Last piece of work before Christmas

As the Christmas season fast approaches I am excited to get started so I can get it finished. The next mission of course is the final before the semester ends. This methodology mission He’s going to be the only mission that doesn’t consist of a PowerPoint. I am excited about this because it may allow me and my team members to be more creative and efficient rather than writing chunks and chunks of words on a page. However I am nervous about creating a video as it is something I never done before.
I am also excited for the challenge.

For this mission I’ll be working at my mates Justin and Aaron. It is refreshing to work with people outside of the group and it’s nice to have the freedom to choose anyone from the module rather than just in the small group. Opening myself up to new people is great because it allows me to feed off of other people and learn new things from other people also.

For this mission we chose the topic of mapping which quite frankly we chose because we thought it would be the easiest. It consists of taking a film or TV series or something like that and popping it into a story map which maps out the characters journey.

We met up and decided that we wanted to do the series an idiot abroad. In the series Carol travels around the world and we are going to do a map tracking his route throughout the first season. As for a video presentation, we are going to take more time to figure this out. Because it is so new to us to do a video, we are thinking of doing it in an interview style because that seems to be the easiest solution. Basically for this mission we are just taking the easiest route. I feel that with our basic knowledge of filming and editing this would be the best for us.

Taking time out of our schedules was difficult at first to try and film this video because each of us had work, or was sick, or wasn’t able to come in. But eventually, we found the time to film the presentation. This was probably the most fun part of the project because we were able to have a laugh while also getting creative, and adding in different elements to the video itself.

As for the aspect of it all I definitely played a key role in building them up along with the other two guys. This mission I definitely stepped up my skills and teamwork. We really efficiently worked as a team because we each chip in a little bit to each aspect of the project, rather than doing little bits separately and putting them together. And it’s because of this progress in teamwork I feel like this project was one of my favourites to work on.

I’ll update the blog whenever we have a finished product.
Thank you so much for listening and reading I’ll stop now because it’s probably too long. You’re  a saint if you’ve gotten this far.

-Ava 00:08

Reflection

I woke up on the morning of the presentation for the culture mission and was getting sick. I knew that this meant that I could not come into college to make my presentation, unless I wanted to get sick on everyone in the room. Funny enough, I was actually really disappointed because of this. I was very excited to make my presentation. Usually I’d be so glad if I could miss a day of college but in this case, I did not feel that way.

I texted Cian and Joe to let them know that I wouldn’t be there and I emailed Shaun that I wouldn’t  be there due to the fact that I was vomiting everywhere. I felt really bad for the two guys more so than anything else because they were relying on me to come in but I just wasn’t able to do that sadly.

I was so annoyed because I was really looking forward to making the presentation and I really thought that I looked into detail on experimenting with blog platforms.

Overall for this mission I felt that I did less research. I feel like this because I kind of only researched the things that I was going to work on rather than things that I should’ve been learning for myself. The fact that I was sick on top of this really wasn’t ideal.


However, on the bright side, I feel like I made a bigger effort on teamwork for this project and I think I worked well with Joe and Cian to complete it. The three of us worked really well together on the blog and the Google slides aspect of the project.For the blog Joe was able to put each other blog posts into HTML. This looked really cool And I like to the finished product. It was really interesting to see what the two guys have done for the project and what research they are put into it. I found I learned a lot more through this method.

However I do feel that there  is still work to do on my teamwork skills because we did a lot of separate work rather than working on everything together. On my methodology mission I will really make this top priority.

On the next mission I will be working with two other people in any group in the module. Self for me being in group three, This means I can work with someone in group two or someone in group four etc. This is really going to challenge my teamwork skills and I am very excited to expand on this because it really is my weak spot.

However, with all this being said,  I do think I worked well on the culture mission. Of course getting sick violently the morning of my presentation was not ideal and it was definitely a bump in the road, I reckon that I still managed to produce a pretty well thought out project with Joe and Cian.

That’s it for now I will update you once I get started on my methodology mission which is the last of the semester thank God then I get a nice big break and a chill out.

Ava-00:07

Work, work and more work.

In this blog, I will pop in the blog post I used for our collaborative blog section of the upcoming mission. This along with the slides I have on experimentation of blog platforms should be great. I spent some time on both of these parts of the project so without any more rambling here is the blog post about Christmas that I made.

