Siyao Chen - Reflection

If I needed to summarize this course in one word, I would choose "innovative." This course introduced me to new tools, platforms, topics, and ways of thinking.

First, I was exposed to a variety of new tools, which also made me realize that new media narratives can happen in various forms, such as blogs, video, audio, etc. I learned how to use multiple new tools. For example, it was my first time writing blogs, and it was a novel experience. To be honest, I had to spend a lot of time and always get frustrated because of the difficulty in adjusting the formatting for my blog. However, I also gained a lot of practical knowledge and valuable experience as I delved deeper into the use of these new tools and utilized them for my new media narratives. In my future work, I believe I will be more confident when using these new tools to create personal narratives and expressions.

Second, the platform involved in this course is very innovative. Not only did we need to post our assignments in e-class, but we also used Blogger, Pinterest, Wikipedia, etc. I think the cross-platform ability that this class gave me is very essential. In this process, I need to understand the rules and ways of posting my work on each platform so that my narratives can match the tone of individual platforms and be more engaging. For instance, in part 3 of the selfie assignment, I tried to transform my academic article into a blog post with consideration of language, images, and audience. This transliteracy skill is something that I completely could not acquire when all I needed to do was write an academic essay.

The topics in this class were also interesting. Such as AI narratives, creating selfies, and digital curation. It is fair to say that all of these topics are new and up-to-date.

These new topics also brought me a lot of new ideas and made me think about the importance of personal expression. Among them, the use of Pinterest for curation impressed me the most. Before reading "Everyone's a Curator": Identifying the Everyday Curator, I never regarded using Pinterest to add pins as a meaningful or special activity. However, this article shifted my mind and made me realize that everyone can be a curator and use self-expression to impact larger aspects (e.g., cultural heritage).

In general, I thought this was an interesting course. I look forward to applying what I learned in this class to my future work.