, but I know it'll take a lot of planning (Marvel already has their media planned out till 2028!) But as a viewer this is a storytelling I enjoy, it almost feels like I am apart of this world where superheroes save the day - and leave a huge mess for S.H.I.E.L.D. to clean up.

Media Journalist by Day, Singer/Songwriter by Night

On the 28th my New Media class at DSU had a wonderful guest speaker by the name of Adam Hammer. He started out as a photo journalist in college but found a career in media. He writes for the St. Cloud University Outlook magazine and his official title is Director of Media Relations. During his time here he talked about his life and how that took him to changing career paths. A lot of it was due to job demand and his previous experience in writing for newspapers as well as the loss of his job when his newspaper company at the time was cutting down on writers, and now having an uneven ratio of editors:writers. He had found a job with St. Cloud University, which had a very similar problem and he created a lot of changes to the program to widen up the audience and keep everything fresh and up to date.
In his spare time he performs in small towns as a singer/songwriter and that information can be found on his website.

Convergence, Collective intelligence, and participation

Today I decided to venture into the world of 'reality tv', not my favorite genre in the world - but it's big now, so why not try to figure out why. The sites I took a peak at were Survivor's and American Idol, reality tv that was huge before reality tv was.

From a first glance, I was really impressed with the appearance of American Idol's website. It's super easy to navigate, but my favorite detail was when you scroll down all of the features fall into the center of the page. It creates some major eye appeal.
Then as you get further into the website a whole American Idol world can be seen. It has pages for everything - from news to host and judge biographies and behind the scenes, even how to get tickets to attend one of the shows.
A lot of it has options for users to have a voice in the show, with a link to vote and even questions for live Q+A sessions with the contestants. Everything about the site is to enable viewers to basically be apart of the show - and more than just a viewer.

Now, a look at the Survivor's website - it doesn't have nearly all of the bells and whistles that American Idol has. It's fairly straight forward with links to help you catch up on episodes you might have missed, a merch shop, and biography and summary links. It isn't nearly as interactive in comparison to Idol.

And despite not having watched either show, I was more obligated to want to linger onto the American Idol webpage just because it was more interactive and I was allowed to input some of my own thoughts about the show that ventured off from more than just the usual social media websites.
It kind of shows the type of world we have now, new media has given us the ability to have a voice in these bigger media outlets and we will take those opportunities as often as we can, we have a voice and we want to use it! We want to see our favorite contestants strive, and we want to be part of the key to help them get there.