Blog Design Update

I have updated the top headings and most of the pictures so that all the stuff I have posted is adequately organized. There is also a list of tabs on the side which has anything I may have missed. When I post things sometimes they get put in weird places/timeslots so I am sorry if it looks like I have posted things at weird times.

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Journalism Analysis Project: Youtube

On YouTube there are a lot of user created news channels as well as channels produced by major TV companies. I watched a number of videos to see the quality of YouTube journalism.

This video by ABC news seems to be a rebroadcast of the report they showed on ABC world news. It was posted on the day of the event so their was no wait time between broadcast and YouTube. If you are away from a TV or do not see a broadcast it is easy to see what you may have missed.

If you noticed how late this post was it is because I really couldn't find any videos that fit in with this topic. There are a lot of videos about the shooting but very few that give a basic overview of the events. You can find hundreds of news reports, tribute videos, and speeches but I didn't want to include these as they varied from the established topic.
I was pretty surprised in the lack of videos. It seems like if you do want to get all of your news from YouTube there are a limited number of creators. A lot of news companies have videos with their articles, but it doesn't seem like they are posted to YouTube as often.

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New Project: What Is It? What Am I Doing?

So I was looking at what I had posted regarding the family gifted project and I realize that I never actually said what it was. The family project is almost a compilation of the work we have done thus far in gifted. We will be taking all the things we have and are learning and find a way to infuse an element of our family. Like I said previously I don't know exactly what I will be doing but you can find all the latest information on this new project on the Family Project tab in the page bar thing.


This weekend I spoke to me mom about the jobs of my family members. As it turns out my great aunt and uncle are journalism majors, my father  majored in communications and wanted to be a radio broadcaster, lastly my grandfather was a writer for some sort of business but my mom didn't know.
I'm not sure what exactly I am going to be doing but I have a lot of avenues open for exploration. Before I jump into anything I want to create a specific project, ideally with some sort of physical end-product.

I am not sure how this will effect the rest of the content coming into my blog but ideally any interference will be minimal.

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Beware Online Filter Bubbles

So I wasn't going to post a full-on analysis of this Ted talk but It did what it intended to, it made me think. The ides of having computers decide, with great accuracy, what I like and what I may like in the future is weird yet very cool. News websites aren't the only services that do this. From Pandora to Target modern life has become so wrapped up in what you want now. This helps you with getting people what you, think you, need at a better cost to you. However this technique removes much of the opportunity for creativity and finding new exciting things.I feel like these techniques should be regulated but this could easily be a sticky situation. I just hope that the internet remains a, somewhat, open place where people can express their beliefs, concerns, and qualms with the world.

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Tools For Creating Infographics

20+ Tools to Create Your Own Infographics

10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations

10 Fun Tools To Easily Make Your Own Infographics

So I originally found the last article I posted but as I tried to find it tonight I stumbled upon the other two. I felt like it would be good to include these as well. In the future I plan on integrating more "homemade" infographics into my blog as well as my new family project so these programs will hopefully be very useful. I definitely credit the apps I use in each infographic.

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New Project!!!!!

My Family:

Moms Side
Nursing
Highschool
Roycemore
Italy

Dads Side
Mildrid
Montana


What Can I Do
Interview
Articles
Pictures
Videos

Take stories I get and infuse them with other stories, my experience, modern events/news.
___________________________________________________________________________

Ok so that was what I wrote while I was being told about my new project. For my project I was thinking about interviewing some of the people in my family and write about their stories. My main interest in these interview is probably my Dads parents, but theyre on vacation until march, I could probably start with my dad.

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Ted Talk: Beware online filter bubbles.

So I watched another Ted talk today, I didn't have my chrome book so I just took notes the old fashioned way. If I have time I will retype type this all.

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A Pep Talk from Kid President to You

With this blog format it is really easy to get distracted from doing work. Videos like these really inspire me to keep working, in addition to my grade, and I wanted to share it with you.  Plus its super cute so you should definitely watch this.

