Lecture notes and comments
Week #3
Date: September 15
Outline: Today in class, we were given the syllabus for this semester, which we were told could be changed at any point, and probably will be. Personally, I’m quite glad we received this schedule, as it makes it much easier to see what lectures are coming up in the future, and so that I can quickly reference what we talked about in class on a previous date.
After this,we went on to talk about an upcoming project in the later half of the semester called the “sound-image project”. It ends up looking a lot like a music video, because the idea of the project is to make a collaboration of music and pictures, that you either drew, took, or got off the internet, and sync the two pieces together. It is worth a good chunk of our grade, so I was glad i we went over it early so I could begin thinking of what I will do for my project.
Comments: Not only did they talk about the project, but they showed us examples of what they were looking for in a good project, and told us why the projects were good in their opinion. A lot of the projects shown were down with a tablet, and only a couple were done with a digital camera. I know I definitely did not want to just grab photos off the internet, so I began thinking on what I wanted to do.
At this stage of my thinking, I want to do a stop-motion animation project with a digital camera I can borrow from the library. I’ve seen some cool effects done on youtube.com using these techniques, which I hope to experiment with and test to see if I will be able to pull this off. The only flaw in my plan right now is I don’t know who will do the photography, but I’ll figure that out closer to when the project is due.
A good start to what I hope to be a very good project.
September 17
Lecture notes and comments
Week #3
Date: September 17
Outline: Today, the lecture was taught by Paul Grossweiler, the associated professor of Communications and Journalism, who is also one of the leading experts on Marshall McLuhen, who wrote about New Media and who we read earlier in the month as an assignment. Here are my notes from today’s lecture NMD 100 Journal Sept. 17 .
Comments: To be honest, I did not like the lecture. Paul seemed like a nice guy, but he looked uncomfortable in front of the class, insecure in his position of professor for our class, and constantly looking for a sign that we were listening and enjoying the presentation. He undermined himself once or twice, being wishy-washy at times instead of resolute about the facts that he was presenting us. I expected him to be firm in all that he was talking about, but it came off like he was asked to teach the class just ten minutes before, and happened to have a slide show on the topic of Marshall McLuhen handy to fill the time.
Another problem was the slide show was far too long to fit into the fifty minute lecture that he had to work with. He spent too long on some parts of the presentation, and by the end of it he skipped huge chunks of the end of his slide show, leaving some of the class wondering what what they had missed. I felt uncomfortable during his presentation, almost pressured to like him and his presentation out of the guilt trip he was putting on us, his audience.
I realize I’m being awfully harsh on him, but my expectations were quite high when he was described the world’s top expert on Marshall McLuhen. The information I gathered, which you can see in my notes, was good information, I felt. But the presentation was so under par that I found it very hard to retain the information as his thoughts were all over the place. It’s really too bad, because it seemed like he had a lot that he wanted to communicate to us, but just couldn’t do it.
Unfortunately, a disappointing lecture. At least I learned what not to do when I have to present in front of the class later this semester.
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