This project was definitely outside of my technological comfort zone as I am just familiarizing myself with a Mac this year at my new job and iMovie has been nothing more to me than the star on my desktop screen. I found that once I became comfortable with downloading movies, saving pictures properly, and using iMovie, I actually kind of enjoyed putting this essay together. While my project turned out far from perfect, this is something that I would like to incorporate into my classroom to allow my students to begin practicing with visual argumentation.
As for technical skills, I had to become familiar with navigating on a Mac and utilizing the features of iMovie. I had to go to “Add-ons” to install a program that would allow me to download youtube videos. I also had to know which types of pictures to save that would be compatible with iMovie and the project. Finally, I had to import a song and save the project as a work in progress. I did find iMovie difficult to manipulate once I went back into the project to edit some things. Once the items are pieced together and no longer individual elements, they are not as easy to move. One of the things that I am not pleased with is the abrupt entries of the song/speech of the movie clips within the essay. They seem to break the natural flow.
In terms of rhetorical skills, I had to play the role of both the author and the viewer to make sure that I created the right context to allow for interpretation as I intended. According to Lemke, “the meanings of words and images, read or heard, seen static or changing, are different because of the contexts in which they appear…” (72). I tried to focus the zoom of each picture to land on the exact element that I wanted to the viewer to focus on (ie. the iPad in the hands of a young learner). I also wanted to make sure that the ending slide landed on a specific phrase in the background song to create the final thought-provoking effect upon the viewer that I had in mind.
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