Letter to Future Seeing Sideways Students

Dear Future Seeing Sideways Students,

     You are about to enter into a class like you've never taken before, in a good way.  Seeing Sideways is about opening up your mind and creativity and looking a everything in a new way, not just they way you've been taught. 
     What I got from this class is that you should keep an open mind about most things and try and stay creative.  In your future or current career you may not have complete creative controll over your work and this class teaches you to be creative for yourself and to stay creative. 
     This class will change my outlook on future classes by not being afraid to do something creative and different even it doesn't neccessarily fit what the project or assignemnt is for the instructor.  They may love, they may not, and if they give you a bad grade for being creative then you can always fight for the grade you feel you deserve as long as you feel passionate that the work you did is worthy.

Sincerely,

Kyle D. Heacox

FINAL - Research Project

     For my Final Research Project I decided to research Tagging or Metadata.  For my project I researched what tagging was, how it was created, and how it is used.  The following is the information that I found and ultimately used for the project:
     In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.
Tagging was popularized by websites associated with Web 2.0 and is an important feature of many Web 2.0 services. It is now also part of some desktop software.  Labeling and tagging are carried out to perform functions such as aiding in classification, marking ownership, noting boundaries, and indicating online identity. They may take the form of words, images, or other identifying marks. An analogous example of tags in the physical world is museum object tagging. In the organisation of information and objects, the use of textual keywords as part of identification and classification long predates computers. However, computer based searching made the use of keywords a rapid way of exploring records. Online and Internet databases and early websites deployed them as a way for publishers to help users find content. In 2001, John Harrower - a schoolboy from Scotland - created an online yearbook application that made use of photograph tagging allowing users to post comments regarding the person from the photo they clicked on. In 2003, the social bookmarking website Delicious provided a way for its users to add "tags" to their bookmarks (as a way to help find them later); Delicious also provided browseable aggregated views of the bookmarks of all users featuring a particular tag.  Flickr allowed its users to add free-form tags to each of their pictures, constructing flexible and easy metadata that made the pictures highly searchable.  The success of Flickr and the influence of Delicious popularized the concept, and other social software websites – such as YouTube, Technorati, and Last.fm – also implemented tagging. "Labels" in Gmail are similar to tags.  Websites that include tags often display collections of tags as tag clouds. A user's tags are useful both to them and to the larger community of the website's users.  Tags may be a "bottom-up" type of classification, compared to hierarchies, which are "top-down". In a traditional hierarchical system (taxonomy), the designer sets out a limited number of terms to use for classification, and there is one correct way to classify each item. In a tagging system, there are an unlimited number of ways to classify an item, and there is no "wrong" choice. Instead of belonging to one category, an item may have several different tags. Some researchers and applications have experimented with combining structured hierarchy and "flat" tagging to aid in information retrieval.


     With the information I found and researched, I divided it up into five seperate paragraphs and put a different paragraph on the back of some indez cards.  I think I ended up with 50-60 index cards.  During class I would try and listen to everything everone was talking about; not just the people presenting their projects, but anyone that was talking.  When I would hear a word that could be used as a Tag, I would write that word on the front of the index card and give it to them.  With doing this, I was hoping that they would turn the card over and read it and realize what my project was all about.  I ended up giving every student 2-3 cards.  At the end of class, I was going to try and pull up an online Mad Libs site and have the tagged words used as our words for the Mad Lib, but I decided against it.

Better Left Untitled

I have come to realize that there are many things in life that I really enjoy, as hobby's or whatnot.  There actually may be too many things.  I usually get really involved in something and put all of my time and effort into a project or whatever it is at the time for a few weeks to a month and then it's on to the next thing and this cycle continues and never stops.  New interests arrive and some stay and some go, must come around again after one or two other interests consume my mind and time.  I'm not sure if this happens to everyone, but its been a part of my life ever since I can remember.  I'm glad I have all of theses interests, however I really wish I could totally focus on something at a given time and not loose the focus to something else.  Maybe this is where my personal wellspring of creativity and inspiration come in.  The simplest things inspire me, like taking a walk outside on a nice day, although I find that most of my creativity stems from the work other people do.  My current project that is keeping me occupied is my Capstone project.  The project was originally just going to be a short film for my own personal pleasure and experience before I started on my Capstone, but it turns out things haven't exactly worked out for it that way; so now I am making this my Capstone project.  I have decided to make the project more of a feature film and include some short films along with it in the final DVD.  My Capstone isn't due until May 2012, and I plan on shooting the film this summer.  I have already done some test shooting over the past year and a half with the actors, and I'm glad I'm now using that as only test footage, because I would not want to use it in the final film.  It's not that the footage was bad, but I am a perfectionist, and if I'm going to be presenting this film for everyone to see as all the work and effort I have put into school, it has to be done to my specifications.  Anyways, this is what I've been working on and will be working on for the next year, and I hope not to lose focus on the project.

