Final Blog

Throughout the course of this term my group and I created a highly effective informative tool to aid in teaching people about the issue of Net Neutrality and the effects it has on them. We did this by gathering interviews with a lot of very knowledgeable people on the topic along with a few who weren’t so knowledgeable but still willing to give it a stab and express what they thought the internet was. Though some of these interviews were highly entertaining because people say some pretty random stuff when talking about a subject that they have no clue about, they still gave some good insight as to what the internet was to them and why changes in it would affect them. Along with interviews we wrote essays, compiled art expressing the matter, researched and posted links to other sources with information on Net Neutrality, started a Facebook group that has 116 fans and counting, and even made an incredible website to compile all of our thoughts and findings on. The website NetScruple.com was highly effective in communicating to our followers all of our information in one simple yet very effective manner. NetScruple.com was very easy to navigate yet visually pleasing in order to keep people interested. Apart from all of our content (videos, interviews, definitions, sources, blogs, etc) the site also featured author biographies with each of our own pages that shared some information about us. I thought that was an awesome little finishing touch.
The experience I gained from this project was something you can’t just get in an average class room. I learned about working with others and how it can have its positive sides and that when a good group of people is put together great things can happen. Some of the more challenging things I had to overcome through this project were definitely the technical aspects of working with cameras and computers. For one the Sony PD150 cameras we were using were far more advanced than any little Handycam I had used prior. I soon realized that any little wrong setting could completely destroy hours of work or render it useless. Apart from the cameras, the computers and software were a huge challenge because I was previously not familiar with Mac computers or their editing programs. Hours were wasted just pressing random buttons hoping it would do something I wanted it too.
The effort I put into this project consisted of hours of filming, hours in the lab, and even more hours on my own computer writing blogs and making designs. How much does all this add up too? I have no idea but what I do know is that from out of it came a couple great videos that I am very satisfied with, some entertaining and informative blogs and some pretty cool logos (that are now on shirts) that I spent a week or so kicking around. Apart from all my personal projects I also aided others in the group when ever help was requested and was there to see the project through the whole time. Do I think I was the most important person in this project? Absolutely not, but I did my part and learned a lot along the way.