ITL Reflection Questions
Hey!
This is probably late compared to other people’s…but I wasn’t in school today so I got it for homework. Rough day today! I had a doctor’s appointment at 9:15 this morning (I was taken to emergency the night before so they told me to come in) and the doctor said I should go to Flin Flon for some blood tests. Turns out the infection that gives me a fever is an infection in my glands. My neck has been extremely sore lately, and now the glands are swelled up all big. The swelling and pain is going down though, due to the medication. No one could figure out where the infection was coming from, so they looked at my glands and had to perform blood tests (it took 3 needles but missed twice before they got any blood! Apparently I have really small veins…). The glands are the size of large lumps the doctor found. It’s very painful, I must say =(. (No, I don’t have mono for those of you wondering =P. They even tested and I don’t.)
Anyways, here’s the answers to the questions.
1. What have you learned about your topic?
As some of you already know, my topic was on eating disorders, mainly bulimia and anorexia. I learned a lot on this topic. I learned how it affects your body, what it does to you and how it can kill you, how it rots away your teeth from throwing up so much, and what you look like after you become anorexic or bulimic. I also learned how it affects the body not only physically but mentally as well. The saddest part is the skinniest of all people still see themselves fat. I learned about all the mixed emotions people go through and how they just won’t stop. I just wish people who are like toothpicks would not see themselves FAT. Like really, you’re much too small as it is!
2. What have you learned about collaborating locally and internationally?
I’ve learned that the two are very different. Collaborating locally is easy because you can easily communicate with the person you are working with; all you have to do is reach them face-to-face and you can easily discuss topics because you live in the same area. However, internationally is not so easy. If you wanted to discuss something face-to-face with a person in a place like, let’s say Columbia, and you live in Canada like I do, you’d have to like get a plane and fly across the world just to chat with them. You have to use things like wikis, blogs, and Skype calls to talk to them. It’s not as easy as talking to them, but it does work and you still get the project done and it turns out great.
3. What would have made this project easier/better/more interesting?
I didn’t really think this project could’ve been more interesting or made better. I think it could’ve been made easier, though. I found that the programs we used, like Pinnacle and Audacity, got hard to work with at times. It also made people very frustrated, snappy, and tired of working with; this may have made them want to give up and just slap some work down on a very important project. Stuff just wouldn’t work out at times. We worked on these videos from everyday that we got them going, so I think if we got at least one or two days off from working on them per week it would’ve been easier on everyone and less stressful. It would’ve taken a bit longer, but people would probably feel more calm about it.
4. What have you learned about telling a story combining pictures/music/video/text?
I learned that you have to chose what you use very carefully to make everything work together just right. To capture the correct mood, you have to capture the correct material. For example, for a project like the one I did, it’s a very sad, deep topic so you wouldn’t exactly use some loud heavy-rock music. You’d use something slow and moody, not depressing but something that makes you think and puts you in the correct mood. The text would be a calm, possibly italic font, not something jagged or crazy, or something “happy” like Comic Sans MS or Tempus Sans MS. You could use something like Monotype Corsiva or Lucida Calligraphy (that’s the one we used for most of our video.) The video would have to be sad and make you think about bulimic people and what they go through everyday and how they could see themselves fat when they look like they’re about to break. I’ve learned that everything is like a puzzle; you have to put the pieces in the correct way or else it won’t complete like it’s supposed to.
Anyways, that’s about it for my ITL Reflection Questions. I think the videos turned out excellent and carry out an important messages about very important topics. These videos were most definitely worth the time and effort and I hope everyone likes them and that it makes them think long and hard about these issues.
Hopefully I’ll be in school tomorrow!..
April
