Beginning of Class Writing: Miller’s Digital Storytelling, Chapter 5, Old Tools/New Tools

During the first ten minutes of class, write and post a summary memo of Chapter 5 from Miller’s Digital Storytelling as a comment to this blog entry. Consider how you can connect some of the topics discussed about storytelling tools and your observation/experience of them in contemporary media. Can you name some examples?

Project 2, Planning

Before our next class, complete your planning memo for Project 2 (available under the Projects menu above) and copy-and-paste it into a comment made to this blog post. Instructions are included below.

Planning: Think of at least two fiction stories that you could tell in this project, and write a brief memo (approximately 250 words) describing the two possible fiction stories that you would like to tell in this project, and explaining why, of the two possible choices, you selected the one that you did. Post this as a comment to OpenLab. Also, you should confirm that your YouTube account has a fully formed profile with profile image that fits into your interconnecting online professional image/brand, which of course, you might change over time but it suffices to have a profile in place that you might decide to change later. Also, all students should subscribe to one another’s YouTube channels and Professor Ellis’ channel (www.youtube.com/dynamicsubspace). (in-class Feb 22)

Due to the extra work required for this project, it is recommended that you continue with the next modules, which we will devote some of our next class to working on, too. Good luck!

Beginning of Class Writing: Miller’s Digital Storytelling, Chapter 4, Interactivity

Let’s use the first ten minutes of class today to write summary memos on your reading for today’s class: Miller’s Digital Storytelling, Chapter 4, Interactivity and Its Effects. As you write your summary of the reading, you should note examples of interactivity that you have experienced or know about that we can discuss when we discuss the chapter. Post your memo as a comment to this blog entry.

Tasting Success: An Intern’s Journey

 

Reflection

The first project of the semester was so much fun! I enjoyed the project immensely. The Twitter project afforded me a chance to craft and participate in a non fiction storytelling via the platform and incorporate multimedia. I loved every bit of it! As I look back, one of the hardest moment I struggled with was deciding on a subject to discuss, there were so many important stories that I wanted to share. In the end, I decided to talk about attaining a summer internship in a field that was unfamiliar to me and talk about the struggles and triumphs that it comes with and how I discovered myself in the long run. I really enjoyed sharing my story because many of my classmates are dealing with similar issues and I hope to be a resource for them. After completing the project I realized that I had social media strategy to share my story nor did I have any target audience. But I do think that I was successful in delivering my story because I received user engagement on Twitter from my classmates, Professor Ellis, as well as the social media manager of Indeed— which was really cool! I used a few hashtags and was expecting an increase in my impressions but I was unsuccessful. My task for this semester is to build a following on my professional Twitter page where I can interact with industry leaders, connect with unique socialites and network network network!

 

Analytics

For the Twitter project I went back and forth on whether or not I should use my already established account or create a new account, in the end I ended up creating a new Twitter account. Looking back, I believe if I had used my previous account with my 200 plus followers I would have had a much stronger user engagement apart from my classmates and would have received a surge in impressions. This was a fun exercise because building a Twitter persona from scratch is not easy. This may seem like a daunting task but I am completely ready for a challenge.

Embarkment on a Vegetarian Path

Reflection:

This was a very engaging and interactive experiement. I enjoyed expressing myself through my writing the series of tweets and experiencing it through different mediums has made it more and exciting. It bacame a way of sharing my story with a larger audience who may be primary vegetarians and vegans, and secondary, really anyone who has an interest in making that change. Allowing my audience to know me in a quick yet personal way quite challenging. Also challenging was going beyond the limitations of Twitter to turn a few tweets into a powerful tool where the story is divided over several tweets while keeping it cohesiveness. Learning this technique has added a new dimension to tweeting and it made me look at tweets as not just individual messages but connected to a larger spread of information.  I feel that my experience was a success and the feedback was quite positive.This only makes me want to experience more in different ways. It was interesting to think that if the tweets were posted over several days or even weeks, would the audience come along for the journey? I also feel that the audience are now a part of a large collaboration with me and can engage in the writing, editing, publishing, and reading stories.

Analytics:

Being new to Twitter, other than using it last semester in class and previously for class projects, the idea of posting it all over and linking it to other sites is quite new to me. I posted 15 posts which contained 3 photos. I find that the photos increase the likes and the discussions even more than just the text. My analytics is low because I have a lot to learn about optimizing my tweets for user engagement but this is a challenge I will happily participate in.

Archiving “Moving While Gaining Momentum”

https://twitter.com/MariahRaj/status/700107514759811073

From existing to excelling, The story of a lost and found single mom

This is an archive of my non fiction Twitter story. Below are the tweets in order detailing my journey from aspiring cop to single mom to college drop out to college graduate.

REFLECTION:

For my twitter story I had two particular audiences in mind. One being young moms and the other being moms who juggle work and school with motherhood both who may doubt their abilities or that the goal is attainable. I crafted the story originally to be very detailed but soon realized that would make the story entirely too long for a character limiting platform such as twitter. I then reorganized my story to include necessary detail but concise to where it wasn’t overwhelming on a timeline. I believe my story was a success because not only do the numbers (over 2,000 impressions in 24 hours) support that but I got excellent feedback from my professor as well as my peers. Mariah (@mariahraj) said “ your strength and go getter attitude is inspirational” and Jodie (@jodieannstephen) quoted one of my tweets saying “Life goals “. Professor Ellis also applauded my delivery of the message as did Pam who can personally relate as a mother herself. I feel that I got wholly positive feedback and my story was relatable to people with or without kids. I sought to deliver a message of inspiration and encouragement and based on the replies I believe I have. It was challenging but rewarding to deliver a story on this platform because not only do I love twitter I enjoy discovering new ways to use it. From these tweets I got mentions, likes and follows from things I mentioned or hash tagged. Using keys terms and tags helps to reach a specific community and that was my main goal for crafting this story.

ANALTYICS:

On Wednesday my twitter got 2,473 engagements. This consists of retweets, likes, and mentions or times people opened the tweet. The most highly trafficked tweets were the closing to my twitter story with 116 and tweet 16 of 16 with 79. The topic in general garnished a lot of attention because its in line with one of the genres of my twitter feed regularly.

Project 1, Execution

During today’s live tweet of each person’s Twitter story, we will model networking at a distance–meaning we will engage only through Twitter for responses, retweets, and likes. After each person has a chance to run her story, everyone will come to OpenLab, create a comment beginning with the person’s name who just live tweeted on this post, and write a brief comment about the story focusing on what worked and what could be improved upon. Then, we can talk about the story in a regular class discussion.