The hands-on assignment for Class Two is to:
First, shoot a series of images on a selected popular culture topic.
Then, as we discussed in Class 2, we will be attempting to use wikispaces (http://www.wikispaces.com) to share digital photos that are taken during this course.
For this assignment, you should try to upload at least one or two images that you took by going to our class location on wikispaces. It's located at: http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com You will probably need some help learning to use wikispaces, so a tutorial on how to create an account and add images is available here:wikispaces-tutorial.pdf
After you have attempted to upload the images from the hands-on assignment, post a comment here in which you discuss the images you took for this week's hands-on assignment as well as any experiences you would like to share about using wikispaces.
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I have quite enjoyed taking the photos over the past week and a bit. I tried to stick with the randomly generated topic I was given for Pop Culture (Food) so that I would start to build up a stock of photos for the digital story. I must have taken a couple of hundred pictures. Basically I just carried the point and click camera around with me and took shots as the opportunities presented themselves.
I have uploaded 5 pics to Wikispaces. I have a picture of two little kids learning to make pizza (which I must confess I had already from a recent trip to the UK - Pizza Express is excellent should you ever be over there). I think this picture (although not the best of the set) show an interesting interaction between the people involved and the food they are preparing.
My second picture was the outside of an old style Dennys somewhere on Louetta Road. It is a big silver building and I loved it so I took some pics. I think the word DINER in big letters is pretty synonymous with food so I went with that one. I have to say I found myself taking a lot of pictures of signs and buildings considering the topic.
I have also included a macro shot of a steak I was eating (before I ate it - it was nice). I tried to push the camera to the extreme it would give me for macro to make it seem a little alien and strange, although it is instantly recognisable. The macro on the point and click camera is pretty good for most things and I found myself using it a lot when it came to photographing food.
I also threw in a picture of a barrel of peanuts taken from above. This picture reminds me of those old web site backgrounds that were tiled infinitely (though this obviously won't do that). I liked it because even though there is very little differentiation in the colours there is still a lot going on.
And finally, my dog Ruby provided a very nice counterpoint to the fact that drink is also included in food when she found an empty beer can and started to play with it. I have a whole series of these photos but I liked this one because she is licking her lips and eyeing up the beer.
With regards to Wikispaces I had a few issues. Firstly I found it pretty unfriendly and I have used Wikis before. When I came up upload my pictures they were too large so I had to take them into Photoshop and reduce them in size. I took them down to the maximum allowed (as not to lose any details etc) and they are huge on the screen. I have to scroll over on my wide-screen monitor with it set to maximum resolution so I apologise for those who have smaller screens.
I have to say that I do not think that it displays the pictures in a very easy to access manner and although free it is rather frontier. I understand the need to have a comments function and the like but I think this could have been better achieved for photos using something like Flickr which is geared for multiple uploads and display of photographs and is also free for 100MB per month.
Hope you have all had fun taking pics.
Hal
I'm really interested in the influences of media on children, especially young kids. The speedy development of technology in our time has made media available to all most everyone, whoever they are, whatever environment they're in. The fascinating thing is while young people nowadays receive tremendous impact from media, they do not always remain passive receivers, but tend to interact and direct the trends of media to some extent. This is clearly shown in the field of technology - internet, computer games, ipod... all try to appeal the young audience and change to keep them.
The photos I posted are two images illustrating my ideas along that line. I usually bring my 3-year-old daughter to the community library of my neighborhood on Saturday morning. At this library, kids of different ages are allowed to use the stations with varied educational softwares, watch movies, borrow books and magazines; and above all they are provided with an ideal environments to have contact and interact with media.
The first photo I took after observing 3 little kids no more than 5 years old play with an early literacy program on the station for them. The second one is my daughter, who was trying to paste some pictures of her favorite characters on a piece of cardboard after listening to a fairy tale. The librarian caled this doing art. She had also spent time watching the pictures in the story books she wanted me to borrow, which were stacked on her right side.
Thus, the concept of art and media have been suggested very early to young kids. I think this is a wonderful condition to help develop their media literacy later.
As for Wikispace, I've found it not very user-friendly though Danna has made an excellent job of guiding us how to post pictures. I followed the guide as far as the loading pictures part, but for the part after that, when the guide is about inserting table, I'm a bit confused. You just have to follow these steps if you want to make tables in your pictures or you have to go through all from page 1 to page 8 to post your pictures?
If it is possible, Dr. Robin or Danna, please go over this part again next class. Thank you.
