This is supposed to be about me and twin sister Marybeth. We have always been really close, but now are at colleges far away from each other. I hope this video, in the end, will convey the relationship I have with my sister.
my digital story
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 12:55 PM 1 comments
Rooms
I recently decided that my dorm room looked too generic. So I had some friends come over to help me move my stuff around. They were great. They wanted to make sure I stayed safe, so they supervised to make sure nothing could fall on me. They helped, well one of my friends helped. The other two laughed a lot and gave directions. We got my room all switched around. And they decided it was too harsh, so they made me move the furniture around some more.
Now I have one of those big wardrobes that is not attached to anything, but when it is full of clothes, a little heavy. They decided that was what I needed to move, by myself. So I moved it, got it where they told me to, and they said that it didn't look good like that, I should turn it around.
In my room I have a box attached to the wall, I like it, it gives me more storage space. When trying to move my furniture around, it just gets in the way. Of course, I also rented a kit to loft my bed, high enough for my fridge to go under it and that is it. We had very limited choices of where to put my stuff. Yet we managed to make it so that my stuff had to keep getting moved.
I now have my furniture where I want it. Well, the furniture I have. I might have to get my chair up here, I have made it so that I can't watch movies with my roommate from anywhere... so much for careful planning. And the whole thing only took an hour. In my opinion that was a very well spent hour.
Thursday, September 25, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 10:39 AM 1 comments
Images
So, we started work on our digital stories in class yesterday, and it got me to thinking. It got me thinking that images, actual pictures, are really powerful things. I brought with me to class a series of seemingly unconnected images, pictures of random things that I enjoy or that are just part of my life, and with a little thought I managed to put them together into a type of story, or maybe more accurately, a personal philosophy. Each image could carry so much meaning and be interpreted in more than one way. It seemed that almost every picture had a literal meaning (this is a picture of my car), and a figurative meaning (the car represents the freedom of being able to go wherever you want). Having these multiple meanings for each image, and various levels of comprehension and depth, I think, is what makes it possible to create a legitimate piece of literature based from a collection of nearly random images.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 | Posted by Doug DeMaio at 9:04 AM 0 comments
Animals and Jobs
My family has always had a lot of pets, we seem to keep getting more as time goes by. We have 9 pets at my house now. All very special to us in their own way. For awhile after we moved in I was convinced that they had all forgotten me. Well maybe the goldfish didn't even know me to begin with but the other ones certainly did. I was so worried that they would not love me anymore when I went home. Luckily I went home and now realize that all of the pets will be happy and excited to see me each time I go home.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 9:35 AM 2 comments
French ?!
I just got done with my first french test.. well it was supposedly a "quiz" but it took the full class and was pretty long. (this is french 1) Some of it was translation, and some of it was answering questions. One part was confusing.. because we didn't really know the verbs in the sentence to understand what it was telling us to do in the instructions. i started off answering the questions, and then somebody asked if we were supposed to answer the questions, or translate. She said to just translate it. So i was like, oh thats easier, let me just cross this all out. Then there was some more confusion in the class and you heard some mumbling and shuffling of papers ... and another question was asked, when I heard her say, oh no no! don't translate it, answer it! AFTER i was done crossing out my answers, and translating instead, I had to cross that part out too and rewrite my answers I had written to begin with. She would not even give me a new paper to start fresh. Then on the next section, it was more clear that we were just supposed to translate because the question was english, and we had to write how to say it in french ... a few of them were never even covered in the class and she said to only study what we have covered so far.. hmm.. i see myself not doing too well in this class.
Thursday, September 18, 2008 | Posted by bLOWFISH at 7:30 AM 1 comments
Theories
I have this theory. A random one. That the temperature I wake up in decides how I feel that day. For example if I wake up warm, the day seems warmer, and if I wake up cold, the day seems cooler. Even when the outside temp does not change. I recognize this does not always apply to my day, so I think of it more as a guideline.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 5:12 PM 1 comments
Oh, Canada
Hello readers...
