Journal 40

How will this RE/mix help you with your major and with your writing?
This assignment will help me further continue to learn the ins and outs of video editing, which is important for my degree. Companies are looking for journalists that can do more than just write these days. They want people who can go out and put together their own video sequences, in addition to other talents like designing and blogging. As for my writing, I will have to write a creative story for the movie, which I haven’t done in a while, so this assignment will hopefully help me brush up on those skills.

Questions/Concerns
By this point I have put together my fair share of videos, so I don’t expect much difficultly on the technological side of things. When it comes to writing a story and getting people to be in the movie, I can possibly see some challenges. Right now I don’t have much of an idea for the story, but with a little brainstorming, possibly with a few friends I should be able to put something decent together. Finding people to be in the movie won’t necessarily be that difficult as a few of my friends will probably be interested in helping out. Finding time when we can all get together will be a bit more of a challenge though, but not something that can’t be solved with some planning.

Journal 39

How will your new mode strongly illustrate your intended purpose?
Because of the way I hope to promote the software in the movie, I hope that my intended purpose will not be immediately obvious. This movie is going to bring open source software into the story in more of a product placement style. By doing it like this, it will not be immediately obvious to the viewer that I am specifically endorsing the applications and because of that they will hopefully be more compelled to look into the software more.

What specifically makes this new mode the most effective in representing your content?
The movie is the most effective way of representing the content because it not only informs the viewer about the benefits of using open source software, but also excites them. The software will be used in the story to solve problems very easily, thereby promoting it without actually saying “use this software” or something along those lines.

Journal 38

Materials Needed
Putting together “Open Source: The Movie” will require a few items. Most importantly I will need a camcorder, computer, editing software, some type of compelling story, and people to play roles in the movie. I will also of course need my article for information about the software I am going to be promoting in the movie. I have all of the hardware and info required to put this together, but as of now I do not have any story put together or people who can appear in the movie.

Key Questions

How will your new mode address your old and new audiences?
As stated above, my new mode will address my audience in a way that is cannot be achieved in a simple article. The movie I believe will not only interest college students, but get them excited about Open Source software because of the way it is portrayed in the movie.

Journal 37

Planning Guide:
Original Background
The assignment I have chosen as the subject of this RE/mix project is my first article. The article was about the benefits of Open Source software and it was aimed towards college students. The purpose for writing the original article was to inform college students on how easy-to-use and customizable Open Source software is in hopes to get them to use it instead of more expensive paid alternatives.

New Background
The new mode I hope to create for this topic is a engaging movie that promotes to software. I am planning on making more of a “epic” type movie, with a back story, possibly a spoof of a popular movie, that will promote the products without it being blatantly obvious. These types of movies are popular with my audience of college students and I feel will therefore be able to draw them in, keep their attention, all while promoting the topic.

Journal 36

The research paper is due tomorrow. As I am almost done now, I thought I should look back a reflect on what happened. I had a few problems with the paper throughout the process of creating it. The biggest hurtle was, well actually writing it. My procrastination almost prevailed again, by that I mean I basically didn't really get down to writing the actual paper until this week. I had kept up with all of the mini assignments that went along with the paper, but when it actually came down to writing it, I put it off a little. But I got it to a semi-finished state the other day and with the comment I got in class today I think I can finish this off pretty easily.

Journal 35

Abstract: The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the site of the worst nuclear disasters ever. The plant is located in the Ukraine and was in full operation up until the accident in 1986. The accident occurred because of an emergency black out experiment the plant was testing. During the experiment, partially because of human error, the reactor they were testing (reactor 4) became unstable and eventually built up enough steam to create two large explosions. The explosions not only caused the plant to catch on fire, but also released large amounts of radioactive debris. This debris had negative affects on the health of the people and the environment around the plant. It caused diseases, including cancer and contaminated large portions of land. Since then though there have been advancements in nuclear reactor design and safety and it’s not likely that another disaster like this will happen again.

Journal 34

Kouts, H. (1988). Safety of Nuclear Plants in the United States. Radiation Research, 113(2), 211-216.

