Our last day.

Well, sitting in class the last day is kind of weird. I actually think i'm really going to miss a school class for once in my life. I just finished my last word, and I think it pretty much states what I am going to say here on this blog. Finishing up this blog is kind of sad too considering i spent so much time working on the posts that I might even keep up my posts once in a while. Here is a clip of the letter I wrote to Mark, maybe it will say a little bit morea bout what I think.

"The blogs were obviously the most important part of the whole course because of its weight. I have to admit, by the end of blogs I heard a lot of people moaning and groaning about it, but I wasn’t to stressed. I am in the image arts stream, but I enjoy writing too, and the blogs allowed to me to a lot of critical thinking, self-reflection, and in general writing. I actually think my writing has improved because of this course, and I’m not just saying that because I want a good mark."

Maybe I will write on here in a bit...

The End.

Short Video Experience...

For our video group project, we decided to make a video about a topic and concern everyone has with themselves and with others. We decided to pick a question and get people to answer it on film; If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? We each came up with different questions originally, but decided that this was the best one and that it would be great for people to answer. We thought we may even be able to get some interesting comments about people and what they really thought of themselves. Here is a list of some of the answers we recieved.

- Love Handles
- Big Feet
- Want to be more athletic
- Younger
- Taller
- More outgoing

Most of the answers we recieved were about peoples physical self, but nothing drastic like being fat and wanting to get skinny, or not being anorexic etc. The one answer I personally thought was really good was the last one on the list; to be more outgoing. The impact was big because the person getting interviewed was on the co-ed study floor, and it seemed like his personality was really outgoing just by talking to him for a second. I liked how he was serious about his answer, and was really honest about everything. I think the actions people do show their personalities more than their personalities show themselves...if that makes sense.

In the end, we had some computer and file compatibility issues and did not even get to create the video, we were just left with the clips of these indivduals which made us a little mad after all the running around we did to get the clips.

Technology rules...but it sucks sometimes too!

Podcast....On The Subway!

Script:

Kevin: Welcome to the tour of the TTC, the subway addition
Kyle: TTC stands for Toronto Transit Commission and its been running since 1925 beginning with trains, but the subway itself was built form 1949 to 1954
Katie: The Younge Street line was the first subway in Canada, but it only came into commission was in 1964!
Kyle: And, it was the beginning of postwar Toronto's effort to accommodate the demands of the city's prosperity and its future.
(Subway chime)
Kevin: What you just heard was the sound that prepared the passengers that the doors are about to close.
Kyle: So here we are on the subway riding south towards Union Station.
Katie: The Yonge line has 16 spot going from Finch Ave. all the way to Union Station in down town Toronto.
Kevin: There are 3 different lines so it is possible to get any where in Toronto. And they are currently planning on extended the Yonge line into York Region, by York University and into the city of Vaughn.
Katie: So while we’re on our subway ride, we’ll give you a few tips about the subway and some other stuff.
Kyle: Here’s an interesting fact, the subway has had over 25 billion riders since 1921.
Kevin: That’s almost 4 times the world’s population.
Kyle: So we started at the Finch station and now are at Bloor and Yonge. This is the station where you can switch subway lines if you need to go east to west when going north to south.
Kevin: But since we’re doing our tour from Finch Station to Union Station we are continuing on this subway.
Katie: Oh look at that guy over there, he’s playing a violin!
Kyle: Yeah, they’re called buskquers.
Kevin: In 1980, the TTC began a program called Subway Musicians Programme.
Kyle: The TTC allows musicians to audition and the ones who make it can perform in the subway entrance and as people walk by they throw change into their instrument case.
Katie: Oh cool!
Kevin: Yup, there are a lot of cool things that happen in the subway. It’s not just a way of transportation.
Kyle: Well there’s not much more to say on this tour.
Katie: Yeah the only thing left to do is enjoy the ride.


This is a script of a podcast that we worked on. We decided to use the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) as our sort of guide to the city. The subway is used daily by thousands of people around and in toronto, and really is behind the scenes, an important part to Toronto's history. Thousands of people rely on the subway to get them from one place to another, and at the same time don't even think about the conveinience of it.

One of the most interesting facts we found was that over 25 billion people have rode the subway since its opening, which is an incredible amount of people to be going from one place to another.

