At the start of this project it was not extremely clear what we were to do. Before receiving instruction on the project, it was just told to us that the project having to do with this book would be different. As stated earlier in class it would not be an essay. This was because so many essays have already been written on the book Jane Eyre. Therefore this project would be different. One day we were told our project would be a mashup. When hearing these words it is pretty safe to say that everyone looked at each other in a confused way; all most likely thinking what in the world is that. That day we were not exactly told what we were to do. We were only given an example of David Shield's book Reality Hunger. It used the same format that we would use for our mashup. It used outside quotations out of context and then brought them together to bring across a developing idea or point. In the days that followed we were given our instructions. These included the format of how this project needed to be, and also the minimal requirements. Honestly, at this point not all of us were convinced.
When looking at the format that needed to be taken for this project, specifically I was still not sure what needed to be done. I felt that the directions at first were not extremely clear. Then when looking at the minimal requirements, at first I thought it was actually a lot of sources that we needed. Especially a lot of sources from our book and our curriculum. Then only there was some outside sources. But, upon completion of the project, I did realize something else. I do admit that my partner and I used the very minimum amount of sources that we needed. However, there was a direct purpose for this. When we actually gathered sources, we had an ample amount of sources from the book and our curriculum. But, we struggled to find outside sources. This was actually an amazement to me. I thought that those outside sources would be the easiest to find but that proved otherwise. I will comment on our minimum use of sources in a second. First however, I would also like to say something on the formation of our groups. Our groups as much as we were allowed to chose by ourselves, it was clear that some people were overflow because there was not enough room. It was also mentioned that this project was meant to be beneficial when working in a large group. Although I did not work in a large group and it is unfair for me to therefore speak on their behalves, I go the feeling that by having a larger group you needed much more sources and that these sources were extremely hard to come by. That is the impression I got.
These are all the ideas prior to our project and the gathering of sources and so. But, there was also the extremely important part of putting this mashup together. After determining the idea that we wanted to get across, and collecting our sources, we set out to format our mashup. At this point we actually had many different ways that we could go. All these ways were significant and related to the book and the outside world in many ways. However, we could not get over one idea. Our topic was independence and we thought, what if we declared our own independence. In light of the situations all across the world, in the past and actually in the very present, we felt that it would be an interesting task to declare our independence. So we sent out to do so. At the beginning we stated examples, specifically the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. We felt that this was an appropriate place to start, to describe past revolutions and independence. We proceeded to then describe the challenges that have been faced. This is the why for creating this mashup. In the end we firmly stated our independence and our realization of what we have done. That was the most significant part. This was the mashup. Under that we had our sources. One note about the sources, I know that there was a time saving tip that said to do your bibliography at the end. However, the way it worked for us it actually proved quicker that we did the sources as we created the mashup. This is something that we noticed. In the end we signed our document. We signed after the sources because the mashup was supposed to sound as if one voice was speaking. That's what the end provided.
So you may look at our mashup and see that it only uses the minimum amount of sources. This is true. There is nothing to hide about this. While inserting our mashup sources we were in a flow. We got near the end and saw that this would be a perfect place to end. We had many sources still left but where we were we felt as if it was perfect. We then proceeded to count our sources and saw that we were a couple short. We knew that this did not reach the minimum amount of sources so we needed to insert a couple more. Those added at the end were not ideal, we would have like to removed a couple sources actually. But, not to down those sources it was still near perfect. We were extremely satisfied with what we produced. It was concise and to the point of what we wanted to do. We wanted to declare our independence and the way we did it was just perfect. Our choice for a title supports this. This was our Declaration of Independence. Another note is our choice of posting this on a blog. We felt that this format was extremely important and significant. By putting this on a blog it makes it available to the public. This is public. This is for the public to see. By putting this out to the public it can gain support from the public, gaining comments or likes. This is exactly what a declaration like this needs; it needs support. Tangibly, it was also much easier to put this on a blog.
In the end we thought that our mashup turned out real well. At first it was not clear what we were to do or even what we wanted to do. We looked at this project and thought about why we actually had to do it this way. Most of us rather wanted essays. However, after completion of this mashup, I can confidently say that this was a great project. The mashup took a different approach, different from anything I have ever done before. But this was a good thing. It changed the way on how I can look at things now. Plain and simply I also now know what a mashup is. But, overall the process was successful. I wish there may have been more guidance at the beginning, and maybe if we were told about the project before we read the book it may have helped before. But, the way it turned out is perfectly fine. It worked and I enjoyed it. It was successful.
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