Sarah Pinhasov
“A Balancing Act” is a presentation of my narrative research paper, this remix is not as focused on statistics and facts the way that my paper was. It’s more focused on showing how an informal education is more prevalent and important in the twenty first century and that students and teachers alike should embrace the way that education is evolving to include more than just what one learns in a classroom . I felt that for this video my target audience should be students, parents, and teachers. Since I wanted to reach such a broad and varied audience I decided that I should make the video simple and not hard to understand. I did so by using very simple language that could be understood by all and made it more of a video that could be considered entertaining to watch rather than an informative video that just mentioned one fact after another on the importance of both a formal and informal education. I think many people would get bored and disinterested when watching such a video. I tried to make my video bright and easy to follow so that those watching would not get bored with it and would watch the whole video through to understand the argument that I was making in this presentation. I believe that this was a very simple translation of my research paper into a different medium. It’s not as detailed or specific and doesn’t have any statistics or testimonials. I made a conscious decision to not include facts and statistics because I think sometimes when there are too many facts and words in a short video, people end up getting confused and mixing things up.
Most of the video was made by me, I used Powtoons, an animation software to create the beginning of my video and also a Prezi presentation that I recorded and then combined with the Powtoons animation. There is also part of a clip that I got online that I combined it with some video snippets that I had taken myself and meshed them all together to make one video. I decided not to do a voice over because I thought that it would just be simpler and easier to understand if there were just words on the screen. I also feel as though without a voice over people can form a better opinion on the topic than would’ve been possible had I been speaking and projecting my opinions on the topic to them since it wasn’t all based on facts. If someone is just watching the video and reading along, they themselves can give meaning to the video, but once there is someone speaking in the background and in a way projecting their opinions then meaning has already been given to the video. I also chose to put music in the background, I felt that adding in music tied everything together and made it more of a video than the slideshow it was before I added it in.
Remaking this has really changed my paper, the paper was based more on facts and on my own personal experience but this was much broader and just included pictures and videos. So that anyone watching could relate to it and understand without needing someone to explain it to them or having to read about what they are watching.
In redoing this I’ve realized it’s different from my paper because it doesn’t include any of my experiences or those that I wrote about in my paper. I think that I have gained an easier way to explain what my paper was really about and make it easily understood by whoever decides to watch it. I think my remix is an appeal to pathos more than it is to logos, it’s meant to engage viewers through images and words but not really through hard facts which is how I think it differs the most from my paper.
My argument was that education is always changing and learning happens outside of school, in the video as an example of learning outside of school I used traveling and trips to make my point. I start off by explaining what exactly informal and formal education is and from there I make points on how as times have changed, so have the ways that education is presented and learning is done. I try to make the point that there are many things that are learned in school and that teachers play a large role in our lives. I also make a point of showing that there are many things that are learned outside of school in a setting other than that of a classroom that are important to the development of well rounded individuals. Different learning methods and modes can give a person more options to help them find out which way is best for them to aid them in becoming and doing the best that they can in all that they do.
One of the biggest challenges I had was figuring out what exactly to do and how to do it, I at first was just going to make an animated video presentation that was mainly centered around statistics but then I realized who I wanted my target audience to be and decided that I should make it simpler. I’m not sure if my argument and point were too strong so I think that is something that I would like to continue to work on.
My main concerns at this point regarding this are: Should I add in statistics and facts or should I keep it the way it is? Is there anything else I should add or clarify?
Link to Video: https://youtu.be/tLfPjP5k4_E