My pop culture topic is superheroes...everything from comic books, cartoons, and marketing gimmicks, gadgets, and gizmos. I’m very interested in how we, as a society, have always felt a need to create heroes to look up to, seek justice in, and live vicariously through. As a kid myself, I began a fondness for my dad's and my cousin's comic books and then I moved to reading graphic novels and watching every superhero-related movie or tv show that I could. I guess the majority of my project is just an overall fascination with our need for heroes and why it appears to be easier for today's generation to seek out imaginary superheroes instead of turning to the types of heroes that were deemed adequate and worthy in the past (police officers, fire fighters, political figures, etc...). I know I won't be able to find a solid answer, but the topic interests me personally and it is a great conversation piece with my high school students, so I think it will be very fun to explore.
I experimented with a digital SLR camera that I checked out from UH to take my pictures. It took much clearer images than my five-year-old Canon Powershot, but it's bulky nature made it less conducive to bringing it with me everywhere I went and it was not compatible with my laptop, which runs Vista. I took pictures of family members that I look up to as well as pictures of my favorite comic books and my dog in his favorite costume...SUPERMAN! Overall, for my project I believe that I will have to utilize images found online and mix them in with my own photography since I do not own certain superhero pieces that I wish to use for my digital story.
I have used wikispaces before in one of Dr. Pierson's classes so I did not have any trouble with its interface. My only problem was that I thought that I had already requested membership to the page last week, but I hadn't therefore, I had to wait before I could upload my image of a superman comic book spread that highlighted a children's ad for "acquiring super-strength" and the picture of my dog in his beloved Superman costume...he really does enjoy running around and having the cape "chase" him. :)
I looked for instances in which popular culture has influenced my students and my school. I found some obvious references to my theme project of sports, but it is a bit of a stretch for first graders to be as blatantly ingrained into sports pop culture as it is for middle and high school kids.
Within my search for pop culture at my school in general, I found that many of the music books for elementary children are incorporating relevant and encouraging songs (like Eric Clapton's Change the World), esp. about themes that have changed the world, such as 9/11.
The book fair is also coming up, so there were numerous examples of books based on television shows and movies. Plus, there were a few books about fashion and they actually had manipulatives with different clothing styles and accessories to create outfits with!
Besides the backpacks, lunch boxes, clothing, and shoes children plaster themselves with, their writing and vocabulary are also heavily embedded with pop culture references. As I mentioned earlier, my theme of sports crept up in at least 2 different instances of my children's writing this past week. The first had to do with the Power Rangers and how they fight bad guys and use weapons to defeat them. The second instance had to do with buying new "MJ" shoes. This student was so excited to have black shoes with the Michael Jordan logo on them!
The Power Rangers fighting is a stretch for sports, but it still reflects a strong presence of physical activity and, in some cases, the first introduction my students may have to martial arts. The student who wrote about MJ shoes is a second-language learner, so I was very surprised that he even referred to his shoes as "MJ Shoes!" Whether he actually knows who Michael Jordan is or not, his knowledge of what shoes he should wear for school exemplify how powerful and universal pop culture can be!
As far as downloading my pictures of these writing examples, I was frustrated and surprised with Wikispaces. I had waited to sign up until I had taken all of my pictures, and I didn't realize I had to be accepted into the class space before I could upload them. So, I was not expecting to have to wait. Otherwise, it seems fairly easy to maneuver through.
I have been struggling with both the Wiki Page, and my new camera that I purchased this summer. If truth be told, I am really enjoying the camera but have been struggling to find opportunities to take decent pictures. The great thing about the digital camera, is that I can take tons of pictures. Today, I went out trying to chase a sunset, chasing because I was trying to get away from all of the wires, telephone poles, and business establishments. I was actually getting frustrated because the "sunset" was hidden by all the new development and billboards. So, one good lesson I learned is that If one wants to take a picture of the sunset they need to get out of the city. The second lesson, is that fast moving vehicles do not make for great pictures.
I must have taken 50 pictures today, but I am not happy with any of them. I am going out again tomorrow to sharpen my skills and hopefully by then, I will be able to upload my pictures. (I did not realize that it would take awhile to be granted access for uploading to the page). I have enjoyed everyone else's posts and pictures so far.
My pop culture theme is food. As a subtheme I looked at the disposable containers that much of our food comes in, the environmental costs and the implied economic costs associated with food container disposal. As a result, many of my pictures involve garbage and litter found in various places. The difficulty became making each shot unique. Despite employing various angles and lighting my pictures did not seem to produce anything worthwhile. As I progressed in taking pictures, I began to look for symbolism. I also looked at some of the writing on the containers and tried to guess at the possible consumer mindset that led to the purchase of the item. Often I found a subtle hypocrisy. A healthy snack like a granola bar became a piece of litter, once the plastic wrapper was discarded. Thus, the personal benefit of healthy food created a negative environmental externality. I was also surprised by the amount of litter on the UH campus despite the numerous waste receptacles available.
