Final Project

Here is the final version of my project. Your Networked Non-Profit is a weekly newsletter that will provide resources and great new media tools to keep non-profits a float in the ever evolving world of new and social media technology.

Your Networked Non-Profit

Project Iteration #2

Today I am submitting what my layout design is for my newsletter. I had trouble with InDesign so I opted to design it in Photoshop. I worked with Photoshop last semester in my Web Design 1 class,  so I felt a little more comfortable working with it. With some assistance from a Photoshop pro and a few tutorials I was able to but together the layout. I am currently working on the text that is going into the two topics I will cover in the first issue; Who’s looking @ you? and Finding Funders.

Newsletter: Your Networked Non-Profit

My goal for next week is to finish the text that will go in the story and design a second page to the newsletter. I would like to cover one more topic if time permits.

Project Iteration #1

So, last week we gave our first project iteration. For me, it was an outline. I decided the day before that I was no longer going to produce a white paper for my project. I found it to be very boring a dull for the information I wanted to share. I then went back to the drawing board and had to come up with another idea. However, it didn’t take me long to decided that I wanted to share to other non-profits by a newsletter. I then came up with a new prototype of how I want the design of the newsletter to look. My outline is going to be very helpful in organizing the information on the newsletter. As well as deciding what will be included in the first issue. I am choosing to use Adobe InDesign as the software for producing the layout of the newsletter. I have no experience with InDesign and am keeping my fingers crossed. Below is a quick prototype of what I’d like the layout of the newsletter to be.

Newsletter Prototype

Best of Intercom

Besides paying $10 for a pretzel and a bottle of water, I really enjoyed watching 11/4/08 at AMC River East last night. This documentary was part of the 46th Annual International Communications Media competition. They briefly showed all of the winners from this years entries but played the entire documentary by Jeff Deutchman’s  documentary that covered the election day of November 4, 2008. I love all types of documentaries for the sole reason that they bring you in and touch you. No matter the topic. They are so very real and you feel like you were a part of it even if you weren’t. In this case, I was part of it. I didn’t attend the rally when Obama won in 2008 but I was part of the audience. I had the same feeling of joy when I heard the good news. However, I also feared what was going to happen that day. I remember feeling like we were going to have another Kennedy moment. And fearing that I would be a part of that is what caused me not to attend the rally.

I thought it was great how he asked several of his friends, from all over the world, to video tape their experience on election day. Several small digital cameras is what brought this whole documentary together. This was a great multimodal project. There was a scene in the documentary where one of his friends video taped his mother on speaker phone, via his cellphone, sharing her experience of meeting Bill Clinton at a Starbucks in the mall on election day. That indeed shows how much technology has changed and how creative we have become with the use of incorporating different modes of media in multimodal projects.  Overall I thought it was a great documentary, but it was one-sided and I would have liked to have seen the other side as well. He may incorporate it later since he is still asking for submissions of footage from election day on his website 11-4-08.com.

Project Proposal

The project to which I am proposing is to generate research on the importance of new media and social media in establishing a non-profit. I am currently working with a group of individuals to start a new non-profit. While working on ideas to promote and create a marketing campaign for the organization I read a book titled The Networked Non-Profit by Kanter and Fine. This book gives some nice examples of the steps you can take but it didn’t give enough examples that fit specifically to our target audience.

Our target audience is young adult Latinos ages 18-25. Our mission is to foster career-driven leadership through programs focused on empowerment, education and development. In collaboration with other community organizations, these programs are specifically tailored to address the unique challenges facing young Latino adults living in our Chicago communities. The Northwest neighborhoods of Chicago are our primary focus.

So, the question we face is how do we reach these individuals? Yes each of us members has friends and groups on Facebook as individuals, but do we have individuals that fit this demographic? We will need to come up with ideal ways to reach individuals in this age group, who have either not graduated from high school or have and now don’t know where else to go in their lives. Just reaching out to the people “we” know already will help because it then becomes a trickling effect. However, there is more that needs to be done and that is what we are trying to figure out.