The Greatest time of the Year

When I say the greatest time of the year, I am of course talking about the only time of year that counts. Christmas. It's the time of year where you wrap yourself in layers upon layers of clothes and pop on the hat scarf and gloves. The magic of Christmas is a huge part of our lives during the cold winter months. It really puts a cheerful spin on a few months of the bitter cold and we all get plenty of presents, which of course is a major plus. In this blog I'll be talking about just a few of the many reasons why Christmas is the greatest, as we quickly approach the late days of November. 

Family and Friends

In my opinion, Christmas is the most special time of year where you get to catch up with the whole extended family and all your friends. Of course giving and receiving all the gifts is great, but there's something almost magical about seeing the whole family in one room during the holidays. This is especially true for people whose family is living in a different country to them. There is no joy greater than greeting family at the airport at Christmas after not seeing them for months or years at a time. 

Christmas provides a time of relaxation where we all have some well needed spare time to properly spend time with the people you love. Seeing friends, going to Christmas parties together is a great way of seeing friends over the holiday season. With our busy lives, it's great to finally catch up with friends.

Christmas Dinner

Along with the many joys of Christmas,  there is one of the greatest joys of all, Christmas dinner.

The roast potatoes and mashed potatoes, turkey, ham, roast veg, and of course the most dividing food of all, brussel sprouts. I personally love them but it's that type of food you either love or hate.

Either way, whether you love or hate brussel sprouts, one of the best parts of Christmas dinner is the Christmas crackers. They give the family a fun activity to do while waiting for the dinner to cook.

The hats that come with the crackers have literally become a staple at Christmas time for sure. 

    

Gifts, gifts and more gifts!

The happy feeling you get on Christmas morning to open the gifts, that people have taken the time out of their lives to buy for you, is one of the many joys of  Christmas. I also think that putting careful thought into a present to but for someone you love is very exciting. Theres something great about the excitement of seeing their face when they open a present you bought for
I do however think that nothing compares to being a child at Christmas. You carefully consider and choose wisely as you write a letter to Santa asking for what you want for Christmas. Whether you sent it off by post, or threw it into the fire, to send it to the North Pole, the most exciting time of your childhood Was most definitely waiting for Santa to arrive. I remember waiting up at night to try and hear the hooves on the roof and the jingle bells of the sleigh. We loved the gifts he brought and couldn’t wait for the morning when we could open them.

If you’re a big fan of Christmas like I am, (well if you don't like Christmas, there may be something wrong with you), I think you'll agree that these things are the highlights of the holidays. Not only are you able to enjoy a nice cup of hot chocolate and Mariah Carey's 'All I want for Christmas is you', You can enjoy all of the great things on this list. I think I've fully made made my point that this time of year is truly the greatest time of the year.


Ava-00:06

Onto the next assignment with new people.

Well I know it's been a while but I've finally gotten it together and now have the time to post. I feel like it's been far too long. last time i posted a blog I was still pretty new to college and all my peers but now I have loads of friends here. It really is great getting to know everyone. I feel like it will really give me an advantage for when I start working with more and more new people.

But moving onto the important stuff. I have started the new culture mission for Introduction to digital media. Since I missed the lab where we started the new assignment (what's new), so I was completely lost at first. But then Cian texted me saying that I was going to be in his group and I was relieved. At least someone is organised! After this, Joe asked if he could be part of the group which of course was perfect because this gave us three group members

After reading up on a few of the options, we decided to go with blogging because we felt that it was well within our ability to do. At first I was a bit sceptical as to what our actual content would be but once we sort that out it will surely be fine. In a nutshell what we have to do is again create a power point and a blog including posts from all three of us. After reading up a bit more on it, I decided to do the experimentation with platforms for the group.

I've met up with Cian and Joe twice now but mostly we use Whatsapp and Google slides for the project. I rell like google slides for the mission as it allows us to work together more. It feels very collaborative.  I really enjoy working with them I must admit.

For this project I will research into two different blog posting platforms. (I'm kind of doing it now as we speak) I made my own blog site on weebly and wix did a small review on each also. So, my power point slides will basically consist of my process of creating the blog sites and posts, how easy or hard I find the sites to use, which site I prefer and why and the links to  each site. I'm now currently working on my slides for the presentation and I'm almost excited to present it. Is that nerdy??? probably.

Also each of the three of us will write up blog posts and pop them into the same platform, which I'm not sure about yet but we have some time to iron out the details of that.

Anyway that's all. I will update this blog once I present the project to my group. I'll show you the power point slides and hopefully it will all look as good and go as well as I have planned in my head.

Until next time,

-Ava 00:05