Multigenre Literacy Autobiography

ST: New Literacies in Practice.

Right now I'm waiting for my video to load and be approved to School Tube , so let me reflect on the creation of my Autobiography.

I decided to use Mac's Keynote for the framework of my presentation. The program has better transitions between slides and nice animations. I then located images for the different areas of the autobiography. Instead of doing a picture per slide, I stacked the images, adding animation directions as I went. This helped me not have too many slides and group information too. I rehearsed the timings so that the show would play by itself. I exported this presentation file as a Quicktime movie at the CD ROM (medium) file size.

I wanted to include videos of the TV shows I watched instead of static pictures. I used Screentoaster to record a portion of the opening titles to shows I could find on You Tube. Generally the quality of the video was good. Once I screencasted the episodes I needed, I downloaded the TV shows as a separate video.

I then used iMovie to edit the two videos together. I placed my TVs in the middle of the Autobiography. I was able to easily access iTunes to add song clips into the presentation. If I didn't have a song, I could find it online and use the record feature in iMovie to add it to the show. I also used the record feature to add my narration. I exported the completed video as a Quicktime movie for web streaming. This lessened some of the quality of the video I am sure.

I have a School Tube account, so once I had my video done, I logged in and uploaded the video. It was under 1 GB, so I hoped I had no problems with video length. Then I had to wait for a moderator to approve the video. Once it is approved, I can attach it to this blog!

Reflections/ Critique

• Apparently my rehearsed times were sped up when exporting Keynote to video. I will need to add extra time next time so I don't have to speak so fast!

• There were many things I thought about adding upon completion of the presentation:

1. Movies like "Dune" and "Bladerunner" were great High School Sci-Fi influences. They got me reading some great Sci-Fi that wasn't all about technology.
2. Movies like "Momento" which challenged my concepts of linear storytelling and "Sleepy Hollow" which showed that you could reinterpret a story and not stick to the literary source.
3. Comic Books and graphic novels. I read some of my brother's initially, and probably knew more about the characters than really the storylines. Have read many of Alan Moore's Graphic Novels and Gaiman's Sandman series.
4. Totally forgot Fantasia (one of my favorites as a child) and Beethoven, Chopin, Copland, Bernstein, and other Classical music interests.
5. Would have liked a more modern "update"of where I am now to close the show.
6. Would like to add more on comics I read that had ties to literature like "Fables" or ones about storytelling like "Unwritten" or nonlinear plots like "Planetary" and how the Iron Man movie gave me my favorite superhero. (It was Batman, but Bruce Wayne can be kind of depressing at times.) It's interesting that both of my "superheroes" have no superpowers but are detectives and inventors. Perhaps this traces back to MacGuyver?
7. I would have liked to revisit how my childhood is being reinvented: GI Joe, Transformers, Tron, She-Ra, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, A-Team, Knight Rider, and the list goes on and on. Some of these are marketed for new, younger children, but I think many (like the She-Ra collector figures) are targeted at my age group because we'll remember them!
8. I would have liked to talk more about how these media affected me as a teacher. I incorporate a lot of movies, artwork, and music into my classes as they fit into topics (like looking at Elvis' music and the Beatles' music while studying the difference between the Greasers and Socs in "The Outsiders" or making predictions with Harold Loyd silent movies.

• I liked the way the video selections showed up. I think I might try exporting the iMovie as a CD ROM category to see if the quality can improve while file size doesn't go up too much.

• Liked the way the music fit in those sections and blended together.

• I was really surprised how much literature affected me. Literature informed my art interests and many of my favorite movies. It affected my travel, and I often liked song lyrics that told stories or had allusions. Does this mean I valued the printed text over other media? I don't think so, but it is interesting to see how one medium interprets another.

This project is something that is never finished but only abandoned. I like its reflective nature. I was surprised to see how many times different texts were tied to literature. Yet in many cases, the other medium change or reinterpreted the original text (like Rossetti's Double Works of art.) Good techniques in storytelling are present in whatever text you pursue!