New media tools, especially social media are becoming more and more resourceful for spreading the word. Word of mouth is still a great source but our generation looks more toward the word of Twitter and Facebook.  I am having a little difficulty figuring out what research I should compile. I am going to monitor the amount of individuals who respond to our group over the next few weeks, but I don’t know where else I can go with this. I am hoping through discussion in class I can get some feedback as to what will best meet my argument of the level of importance of utilizing new media. Through our marketing campaign we are going to utilize other traditional sources like mass mailings and e-blasts. I’m just not certain how much of this will be completed before our semester is over in order to generate some numbers from this. I would have loved to see how many individuals respond to older forms of communication versus the newer sources. I just don’t think time will permit that.  

I am hoping to gather as much research as possible from this process. I am working on the development o the website as well with the graphic designer. We are hoping this cam go live very soon as well to generate more of an audience. I can then utilize Google analytics to see what our visitors main interests are or if we even have any visitors as of yet. I am excited about this project because not only will I learn more about the views on new media by others, it will help the organization learn how to reach our target audience and get our message across through multimodality.

Here is a link to our current Facebook group to give you more informaiton on what our organization is about. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=159158340779423

McCloud

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Lauer

Columbia College Chicago and CPS

http://theloop.colum.edu/s/644/staffWide.aspx?&gid=26&pgid=252&ecid=9755&ciid=33983&crid=0

Lauer states, “though multimodal  has become more commonly used in scholarly literature related to the new kinds of texts students are exploring in the composition classroom, it is almost entirely absent from course titles, program names, and more public decisions outside of the academy where the term multimedia is more prevalent”.

In this specific project above with Chicago Public Schools and Columbia College Chicago, they too are using the term “media arts” in the description of their TEAM program and what their main focus is. This is another area of impact to which educators are trying to address to bridge the gap of the digital divide. When you look at programs that are offered at Columbia College they are all “art” form, or art based titles like:  Interactive Arts & Media; Audio Arts & Acoustics; Arts, Entertainment & Media Management. I found it interesting that none of their courses or programs contain the terms “multimedia” or “multimodal”. When you look at other colleges like IADT they have a program in Multimedia& Web Design. So the point that I am trying to make is that I think it makes a difference in who the audience is and what the presenter, institution or educator is trying to address. I don’t agree that these two terms of “multimedia” and “multimodal” are only being used in certain contexts because one is more familiar than the other. I believe the use is being judged by the educator, or presenter in terms of who their audience is and what they are trying to teach or present. Yes, multimodality is a newer term that many may not be familiar with but I don’t believe it should not be used in an education setting just because there are many who are not familiar. That is the process of learning and technology continues to evolve at lighting speeds, every day. Educators especially, need to keep up with that speed and continue to come up with processes and ideas to evolve students and learning new media. In this TEAM project with CPS and Columbia College, they too will be producing multimodal projects through this program and I believe that should be known and addressed. I think they are missing out on an important new topic the I believe is going to continue to grow especially in the professional sector of new media.

HaptiMap  www.haptimap.org

http://www.haptimap.org/events/organized-events/pervasive.html

I’ve learned that multimodality has many, many aspects to it. Multimodality can be used to describe so many different types of projects which make it such a beast to understand. There just is not one definition to describe multimodality; it’s really hard to define in my opinion. Although Lauer does talk a lot about the use of multimodal not being used as much as multimodality, I do like the fact that she addresses that they are used interchangeable. The example that she gave on Jonathan Alexander’s Computers and Composition on “Media Convergence” stuck out to me when I found this project below.

 Haptimap is a very interesting project I came across. This is a brief description of what the project is about: The HaptiMap project is aimed at making maps and location based services more accessible by using several senses like touch, hearing and vision. Our end goal is to increase the number of persons who are able to use mainstream map services. Thus our user group contains both sighted persons and persons with visual impairments (including elderly persons).

This project touches subjects of: Multimodal techniques to augment visual map displays, Multimodal navigation systems for runners, and Multimodal navigation systems for extreme sports. These are areas to which I’ve never thought about. However, they make perfect sense to me. To be able to design a product that is more accessible to several senses while thinking of converging several modes is genius. It seems like a difficult task at hand but I am very interested in finding out what the end result will be. Navigation being a form of multimedia and now the development of multimodal navigation is very cool. This again reminds you that multimedia and multimodality can be interchangeable.