The camera I used was a Kodak EasyShare C340, and I think it performed admirably. There was certainly some operator error, and I tried to avoid changing from the automatic mode. I think the best shots I took actually came on the UH campus because of the varied terrain and lighting. I also felt more comfortable taking pictures of the contents of trash cans, the trash cans seemed to create collages of waste that were striking. I also took shots along desolate roads. Though the litter was plentiful the shots did not appear as good, because much of the litter was already exposed to the elements and blended in with the natural environment. Wikispaces seemed easy to join. However, because I did not request membership to the group until Friday evening, I am unable to post pictures at this time.
Although my group pop culture assignment deals with advertisement, I was struggling with how to take pictures while practicing the methods discussed in class... instead, I chose to take pictures of public art.
I was planning to post at least two photos onto the Wikispace (because I have not yet been accepted, I can't post yet). The first is a profile of an art car decorated entirely of shells, and the second is of one of the many art cows found around town. The particular cow I took a picture of is one that I passed every day when I worked at the Children's Museum.
The one thing I struggled with in this asignment was light. Although I prefer to take pictures on partially overcast days, it was almost always too overcast whenever I pulled out my camera... I did find the project interesting though, because my husband and I decided to spend the better part of a Saturday exploring the city for examples of public art. We discovered a park we never knew existed, and found art in the strangest of places (I found a mural of Sam Houston painted on a cylo at a chemical plant, for instance).
I have most likely said it before but I will say it again...technology and I don't go well. I seem to have been issue with all computers and electronics this past week. With that said, I have yet to upload images to wikispaces (hopefully I'm just waiting on being added). Other than that. I was able to take the rebel digital camera home for the past two weeks and loved it. It made picture taking extremely easing and came out very well done. I took pictures of simple things, mostly flowers, just to get the feel of things. I'm not much of a picture person so this was a different experience. Hopefully I can figure out what I'm doing wrong when it comes to wikispaces and I will be able to see everyone's images as well as post my own.
I'm still debating on what topic I want to choose. I'm trying to find a good angle for Cam's project that I can then turn into my digial storytelling presentation.
This is Keyana Jackson:I uploaded four pictures that I tool of my classroom. These are very significant to me beacause it is my first year as a teacher and I am proud of how I have transformed my classroom into such an inviting environment. My class is all the buzz on my campus and the staff and teachers love to come in and look around.
I enjoyed getting to use the Canon Rebel. While doing so, I learned alot about my own camera in the process. I tried taking different perspectives (high and low) and using different focus options. I used different settings on my camera. I now know more about shutter speed, F-stop, ISO, continuous shooting. I used the continuous shooting to take a serious of pictures to captur a football throw. I was trying to connect parabolas to pop culture and I tried football. I hope to learn more as this class goes on.
I'm still on my journey to connecting a pop culture theme to math. I can definetly see a way to bring geometry in with the real world. Shapes are all around us. I took some pictures at a park and focused on specific shapes such as trapezoids, circles, etc. I will slowly work my way to integrating pop culture somehow and that will be great when I can. It will give me something interesting to bring to my students.
My two baby nieces were baptised labor day weekend. So mostly I photographed that. I also attempted to take some scenic pictures of Texas hill country on my way back from an Austin trip, but the overcast was not really conducive to great photography.
I upload a few pictures from my 5 meg digital picture onto wikispaces. The first was of my niece's first experience with a Wendy's frosty.
The second was a picture on my puppy. I suppose I thought of him as being part of pop culture seeing as how he's part chihuahua, and Paris Hilton has started a trend of owning rediculously small chihuahuas.
I'll be uploading the pictures taken with the school's canon when I return to my home computer.
My pop culture theme is film and movies so I'm hoping to take shots of that this coming week.
I had originally brain-stormed for ideas of capturing images that conveyed the use of cell phones--with ring tones being my main topic. (However, I will be changing that topic to match my group's in the "Pop Culture" course.)
I took a number of pictures, mostly staged, but some candid, of family members and strangers using a cell phone. However, when I chose to upload for this assignment, I selected pictures that I liked, not necessarily pictures that went with the theme of the cell phone or ring tones (since I am going to change the theme of the pictures anyway).
One picture I particularly like and will experiment with this next week is the one I took of the park. I like it because of the sun beams. I also took some pictures at Sylvan Beach at sunrise that I may play with, as well, but maybe not. I do not want to feel that I am copying anything that was done in class.
