This American Life

I love listening to the stories - no matter what the subject - in this American Life. I still remember the first time I was exposed to this radio show - in the Spring 2006 in my Master's program- it was one of my first multimedia classes with Jenny. Since then, I guess I almost forgot about this great program, but just subscribed to the free podcast from iTunes. I guess the closest equivalent that I listen to now, is NPRs "This I believe."

What I remember about this program and the great stories as I listed to the different stories, is just how entertaining, even the most seemingly mundane topic, can be throught the way the host, Ira, helps to narrate everything, to the musical and sound editing added to the broadcast. It is very much an entertaining event and each story seems to connect to me in some way as well - they are the stories of everyday life.

The music and sound effects added to each episode give it a very "tv show" feeling. I listend to "A Little Bit of Knowledge" during my lunch break as I worked on cleaning my office and ate my lunch. It was so entertaining and made me laugh out load a few times, all while considering all the similar moments I've had in my life. This is truly and entertaining show for me and I will be sure to listen regularly.

Sound

I tried to listen to several sites, but didn't have any luck with a few of them. The sites I was successfully able to listen to included Earth to Earth, Sound Seeker (sounds of various places in New York City).

On the Ear to Earth link, I listened to the Song of the Kauai 'O'o, and extinct Hawaiin bird and the Stati d'Acqua / States of Water, which seemed to be a composition of varied water sounds along with other music. It was fascinating listening to the extinct bird in it's natural habitat with the sounds of the forest in the backround. And to realize that this bird is no longer in existance made the experience even more fascinating. Imagine all the animals or people for that matter that generations to come will never be able to hear or know in that manner. What a wonderful way to preserve them in some way. The States of Water piece was really interesting and made such a nice relaxing piece to listen to.

The other site, Sound Seeker, was also interesting, but instead of profiling quite places in a forest or in "nature" it profiles different areas of New York City and surrounding burroughs. I listed to a train that made a stop in the South Bronx (I chose this b/c my father is from the South Bronx and it was a way for me to connect with that history a bit), and the Saturday's farmer's market, among other things.

Ok, how did I connect this back to the readings? Selfe's piece is certainly sticking with me more, particularly her emphasis on how people need to have the opportunity to draw on and communicate with "all available approaches, not simply those limited to the two dimensional space of a printed page." Sound conveys so much meaning that cannot be ignored, no matter the piece of communication, and can be a powerful tool to convey specific meanings.

Blogs in politics and public discourse

There's no doubt blogs offer politicians a more irect route to potential voters and funders in a more grass-roots style. Rather than reaching voters through television, radio ads and other traditional media, it allows them to taylor their messages more individually while at the same time potentially reaching more people.

Likewise, blogs offer more civic participation on issues important to them and more access to politicians through their blogs. This is a way provides more access and participation than traditional media such as writing a letter to the editor that would have limited distribution through just that one paper, in one particular community. Blogging, conversely, allows for much wider distribution via the Web and you can blog on many, many levels.

Blogging Continued

Overall, I view most blogging as very similar to op ed pieces or letters to the editor in the newspaper, so in a sense, I see it as a tradional form of voicing opinions, however, using new technological means. Additionally, the blogging landscape allows even greater participation of individuals because of the many, many different platforms and sites on which to contribute than the traditional media vains. This does allow more and more people to actively involve or situate themselves within a particular community or discussion that would not come as easily with traditional means of communication.

While most blogs with which I am familar tend to be just these types of pieces - opionions on news articles or public policy - I do believe that others, while they are certainly personal, are used more as a means to log personal accomplishments, family events or updates, or just personal reflections very similar to diary or journal entries.

Additionally, I'm familiar with discipline specific blogs. Contributors to these likely used journals and conference presentations as their primary means to communicate their findings or musings. However, now, with professional blogs within certain displines, I think it allows even more members to participate and share knowledge with one another, which is an important aspect to any field of study. It allows a greater number of people to join in the conversation, participate and offer and disseminate new knowledge.

Blogging

The readings certainly suggest that blogging is a form of writing and a specific genre in it's own right. With that, there are inherent ethical, legal and stylization conventions attached to this particular genre. Additionally, the readings hint that blogging could be considered a form of journalism, which certainly has ethical implications attached to not only what is written, but how it is presented (fair and balanced, attributes included as necessary, etc.).

Altough I agree mostly with these insights, I do have questions about stylization conventions - or more specifically punctuation. In my experience with bloggging (mostly we've used it at work with our child participants in the games lab), if the kids had their way, they wouldn't use "proper" grammar and conventions, but seem to lean toward using text messaging slang to get their points across. Because I help facilitate their responses (I come up with the prompts) I usually have them adhere to more "proper" grammar practices (most times) because part of my responsibility in the research facility is to help them become better communicators. I bring this up because, honestly, the more I think about it, I don't know if I should do that, and instead let them answer the way they would to give researchers a more authentic answer and allow the participants to more authentially express themselves.

Also, I bring this up because I would say that style and grammar usage is probably a very personal, individual decision rather than restricted by an overarching "blog grammar standard."

New Media

I view the term new media as a hybridization of media digitally represented and with which viewers or audience members can interact. This can be a Web page using video and audio to tell a news story, a flash animation complete with images and sound detailing the future track of hurricane, or maybe a slideshow of photos that uses sound and still images, but is NOT a video. 

Visual texts

Todays readings help to bring into perspective the idea that images are texts too, or more literally, ways or modes to communicate. They too carry messages or information to a particular audience. 

This is important to me professionally because my department uses a variety of media --video, interactive Web sites, video games, print, photography, wikis, digital mobile devices (iphone, mp3 players, etc) -- to communicate with and educate audiences. We are all strong believers that images plus words are powerful tools to reach and engage many people - of all ages - effectively. This department has been working with multimodal media to educate various stakeholders for more than 30 years, so their really is no argument in our eyes when it comes to using images and words to do this.

Lovett's piece does a good job at the struggle some people have to show others that video and images are important communication media and should be respected as such.  However, I'm interested in when this was published...the most recent source was dated 2006, so I'm assumming this was published in 2006 or 2007. If so, it still seems unreal to me that college program leaders would still have a difficult time sustaining such programs and convincing administrators (the main funding arms of universities) that this is an important field of study for a variety of students across many disciplines. I guess this speaks to an important argument that people in the field are still having with "naysayers" so to speak.