Final project

The title of my final project is  Sara's Apprehension.
After playing around with several software, I finally decided to go back to powerpoint.
I was able to insert hyperlinks to different slides in the powerpoint.

This was a narrative that I wrote myself.  It's mostly about a girl named Sara, the protagonist, who deals with differences with her mother after the death of her father.  The hyperlinks in the presentation are words which take the viewer to the next slide that has to do with either a image or more narrative about the hyperlink word.

The viewer/reader has to click on the sound image to hear the tune and also click next whenever the screen is blank.

It is much easier to view the presentation rather than explaining it so please enjoy and hope everyone enjoyed the class as much as I did!

final project plans

For my final project, I plan to use either powerpoint or prezi softwares.  I wish to use the story
I had originally intended for project 2 but ended up changing my mind. 

My fiction story will include three characters with dialogue who experience conflicts
and tribulations.These characters eventually overcome the conflicts and become better people.

I wish to include various audio and visual components in my work in order to make it more
entertaining and at the same time, electronic literature.

These are my initial plans, although they may change once I actually begin the project.

project 2

For my project 2, I changed my initial story plan.  I decided to base my digital story on photos I took
myself a few years ago on my trip to Lake George.

I added some poetic lines at the top of most of the pictures and some sounds of the ocean.  I had fun creating this digital story and plan on making a few more just for fun.

In order to navigate the story, the reader simply needs to begin the slideshow and watch. 

Review Assignment

Review Assignment

A Show of Hands

By Mark C. Marino

A show of hands is an original adaptive hypertext novella written on the Literatronic (Literatronica) system developed by Juan B. Gutierrez.  This electronic narrative has two versions; one is called “a little show of hands” and the other is “a show of hands”.  For my review, I will focus on both. This story can be found in the ELC volume 2. A show of hands

This novella takes place at the time of the 2006 U.S reform protests.  During this time, millions of people marched across the streets of many cities across America in response to penalties for undocumented immigrants; these immigrants as well as those who helped them, were to be classified as felons.  The protests emerged as way for the public and government to reform the immigration laws and create a path for the undocumented immigrants toward citizenship. “A show of hands” is about the rallies that took place on May 1^st ,2006 in Los Angeles; this consisted of 400,000 people.

“A show of hands”

This story puts the reader in control and allows him/her to follow a customized plot

The first webpage of the story directs the reader to a mosaic of two holding hands; within this picture are hundreds of tiny images of more hands.  These images are representative of the hands of the upper-class in Los Angeles as well as those who marched in the rallies.   The reader is able to click on any image, in any order.  Once he/she does this, they are directed to a page with a short story about the de la Palma family, a Mexican-American family at the time of the immigration reform protests in 2006. 

After clicking on many ‘hands’ images and reading many different passages, I began referring to the links under the title “Recommended Next Pages”.  I thought that this means the story will go in some kind of order, however, it did not.  It continued to be a random selection of excerpts from the characters’ lives.  Now, I began jotting down some of the characters’ names I came across; which consisted of Madeleine, Santa Paula, Santa Rosa, Eduard, Sydney, and many others.  Each passage seems to be a scene focusing on one or a few characters at a time. 

 The ‘about’ segment of the site states: “Human connections are the pathways of grass-roots political movements and this electronic narrative environment encourages the readers to forge these ties or else experience their tangling. Hands are our means of building these connections and losing ourselves in the tangle”.  This statement is powerful and does an excellent job in explaining the overall message of the story.

“A little show of hands”

This narrative centers around one of the characters from the full version, Katrina de la Palma.  This version begins with a page titled: “tomorrow’s child [Katrina] and tells about a baby in an incubator in critical condition and her mother.  Some of the other characters in this series are Chino, Santa Maria, and Tony. 

The author, Mark Marino, is currently the Communication director for the Electronic Literature Organization and holds a Ph.d from the University of California.  His work has been published in a number of magazines and journals.  Personally, I admire Marino’s work and look forward to exploring some of his other e-lit creations and blogs. 

Blog # 8

I am so excited about Project 2! I'm looking forward to creating a digital story.  The application/software I will be using is PowerPoint.  I love the many features this program offers and hoping that I'm able to explore even more than my initial familiarity with it.  

For this project, I plan to write a story about three women.  A grandmother, her daughter, and granddaughter.  After the death of the male figure in the house hold, the relationship between mother and daughter has weakened for some reason and they have distanced immensely.  As the grandmother attempts to fix the mother-daughter relationship; she grows old and sick.  

I hope I can get creative with my story and digital story-telling.  I will try not to make my story too long so I can focus a little bit more on the creativity of the animation/design.

I plan to add some pictures, videos, and perhaps special effects to my story.

I'm excited to be tweeting next class with Dr. Flores for our second 'connected learning session'.
I would like to ask him for advice on creating a digital story.  How we interconnect entertainment with literature?

