Over the past week I have been receiving feedback on my Twitterive project by some classmates and professor Mangini.  When we first got assigned this project I wasn't exactly sure in which direction I wanted to take it.  Once I decided that I wanted to do it about Disney World, the question was how to develop a story making it both multimodal and multigenre.  My first draft was defiantly on the weaker side but I wanted to get some feedback before I attacked the project for the second time.  

The feedback that I have received had some good inputs on how I can kind of explode the story a little more.  Christie suggested, in her blog, that I should include more diary entries throughout the project to serve as a repetend.  I really like this idea and I think I am going to incorporate a "dear diary" before each of the trips that I have chosen to feature in my project.  Sam O suggested that I should add myself as a character throughout the piece.  At first I thought that I had done this but after looking back at the project I realize that I didn't add myself in the piece.  I think I am going to create myself as a character through different events that have happened while traveling to Disney World.  

Professor Mangini also provided some good feedback.  One part of my project that I thought was the weakest was my prologue.  I felt like it didn't really fit nicely into my project and needed to be changed some way but Professor Mangini said that it was one of the best he has seen all semester.  That was a surprise.  After reading all of his comments on my project I learned that I need to develop the story a little more and make sure that everything is stated clearly.  For example, I had written a piece about attending the half marathon there but never really explained it before hand so it seems to just be thrown in there.

Overall all of the feedback that I received was very helpful.  It made me realize things about my project that I hadn't realized before.  I am going to take some of the suggestions and use them to explode my project into a more powerful piece.

Today was Day 3 of Twitterive presentations.  Again it was day filled with good projects with great topics.  All of the projects were interesting to hear about and interesting to hear about why the "place" they have chosen is important to them.

First off today was Samantha Caltabiano whose project dealt with her family.  She explained that her "place" was the physical place of her family room.  It is the place where the family is always together.  The place where important events have taken place.  In this room she found out about having two other brothers.  It was the place from where her mother called her to tell her she was getting a divorce.  I think that this is a good direction to head with the project.  One thing that we discussed as a class was the idea of making a family tree, which I believe is a great suggestion.  It will make the connection of where and when you found out about the family members you discussed.

Next was Alexa Kalin who explained the road that she has traveled to find the perfect house.  She feels as though her opinion isn't being heard because she has her mother and her fiance trying to sort of take over the situation. This project was good with a lot of potential.  While she was presented the Twitterive you got a jest of what was going on but as we discussed it as a class we found out a lot more information.  Like how she never had a "home" when she was little because she was always moving or the fact that her mother was her realtor.  I feel if these get put into the project it will make it a stronger, better understanding, project.

Samantha Olenowski was the next presenter of the day.  She portrays the life of her grandfather, who passed away ten years before she was born.  She expresses how she has the feeling as if she has known him even though they never got to meet.  I really loved how the idea of her roots flowed throughout the project with the graphic.  The project consisted of a lot of important information in the form of narrative text.  To make the project more powerful I believe that this narrative text could be broken down into different genres such as maybe a interview with her father or grandmother about her grandfather or a timeline of the important events throughout her grandfathers life.

The last presentation of the day was Michael Youngkin whose project was probably more of the most interesting ones.  His project dealt with the idea of limbic space.  I really loved the first person piece that was read before the presentation was presented.  It really set the tone for the project.  The video was also another interesting piece for the project.  The sense of a disconnect through space or distance is an interesting concept throughout the project.  When all of these things come together and get polished this is going to be another interesting project.

Today was another day of Twitterive presentations.  All of the presentations had such great topics everywhere from cancer to waiting to be a kid again.  Each presenter did a great job while constructing their Twitterives and three of the four projects brought a tear to my eye.

The first presentation was by Stephanie Bowser who discussed dance and the importance that it holds in her life.  Being diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome at the age of 17, dance has become the one place where she feels normal.  It is the place where her tics don't exist.  It is the place that is an escape for her.  I really liked the video that she added in Act Two because as she said "it gets the point across" easier then if she tried to write it.  The emotions throughout the video were raw and not scripted.  Stephanie is on the way to having a really moving project and I can't wait to see the final draft.