Music journalism and data
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/07/02/music-journalism-and-data-ma-online-journalism-multimedia-projects-pt1/

This Music Journalism Multimedia project stood out because it reminded me again of Lauer’s argument of using multimedia versus multimodal in an educational setting. With this project there is a lot of activity and work that is related to the theory of multimodality. They are fusing audio, video, interactivity, data and visualization. This indeed is what multimodality is about. Through this project they are working to create meaning form the data that has been gathered. Lauer’s argument is still holding to be true in this case. As Lauer said, “multimodal is a term that is more theoretically accurate to describe the cognitive and socially situated choices students are making in their compositions, multimedia works as a gateway term for composition instructors to interface in familiar ways with their students and those outside of academia”. Although I see that “multimodal” is being used in some projects it seems as though “instructors” are still using multimedia more often than multimodal. What bothers me about that is the fact that the projects they are giving are indeed reflective of what multimodality is.

Because I am very interested in teaching new media in the future and consulting, it worries me that people, especially educators, will not adjust to the theory and use of the term multimodal. This is an important aspect of the change and shift in technology and defining it’s use and capabilities. Although I thought Lauer didn’t have much of a case while first reading her argument I am seeing a pattern after looking up some current projects.

NMS 504 Text & Image: Chicago is a typography town…

While reading the first page of Chapter 1 by Kress, I was really intrigued by his question, ‘If writing alone had been used, would this sign work?’  As well as, could the sign work with image alone?  In the examples he provided I found it didn’t work on both occasions. At the Jackson stop on the Red Line, I was surprised to see these new images below. They are placed on the walls alongside the track.

West Side view of Jackson Street

East Side view of Jackson St.

Looking at this it not only depicts Chicago being a typography town, it makes me analyze Kress’s questions. Without the text the image does do the job of telling you what takes to long to write, for a local but not for a tourist. If there were just text and no image it wouldn’t work for either one of us. The color that was added to the awnings in the photo indicate the Red Line and reminds you again that you will be exiting the Red Line Train into the city where you will then see these buildings, in these photos. I think this is a very functional form of using text & image in a big city like Chicago where there are large volumes of tourists throughout the year. The three modes are working together very well in this image. Informing you where you are and where you will soon be. This brings me to my next image.

Image in the Chicago Architecture Center

The infamous…You Are Here! I loved this when I saw it through the window of the Chicago Architecture Center. This was a prime example of how text is an image. I have seen these three words all my life on the map directory at the mall. And a few other places of course. But what I never saw in this was the fact that it was just text. Text places in circle with added color. Text definitely does become an image in the simplest way. In a place as busy as a mall or a big city like Chicago, this is a very functional image much like the images in the L Train station.  Kress also talked about cultural difference and language. Although this is in the English language, I think this sign is very universal and easy to adapt to those who speak another language. It’s such a straight forward image that anyone of any cultural background can gather through the connect what this image is saying and directing.

The following images reminded me of how much Chicago uses typography for advertisement and marketing. Busses will pass with ads on them for other companies; building will market their new product on their windows, etc. The combination of text, images and color make a fascinating trio. Providing functionality, direction and even sometimes brings cultures together.

the Future Web…

After reading some of the blogs and articles on the future of the web I was really most interested in the more collaborative /real time content tools. Being that I am very interested in consulting small businesses and non-profits, a lot of these tools will be useful to know about, as well as how to use them. I love trying new things and find that a lot of these collaborative tools are so helpful and useful in office settings. I am currently working with a group of individuals in starting our own non-profit. Using Google Docs has been so helpful and a great tool for collaborating on establishing our mission and vision statement as well as allowing us all to input our individual research. I do feel that it can use some improvements but I appreciate that Google is constantly updating you on changes and upgrades so you don’t fall behind on any advancements. Creating graphs and charts isn’t very user friendly and I prefer to use excel to do so, however it can be imported via PDF into your presentation on Google Docs. I am very interested in trying out some of the collaboration tools like Stixy and am hoping to be able to implement them in my work place as well as other businesses.

Project 2….

is coming along but it is a bit nerve racking. I am having trouble making my next two pages look identical to the homepage. I am trying to learn how to copy the homepage and then just remove what I don’t need. I need to get this webpage spliced up and ready to go this week! I keep trying these steps and they keep failing me. I am confident that I will get it together by the end of this week. Adding my content had been a bit of a challenge as well, but then again what hasn’t! I really need to become a Photoshop pro or think of switching to HTML/CSS for future projects.  8^)