WebAssignments712 – Assignment Bank

Social Media during the Russian Revolution?!

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I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I particularly love Russian history. My interest started when I was a wee little thing and first saw the movie from Fox Animation called Anastasia.

MAGICAL. (credit linked in .gif)

Of course, I didn’t know the true, tragic story of the Romanov family at this young age, but when I was old enough to handle such details, I was addicted to finding out all I could about this Russian grand duchess.

I’ve spent years studying this family and followed the mystery faithfully. I’ve cried many tears for their lost lives and the suffering of the Russian people as a whole during this turbulent time.

If I had to choose, this final years of Imperialist Russia would probably be my favorite period of history to study. I knew I wanted to create a social media post based on one of the people during this era.

Writing as a member of the imperial family or a Bolshevik just seemed too sad, so I decided to focus on one of the points that lead to the Revolution’s crescendo: the murder of the monk Grigory Rasputin.

Long story short, the monk–despite his drunkenness and habit of sleeping with and beating prostitutes–was considered a mystical, holy man by the Tsarina or Empress of Russia. She believed that he could heal her son, the Tsarevich or Crown Prince Alexei, when he had bouts of pain and near death experiences from his hemophilia.

Rasputin’s visits did help ease the Tsarevich’s pain, but his influence over the Empress (he often gave her advice–which she followed–on handling governmental dealings and decisions) and general nasty appearance and demeanor struck a sour chord with the Imperial Court.

The Prince Felix Yusupov lured Rasputin to his home one evening on the pretense of dinner and then killed him with a friend’s help. The monk survived poisoned food and gunshots to the chest, only finally dying after they dumped his body in the Neva River and he drowned–not even kidding. How creepy/eerie is that?

The death caused an uproar within the Imperial family. Prince Yusupov was exiled and the Tsarina was distraught. The family arguably never recovered from the dramatic consequences of the murder.

Now that you have a bit of history, take a look at my tweet:

Not such good company after all, huh?

I tried to use the Twister app provided by Alan, but the picture the generator spewed out for Prince Felix here was blurry and unattractive. I wanted to make a new, clearer tweet, so I used a different site that allowed me to upload my own pictures, screenshot the result, and then did some further editing in GIMP.

I hope you learned a bit about Imperialist Russia, and I hope all of your future dinner experiences are far more pleasant than Rasputin’s and Prince Felix’s!

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Fake Facebook

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See the whole profile here:

LINK

For this assignment I made a fake Facebook and Tweet for George Washington. I thought it was kind of funny because I go to Mary Washington.

This assignment was so fun! I used a program called Classroom tools and created both fake social media pages. I used a quote I found about his mother, Mary Washington for his post and an encouraging note to the Red Coats as a tweet. George is most associated with independence after the Revolutionary war.

It so interesting to sit down and think about the revolution social media. We think of it as second nature but to people in the past it is a foreign/non-existent tool.

I think that if George Washington was alive today he would not have used Twitter or Facebook to often but he would use it to occasional talk about the war. It was such a significant part of his life and lead to his presidency. He would probably tweet out information and encouragements to keep moving toward independence.

Media relations have revolved around social media. It would be interesting to go back and time and see what the figure heads of our past would tweet.

Assignment worth:

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If Columbus Had Social Media

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I attempted the What They Might Have Done in Social Media (3 stars) Web Assignment. The assignment was to make fake social network accounts for a historical figure.

I made a Facebook account and Twitter posting for Christopher Columbus. His Facebook account outlines his struggle of finding funding for his expedition to North America. His family and friends section contains his wife, kids, and sponsors of his voyages. There’s even a nod to his problems in home life. He posts about the birth of his second son, however that son was born out of wedlock. His wife then furiously comments on the post. His cover photo reflects his love of his three ships he originally left on the trip with.

You can see the Facebook Account here.

The twitter post describes him bragging about the fact that he made it to what he thought was the West Indies. He makes a nod to the fact that he was denied so many times before he was ok’d for the voyage.

If he had access to social media it definitely would have been easier to spread the word about him discovering the new world. For that matter maybe if the natives had access as well he wouldn’t have made the mistake of wrongly assuming where he was. He also would be able to live tweet during the long trip to pass the time.

To make them I used Fakebook and Twister to create fake accounts. From there I just inputted information I researched about Christopher Columbus and added pictures as relevant.

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What Benjamin Franklin Would Have Said on Social Media- 3 Stars

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For this assignment, we had create fake social media accounts for a historical figure. The process to create this was pretty simple and fun. For the Fakebook, I posted my historical figure’s bio, about his family, and date of birth. I also posted a profile picture and and a cover picture behind the profile picture. The Twister Tool was very simple as well. All I had to do was be a little creative with his “handle” and the tweet he would tweet out to his followers. I wanted the posts to be funny and clever and I hope I accomplished that.

It took me awhile to think of an historical figure, I decided to go with Benjamin Franklin. There is no particular reason why I chose him, I just thought he did so many great things in his life, and it would be easy to post them on social media. I also thought that his major life events would be easy to tweet out but also have a funny twist to them as well.

Benjamin’s Franklin Fakebook:

Benjamin’s Franklin Twister:

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Facebook and Twitter for… JFK!