Overall, I think this project was a great success, and we really did explore a lot to do with both transportation in general and the TTC specifically. The project was worth doing for sure.


Script:

Coming to the End!

Well, There is only one Mass Comm class left and to tell you the truth im happy in some ways and sad in others. I learned a lot this semester, and like Mark said at the beginning of the semester, he figured and from previous responses that this would be one of our hardest and most interesting classes throughout our whole university experience.

So Far, it has been great, this is defenetely the most interesting class I have been a part of and I am happy for the most part on my success thus far. Hopefully these blogs will be a job well done, as I have spent lots time, effort, and thought on making each one of these posts unique for myself and sort of interesting for others to. The whole point of blogs is self reflection, so although this blog is in essence for Mark Lipton, it is not essentially geared towards him. My thoughts are true to what I think and nothing is made up. I personally am not a fan of liars, nor fake people, I despise celebrities, reality shows, and pop icons because they are all fake. It's stupid to lie in this world and at some point it will catch up with you. I Have friends none the less that live by this fake crap and I can't take it, it changes their lives whether they think so or not.

So! getting past that, I just hope that everything I have written has been a true self reflection, and that my effort in all my writing will pay off!

It's Crunch Time!

A Timeline of Social/Media/History

This project asked our group (Katie, Kyle and Myself) to investigate some of the most important inventions, and map what they were and how they've changed. We began with making our poster vey simple, and outlined the major ideas followed by similar ideas, inventions, and other things that have come from each of these major inventions or revelations. Each of us contributed a different invention, and I think each one of us knew what they were before we even discussed it. Anyways, here is the breakdown of what we thought.

Language/Speech (50,000 yrs ago) - Language was probably one of the most useful invention of all time. Language and speech are so important because they can effectively communicate our words and sounds up until this very day. Humans no longer had to draw pictures or grunt or act out what they were trying to communicate, they were able to use words. Although it may not be the same kinds of languages we use today, without this we my have never become so intelligible to actually speak.

The alphabet (over 4000 yrs ago) - from the alphabet came the invention of spelling and grammar which eventually turned into books etc. The alphabet has made it easier for humans to learn and read about new information and effectively communicate with each other through reading and writing.
The Printing Press (1430’s) - the printing press gave humans the ability to mass produce books and newspapers not only once but millions of times. The printing press has given most people the privilege of books and learning how to read. The world has become a lot more educated and informed because books, newspapers and magazines can be mass produced.

Typewriter (1886) - Books no longer had to be hand written when the typewriter was invented. The typewriter allowed work to be completed a lot faster then before. It also provoked inventors to later invent the computer etc.

Semiotics Paper....Oh the Humanity!

Well, today, we talked about a few important things and ideas but one of the most important things we talked about was our marks on our semiotic analysis papers, worth 30 percent of our mark. Mark talked about how 69 (our class average) was the highest average on the papers he had in the last few years for the Mass Communications class which was pretty good to hear. I was still scared. I had worked hard on it, but i didnt think i worked as hard as a possibly could on it because I had a lot of other things due the week i submitted it. Ever since I came to university, I have been working a lot harder than I did in in high school because now I have to pay for it myself, and why waste money on something that I am going to use in my future!

SO, when i received my paper back at the end of class, I took a quick look and on the front page the word thesis was followed by a question mark. THESIS? That sure as heck did not seem like a good sign, but then there was also a checkmark after. I didnt know what to think, so I continued to the back and saw my mark; 69; the class average. Although this was not as good of a mark as I wanted to get, I was happy that I did as well as a lot of other people, and even some of my friends got really low marks.

Now all thats left to do is finish these blogs which are obviously the biggest part of this whole course, and to write the last word to Mr. Lipton. I'll write again in a bit to give some updates on how I am doing on these blogs and the last word.

Coming Home

When I went off to school, I was very excited about living away from my parents for long periods of time and being able to control everything in my life. After a couple weeks without my family I began to realize what they did without me knowing it, and what I now need to do for myself. They always cleaned the dishes, washed my clothes, made great home made food for me, bought me things, and above all were always there for me if say, I got a bad mark on a project. Now, whenever I am at school I have to do these things for myself, and it kind of sucks but I am getting used to it. Coming home for a weekend here and there really helps, and reminds me how much I really miss my parents. The Christmas break will be fun, having a month to see friends and spend time with family while managing a job at my local Bestbuy. This weekend particularly was spent catching up with a few friends, doing some homework, and contacting my managers at work to see where they can fit me in for the holiday season. Christmas is an exciting time, and I can't wait until it comes but before then it is going to be a busy few weeks, and it is beginning to start now. At the end of November I am heading to Ottawa to see my best friend for his birthday, so it should be a really fun time because I here it is really nice in the winter up there.

