Visual Literacy Narrative Project
Visual Literacy Narrative[U1]
The purpose of this assignment was to create a visual literacy narrative that displayed an event in my life that made me the literate person that I am today. My literacy-changing experience took place during elementary school as a result of a reading program called Accelerated Reader (AR). Accelerated Reader was a mandatory assignment for every English class in all grade levels where students were responsible to read a book and then take a test over it. Each book had a point value and every student had to reach a certain number of points to pass the assignment. I always struggled to reach my entitled number of points for the assignment because I hated reading books as a child. Therefore, in order to pass English I was forced to read. Reading eventually increased my vocabulary and allowed me to be the reader and writer that I am today.
In order to know what details I had to incorporate into my project I had to recognize the audience I was presenting to. In this case the audience was our English 103 class, which consists of individuals that don’t know me on a personal level
One of the most significant choices that I made was depicting my narrative as a multimedia project, which emphasized the details that I used. The multimedia genre allowed me to display my mood, emotions, and reactions throughout my experience with Accelerated Reader. This genre also permitted me to add details to my project
The design of my project truly brings my visual literacy narrative together. First, I used color and audio to portray the time and mood of the video. The beginning of the project is in black and white to display past events, and to portray a gloomy atmosphere. It also contains a very slow and depressing song that adds to the tone.
Secondly, I used still images and video clips throughout my multimedia project. I did this in order to show the humor and passion that was associated with my experience. Still images also allowed me to put detailed text into my video, so that the audience was able to understand what was going on. Finally, I arranged the clips and pictures in linear or chronological order. Creating my video in chronological order only made since so that I could show the progress of my narrative. I had to walk the audience through the events that took place so that they could clearly understand my experience with Accelerated Reader.
My stance on my visual literacy narrative is that Accelerated Reader was a very important part of my young educational career. This was the event in my life that pointed me in the right direction to become a successful, literate person. While making my video I focused on three major points from this colossal event. I learned that reading is an important skill, because in order to do anything you must be literate. Almost everything you do in life consists of reading something. Accelerated Reader made me read books, which increased my knowledge and made me a better student. Consequently, the things that I gained from this experience have stuck with me throughout my entire educational career. Lastly, as a child I hated reading, but this experience helped me overcome that hatred. I learned to accept reading as an everyday activity that I must partake in, in order to be successful.
Briggs,
Paper: Your essay is really well done here. First, your thoughts are well organized throughout. Second, you provide examples for each rhetorical choice you made and emphasize why each was important. Third, you have a strong introduction and conclusion. The arrangement and sentences you use throughout are clear and keep the reader entertained and never confused. Remember to try and captivate your audience with a strong title. I am sure you can some up with something more creative than “my visual literacy narrative.”
Project: What is most apparent in your video is the contrast in moods and emotions from the first half to the second half of your project. Your facial features, audio, and color choices, as you explained above, make this successful. What I think you need to work on most here is the transition between the two segments. As a reader I really didn’t know what you were taking a test for. How can you make this more obvious that you were taking an accelerated reader test? Also, how can you strengthen the idea that what you learned in those books helped you later? Could you show some specific skills you acquired through that program? This transition point is crucial to your argument. As always titles are important. You need to introduce your audience to your project. It might also be wise to say that you are talking about freshman year in college not high school. It can be figured out through math and the later visuals in the Ball State sweatshirts but it might be nice to just say it so there is no confusion. Also, could you play with the music so it doesn’t cut off so abruptly at the end. Can you fade it out a little more?
NW
[U1]Can you come up with a better title than this?
[U2]Excellent point
[U3]Great knowledge of audience and purpose.
[U4]What kind of details. Can you give some examples here even though you are going to go on and talk in details later in the essay?
[U5]Very effective
Reading for the Future
The purpose of this assignment was to create a visual literacy narrative that displayed an event in my life that made me the literate person that I am today. My literacy-changing experience took place during elementary school as a result of a reading program called Accelerated Reader (AR). Accelerated Reader was a mandatory assignment for every English class in all grade levels where students were responsible to read a book and then take a test over it. Each book had a point value and every student had to reach a certain number of points to pass the assignment. I always struggled to reach my entitled number of points for the assignment because I hated reading books as a child. Therefore, in order to pass English I was forced to read. Reading eventually increased my vocabulary and allowed me to be the reader and writer that I am today.
In order to know what details I had to incorporate into my project I had to recognize the audience I was presenting to. In this case the audience was our English 103 class, which consists of individuals that don’t know me on a personal level. Thus, it was important for me to display my childhood feelings about reading and literature throughout my video. I was able to exhibit those feelings through my actions and text in my visual narrative. However, if I had presented this project to an audience that was more familiar with me, it would have been created quite differently.
One of the most significant choices that I made was depicting my narrative as a multimedia project, which emphasized the details that I used. The multimedia genre allowed me to display my mood, emotions, and reactions throughout my experience with Accelerated Reader. This genre, unlike others, permitted me to add details to my project that elaborated on the points I made. I was able to incorporate details such as the information in the text and the vital pictures that helped explain my narrative. Related closely to the genre is the design of the project.
The design of my project truly brings my visual literacy narrative together. First, I used color and audio to portray the time and mood of the video. The beginning of the project is in black and white to display past events, and to portray a gloomy atmosphere. It also contains a very slow and depressing song that adds to the tone. The color comes back in the middle of the video to represent the climax of my literacy narrative. This represents overcoming the problem at hand and how the mood is shifting. At the end of the video I used bright blue and red subtitles to represent the success and happiness that was possible from using Accelerated Reader. I also used two more upbeat and entertaining songs for the ending of the video to portray the joyous mood.
Secondly, I used still images and video clips throughout my multimedia project. I did this in order to show the humor and passion that was associated with my experience. Still images also allowed me to put detailed text into my video, so that the audience was able to understand what was going on. Finally, I arranged the clips and pictures in linear or chronological order. Creating my video in chronological order only made since so that I could show the progress of my narrative. I had to walk the audience through the events that took place so that they could clearly understand my experience with Accelerated Reader.
My stance on my visual literacy narrative is that Accelerated Reader was a very important part of my young educational career. This was the event in my life that pointed me in the right direction to become a successful, literate person. While making my video I focused on three major points from this colossal event. I learned that reading is an important skill, because in order to do anything you must be literate. Almost everything you do in life consists of reading something. Accelerated Reader made me read books, which increased my knowledge and made me a better student. Consequently, the things that I gained from this experience have stuck with me throughout my entire educational career. Lastly, as a child I hated reading, but this experience helped me overcome that hatred. I learned to accept reading as an everyday activity that I must partake in, in order to be successful.
In order to complete my visual literacy narrative project I had to make several revisions to my video. First off, I had to come up with a title that would introduce my video. Considering my experience and what I learned from it, I decided to title my narrative “Reading for the Future.” Then I had to better explain why I was taking an Accelerated Reader test in my narrative. I did this by displaying how important the test was to my English grade, by using the text tool. Next, I needed to strengthen the idea that Accelerated Reader actually did help my educational career. I was able to accomplish this by showing a picture of myself at graduation, noting some literacy achievements I reached, and displaying a picture of an award I received. It was also imperative that I clarified what years of school I was referring to at the end of my video. Therefore, I used the labels “High School Senior” and “College Freshman.” Finally, I had to edit the music. As a result of the video’s length increasing I had to add another song to my project in order to obey copyright laws. I also tried to fade the audio in and out better, so that the video flowed more smoothly. All of these revisions helped make my visual literacy narrative more complete and elaborate.