First teaser poster for the film.  Yeah, it's pretty lame, I have a lot of work to do.

Along with this film project, I am also starting to create my personal website portfolio and I want to make it impressive (obviously), so hopefully I can split my time between the two projects and not lose anything.

The Story So Far

At the start of the semester, I was very interested to see what Seeing Sideways was all about.  Through the semester so far, I have discovered that the class isn't quite what I expected.  In class we mostly have discussions and talk about projects that we have done for assignments.  This is all fine and dandy, but I was wanting more out of the class than just discussions.  Don't get me wrong, the discussions are great; they are very interesting, comical, thought provoking, and educational.  I feel if the class was broken down into two parts for each class time, that might be more up my alley.  I would like to see the first hour and a half be discussion and the second hour and a half be something different (I don't know what I'm really looking for for this half of the class time, but I know I don't like to sit still for a whole class period).  Overall, I am really enjoying the class and the assignments we have, I know I've never had a class like this before or will ever have again.

Why Am I Here?

Why Am I Here?

     When I start to think "Why Am I Here?", many thoughts go through my head.  Why was I put on this earth, as a human, and as a male?  Why was I born into my family instead of someone else's of any species?  Why am I anywhere at any given time?  I have many different opinions as to why I'm here.  First off, I'm not a religious person.  I belong to no religion, yet I believe in something, however I'm still not sure what.  So, at times I believe I have a purpose as to why I am here.  When I say "here" I mean on earth as a male human living in Indiana doing the things that I do and the way that I do them.  I feel that god as put me here for a reason, whether in the end it is good or bad, it all has a purpose and keeps the world interesting.  On the other hand, I think that type of thinking is complete bullshit.  There is no plan for me, there is no reason for my being.  It's completely random and that's just the way it is.  I find it easier to think through my first opinion, yet I don't take it too seriously.  For me not to go crazy thinking about why I'm here, choice #1 keeps me a little more sane and it's easier to wrap my head around.  Why I'm here, right now, at a computer typing this blog about "Why I'm here" is because of countless actions throughout the time of anything.  So, "Why Am I Here?", I think their is a reason for why I'm here right now at this point in time, yet I will never know why.  That's the easy answer.

     Why am I here in NEWM N385 Seeing Sideways at IUPUI with Beth Lykins, because I chose to go back to school when I was 24 and pursue a degree in New Media.  I need to take a certain amount of credit hours in NEWM at the 300 level and I had heard from past students who have taken the class that it is a very interesting class, so I thought I would see what all the hype was all about.  That's why I'm here in this class.

Reaction to Fear Part II

I was unable to make it to class for part one of our fear projects, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I came into class for part two of the projects.  Of course this meant I had to present on this day, which i felt I could have done a much better job on coming up with an experiment and project all together.  I found that the projects brought out a lot of emotions with the presenters as well as for the rest of the class.  There were two projects that stood out to me because they were so personal to the presenter and it took a lot of courgae for them to tell the class what theie fears were.  I also enjoyed the balloon popping project becuase it was a got icebreaker to get out of the emotional state the class had gotten into and it made the transition into my project easier.  From what I've heard, I missed some really great projects from part one, but I think part two had some really great work as well and was kind of like a bonding experience for those that where there.

Fear Project Experience and Presentation

Today I presented my experiment for the Fear Project and I got the reaction I though I would have from the class.  For my project I gave everyone a single piece of blank white paper and told them they had 3 minutes. That was all I told them, that they had 3 minutes.  The purpose of this experiment was to conquer a fear of my own and help the class face a fear of their own or maybe tell me about it.  The reason i chose to do my experiment this way is because I am personally very fearful of having attention on me, so standing up in front of the class was not something I really wanted to do.  I am also fearful of looking like a colossal ass-bag in front of people (which is what i felt when I just gave you guys the paper without instructions).  After I did the experiment, I realized that none of you probably thought I looked like an idiot standing up there giving you no instructions, but instead you were more concerned with what you need or wanted to do with the paper.  I purposely did not give the class any writing utensils because I didn't necessarily want you to just write something down, I wanted you to face your Fear of the Unknown (like many students do).  I wanted you to do something creative with the paper or maybe even write down something personal or a fear you might have.  After looking through the papers I got back from the class, I found that 3 people decided to make paper airplanes (which i expected), 1 made a paper fold game, 2 folded the paper and I'm not sure what they are suppose to be, 2 didn't even do anything with the paper, most of you either drew and picture or wrote something on the paper or both.  I was surprised to find one crumpled up piece of paper with a list of fears or secrets on it.

After thinking about the experiment I only got a little bit out of a few people of what I really wanted, but I got what I thought would happen from most of you.  In conclusion, my fear of have the spotlight on me is really uncalled for because most people aren't paying attention anyways and even those that are, they're probably thinking about something else.  Most people are predictable when you give them something to do for 3 minutes with instructions.