After Chernobyl, the safety of nuclear power plants came under great scrutiny and with the US having the most nuclear power plants at the time it was only natural that people would wonder if the same thing could happen here. This article aimed to convince people that the power plants in the US were in fact safe. The Radiation Research Society published this article in Radiation Research and even though there are no references at the end, I believe the article is credible because of who published it. Though this article is rather old, I believe the information in it is still very useful, and I plan to use it when talking about how another nuclear disaster like Chernobyl is being prevented today.

Journal 33

Well the annotated bibliography was turned in last friday, but I still had two more sources, and I suppose they can still count as writing, okay enough validating this to myself...

Baverstock, K. & Williams, D. (2006). The Chernobyl Accident 20 Years on: An Assessment of the Health Consequences and the International Response. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(9), 1312-1317.

This article is basically split up into two different sections. In the first part, the author covers the health consequences of Chernobyl from Psychological problems to birth defects and various types of cancer. In the second part the author goes over how the world responded to the disaster and what we can learn from it. This source comes from a scholarly journal and has both an appendix and references at the end of it, so I believe that it is credible. This article has a lot of information about the common illnesses caused by the disaster, which will be helpful when writing. Also since it goes more into the international response than other articles, I will use it when I talk about that.

Journal 32

Ahearne, J. (1987). Nuclear Power After Chernobyl. Science, 236(4802), 673-679.

This article starts out by covering how the reactors in soviet nuclear plants work. From there it goes into the events leading up to the Chernobyl disaster. It ends off by talking about how the disaster affected not just the Soviet Union, but also the world. This document is credible to me because it comes from a scholarly journal and makes sure to reference the information used at the end. Since this article has a well-organized section about the events leading up to the disaster I will mostly be using it for that purpose, but also for how Chernobyl affected the United States.

Journal 31

Nuclear Energy Agency. (2002). Chernobyl: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts. Retrieved from http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/reports/2003/nea3508-chernobyl.pdf

This document focuses on the health impacts of the Chernobyl disaster. It goes through the release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere shortly after the explosion, the dose of radiation people attained, and how that caused various diseases. Also the document looks at the environmental effects of the disaster. This document is credible to me because it is coming from an agency specializing in nuclear energy and also because of its references page. I plan to use this document to talk about the health of people involved in the disaster and how the environment around Chernobyl was effected and forced to adapt.

Journal 30

Vainrub, E. (2006). Twenty Years After The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Retrieved from http://radefx.bcm.edu/chernobyl/english/Chernobyl20yrsOn-English.pdf

This article, much like the previous source listed, covers many aspects of the disaster. What differentiates is from the last source though is that it gives a lot of numbers and statistics, which I believe are a critical part of a research paper. This article is credible for many reasons, for starters it comes from an educational website (.edu), it was written by an expert in the field with a PhD, and finally as with any credible source, it lists references at the end. I plan to use this article mainly to get statistics and figures to support that will support some of the statements I will make in the paper.

Journal 29

Well it's time to start pulling some double duty with these journals. It's annotated bibliography time...

Nuclear Energy Institute. (1997). NEI Source Book (5th ed.). Retrieved from http://www.insc.anl.gov/neisb/neisb5/

This document is not specifically based upon Chernobyl, but nuclear power in the former Soviet Union in general. It is quite lengthy so I am focusing in mostly on what it has to say about nuclear energy in the Ukraine, where Chernobyl is located. The document basically covers every aspect of the Chernobyl disaster in addition to covering soviet reactor design with schematics. The reason I know that this is a credible source is because the document is coming from a government agency and also because the document has a list of resources and everyone involved in its creation. I am most likely going to be using this source a lot because of how complete it is, but also a lot when describing the design of the reactor and why it failed.

