I'm Back!

Hello again!

This is the last post for sure! I promise this time. ;D

I just wanted to summarize my experience throughout my Exploring Digital Media Class and what projects I think that I will use in the future. When class first started I looked at the list of projects that we were going to do my first response were: Why do I need to do Twitter? When will I ever need to build a website? I know how to shoot videos? And other similar questions followed for my other projects. I just could not get passed how some of these projects could be used in a professional stand point. I’ve learned that blogging can be fun and relaxing. I have also realized that by putting your face out there for employers to see and by trying new things these projects can be both beneficial and rewarding. I still don’t really see a use for Twitter as a professional side so I probably will not use that again, but I believe that all of the other projects, with the exception of Youtube, definitely have a spot in my future occupation.

I believe that other people should take this class because it really opens you up as a person and helps you become a professional in your area of study. It is also a great way to start making connections with people in similar majors or to at least endorse their skills on LinkedIn and broaden your pathway there.

This class has been very beneficial for me and I am excited to see what else I can do with the information I have learned. Maybe you will hear from me again on a different blog, but for it is goodbye.

Ta Ta For Now,

Ann Stang

Open Doors

Dear fellow bloggers,

       My final project is finished for my class, so this will probably be my last post on this page for a while. Hopefully I will be able to start another blog on a topic that will be able to last a little longer J

       I have thoroughly enjoyed working on my LinkedIn project. When you first create an account on you start by creating your profile page. You use this page as your resume and to put your face out there. You gain connections with people through your page, and every new connection you gain more people are added to your network whom can view your page and give you advice. You do not want to clutter your page, but you want to put information on it that supports you and your goals. This project has gone over very well and I already have a large network and multiple connections that will benefit my major. 

       Overall this project was very easy to put together and I am really excited to continue this project and take advantage of all of these new open doors and opportunities.

       Best wishes to you all!

       Ann Stang

P.S. Here is the link to my LinkedIn profile so that you can see what a profile looks like!

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=305915519&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile_pic

The Final Chapter

Dear Readers,

       My final adventure is about to start and I hope that after this last event that people will still check into my blog and ask questions! My final project is to create a LinkedIn page! I am really excited for this page because it helps you make connections long after you are out of college and have a job. I did not really know what LinkedIn was when I first came to college, but when I started meeting more people I learned more about the site and it sounds like it will help us out in the long run! You can make connections with people who have the same interests and/or job as you, and you are able to put your resume out there and see what type of companies and employers would like to hire you! There is also a wide range of people who use LinkedIn; from teachers, bankers, and musicians to politicians, therapists, and other leaders!

I plan on starting this project kind of slow because I want to make a good first impression, but I also want to get my information out there so that I can get feedback by employers and such. I do plan on creating a resume and putting it on the site because I want to see what kind of a reaction it will receive and hopefully it WILL receive some sort of reaction! I want to give this project all that I’ve got and I want to use it to the best of my ability! I will let you know how this project goes! Wish me luck!

       Yours truly,                               

     

       Ann Stang

A Great Adventure!

Dear fellow bloggers,

       Well, Emmalee and I finished our website and it looks terrific! I am very happy with how it turned out. Weebly was a great website to start a website and it is still very easy to update your website even after it is published. The only true conflict we came across was that we both could not be editing the same page at the same time. We could edit different pages of our page at the same time, just not the same one, so it was not that big of a deal. We got a decent amount of information on our site; I just wish I could’ve added more. The pages I created was our homepage, the camping page, my About Me page, and we collaborated on the contacts page. If you would like to check out our website it is http://outdoor-odyssey.weebly.com please take a look if you can and leave some feedback! I am very happy with how it turned out and there a lot of delicious recipes and terrific destinations to try out! I would definitely useWeebly.com again and if you have any questions about how the site works please leave a comment on my blog, or you can contact straight from our website as well! Thank you for following my blog for so long and I only have one more project to complete before the end of my digital media class is over, but hopefully I will be able to continue on with my blog.

       Yours truly,

       Ann Stang  

Outdoor Adventures!

Dear bloggers,

              

       I am really excited for this next project for my class! We are starting to create a website! I am going to be creating one with another girl in my class called Emmalee Cornell about Outdoor Activities. We are going to break it down into camping, food, and destinations which will help people enjoy the great outdoors. We are planning on using the website Weebly.com and so far it has been very user friendly. It is very simple to add new information and pictures, and I am really excited to see how else we can utilize our website! Like I said, I am really excited for this project and if you have any questions about other sites or if you are going to try Weebly and you want more information feel free to leave a comment!