The Media and its Ridiculously Outrageous Influence

For the Mass Communications writing portion or writing assignment, everyone had to do a semiotic analysis of a certain commercial, advertisement or something media related. We were told we had to relate this to at least 3 different texts we have had to read throughout the course. To start off, I think this assignment is great even though it took a while, because it encourages to use the new knowledge we have learned through the readings and apply to an actual media.

I began looking across the internet on different websites, including YouTube, Google Videos and Yahoo Videos just to name a few. Then through searching, "Media Commercial" on YouTube I found on the 5th page of videos one advertisement for a Superbowl Commercial that was appealing to me, and I knew would be great for my paper.

For my semiotic analysis, i decided to base my opinions and relations of the texts and course related media to a Pepsi commercial with Britney Spears as the main attraction. The three course readings I based my relations on were Amusing Ourselves To Death, Ways of Seeing and Understanding Comics, all of which could be related to this one Pepsi commercial in a substantial way. I think i did a good job of combining the ideas of technology, women, and color from the ideas found in these three texts in to a satisfying and compelling argument about the sexiness, color, and advertising in the commercial. My paper came together as such: intro, 1st and 2nd paragraphs general ideas, 3rd Postman relation, 4th Berger relation, 5th McCloud relation, conclusion. I think the way i organized my paper was an important part of delivering my message clearly and more effectively with starting off general and leading to more specific texts which not everyone has read.

Here is the video:



Overall, I worked pretty hard on this project, and I think my relations, the commercail i picked, and my ideas were solid enough to get a pretty good mark, and coming out of this project I have learned more on how to look for underlying ideas in media.

Activism is KEY

For Mass Comm, everyone has to do an activist project for one of the seven group projects, and i think this is one of the best out of the 7. It is good because it allows everyone to get together and form a sort of alliance and do something good for a change. One of the biggest concerns recently in the world has been pollution within cities and large factories around the world. There are so many different products in our society that are easy to make, cost basically nothing to produce, and are convenient, but definitely do not contribute to the environment in a safe and healthy way. When we first got together we all thought of this as one of the major concerns in the world that we as residence students see every single day when we are down in the cafeteria. STYROFOAM. Everyday as residents get their food, they are given Styrofoam containers without having the choice of that or a plate. This, although very cheap to do is horrible because styrofoam has been proven to take nearly 500 years to decompose. 25 billion styrofoam cups are thrown away just by americans every single year, none of which can be made in to more styrofoam therefore making a process which is uncureable until it is completely stopped. For our project we decided that we would each make a poster with some facts and other options in order to fix this ongoing problem we have in the residence. The day after these posters went up, our group went down to get some food and see what the deal was on our idea, and it seems there actually were noticeably more people with plates. This was fantastic, and let us know that just doing one or two good things can actually change the world just a bit and maybe save it for another couple minutes.

Group Media Map Layout...

Today, our group (Kyle, Katie and Myself) got together to start and finish our media map. We each had sort of read over the ideas of the project and what it was supposed to turn out like, but all in all we were all pretty lost on what to do. When we got together and started putting our heads together, we began to realize the task at hand. What we had to do was find a certain company or big gun branch that owned a variety of companies that people would never know were actually owned by that one big company.

After some thought, our group decided to go with CTV (Canadian Televison Network) which we began to search for information on www.yourmedia.ca. We found some relative information regarding media ownership, and then continued on to other sites such as wikipedia and ctv.ca in order to find who the company actually owns. The information we found was pretty astonishing, and it turns out CTV actually owns the Globe and Mail, many radio stations, and even has a relation to the Toronto Maple Leafs (not like that is a good thing!)

Out of this project, our group learned that not only is there more than meets the eye when it comes to girls, but media ownership as well and that it is a compound thing that we need to understand or else in our future things may go wrong when we do not give credit to who really deserves it. This was a successful project in the end even after all of our debating on what we really had to do or make for this assignment!