Critical Thinking and Writing

Well, here it is. It is time to say good by to my loyal readers. I”ll wipe away a single tear when the time comes to publish this blog post– my last blog post (for this blog).

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To begin my reflection on this class,  I will start from the beginning. Briefly, I will discuss the content from CTW I. Personally, I enjoyed CTW I more. I felt as is I learned the basics that are more useful in everyday writing and rhetoric. It wasn’t necessarily easier, but I felt that the class discussions were more engaging because everyone was reading the same material whereas in CTW II, we read some but when we got going on our researched topics, class discussions consisted of methods rather than content which was personally less engaging.

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Discussing the methods of research became a bit tedious to me looking back at class. Although I enjoyed the content that we studied in the Winter, I did learn a lot with BEAM and Tirabassi that was useful towards the project that both terms ultimately lead to– the researched paper.

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What I think the best things that I learned from CTW II is how to use scholarly databases, proper citations, annotate bibliographies, and synthesize authors to make my own point. I think that these concepts stood out to me more than BEAM or exhibit sources and the sort because these are skills that I will certainly use in the future. I will probably use aspects of  BEAM but I may not remember the exact terms moving forward. I do acknowledge that my future writing could be enriched by applying those aspects of the course, but realistically, I’m going to forget the exact definitions of BEAM and most likely use similar concepts to prove my point since I know how to do it.

For me, I think that when it came down to it, I placed a greater emphasis on the aspects of writing a researched paper that I considered to be the more essential parts– parts that I had a shaky foundation for like how to use scholarly databases, proper citations, annotate bibliographies, and synthesize authors to make my own point (like I mentioned before). For example, when it came to the researched paper I don’t think I felt like I had a good reason to include my exhibit source from my survey because it’s my topic had changed. I could have made a reach to connect the two so I could include an exhibit source, but I thought that would hinder my project.

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Finally, to the good part. The best thing looking back to this course was how well prepared I was to write my researched paper. I was absolutely amazed. Over the two terms, I had picked up things that I didn’t know would really tie together seamlessly so the large project felt as if it wrote itself. I think that the most useful aspect was the annotated bibliographies. I really planned reading the scholarly articles in advance and it helped me tremendously.

The week before the paper was due I was out of town and planned on not working on my paper while I was away. When I got back I had three days to write the twelve paged paper. Naturally, I’m a bit of a procrastinator and I believe working under some pressure is beneficial for me, but I was a little nervous that I was to begin writing 3 days prior to the due date.

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But what I didn’t address my fears with was the fact that I had already done so much preparation for the paper. Practically everything lead to the paper so when I sat down and wrote it, It didn’t feel like a chore at all. It even became pleasant because instead of writing for only a professor, the way this project was designed was to add a meaningful voice to the topic. Having a purpose to write the paper made it more rewarding, in turn, influencing me to produce more genuine work. 

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Well, that is my best personal insight into the course!

Thanks for reading!

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Envision the image above as a billboard on a busy street or highway in the Bay Area. Thousands or cars that are transporting hundreds of people with smartphones would understand this ad. The travelers would be able to imagine that “they” are reading a text sent directly to them.

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Each person who reads the billboard would be directly send the same message– which is the public service announcement. 

The message was established in my last post but what they do with it is now up to the viewer. The audience was offered this insight but there are a number of different ways that this could be interpreted to the intended audience. 

1. Some in the audience could agree that people miss out on the experience of art– and the ad might reinforce what they already believe but doesn’t make a profound impact
2. Others could see the ad and simply have no interest in art; hence, the billboard would do much for them.
3. People who already have at least a small interest or openness to art my see the ad and become aquatinted with the idea that digitalized art does not carry the same experience as viewing it in person. This is the main goal. For the public to become enriched from offering them such an insight.

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After all, no one who sees my billboard thinks the same way that I do let alone has the same existing meaning of art.

Until next time…

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In the library session, I realized that I ran into some problems with my plan to make a billboard. In my last post, I described the purpose of my billboard which was to be a translation of my researched paper into a multimodal form. Problems arose because I am not tech savvy in the slightest.

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My initial attempt was to make a project that could be easy to make. Which for me meant that I try my hardest to ensure that my project created with as little technology was possible.

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In class, I found out that my plan to tape and cut out printed images onto a poster-board would not look clean– or good for that matter. I faced the inevitable… I was to use the dreaded technology. For some perspective, even the idea of making blogs was scary to me because anything on the computer, I hate.

Then I got some help by the Camtasia instructor to help me with Photoshop. My plan was to put two images on one screen with a background; easy enough?

