Reflection for project four.

    For project four, we are required to recreate one of our former essays, transforming into an alternative digital form. When I first knew that we were going to create a small movie, I became very very nervous, even though the professor said it was not difficult for several times. The reason is that I just could not get along well with computers, and I totally had no idea how to make the pictures moving and put music into the video. Fortunately, the professor introduced us a very simple and funny program called IMovie. After playing with it for a short time, I found it really interesting.

       I chose to remix the second project which is mainly talking about the benefits of contact lenses into digital form. The purpose of this video is to encourage more people to use contact lenses instead of glasses, and the audiences for the video are those potential users of contact lenses. First, I used two interesting little video showing the funny mistakes that caused by the glasses in order to capture the audiences’ attention. Because most customers of contact lenses are adults (eye doctors encourage teenagers start using contact lenses after maturation of their eyes), I pick the love topic to interest audiences. Then, I point out the purpose of my movie: “Contact lenses can change your life. Please join us!” The most difficulty and the most time-costing part is interview. It took me a lot of time to persuade ten of my friends to be the artists of the video and to find the available time to interview. After completing the interview, I put together those ten interviews; however, I felt a little boring to hear ten people keep talking about their experiences of wearing contacts. Therefore, I add a short funny video which showed a cute puppy. In the movie, I tried my best to be humor so that I can capture my audiences’ attention at any time.

       This is the first time that I expressed my thoughts through digital form, and I love it! I hope I have chance to di it again in the future.

Reflection for project three -- Music Literacy.

Music seems to be a natural need for people. People start to get into touch with music from when we are newborn baby until we die. When it comes to music, the first thing come into my mind are nursery rhymes since I really get alone well with children. Being born in an “educators’ family,” it seems that there is a “teacher blood” flowing in my veins. It is interesting that the majority of my families are teachers. For example, both of my maternal grandparents are university professors; and my paternal grandfather and my mother are lecturers in university. As a result, I enjoy telling children what I know and help them. From my perspective, nursery rhymes are extremely essential to children as a communication tool and also education tool.

In the essay, I want to tell my readers that there are countless advantages of using nursery rhymes in helping children develop, expressing emotions, and not forget important historical events. There are even other benefits that are still waiting for us to discover. I used three main subtitles in the essay in order to give readers a better understanding of what I am going to talk about.

At first, I begin the essay with an interesting experience with my little cousin. I think I can trigger the audiences’ interest about nursery rhymes by doing this. Next, I briefly introduced the history of nursery rhymes. In the third page of my essay, I argued that the nursery rhyme is more than a simple babyish song which makes children happy. In many cases, these children songs help to teach the children by telling them what's acceptable and what's not, and many nursery rhymes have hidden meanings and origins. Then, I used three nursery rhymes (one is Chinese and the other two are came from England) to support my argument. Also, I use lots of source either from library database or from the reliable website. At last, I illustrate the influences that nursery rhymes may have on children from three aspects: language development, memorization, and raising emotions. In this part, I use plenty of personal opinions and sources to convince readers that how nursery rhymes can affect children. Thanks to the telephone interview with my aunt, who has been a senior kindergarten teacher for about twenty-five years, my point of view was supported by her experiences.

I think the most challenge parts are work citied page and paraphrasing the source. Although I have done the citation for several times, it still cost me tons to time to figure out how to write it correct and complete. I also want to mention that because of different culture, it is hard for me (an international student) to tell the difference between first name and second name. Therefore, I always put the name in wrong order.