       Yours truly,

       Ann Stang

MyTube!

Dear fellow bloggers,

       My sincere apologies for not keeping you posted on how my video was coming along, but it was harder to put into words than I thought it would be….

My video didn’t turn out how I thought it would because I get so tongue-tied in front of a camera so I will not show it to you, but it was an informational video on some of the Basic Brass instruments. I was glad however on how easy it was to post my video on YouTube! I went on the site and I uploaded my video and it was ready for the world to see! The hardest part of putting my video online was adding closed captioning into my video which is basically like subtitles in movies. The only hard part about that was transcribing the words into the video, but that was only hard because it was time consuming. Overall the process was very easy and I was glad that it all came together even though I was not happy with my final outcome for a video maybe I can create a better one next time!

       

       I would consider doing more videos, but I would give myself more time to complete them in and hopefully use more people in them as well as practicing my parts more so that I don’t stutter as much! I hope you all have found my blog useful so far and I hope you continue to follow my posts because I have a few more projects left to do!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

Going Viral

Dear readers,

       My newest project for my digital media class is to create a youtube video. I feel as though this project will be easier than some of my past projects, but it will take more time to finish it. I believe that the actual shooting of the video will be the easiest part, and the planning of the whole project will be the hardest. It does not help that I am terrible at making decisions, but in order to make this a decent video I am going to be drawing up a storyboard and hopefully my lack of drawing skills do not make me have my video be simpler so that I don’t have to draw a detailed picture. The video I am going to create must be instructional or informational, and I have a decent idea of what I am going to do but you will have to wait and see the final project to know what I am planning.

       I am going to rent out a video camera from my local library, but I’m not sure how I am going to edit my video. I’m not sure if my computer has a video editing program, but I will have to look into that a little more. This is my only plan so far and I’m just hoping that my video can come together in time. I am going to try and keep you updated on my troubles and other experiences for this project, so keep checking in!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

A Job Well Done

My humble thanks to you,

       Thank you again and again for helping with my survey because I am still surprised with how well this project came together. Once I figured out what I wanted to ask people about it was easy to put the questions on the website. Questionpro.com works really well, and for their free version you still have a decent number of question types to choose from in order to make your survey more interesting than simply ‘yes or no’ questions. If you don’t mind putting in a little bit of money you can get even more questions on questionpro.com, but I did the free version and my survey still did well.

       The part of the survey that I was the most worried about was probably getting enough people to take my survey. I distributed information on my survey on Facebook, Twitter, and here on my blog in order to open more opportunities for people to take my survey. I easily got the needed amount of people to take my survey, yet I feel like I could have received more responses if I had used “Call of Action” properly. Call of Action is simply what you use to persuade others to take your survey, and I do not think I utilized that concept very well.

       I still believe that surveys will come in handy in most occupations, and once I get a job I believe that getting a response will be easier because I will know who my target audience is; whether it is students, parents, board members, politicians, etc., it can only get easier from here now that I have made one. Once again another project has come together and I am looking for your input and questions so that I can see what I can improve on, and so that I can learn from any questions you have as well.

Your fellow blogger,

Ann Stang

The Results Are In!

Fellow bloggers,
      
       Thank you to all who helped by taking my survey! I am proud to say that I have a 100% completion rate for all those you took my survery, so no one dropped out once they started it! By the responses I received I believe I have found a small connection between social media sites and how they affect people's crying patterns. The majority of the people who took my survey were female and younger than 20. Almost half of them spend more than 5 hours on social media sites during the span of a week, yet most of those who participated said that they rarely cried. What was interesting was the differnece in the gender ratio. I'm not sure if the male gender just simply didn't feel like taking my survey, or if they didn't take it because crying is a sensitive subject for men. It's still sad how much crying is repressed by social aspects of society; it's been repressed way before media sites were ever created, but even more so that they are available. I also saw in the results for my survey that there was a variety of thoughts about if social media sights influence how much someone cries, but over half said that something on a media site made them cry. The mixture of thoughts on the influence social media sites have towards crying made it seem as though the participants in the survey were not entirely sure on what to think and I believe that more research should be done to see if media sites do affect crying or not. 

