New Media
Writing in the 21st century has been saturated with various modes of composition. It means composing in a digital environment full of sounds, images, visuals, and other scripts. In the time when people are overwhelmed with images and information all around, how do people imagine the future of composition? In what ways do students participate in their daily activities of reading and writing? How does new media affect their writing process? I plan to design and teach courses using new media and digital technologies. Here are some other details about the works I have done in the area of new media and digital technologies.
In one of my multimodal projects earlier, I created and managed a university student Website for NSA (Nepalese Student Association) in University of Louisville. I also applied some video-making and editing skills in a short video I produced for a student Website (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRCkytG758). While restructuring NSA (Nepalese Student Association) website (https://louisville.edu/rso/nepalese) under the domain of U of L (https://louisville.edu) (now they have moved it under OrgSync portal), I have used several technological skills in order to make this website look more professional and student-centered. As we can use only Plone to create and design the pages based on the basic template that the university provides us, I’ve tried to learn and utilize as many skills as they seem to be available in Plone. In this project, I have mostly focused on introducing this organization and making it resourceful for prospective international, especially Nepalese, students. Making Home page an introduction, I created NSA logo by using Photoshop, and added some text under it so as to familiarize the organization with student community and others interested in it.
In addition to the NSA logo, I have concentrated mostly on representing NSA activities in a video form. As Plone does not seem to allow uploading video directly to the web pages, I learnt to embed videos. In my case, I uploaded a video to YouTube and then embedded it in the website. This is probably the place I could learn and utilize video editing skills through the use of Windows Movie Maker. In the Video Gallery section, I have created this video by containing some typical Nepali images, symbols, and music to give Nepali cultural flavor to the activities NSA organized in the past. Selecting video clips, adding background music, transitions, video effects, titles and subtitles, cutting and pasting images, adjusting volume among others are some of the skills I have learned and used when creating this video. I believe that such skills will be useful for me in my academic works, whether teaching with the use of technology or creating my own projects.
In a two-week long workshop at institute of Digital Media and Composition in OSU from May 31st to June 12, 2012, I have learned many other new media and digital technology skills that will prove to be instrumental in my teaching and professional development throughout my academic career. In addition to learning camera operation, audio-video editing skills in general, I also gained deeper understanding of rhetorical design and affordances of technologies in the practices of learning and teaching. Use of iMovie and Garageband for movie-making, audio and video editing, and other skills pertaining to teaching and composition has added a lot to the assets of my knowledge. The specific projects I undertook during this workshop include audio PSA, concept-in-60 video entitled “Where Home Doesn’t Belong,” and development of a professional Website in WordPress.
The use of new media and digital technology has also broadened my connection with other relevant social networks like facebook, twitter, blogs, and RSS feeds that update regularly about the emerging concepts in the area of my interests.
Tika Lamsal's Weblog 