I found uploading pictures to WikiSpaces a bit complex. Danna's instructions were very helpful, but I was frustrated at first because a panel hid the "save" button. The instructions said nothing about a panel being in the way; however, it was a floating panel and so I moved it each time I needed to save.
I had to ask a classmate for assistance when it came time to create the link to my page. The first step did not make sense to me because I did not see where to type my name. But, my classmate confessed he had winged it, and so I decided to, also. Everything fell into place at that point.
I do upload pictures to myspace.com and I have experimented with uploading a picture to flickr and then sending it to blogger.com
Usually, when I want to share pictures, I upload them to my geocities account and then provide the full URL in message boxes so that the picture shows up where I want it to, without someone clicking a link to view it.
I am only a *little* frustrated because I just spent the last 20 minutes typing a comment only to have it vanish because I accidently hit a key or something on my computer. Here we go again....
I bought a new camera in May and I have spent the entire summer playing with it. I must have taken over 5000 pictures myself (my husband probably about the same or more); yet, only a few really turned out to be great. We have a nice catalog of our trip, but only a very small few are worthy of hanging on the wall :)
Two of my favorites I posted on the wiki page. I loved the bottom one because of the coloring and beautiful scenery in the picture. The yellow (clear) flowers in the front with the more muted mountains in the back provided a great scene. I loved the other Blue Ridge picture because I remember so vividly trying to capture the beautiful mountains on sun's rays on that day. I thought this picture captured everything that I wanted too. The other two pictures are of my dogs. Tuxedo is the one with his head facing the wind. I actually took a whole series of pictures while his head was out the window, but this was the best one. The last picture was one of many that I took trying to complete my assignment. I had some difficulty with timing and lighting conditions. It was also hard for me to capture what I was seeing. There were many obstructions - and I could not figure out how to get rid of them. (Now I am aware of photoshop) :)
I love landscape pictures, but those pictures are difficult for me to capture for some reason. I enjoyed viewing everyone else's pictures. I really appreciated Jaison's pictures, because he took such an ugly subject, and actually made it look good. I am going to try to work on taking more pictures up close to my subjects and see what happens.
I really had a good time doing this assignment. At first I had a hard time trying to figure out what I was going to photograph. Turns out in was in my face all along. After discussing my assignment with my family, they had no trouble figuring it out.
My little sister (in middle school)is addicted to watching japanese cartoons. Because they are not on all day on TV, she watches these cartoons for hours at a time online. Not suprisingly, she was doing just that when I was discussing the assignment with my family. So I turned around and started shooting her. After briefly stating that she'd helped me with my homework, I took many shots from different angles. I finally picked the one that I thought was the best to upload.
My little brother plays basketball (and all other sports) so he has a basket in the back yard. I made him go outside and play for me. Grant it, it has been raining all day and it was sprinkiling a bit, but we did it anyway. Mosquitos were having a buffet on my legs, but I was subborn! I took what seemed like a million shots. I finally decided to upload a shot of him in the air. I thought this one was the most unique.
I had to wait till Monday when we got back to class to actually upload the pictures. Wikispaces was pretty complicated. In class,your assistant (I beleieve her name is Donna?)guided me through the process. I don't think I could've figured it out by myself.
I really had a good time doing this assignment. At first I had a hard time trying to figure out what I was going to photograph. Turns out in was in my face all along. After discussing my assignment with my family, they had no trouble figuring it out.
My little sister (in middle school)is addicted to watching japanese cartoons. Because they are not on all day on TV, she watches these cartoons for hours at a time online. Not suprisingly, she was doing just that when I was discussing the assignment with my family. So I turned around and started shooting her. After briefly stating that she'd helped me with my homework, I took many shots from different angles. I finally picked the one that I thought was the best to upload.
My little brother plays basketball (and all other sports) so he has a basket in the back yard. I made him go outside and play for me. Grant it, it has been raining all day and it was sprinkiling a bit, but we did it anyway. Mosquitos were having a buffet on my legs, but I was subborn! I took what seemed like a million shots. I finally decided to upload a shot of him in the air. I thought this one was the most unique.
I had to wait till Monday when we got back to class to actually upload the pictures. Wikispaces was pretty complicated. In class,your assistant (I beleieve her name is Donna?)guided me through the process. I don't think I could've figured it out by myself.
I enjoyed taking pictures. However, the experience to upload them was tough. I am used to using photo story and collecting pictures of the internet. Taking pictures to use in digital stories is fun but not knowing photoshop well makes it frustrating.