       If you want to look at the results to this survey more closely I have posted a visual summary in the link below, so feel free to look at that and if you have any questions please let me know.

http://questionpro.com/s/1-2354975-3653147

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

Survey-licious

Hello all!
       In my last post I mentioned that I was creating a survey for my Exploring Digital Media class at SCSU, and now I am asking for my readers to take 5 minutes out of their busy day to answer ten short questions. If you have any questions about the survey please feel free to ask! I have the link listed below. Let me know what you think! I really do care about your feedback!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

http://questionpro.com/t/AKW3JZQFvp

Surveying My Options

Dear readers,

       I am yet again starting out on another digital media adventure! My next digital exploration is to make an online survey, and it has been surprisingly hard to think of something to ask people about when you do not have a prompt. It is also proving to be difficult to pick the right website to start a survey in because you do not know how it will work until you try it out. I am actually excited to start this project because I can see it holding relevance for a future occupation and because I would like to see how people respond to my survey. I am going to be posting the link to my survey on my blog so that you can take a look at it and hopefully put in your input!

       My plan so far is to figure out what my topic is and then brainstorm various questions for my survey as well as researching different survey sights to see which one will work best for me and for my fellow readers. Wish me luck!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

Twitter Page

Here is a picture of the final outcome of my Twitter page! If you have any questions about Twitter feel free to ask me!

Tweets to go?

Long time no see!

       

       It has been a while since I last written to all my fellow bloggers and now that I have finished my Twitter project I actually have some information to share with you!

       Twitter was a little difficult to set up and to understand how to customize the profile page, and once I got those items settled I also found it difficult to search for organizations and people on their website. I also didn’t like the limit of characters in the Tweets, but it keeps you speaking at a point and not wandering like in a blog; however, I am happy with how my page turned out, and it does hold promise in keeping people connected with companies and organizations who correlate with their profession and interests.

      

       I still do not see the total benefit of using Twitter professionally even if it connects you with organizations and individuals with your major and future profession. There seemed to be a lot of hoops to jump through to get started, like having a certain number of sites that you follow before creating your profile. I made it through my Twitter project, learned some new things about digital media and how I would and would not want to use this form of media in my future profession.

That’s about it for now & I’ll talk to you soon,

Ann Stang           

Here we go!

Welcome back readers,

        I am now heading into my next digital adventure by creating a Twitter account...duh duh duh….. To be honest, this project is probably the one that scares me the most. I know plenty of friends who have gotten sucked into Twitter and who spend a lot of time on there. I am going to do my best to make my Twitter feed professional, yet interesting. I have no idea how Twitter works so I also do not know how I am going to accomplish this project, but I will simply take things one step at a time and figure it out as I go.

        I am not entirely sure if I will continue with Twitter once this project is complete, but I plan to go by my motto of not judging things until I at least try them. I use this motto for everything including music, people, and food. So why not use it for Twitter? Wish me luck!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

First Steps

Hello again,

       I am excited that my blog has already gotten a number of views, and I am also excited to be able to tell you more about my blog. The hardest part of starting a blog that I have found is simply finding the right website for yourself because there are thousands that you can choose from. I was recommended to try blogspot.com through a friend and so far I am enjoying it. Blogspot is very easy to get started, and I love how easy it is to maneuver the website and to edit and add posts. I am really glad that I did start on blogspot, and I haven’t found anything that I really dislike about it. As I continue with this project, including the blog and my other digital media adventures, I am going to see if I can incorporate some pictures and videos into my blog to make it more interesting and so that my readers don’t have to read my rambling all of the time. As I start each project in this class I will share my thoughts about them, share ways that you can start your own, and then close the project with what I liked and disliked about that part of the project. I truly am getting excited for this project and I cannot wait to get advice and comments about your own experiences with similar digital media experiences!

Yours truly,

Ann Stang

Welcome!

Hello fellow bloggers,

         It is a pleasure to get the chance to introduce myself; I am Ann Stang (as seen below) and I am currently a student at St. Cloud State University. The first time I heard that I had to write a blog for class I was not really sure how to respond. I've never done anything like this, so I initially felt as though this class might be a waste of my time, because when will I use this again? Although, once I got started creating this blog I started to feel as though it might not be so bad. I can feel myself calming down a bit and I am starting to look forward to this project.  I am also going to be doing other digital media projects through my class, some of which I am even more unsure about compared to this blog, and I will be posting my experiences with them on here along with ideas on how to create your own and what websites work the best for each project! Now that I have gotten started on the overall project I feel like creating a separate blog on poetry. However, this first blog is simply going to be about my adventures through the year and how I do throughout my class on other digital media experiences.

Yours truly,

Ann Stang