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Ted Talks

Ted is one of the best examples of modern media that can be found today. Hundreds of lectures, conversations, and speeches on every topic can be found in a really simple format. Its like YouTube only without all of the mindless content, although I love that too. I always want to watch these but I forget so from now on once a week I will watch one a week and review it. Here are a list of some of the ones I am most interested in.

We are all designers
Online filter bubbles.
Visual News
What is the internet

There are tons more that I want to watch but I will be starting with these four.

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Ted Talk: Crowdsourcing the news.

Today in class I watched this Ted talk entitled Crowd sourcing the news. In this talk, Paul Lewis, discusses the benefits that are achieved by using social medias like twitter, and facebook to create a complete version of events. He discusses two events where police reports are incorrect and using the power of the Internet he completes the story of two men's deaths.

Here are my semi-coherent notes that I took while watching the video.
strangers help in teaching and co-producing news
different perspectives added together to complete the story
the top officials can mislead people with their stories
newspapers accounts can change with edition
eyewitnesses collaborate and tell the real version of events
find people with the same information to prove
skeptical articles draw peoples own questions
someone somewhere has the proof
when people see the proof the other stories fall
the Internet can connect eyewitnesses who are very far away
information travels randomly through Internet but often gets to the correct place
people want to tell the truth and seek to get it off their chest
citizen journalism may be less respected so it needs exact verification
verify against other accounts to remove misinformation
people document significant events and share their stories
examples include the political unrest in middle east, Japanese earthquake
utilize the technologies that allow you to see individual stories in order to complete the story

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Newspaper Circulation

This infographic is a pretty powerful display of the drastic changes that have happened to newspapers. News papers were doing rather well until about 2005 where everything starts dropping. The wall street journal saw a giant increase when they began counting online subscriptions. Although I believe the future of modern news lies online it would be a really sad day when newspapers cease to exist.  

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Resource Breakthrough

I have been struggling to find more newspaper articles that deal with exactly what I need. Today during English we were researching for our next paper when I realized what I needed. THE DATABASES.....there is a database that focuses just on newspapers and more that have valuable information on my topic. I have to admit it was pretty stupid of me to not realize they were there the whole time. The next analysis will be up soon, after posting so much so quick I got a major case of writers block/apathy.

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Journalism Analysis Project: Infographics

Infographics are the first form of media I will be analyzing in relationship to the Newtown tragedy for my project. There are a lot of different infographics focusing on this topic. Many are about the gun laws that have come "under fire" as a result of this event. I will, however, be focusing on the infographics that show a broad description of the shooting as that is the topic of all of the articles I have collected thus far.

This was one of the first infographics I came across in my research. I was surprised at how quickly it was created; I say this because you can see that under number one it says that "his mother taught kindergarten at the school." When this event was first recorded many people believed that she was a teacher. However, soon afterwards it was revealed that she did not teach there. That "fact" was reported my many news outlets during the confusion following the shooting. 

I like that there are a lot of details included in this infographic. It explains the events very well to someone who may not have already known them. If this is the only thing that you have read about the shooting you may be more inclined to look for more information via other articles. This effect is basically the most important goal of infographics, to draw you in and make you want to learn more. 

The design of this infographic is rather simplistic. Because it was probably made in a rush, I can understand why it is this way. Your eye isn't really drawn to anything in this infographic at first glance. the colors are not very bold which makes the images blend in to the background. Where all the text has been placed makes the infographic slightly hard to read. The movement is very inorganic. Instead of having a left to right or up to down reading motion, the information is presented in a way that makes you have to look with a weird mix of the two. If this doesn't make sense take a look at the four steps that are presented.  While going from one to two you probably looked at the images and other side information. Then from two to three there is another image on the side; it would be more beneficial to have all the steps next to each other and the images later. 

If I was grading this I would probably give it a 7/ 10

To be continued.....

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