Author: Mark Hahm

INTE 5340 Focal Theme: Adversity

Aristole

“The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.”   – Aristotle

For my focal theme this semester in INTE 5340, I’ve chosen the topic of adversity.  Since 2003, I’ve gone through several layoffs working in the television production business.  It’s hard to describe how it feels to have a stable income and sense of purpose taken away from you through no fault of your own.  Explanations such as “It’s the economy” or “We needed to make a change” do little to address the traumatic shock of a livelihood taken.

I’ve often thought of adversity as a challenge not by choice, whereas an adventure (swimming with sharks, parachuting, etc) is a challenge by choice.  My intention is to focus on economic adversity as a result of a job loss.  I think this is a topic that does not get enough attention in our society.  This project will unfold over the semester on my blog.

My main learning goals:

  1. I hope to learn how digital storytelling content can best be used to express how people, like myself, deal with the adversity of a job loss.
  2. I hope visitors to my blog will learn how the adversity of job loss and unemployment can impact the lives of people in the United States.

Response To A Selected Scholarship – Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab

While conducting a Google search the term “digital storytelling”, I came across the Colombia Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL).   This site is rich in information and media content relating to digital storytelling.   In addition, the team at Columbia University in New York have done an impressive job in creating a website dedicated to the art and relevance of digital storytelling.   Much of the content is very professional, including content from contributors at major publications, artists and digital production companies.   Not many of the digital stories were created with consumer-grade recording and editing devices.  Still, the wide variety of perspectives can offer viewers a better idea on how digital storytelling can impact societies.  One such video is The Displaced, a simple yet moving digital story about refugees across the world.   I recommend everyone to stop by this site.

DS 106 Assignment Bank: Visual – That’s Not What I Expected

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This is a small part of a whole something.

Digital Critique – 30 Years and 73 Seconds: The Challenger Disaster

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Tomorrow, January 30th, will be the 30th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.   I remember, in that pre-social media era, hearing the announcement on the public address system at my middle school.   There will no doubt be a lot of reflection of that fateful day in the media.  One of those such retrospectives is on the website of KUSA Channel 9, a local NBC affiliate here in Denver, Colorado.  It’s called 30 Years and 73 Seconds: The Challenger Disaster.  What’s unique about this retrospective is that a good portion of the video footage was recorded from Cape Kennedy on that day.  The archived footage includes elementary school kids from Boulder watching the launch and seeing their stunned reactions to the incident, which NASA officials announced as a “major malfunction.”

We often think of digital storytelling as from the perspective of the ordinary citizen with a smartphone rather than from a local news reporter with a camera crew.   Since this particular digital story involves video content from the pre-YouTube era, it makes sense to incorporate broadcast journalism substance and style from the mid 1980s timeframe.

For this digital critique, I’ll focus on a few key areas:

  1. Research – The production team utilizes the archived video from 1986 well.  The narrator and on-air journalist, Gary Shapiro, was on the ground in Florida then to cover a feature about the group of Boulder elementary kids who were sent to watch the Challenge launch.   The web posting also includes an array of scanned photos, including the tragic photos of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding.   In addition, there is quite of bit of up-to-date footage of those students who are now in their middle age as well as Shapiro himself.
  2. Sense of audience – This was one key area in which the digital content was strongest.  Anyone who was roughly the same age as the Boulder students could remember that day and how they felt both then and now.   In my case, I was able to sympathize with them in a pre-9/11 era when I thought this was the biggest tragedy I had ever seen on TV.   Fortunately, those students were able to overcome the adversity of that fateful day and witness the next shuttle lunch 18 months later.
  3. Media application – Like I mentioned in the research section, the production team made good use of the archived footage.  The cross-cutting better the past and the present bridged the 30 year time gap.  One criticism I have is the way the piece is narrated.   Like most television journalists, Shapiro uses a certain cadence, with the wide range of inflection, that I sometimes find a bit too formulaic.

Unfortunately, the website doesn’t offer much flexibility in being able to embed the video into this blog, so you’ll have to click the link and jump to a new tab.

 

 

DS 106 Daily Create: Old West Wisdom Sayings

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For a DS106 Daily Create this week, I chose “Old West Wisdom Sayings.”  There are 3 pages of Old West Wisdom phrases to choose from, but somehow I knew this phrase would be too good to pass up.  A simple Google image search of the keywords “horse” and “politician” came up with this often posted and mocked image of shirtless/brainless Russian president Vladimir Putin on a horse.   A quick Adobe Photoshop adjustment and out comes Western commentary on an Eastern political figure.