My topic for Pop Culture is Sports. I didnt realize this until later. The two pictures that I uploaded for this assignment will be part of the personal digital story that we will do in class 4. I look forward to this. I have been collecting various pictures. I will also be taking pictures of sporting events around town for our theme projects.
The first picture is of my dinning room and the second one is of my residence building. I thought the first pictures came out very rich in color and I was excited about that. The second picture was done with natural light and you can really see the difference. I will try to adjust them with the editing task next. So far, I am having fun taking the pictures. After reading the materials for the class assignments, I am now more careful with composition and more aware of lighting issues that affect the outcome of the photograph.
I took pictures of my classroom at school to share. My bulletin boards and posters in my class are constantly changing. I also wanted to share pictures of the house I just moved into. I have had to make time in my schedule to keep up with the maintenance of a yard. I had trouble getting the photos from the camera to the computer. Silly mistakes for a beginner.
Here is my url
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13707598@N05/
I went to New Orleans to take my photos. I am originally from there and haven't been to the 9th ward in a while. Guess what you don't see you don't think about. Many of the homes still look like they did then.
I took these photos in the automatic setting and tried to get as close as I could without using the zoom maxed out.
The 1st image was of a message that was spray painted on the home asking for assistance to rebuild leaving a telephone #
2nd image is a sign that was in front of a FEMA trailer. Residents frustrated waiting for Federal funds, distressed with the conditions that still remain. Another plee for help.
The 3rd image was near the wall that broke. It was about a 1/2 block of random trash that caught my eye. The image is of a rusted tractor overgrown with weeds.
While taking these pictures I felt uncomfortable. Even though I am originally from LA, I felt like I was trespassing. Some man stopped me and asked me if I was from the Road Home Program. They are still so desperate...just waiting. I couldn't help but feel bad for being there just snapping photos of their remnants.
Here is my attempt at using wikispaces. I really don't like using this because it takes too much time and I think it is complicated. I have a few more pictures, but I cannot add them on there because somehow it messes up the alignment in the other picture. This is a picture of the U of H cougar I took.
http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com/KristalScott
I am chosing to do my final project over sports - and small-town high school football, in particular, so my submissions for class two fit that theme.
When you live in Third ward Houston, it takes you a while to get to any small town, but I enjoyed the drive out to Needville where I shot both of my pictures.
The first picture is a simple shot of a stadium light behind a municipal water tower. I thought that it kind of symbolized the blue-collar mentality of schoolboy football in rural Texas and I think that the gathering clouds in the background add to that effect. I was very pleased with this picture.
The second submission is a shot of a group of men in western attire standing along the fence at the game. I took the picture in Needville but, honestly, I could have taken it in any small town on a Friday night. The "fence walkers" as they are known in my hometown are an obiquitous sight across Texas as they beat a path along the fence, prognosticating, criticising, and reliving their glory days.
I came looking for this shot because, in my mind, it epitomizes the all-encomapassing impact that football has on a community. Unfortunately, I never really got the light right, and this was the best that I could do.
I got really frustrated with Wikispaces when I first tried to use it so I gave up and decided to do it later. I thought I had it figured out but apparently I didn't do something right since my page won't show up on the left hand naviation. Nevertheless, here is a link to my pictures.
http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com/rachelrejona
I did not like using Wikispaces and I don't plan on using it anymore. I find other methods of photo sharing to be much more user-friendly.
At first, I got really frustrated trying to maneuver my way around wikispaces. Once I got the hang of it, it was not so bad; however, I still am not familiar with this so I probably will not use it as often. To share pictures, I like to use the yahoo photos.
For this assignment, I chose to take pictures of nature and landscape. My first picture is a picture of a patio of my school that I am teaching at. The second picture is a picture of a peach tree before and after the rain outside my apartment. The third picture is a picture of a type of rose called the “latin lady.” I had a blast taking these pictures and I had just a tad bit of trouble trying to upload these. I like the caption option for each picture.
http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com/Linh+Nguyen
When I first used wikispace, I also got frustrated as other people experience. Yet, I became more comfortable with this space and tried to use as much as I can. It gave me a lot of flexibility to save my contents in the web by using spontaneous edit and save function.
The two images that I took came from my working place. As you can see(http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com/Sun+Hong+Hwang) I became interested in the moment-to-moment of our everyday life. After I took these pictures, I realized how important light can be in a picture.
I had a fun time shooting picture of my boyfriends instruments, CD, record, and anything I could find. Uploaidn them on wikispaces was neat as well. I go to see other peoples images and point of view. http://cuin7358-07.wikispaces.com/Elizabeth+Aleman
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