Author: ranyaaribi

Ranya Aribi

It’s done, I almost can’t believe it, it does not feel like we really spent over 15 weeks working on these projects. I am feeling a sense of relief right now, but also kind of sad that my sophomore year is over.

This project was so much fun to work on, even from the beginning when we were supposed to be doing ice skating. Me and my group have had to deal with a lot, including our change in topic so late into the semester, and I am really proud. We all stayed on top of everything, communicated the whole time, and made sure we were all doing what needed to be done.

If I had the chance to go back and change things, I would say that I would set up a more detailed clear and strict schedule, that is if everything was normal. My group did a great job the whole way, but I think if we would have had a schedule that we all really stuck to, we may have even been able to keep our original topic. But it is with completely no regret that we had to change it, because what we ended up putting together is honestly better than what I imagined for our ice skating project.

With all of that being said, I believe my performance throughout the whole semester was really good, along with all my team members, I made sure to stay on top of everything and help my group members do the same. I believe my group worked really well together, and we had no issues the whole semester. Everyone was respectful, not just of each other, byt of our time and of the project.

Overall, I really did enjoy this class and the concept of working collectively in a group for the whole semester, and I am proud of our work.

Ranya Aribi

We had our practice presentation this week. We all were actually prepared, we had set up deadlines to make sure everyone was done and ready before our presentation. We also made sure to stay in contact and communicate throughout our whole time, which I really think helped make sure we were all on the same page and ready. We also had our own zoom practice presentation right before our actual practice presentation. In that, we were able to go through each other’s pages and see what everyone had done and figure out what we were going to say and how we were going to set up our presentation. In our individual practice presentation we also helped each other fix little things the others may not have noticed.

For our practice presentation with Kaci, it actually went really well, and after we were all super relieved since we had to change our whole project we all thought it wasn’t going to be the best. But I knew we all put a lot of work into it, an we practiced beforehand, which like I said, really helped.

As for the suggestions, they were all really good and useful. The feedback we got was all simple and easy fixes. And for the most part, it was all things we had questions on anyway. We plan to change and add some more to the website before our final presentation, and that will be done with more communication between each other, and some possible communication with Kaci.

Ranya Aribi

This week was similar to last week. We had our weekly meeting with Kaci. We talked about our progress so far individually, and as a team.

Personally, I am having a lot of trouble with this. I recorded at first with my sister’s DSLR camera, but the shots did not come out clear like I wanted. And to top it off, my Macbook model did not come with a SD card slot. So I can’t put my images and videos on my laptop. So instead, I decided to record with an Iphone, which still had good camera quality. I had to redo all my shots, but they actually came out really good. I obviously did not have a specific microphone, so I used my airpods, which gave me closer, more clear sound quality. I edited as much as I could of those, and I am waiting for the rest of my teammates to have their content done so we can figure out how we can have it all come together.

For the team as a whole, we set up strict deadlines so we can ensure everyone will be done and ready for the practice presentation next week. And once everyone is completely done, we will give each person their responsibilities for the presentation.

Ranya Aribi

This week, most, if not all of my teammates finished capturing their media. We are all currently working on uploading it to our website. I think we are struggling to finish all of it. It seems like we are not all at the same place, which makes sense, but it is getting difficult to equally balance our work when we are not all doing it at the same pace, and that is due to a lot of reasons we can’t fully control.

We still have a large portion of our project that needs to be finished. Because honestly, it seems the only thing we have done is everyone’s individual media. The website design is not thoroughly concrete, the theme of our website is changed and “designed”, but the website needs a lot of work.

From my team, I want some more communication and a sense of schedule. I want us all to be on the same page with where we are at, and I also want equal help from each person. I think we had a really big challenge by having to change our whole project and website so late into the semester, but it just means we have to work harder to finish it. My group has also been very flexible with the change, so I do appreciate that, and I know we are all working with what we have, and to our best abilities.

For this week, I captured my own media, we started working on our logo for the website, and I am setting up the home page to set up a sense of similarity between all five of our activities.

Ranya Aribi

For our project, since we changed it and are essentially doing “individual” activities, we are each capturing our own media. For me personally, my older sister owns a DSLR camera, so I am thankful for that, as it has made capturing my media significantly easier.

My activity that I chose to do, I have already planned my media in advance, and that has, and will continue to, help me complete the media content efficiently. I planned to capture video content, pictures, and some voice overs. I am also planning on adding animations, which are taking some time to create, which has proved a little challenging.

Other than the animation and creation part, the content capturing is relatively easy. I have had to split it over a couple of days due to lighting, and time, and availability of my sister to help assist in recording and taking picture shots.

For our project as a team, we all finally finalized our activity ideas, and the weekly meeting with Kaci helped a lot for my other team members to get where they need to be. I have continued to assist my team members in ways they need help, and have kept up the communication through our group chat.

Ranya Aribi

For our website, we have brainstormed a lot of ideas we want to include in our website. Our goal is to make it as interactive and fun as possible, in the least complicated way. A lot of interactive websites seem to get carried away and can become complicated. I am hoping for a cute/eye appealing website as well, as I believe the look of the website is just, if not more important than the content. We have yet to think about how our website will look on mobile compared to desktop, but that is something we will definitely look into during this week.

