Week 15

This the last chance to rant and rave about this class.

I have learned so many new things!  I learned to make a poster using regular 8.5" x 11" printer paper, I have learned new things about manipulating photos (which is one of my favorite things to do), I have learned about making videos, vlogs, podcasts and picked up a lot of pointers on doing them well.  These are things I will be playing with for a long time to come.

My favorite project is hard to pinpoint because I enjoyed doing nearly all of them!  The challenges were even better when they were accomplished.  

My least favorite assignment was critiquing other people's websites because it was assigned rather than solicited by the site's creators.  I tried hard to help fellow classmates when I thought I had something useful to say and hope my comments and suggestions were helpful and not hurtful.  I know it's hard for some people to accept constructive criticism in a positive way.

Overall, I have really enjoyed this class and am somewhat sad to see it end.  It went by so fast!  Lisa, I will definitely do my best to stay in touch and will enjoy sharing new information about multimedia with you.  Thanks for everything you have helped me learn this semester!

As a final note to fellow classmates who had a hard time with this class, I would like to say I hope none of you were too discouraged or disheartened by all of this. Today's failure will be tomorrow's success.  Have you ever struggled with something at one point in time, and then in future encountered it again and been able to get through it relatively easier?  You may not think so right now, but if and when you encounter situations in the future where these types of lessons and projects could be useful for another class, for your kids, or for anything else you may come up with, I believe you will see these things in a whole different light. At least that has been my experience.

I wish you all great success in your lives.  It has been a great pleasure meeting all of you and sharing in this class with you.  Have a wonderful holiday season.  Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Hare Krishna, or whatever fits with your beliefs, and have a wonderful and prosperous New Year!

Week 14

In my opinion, the concept that a minor change to someone's work is considered "creative" and that it creates and builds on another person's idea is ludicrous.  Credit should be given to the original artist, and then credit can be given to the artist who built upon his/her idea.  That Stephen Colbert could make a few scribblings on the cover of Lawrence Lessig's book, then commit plagiarism by drawing a profile picture of Snoopy on the inside and now claim the book as his own was ridiculous on it's face.  What about the writing inside?  He clearly did not do that.  How could Lessig say that was okay?  I would not want someone to do that sort of thing to any work of mine and claim it as their own simply because they changed, or added, a few things to it.  Besides, the only reason this book could probably have added value would be because Colbert is a celebrity.  If I did that to someone's book, I doubt it would become more valuable.

On the other side of it though, if an artist creates something and another artist totally transforms it into something else based on the original idea, that would be a different story.  People do see things differently.  In my mind, Colbert would have to totally redesign the cover, make the Snoopy drawing inside much different, and re-write the text.  That, to me, would be a new work.