Blog # 7

~My own Spine Poetry~

Blog # 6

As I read and analyzed the article by Amanda Starling, I realized right away her use of the word 'exploit', in reference to electronic literature.  Although it may be a strong term to use, I completely agree with Ms. Starling that electronic lit exploits the realm of literature as a whole; in a good way of course.  "The field of electronic literature is international, interdisciplinary, and animatedly emergent". 

 Indeed this new field of literature is international; more international perhaps than any type of literature previously discovered.  This type of literature will link people from all parts of the world.  They will be able to engage in intellectual conversations related to e-lit.

Amanda Starling's essay truly serves as an introduction for authors, students, and teachers wishing to take part in the emergent realm of electronic literature.  

I would like to ask the author of this essay what she thinks the future of electronic literature holds and whether it is something everyone will benefit from or not?

Project 1

Abstract:
I based my assignment on a family from the Dominican Republic.  This family comes to the United States in hopes of fulfilling their idea of the American Dream; even though their previous life back home wasn't such a nightmare.  Due to the fact that they left behind family and friends, the Santiago family experiences melancholy in their new setting.  There are four people in this family, including the new addition, Armando.  The webpage includes a summary about each character and their feelings about their new transformation.  As the reader will be able to see, all members of this family have different views about the big move.

Instructions:
Viewers will find on the webpage, pictures of all characters.  There is a hypertext link for pictures of Armando, the very cute addition to the Santiago family who has little to say about the move.

The link to my website is

https://sites.google.com/a/kean.edu/rafiqap/home

blog 4, site mapping

For my googlesite, I plan on having several subtitles, or options at the top of the page.  These will be titled: 'Life of family inNew York', 'Beginning of a transformation', 'The big move', and maybe a couple more captions and titles.  There will be a story map consisting of photos.  

The concepts I need help with mostly is putting the whole thing together as far as mapping the site.  I am looking to get some help with my project at the peer workshop.  


I would like to add some creativity and different backgrounds/settings.  I seem to be stuck at this point with coming up with ideas for my site.  In the class workshop, I plan on working with classmates and asking for suggestions and advice.  I will add more to my blog after I get my site up and running.

Blog 3, image blog

This blog will be mostly images that will be used for project 1.  My story I am choosing to do this project on will be about a family that decides to move from the United States back to their homeland; or the homeland of their parents.  Here are some of the images I have so far.  Feel free to provide any feedback or comments. Thanks!













  The family struggles to find peace in their beautiful new home because their memories are attached to their previous country.
 

Blog 2

 Blog #2:

• Write about some of the pieces you have been exploring in the ELC.  
• Also, create an imagined "self" or character and develop at least three scenes and two discussions/reflections that will reveal layers of the character or "self".  Make an outline. (This will be the beginnings of a basis for Project 1.)

One of the pieces that instantly drew me in was "Birds Singing Other Birds' Songs", a work of genuine literature with animation.  The interesting form of literature left me with thoughts of how literature is just about everywhere, in reference to the internet and computer programming.  Another piece I looked at a couple of times in the ELC volume 1 was "Landscapes", by Bill Marsh.  This was another work of animation.  The author describes this work stating: "Each landscape pairs a short Biblical proverb with a series of images taken from street protests, multimedia conferences, Hollywood films, and other private and public sites. The proverb in each of the landscapes scrolls on a loop across the screen and is "locked" in position behind a viewing portal".    In this piece, the viewer is able to choose from a list of different series/proverbs that deal with biblical events.

Another work I liked that was from ELC volume 2, was "A Show of Hands" by Mark C. Marino.  "Show of hands" is an adaptive hypertext narrative about U.S. immigration written in English and Spanish on the Literatronica storytelling engine designed by Juan B. Gutiérrez.

This is the piece I would like to brainstorm and maybe use for my review assignment.  My outline would be:
Character: A hardworking immigrant man who comes from a Middle Eastern Country, looking for a better life in the United States.
 This character would leave his family behind in his native land and travel to the United States.

He would then work long hours for low paying jobs and send some money back home.

He would eventually bring his family to live with him in the U.S and become a well established citizen and father.

Hope that's an okay start; just brainstorming!

Blog assignment 1

Blog assignment #1: Describe some of the strategies you used to "read" Twelve Blue. Indicate what you did + what you hoped to achieve - and what you got out of doing whatever you did.

As I opened up the link for 'Twelve Blue', I noticed the box with all the thread looking colors.  I wasn't sure what to click so just clicked inside the 'thread box'.  After this, a new window appeared with the title 'white moths'; this short story seemed sort of incomplete therefore I wasn't sure how to translate it.

After that, I went on clicking the underlined sentences; which led to different pages.  I opened up a word document so I can kind of copy and paste the story and write some notes for each paragraph.

Although reading 'Twelve Blue' is a bit challenging; I liked that it was different from the norm and look forward to reading more excerpts like this.