The second presentation was by Darren Gaunt who showed a creative Twitterive project.  He took his project through the perspective of going back to being a child but still having an adult brain.  The way that he tackled this idea was very creative.  The use of the micro fiction pieces set up the basis of what was going on.  Then he added the video of a child running around the day care and the interview with the children to really enhance that basics.  It was overall an interesting project.

The third presentation was by David Lucas who discussed his battle with Nasopharyngeal carcinoma.  For those who might not know what that is, it is a form of cancer.  David's project was probably the most moving project that has been presented thus far.  He didn't dwell from this diagnosis and you can tell that throughout the project as he uses humor to kind of lighten the mood.  If you watched the presentation in class you could see this humor present throughout its entirety.  I really liked how he used the Prezi to show the statistics instead of just typing them on the page.  Another thing that I felt was really powerfully was the photo essay.  

The final presentation of the day was by Katie Collins who discussed with us about a loss she had within her family.  This was the loss of a relationship with her father due to alcoholism.  Due to this loss she has gained a strong relationship with her grandparents that took her in their home.  She starts the Twitterive with a letter to her daddy and ends it with Next Stop The Road To Forgiveness.  This was a really great way to end it.  Katie started out unsure of what her exact place was.  She didn't know if it was the loss of her father or the gratitude for her grandparents.  Which ever she choses will leave her with a powerful project.

As you can tell it was a day of powerful presentations.  I can honestly say that I look forward to seeing what the rest of the class has created for their Twitterives.

Within the construction of my Twitterive I have become faced using multiple different modes of technology.  Some of the modes were a struggle to understand and some were simple to being with then became frustrating.  So far in this project I have used Weebly, iMovie, YouTube, BeFunky, and Microsoft Word.

The first mode of technology I had to face was learning how to work Weebly, which I am still not fully comfortable with.  At first I was completely overwhelmed trying to learn how to create the pages and all of the little details that needed to be added to make the website look professional.  I am slowly becoming more comfortable as I continue to work more and more on my Twitterive.

The next mode of technology I used was iMovie on my MacBook.  I have used this program before and the first time it defiantly went smoother then it did this time.  I grew frustrated multiple times in the three hour process that I went through trying to make a six minute movie.  At first everything went smooth then I tried to add multiple songs and everything went downhill.  Growing frustrated I walked away from the computer screen and then would come back and fix all of the mistakes that I had made.  I actually felt as though I almost gave up on the video and just finished it as fast as I could.

Youtube was the next mode I used in order to upload the movie I had made into the Twitterive.  The one problem that I had with YouTube was the long, drug out downloading process.  I think it took about a hour for the video to fully download into YouTube.  Besides that the process wasn't completely intolerable.

Another mode of technology I used was BeFunky.  This is a photo editor that I used to edit a boring photo of the castle in Magic Kingdom.  The process of using this program was completely seamless.  Everything was easy to access and easy to understand.  I will definitely use this program in the future.

For the last couple of pieces that I created for my Twitterive were created in Microsoft Word.  I took pictures off the internet and used text boxes to incorporate the text that I wanted to include with all of the photos.  The only thing that irritated me about this was that I could never line up the words from the photo and the words from the text I created.  They always looked slanted.  But after playing around with them for a little while they kind of lined up the way I wanted them too.

Creating this Twitterive has definitely forced me to face multiple modes of technology I had never used before.  It forced me to step out of my comfort zone with the technology in order to create the pieces that I felt would help enhance my project. Overall even though some of them frustrated me I am glad that I used all of the different programs that I did.

During my Writing, Research, and Technology class today I got to watch four different students present their Twitterive project to the class.  Each student was completely different and taken in a number of different directions.

First was Alissa Francisco's project.  Her Twitterive was about how she had played softball for 15 years and quit last season.  She had grown a love for the sport but this love was turned into a heartbreak after quitting at the beginning of her Junior year season.  Her place was the loss of softball and her repretend, as of right now, was the phrase "I love this sport and my teammates way too much to give up." 