Saturday, September 13, 2008 | Posted by Doug DeMaio at 4:03 PM 1 comments
72ner and MSK Running
I interviewed 72ner. His favorite digital story was "MSK Running". Heres how our interview went.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 | Posted by bLOWFISH at 12:58 PM 0 comments
An interview with AKH
AKH's favorite digital story was Alan.
Alan and Albert are brothers, Albert is older. The narrator, Albert, talks about how different he and his brother are because of age and school, and the distance between them. Albert, through talking to his mom, finds out Alan has M.S. He talks about his brother and stuff they did together after he was diagnosed.
AKH feels that a lot of the times it seems with the health stories they get sappy and emotional, but with Alan the narrator was concise and subtle about his emotions. You can tell what he is feeling without him directly saying what he is feeling.
Unfortunately some of the pictures were not as effective as other stories were. A lot of the pictures were really similar.
Posted by Melissa Partington at 12:54 PM 0 comments
Interviewers and interviewees...
-Introducing M Haji Bigman. You don't know him.
-Favorite video, M?
M.S.K. Running.
-Summary?
A thirteen year old kid, Morne Solomon, tells some of his life story. It starts with him being almost bitten by a snake, I think. He lived with his mother in South Africa, and she was a good mom, but she had an alcohol problem, so he moved in with his aunt, and he really liked spending time with her. He wants to be a cop where he lives, in South Africa, so that he can keep his community safe.
-Why was this one your favorite?
It was a touching story... the kid had been through a lot and still has this really positive outlook. He's not just a kid who wants to like help out, or just a kid who wants to be a cop, he really wants to be a cop so that he can help make his community better and safer.
-Did you have a least favorite part? What was it?
Uh... the drawings. The drawings of the kid were kinda hard to see and it was hard to tell what they were showing sometimes, because they were... less than perfect. Actual photos may have been better.
-This has been enlightening... thank you.
Posted by Doug DeMaio at 12:52 PM 0 comments
Family...
The videos from the center for digital story telling had a lot to offer. I thought that each section of the videos had something different to share, and when taken as a whole they were similar to a well written collection of poems. Each video had something interesting to say, and provided a different perspective on a host of different topics.
Posted by Doug DeMaio at 9:53 AM 0 comments
Books
I figure with this being an english class, even if it is mostly online forms of literature, it is suitable to write about books. Personally, I am a huge fan of books, can never get enough books to be fully satisfied. Lately though I have started to wonder. Is it possible for every single idea to have been used up? Is there a whirl pool of creativeness and once the creativeness is all used up that is it? In my constant search for new books I sometimes feel that I am only finding improved versions of an old story. Maybe this is because many people's lives have some base similarity to each other's and people tend to write what they know. (And even get criticized if they try to write about something they have not experienced.)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 8:11 PM 2 comments
Slice
I have never really thought of myself as being very traditional. Now that I have read Slice, I am realizing I am. At least in one sense. I like a story to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. I prefer the end to come very quickly after the middle, so you don't know until the last bit what truly happened or will happen.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 9:37 AM 0 comments
How 'Slice' was created. In my opinion...
Did anyone else get the impression that 'Slice' may have been written, or composed, while under the influence of Donnie Darko and Alice in Wonderland?
Posted by Doug DeMaio at 9:11 AM 0 comments
Slice
So I finally got around to reading the blogs on Slice... I liked that there was a blog from the girls view and then another from the parents. Each blog seemed to fit the writer, like how the girl skipped over any details she didn't want to write about and said to just go to the parents blog. Then on the parents blog, there were pictures of the house and links to the houses they were looking at... I found that parent-like, having a blog that shows off their new house, while the childrens blog just has pictures of the weird things she has found in her creepy old room.
Posted by bLOWFISH at 8:11 AM 0 comments
the one where we introduce ourselves ...
Greetings from today's scribe... I am Melissa, here with my fellow bloggers Doug and Amira. Will post more later.
Thursday, September 4, 2008 | Posted by Melissa Partington at 12:47 PM 0 comments