Shivani's SAS Blog

The top 3 insights I got from the last day of workshops were about the title, reflection and organization. Both the narratives we analyzed didn't have great titles, one didn't even have a title at all. Through the discussion, we realized how important having a good title was, because it would set up a little bit of context for the reader, it also shouldn't give the entire thing away. Next, while analyzing the narratives, we found that often the reflection was too blunt. Andrew, who did the animal encounter narrative, had to have a lot of reflection at the end based on the mentor text. However, quite a bit of it was too blunt, and this is a lot like my reflection too. I need to make my reflection fit with my narrative in a more subtle way, and have the reader infer some of it rather than downright telling them what I learned. Lastly, organization. In some narrative we read, the beginning wasn't really connected to the middle (crux) of the story, or the focus wasn't

The top 3 insights I got from workshop today was on characterization, redundancy, and the conclusion. While analyzing Maddie's narrative, she chose to characterize her friend more than her, so in the end, we knew more about her friend than her. It was important to follow the mentor to an extent, but she also needed to add details about herself to help the reader understand who the narrator is. Redundancy is something that could add emphasis to a narrative, but too much slows the reader down and doesn't create an efficiently paced narrative. In Da In's narrative, she told us she had chicken pox quite a few times on the first page, however we already knew this from the title, so it was unnecessary to add these many details. Lastly, it's important to end your narrative well enough so the reader doesn't have many lingering questions. Back to Maddie's narrative, I had many questions when I read her narrative, mainly because it ended so abruptly and didn't provide

The top three insights about writing I got from the workshop today were on imagery, character development and theme. Firstly, for imagery, we talked about how important it was to describe the setting using imagery, because it sets a visual picture in your reader's mind. In addition, imagery can also set the tone of your writing, because how you describe your setting could be indicative of your narrative's tone. Secondly, character development was talked about for both the narratives we workshoped in class. Especially if you are the main character and the narrator, it's important to choose your diction well. This is because how you talk about things can be attributed to your character's identity. For example, in Zeina's narrative, her as the child is the narrator. We talked about how you should try to imagine what a child would notice, especially when she (as a child) described her mother. We told Zeina to focus on colours and patterns instead of brand names because

     Retrofuturism is defined as "the practice of looking back to see how yesterday viewed the present." Also referred to as techno-archaeology, it's a process of looking back to find past miracles that never happened. An example of this is the cover page of the Byte Magazine:      This picture shows a tiny computer as a wrist watch, with the entire QWERTY keyboard and a small screen. This picture was created to make fun of future technology, because the editorial in the magazine pointed out this wasn't supposed to be a serious depiction. However, some people still believed this was the direction technology was heading in. Imagine having a keyboard so small it would fit on your watch... it raises questions about it's usability, because how is someone supposed to type when the keys are 1mm wide. In addition, the screen is also tiny, leading one to question what they thought people could do on that wrist-computer. One thing to point out is that smart watches

After my previous drawbacks and the terrible concrete object, I decided to do it again. This time, instead of trying to get the edges as straight as I could with plaster-board and balsa wood, I decided to 3D print an inverted mold to use. Lem and Mr. Williams taught me how to turn my sketchup model into a software file that could be sent to the 3D printer. I needed to turn my sketchup file into an stl file, and then use Cura (software) to turn it into a gcode file (which can be sent to the 3D printer). After doing all this, the printer printed out my mold and looked like this: The edges of this mold are much cleaner than what I made previously. I also inverted my design to create this mold, which is why the center triangle has been extended much higher than the rest. I then used plaster-board to create the same triangular prism I created before, and placed this 3D printed mold inside, facing upwards. This is a picture of my mold after I poured the concrete in and let it dry, bu