Then, the instructors face was as puzzled as mine when I described the objective. She looked at me with doubtful eyes and said, “Yeah, Photoshop isn’t my expertise.” My hopes of making a billboard model online were fleeting. She continued “I don’t know how to use this at all.” 

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After a few minutes of mindlessly clicking buttons with me, the instructor excused herself and onward I trekked into the unknown world of Photoshop. I cut out a photo online, made “layers”, fought with the vertical vs horizontal orientation and so on.

But to my surprise, after the thirty minutes that felt like a lifetime, I made a billboard ON PHOTOSHOP. 

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Although, there is no way that I could retrace my steps in doing so, but I did it. In the mean time, hold the applause because you will see the finished product in my next blog post.

For my multimodal project that is supposed to be like a visual version of my researched argument, I plan to make a public service announcement. I like to consider myself a creative person, so coming up with ways to make a multimodal project isn’t as challenging to me as writing the researched paper. Actually, this assignment gives me the opportunity to be a little bit crafty. I would say that this project could be considered as leisurely, but nothing can be leisurely the week before finals!

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So I was sitting in class for a moment gathering inspiration, and I though, “Lily, made a billboard!”

Not an actual billboard, like some of my classmates thought I was planning on doing– but a model of a billboard that would serve as a public service announcement to be kind of translation for my project.

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Now… how am I to create this public service announcement?

My researched paper was about what is lost in the digitalization process. Within that argument, there were interesting points made about the advantages of seeing art in person over digitalized version online.

So,  my plan is to “make” a billboard to send the message that it is important to see art in person rather than on a device. I plan to accomplish this by having a picture a famous art piece on the screen of an iPhone. (shown below)

My hand featuring my phone with “Starry Night” by Van Gogh on the screen

Most people would recognize the art piece that is on my phone screen, but could many enjoy it? It appears so small. It makes me want to zoom in a lot… or better yet, see it in person.

This is the point of the my multimodal translation. I want the public service announcement to imply something along the lines of “It’s better if you see it in person”.

I want to present this in a style that is similar to the minimalistic apple billboards so I compare the very high tech side with something that cannot be recreated in the digital realm– the experience of art.

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Until next time…

Here is a short Camtasia video that describes my blog! I was in a library session and an instructor gave us a rundown about a video making program called Camtasia.

I am not tech savvy, but I was amazed by how easy I found this program to be. There were a few errors made, but if you watch the video you can see for yourself.

I hope you enjoyed the video. I actually had an enjoyable time with this program and would recommend it to someone is they had a project or presentation.

I didn’t really have a lot to say at the moment so I made a blog introduction post.

See you next time… but probably not in a video form

Instead of a normal class for my CTW, we went to the library to work with an librarian who taught us about contextualized sources.

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I had already felt fairly confident in my contextualizing sources skills, but I learned a few things. 

We began class with two videos that described scholarly articles. These were both fairly clear and basic but one thing that I found particularly interesting is that they journal articles in different fields tend to have different standards. The librarian explained that peer reviewed articles generally have a shorter length than those in the humanities. Additionally, different fields usually have different structures. I found this to be interesting because since they were peer reviewed, there aren’t any absolute guidelines that can weed out the deviant articles. I took this to mean that the scholars in whatever field all gravitate towards one style for many reasons that make it the best for their studies. 

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Then, she went on to teach contextualization of sources. I think that after writing my bibliographies I grounded the authors effectively although, I did not and context to my source paper for the individual authors at all. The following image shows same ways that a source can be contextualized.

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Contextualizing sources also gives the author credibility which is very important. It draws on the readers logos. I think that contextualizing sources can easily be done wrong, but when it comes to adding a quote to a paper a writer won’t just leave drop a random name then a quote. For a quote to make any sense, readers need it to be contextualized!!

All in all, context is very important

In my last post, I described the steps that I needed to make to try to connect the streps of authors who wrote scholarly articles. I planned to do the same process to connect the trends of all nine authors, but my plans had to change once I realized that doing to the process wouldn’t work well with having so many authors that have so many lines! I discovered that the chart would turn into a confusing mess– only after I made it though. 

But in the process of creating my chart, I found a way to make the connections betweens the author and trends more clear. I decided to write down the authors and go through the bibliographies that I had written. The quality of my bibliographies became essential as I wrote down brief main points to make connections. The part of my bibliographies in which I drew connections were I guess reminders of the main points but were not particularly necessary to accomplish what I needed to do– which was write a brief source paper. 

After I reviewed the bibliographies and wrote down the main notes of each author, I began to highlight the trends I observed.