After our meeting with Kaci, we decided to completely scratch the ice skating theme. Honestly, I wanted to do that from the day I found out about the shutdown. I knew it would become too complicated, and I sort of regret that we waited this long to officially decide to do it because now it means we essentially have four weeks to complete a fifteen week project, but I have hope. I am really counting on my teammates, and they are counting on me as well. As long as we support each other and keep each other accountable, I am confident we will get it done, and it will be done well.

In terms to my contribution to our project this week, we decided on changing the topic, so I gave everyone some time to decide on their individual project ,and starting tomorrow, we will be setting up a daily/weekly plan for each person to keep them on track to complete their media/part on time.

Ranya Aribi

So, weird week, and an even weirder blog. Everything is unclear at this point. I don’t know where I stand with my classes, even this one. Everything happened out of nowhere and very quickly. I am still shocked.

In terms of our project, it seems like a rollercoaster of a mess at the moment. We had planned to go ice skating the week of classes being cancelled, and that got cancelled right away as well.

The first thing I did when I found the news about classes being cancelled was going to our group group chat and trying to set up a time and plan as our whole project is based on doing an activity together. We tried to find a time, but that did not work out, as some members of our team told us they are travelling back home because of the situation. So that part is unclear.

We also tried to come up with a time to meet up with an application like zoom to try to mimic in person meetings. I really hope that is just as effective since we have no other choice.

I do have hope though, I don’t want the fact that we can’t meet in person to negatively affect our project. I am still determined to finish the project and semester off strong. I do think the weekly check ins with the instructor, as well as with each other are really going to help keep it going smoothly.

Ranya Aribi

This week, we had interactive storytelling website project presentations. I quickly have noticed a theme through all these interactive storytelling websites. They seem to really focus on animations, transitions, and sliding objects that move the background with them. While I really enjoy this type of website, it’s getting harder each week to say something new out of the presentations. This week though, I did really enjoy how one of the websites incorporated actual images taken by a camera, as this is the most similar to our projects. I did not notice any major problems with these websites, I just like to see more of a use of individually taken images and videos, because like I mentioned, it is the closest thing to our projects. I did however not like how some of the websites, I feel like the use of audio might have overshadowed the actual material of the website. Using audio can be tricky, and needs to be done in a way where there is no risk of it being too much for the website to handle.

If we are being honest, all the cool animations and movements these websites incorporate are a little too advanced for our skill sets, and as much as we would love our website to look like that, we can only do our best.

That being said, this week, we started a more realistic picture of what we want our website to look like. We are going to add the pizazz and fun into our website by using colorful colors, placement, interactive pieces (hover images, scrolling background changes, etc), and a fun environment.

Ranya Aribi

At this point in the semester, I think our project is finally starting to look like an actual project. We have already gone on one ice skating trip, and the next one is coming up soon. We have some media, and have planned the rest we want to get and how. The project is also finally established. The decision for what we are doing, and how we are going to make some repeated clips of us on ice interesting and creative. Other little projects are also going to be incorporated in our big one, which is very exciting.

We have also set up our website, and are currently planning how we want it to look. It was all just ideas in the beginning, but it is finally starting to come with actual work, and come together.

I think what we need to work on the most is having an exact plan for everything, rather than just throwing the idea out. For example, we have a slight idea for what we want our website to have in it, but we haven’t done much but set it up. I am a person that stresses a lot until I can see the actual results in front of me, but I know me and my team will get it all done and put it together really well. I also think this is one of my biggest challenges in group projects, I really like to have everything done in front of me and that is difficult when more than one person is working on something.

For this week, we are working on our preliminary content submission. And this particular assignment is a lot of work, so we have split our paper into different topics, and assigned each person a certain topic, depending on what they have worked on the most throughout our project. After everyone has incorporated work, we are going to work together to mend all the information into one well written, clear paper.

Ranya Aribi

For this weeks interactive project presentations, I thought they were all very good. I think the creativity and range of these websites really showed this week.

I did pick up some things I really liked and thought I could incorporate into my own project website. For example, a couple of the websites this week were animated, and I realized how much I liked the concept of animation. I think it would be super cute and creative to add some animation of each of my teammates ice skating as cartoons. I also really liked the concept of a website “map” that the viewer can click to guide them through the website as opposed to a more basic and common menu bar on the side or top of a website.

These week, in my team, we went on our first ice skating adventure. And we definitely had some challenges along the way. We decided to go after class on Tuesday, that was perfect, it worked in all our schedules, but, when we got there, we only had about an hour and fifteen to twenty minutes of public skating time, so we needed to get as much as we could done.

We spent a goof majority of the time trying to get the technology to work. We had so much trouble with the Ozmo, and the iphone mic, as well as we did not have the proper SD card size for the gopro. In the end, we decided to spend most of the time just getting media on the DSLR camera.

It was definitely not a waste of the trip though, we all got to practice our ice skating skills, and we planned exactly how the next time we go ice skating would be. We also went to the lab after skating and figured out how to work all the technology so that we are more prepared next time.