Next was David Reye's project.  His project portrayed the madness he had faced while writing a paper for last semester.  He shows the battle between normal David and madness driven David.  He described his place as being a place of insomnia.  There were several different repretends that he used including a found poem and vlogs.

Then there was Christie Johnson's project.  Her Twitterive dealt with the Outer Banks and the town called Buxton.  This is her place of the project.  Buxton is the place where her family has been visiting during the summer for the last 40 years.  Throughout the 40 years her family has grown, she portrays this growth throughout the entirety of the project through the numerous collages.  As of right now she isn't sure exactly what her repretend is.  

Finally the last of the presentation for the day was Rebecca Crawford's Twitterive.  Her assignment dealt with the excitement she had for the upcoming summer.  There are three events that are happening within the summer (her 21st birthday, 2 weddings, and a new house) and broke it down into the past, present, and future of each event.  Then there were three headings for each section (change, memories, and experiences).  The repretend that she used was the number 3.  Her place, she isn't sure if that is summer in general or the memories that she is going to create.

In my Writing, Research, and Technology class last week we got into small groups.  Within these groups we critiqued each others first draft of our Twitterive projects.  Below is a list of questions that we had to answer about our personal projects:

1)      WHO are the characters in your story?
As of right now the main character of the story is me.  Within the story there are mentions of friends from high school and family.

2)      WHAT is your story? WHAT genres/modes are you using for your story?
The story is about how as a child Disney was my dream and how once I visited it has become one of the loves of my life.  It shows my travels to Disney throughout the years.  Within my story some of my genres/modes include a once upon a time story, diary entry, narrative, found poem, recipe card, quotes, narrative, video.

3)      WHEN does your story take place?
My story starts with me as a child at the age of four and it continues to the present.

4)      WHERE is your place?
I am not quite sure where my place is at yet.  It could be Disney as a physical place or childhood and the memories that were created within it.

5)      WHY do you feel a connection/lack of connection to place?
I feel a big connection with this place.  It has sort of became a member of the family and is one of the only places that my family has traveled to on vacation.

6)      HOW do you show your audience your connection/lack of connection to place?
I show the connection by including my personal experiences and incorporating them in nontraditional ways.  Also I added a video that depicts different trips that I have been on throughout my life.

One of the major projects for my Writing, Research, and Technology class was to create a Twitterive.  What is a twitterive you may ask?  Well, it is a multimodal/multigenre writing project that is inspired by tweets that we have posted thus far in the semester. 

My twitterive place was a place where dreams come true.  A place that I dream to one day have the opportunity to work for.  A place that allows every person to act like a child at heart.  Where is my place?  Well it is Walt Disney World.  I didn't think that creating this project would be that difficult but of course I procrastinated (like usual). Writers block took the best of me for a couple of hours but once I got started it seemed like everything was spilling out onto the computer screen.  I thoroughly enjoyed creating this draft.

If you couldn't tell my repetend throughout my project was the world dream I felt as though this suited the Disney World theme.  I mean they pride themselves at being the place where dreams come true.  The whole thing started with a wish from Walt and that wish turned into a dream.

There are a couple of questions that I have about my twitterive:
1. Do the pieces seem to fit together?
2. Is there any other genres that would possibly fit into the project?
3. I think that I want to add a photo essay but where should I place it?
4. Is my repetend corny?
5. How could I improve the overall effectiveness of the twitterive?

Where is my twitterive going to take place?  Is it going to be a physical place? Is it going to be a mental place? I was completely unsure of the answers of all of these questions until we discussed possible topics in class today.  Then it hit me, Disney World.  Disney has been a part of my family since I was four years old.  It doesn't matter what is going on at home as soon as I see the castle all of those stresses are gone and happiness fills my body.  It is a place where my family has vacationed for years.  So it seems like a place that fits.  What direction am I going to go with this?  I have absolutely no idea.  I am not sure how to use this my memories of this place to create the perfect twitterive.  I just know that this is the first place that came to mind.  Hopefully everything will come together smoothly for this project, fingers crossed.