These trends included 

• experience
• policy
• accessibility
• lost artifacts
• digital future
• context

 I organized the last names alphabetically then highlighted the common trends by color.

This made finding trends and connects very easy to see visually.

After I did this, I was able to make what I think turned out to be a pretty good source paper. 

Until next time…

As I plan on writing my annotated bibliography for my upcoming research paper, I am tasked with drawing connections between authors. In class, I designed this sample of what I plan to do for all of my authors. I will walk you through this process.

step 1: Write a title (don’t sweat proper spelling) and draw over it a couple times as you think about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. This may seem like an unnecessary aspect but this doodle time is essential to let yourself really consider what you are trying to accomplish. I though of what connections I could make after reading three authors so and I had to decide how I would do it.

step 2: Another critical yet mundane part is the spacing of the names. With only three authors to consider this isn’t terribly difficult although it is practice for when I have to draw up the big one with 9-12 authors who all need adequate space to make their connections. Since this is a visual representation, balance is very important.

Step 3: Make connections. This step has two parts.

a) figure out how you will represent these connections– I decided to write what points were being made on each line that connected the two points

b) make the actual connections looking at the bibliography that you just note and by looking through the article to recall some parts of it.

step 4: Take a minute to look at it and start to take away trends and patterns that you see.

Easy as that, a simple four step guide to start the synthesis process. Stay tuned for my next blog post that will demonstrate my four step guide to my 9 sources.

Until then…

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As my annotated bibliography for my research paper is coming along, like expected I am encountering gaps in my territory. I am collecting mainly scholarly articles to connect voices and enter a conversation about the digitalization and preservation of art.

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Scholars and experts in the field tend to agree that the digital archives of artistic artifacts are to be treated differently than the artifacts like records or books. This is a first gap in my understanding of artifacts because it is stated often that those artifacts require a specialized preservation policy but as to why was only briefly addressed. Brief descriptions discuss the qualities of art pieces that have different rights to the artist and contextual importance… but I will address that gap soon in future research.

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In addition to the art-specific needs in addressing the digitalization of artifacts, another gap is in the policies proposed towards such preservation. I read an article about a case study of the creation of a digital archive preservation policy for the Boston Museum of Art. The BMA was received a grant to create a proposal to address the needs to preserve digital art and the preservation of art that was digitalized. The case study went on to describe the challenges in creating a policy to to the lack of policies to draw from.

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The recent demand for archival policies is due to an increased use of internet in the recent past, hence, the digital preservation is the new field (specifically for art artifact digital preservation) that is in it’s infancy so there are bound to be gaps.

The research continues…

I found my first article that I will use to enter and add to the conversation that I discuss in my upcoming research paper after stumbling upon an informal blog. I wasn’t quite set on what I intended to seek to answers with the help of experts in a certain field. What I had was a muddled question regarding something that would have to do with the preservation of history in the digital age. 

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I was unsure of any effects that the digital age has made, furthermore, I didn’t even know where to begin my quest for answers about the digital age. I simply google searched, “Affects of the internet in storing history” in hopes that that search would take me to interesting and applicable sources.

First, I thought to myself that it would probably be a beneficial idea to read a popular article before jumping into a more specialized article like one in the library tutorial– scholarly journals seem like down the road they could be very helpful in providing qualitative information, but I was after a Wikipedia-like description of some conversations that have been started to be offered in a very accessible way. 

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One of the first websites offered in after my Google search was a blog post in Vice. I skimmed over it and it referenced an expert in the field of data (I think….). I didn’t focus on that expert or the content of the very informal blog, instead I was interested in where these references could take me. I was hoping that it could lead me to a conversation that is of interest to me and of others that I could learn in efforts to conduct my research.

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I found it incredibly easy to find a couple names that are experts in the field of the digital age in relation to history preservation. I became interested a book written my another expert in the field, Robert Hayes. I searched co-writer of the book and found that man research to be even more interesting that what I had previously found. 

This finally got me to my first article which, in turn finalized the decision of what my question was to be on. “What are the effects of the preservation of art in the digital age?”

My first article is a scholarly article. I can tell because it is peer reviewed and has the characteristics of a scholarly article: the vocabulary, a short abstract, etc… The article is entitled “The Preservation of Art in the Digital Realm” by Tim Au Yeung, Sheelagh Carpendale and Saul Greenburg.

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Although reading this article did not make me an expert in the art in the digital realm, it did allow for me to begin get ready to enter the conversation after learning about other perspectives from different experts in the field.

My research continues!! Until next time…