Journal 28

I just got out of my drawing class, and man I have to say, what a day this was. It may have started at about 1pm, but it was still long... Let me give you a brief rundown of what happened today. I woke up at around 12:30, about 3 hours later than I was planning. I got out of bed and sat on my futon and watched TV for about an hour until I could start making coherent thoughts, yeah it takes me a while to wake up. So then I did a little more researching for my paper and put together a brief outline of everything I want to hit in the paper. Next was your class, which actually wasn't bad. After you let us out I went back to my dorm and ate my first real meal of the day, I had had a poptart earlier, but that hardly counts as a meal. I then worked on my drawing homework which was due in 2 hours, yay procrastination! Then drawing class came, it's a 3 hour class, but today it seemed like eternity. Usually in the class I can look at a new concept and use it, but today I just couldn't grasp what we were doing. But it's all over now, all I need to do is finish up my Visual Representation for tomorrow.

Journal 26

So I feel really lazy right about now. I slept through yet another math class this morning, but this time it was an actual lecture at 8am. This is not good. Right about now I am thinking that I probably shouldn't have stayed up until about 2:30am with my suitemates. Yeah bad decision. But what am I going to do about it now, like they say what's done is done. Thank god the notes are online, and usually my professor goes over what he taught the day before briefly in the first 5 minutes of class. Anyway, moving on from that... I have been thinking of how I am going to start my paper. I am pretty sure I have found enough resources to at least start it, I still need more info on new safety imposed to prevent another explosion. I suppose I should make an outline of some sort to organize all the information I want to hit on, yeah that's what I'll do.

Journal 26

I woke up at 1:30pm today. This is a problem. Why you ask? I had a math class a 11:30. Now you see? I missed a class. This is something I have done, well never until now of course. It wasn't an actual math lecture so I really haven't missed out on much. It was a math recitation, which is basically like an hour long review session. I am kind of pissed though because for one I really don't like that class too much so I tend to drift off during lectures so the recitation usually helps. And two, if I were to attend 90% of the recitations then I would have gotten extra credit at the end of the year. But since missing one recitation equals less than 90%, I have no hope of getting any extra credit, which I could probably use.

Journal 25

So I have been doing a little more researching for my paper. For the most part it has been going pretty well. I have been finding mostly scholarly resources through the online resources through the MSU library. There are a few concerns though, many of the articles would probably be considered outdated. This is a problem because many of those articles I find very useful for explaining my topic of Chernobyl. I would think that since the accident happened all the way back in 1986 that resources from even around that time would be very useful, but obviously not current in some areas. I have also been searching through government sites as you suggested and I am finding a wealth of information there to, including pictures which will be helpful friday.

Journal 24

Okay so here is my part of the deal for canceling class. If you were wondering, the Obama rally was awesome. I didn't actually get into the rally to see him though because I was busy working on Spartan TV, which actually may have been more exciting to me than actually getting into the rally to see Obama. If you didn't know, Spartan TV is the internet television station started by a few people from Focal Point, the broadcast news program for Michigan state. The station is done through a site called Mogulus.com and is on 24/7, though most of it right now comes from a few hours of programming that we have looped over and over. So I have noticed that this day is too long to just talk about in one journal entry to for the rest read Monday's entry, yeah I know, procrastination at its finest, but to be honest I couldn't think of what to write on Monday so I kind of put it off for a little bit.

Journal 23

Today was the first taping of Focal Point. If you didn't know, Focal Point in the broadcast news program that is put out every two weeks. If you read my journal entry from last Wednesday then you already know all about the practice taping that I went through. I went got to the studio a few minutes before 6pm, I didn't have to help set up like last time and come in at 5pm. When I got there I was kind of worried because I still wasn't totally certain on what I would be doing, and from what they told me the taping would start right around 6pm, but as it turns out, boy was I wrong. I think we actually started taping at around 8pm and finally finished at 9pm, even though it should have only taken about half an hour because we record shows live to tape which means we treat it as a live performance, but as you know we're only human and this is the first time we are all doing this together so there are bound to be screw-ups. So to end this off quickly the taping went pretty well and I got everything that I had questions about answered before the show started so it ended up going well for me and I am excited for the next show in two weeks.