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Original Assignment (3 Stars)

For this assignment, I chose the historical figure of our 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. Turns out, JFK seemed pretty hip to the social media scene back in the 1960’s.

While creating the Fakebook page, I utilized wikipedia and other online pages to gather all the information I thought was acceptable, ranging from his siblings, when and where he was born, to his coworkers and significant figures during his presidency. Kennedy had a significant amount of siblings, and I was surprised by the number actually. Most of the pictures were automatic when I typed them in into the Friend’s block, while I had to change some of them because of the inaccuracy of the given photo. I had trouble uploading a cover photo for Kennedy, as it would glitch out the page and would lag/freeze it as well. Here is what the page looks like:

Link to JFK’s Fakebook Page

The Twister page was very easy, as typing in “JFK” gave me his profile pic and a background image as well. Oddly enough, typing in “John F. Kennedy” into that space didn’t give me anything at all, which was strange to me. For his first tweet, I simply chose his arguably most famous tweet, from his 1961 Presidential Inaugural Address.

I think social media for JFK during his time would’ve been very active, given the circumstances he had to be involved in, highlighted by the high tensions of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Situations like Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race, and others would definitely have JFK tweeting and posting like crazy.

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“What They Might Have Done In Social Media”: Genghis Khan’s Twitter Feed

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For the Web Assignment What They Might Have Done In Social Media, I chose to create a hypothetical Twitter Page for the 13th Century Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan has always been a fascinating historical figure to me due to the sheer vastness of his empire, as well as the fact that he is still one of the most well known historical figures of all time. These reasons made me eager to create a Twitter page for Genghis Khan.

I decided that the best way to create Genghis Khan’s Twitter page would be to use an already existing celebrity page and modify it. I choose to modify the Twitter page of famous actor Leonardo DiCaprio, as it had the exact layout I was looking for:

Now that I had this template, I began using the X-ray Goggles to modify the page. I focused on editing 5 main parts of the Twitter Page:

The profile picture and banner,

The short bio,

The pictures and videos section,

The Twitter feed itself,

And the “Who to Follow” section.

I chose to omit the “Trends” section as my edits via X-Ray Goggles would continue to change, likely because the “Trends” section updates and changes each time the page is refreshed, erasing my edits.

Even with the X-ray Goggles, editing this Twitter page took a significant amount of time as I had to look up various facts and pictures to use. Actually using the X-ray app in and of itself however was a breeze, as all that was required to change photos and text is simple cut and paste. After all my edits were completed, Genghis Khan’s Twitter page looked like this:

I choose to add a mild amount of uncharacteristic humor to the Twitter page, having Genghis use phrases like “yolo swag”, as well as make jokes about invading ancient China. I also included as much accurate historical information as possible, with a few Easter eggs thrown in. The end result is essentially a parody-like Twitter page for the Mongolian conqueror.

This Web Assignment was worth:

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What They Might Have Done In Social Media

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Original Assignment (3 stars)

The historical figure I chose was none other than the mafia boss known as, Al Capone. Who would have ever thought that mafia guys would interact with each other through social media? That would not be so smart, considering the dirt they do on a daily basis. I would imagine they would just speak in code.

Before making the Fakebook page, I went to wikipedia to gather some info such as day of birth, hometown, and names of some of his associates. It was crazy to see how many siblings he had, especially bothers. I found the profile pic on google images and then added some of his brothers and known associates on his friends list. The header gave me some issues when trying to upload an image. I tried countless times to get it to work, but it would just freeze up every time.

Fakebook url

The twister page was pretty simple to make. I just typed in his name for the user name and it automatically assigned me the profile/background images. Before generating my first tweet, I did some more digging online to find out if there were any common phrases that Mr. Capone was known for. Luckily, I stumbled upon a couple, and used one for the tweet. I wonder if todays mafia use social networks to interact. Hmmm……

Twister url

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What They Might Have Done In Social Media

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This assignment was three stars. It seemed like it would be fun but it turned out to be quite a hassle. I created a profile for Theodore Roosevelt because he is a historical figure I have always admired. I found pictures and the information for his profile online and then put it all together. […]

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The game’s done gone and changed y’all…or has it?

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Well hello again! I hope everyone’s week three ended well. This was a whirlwind week for me, with tons of assignments in all of my classes. But I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to talk about The Wire and digital storytelling, so let’s get into it.

I guess I should start with the Kurt Vonnegut and Bryan Alexander pieces. First the Kurt Vonnegut clip was not only a fresh take on looking at a story, but it was also hilarious! Being a physics major, I have a certain appreciation (although sometimes certain level of apprehension) for graphs. I have never thought to look at the progression of a story graphically. When taking this approach, most stories really can be lumped into several categories, each having similar “curves” as Vonnegut calls them.

On to the assignments!!!

Season 1, episode #13: Sentencing

I decided for this episode to use the “Triple Troll Quote” to sum up the season 1 finale. This quote and picture, in my opinion at least, sum up where the show is headed from here. What I mean by that is this: In this episode, we see McNulty and Bunk in the courtroom where Avon’s crew is being dismantled and sentenced to prison. On the surface it appears that the drug empire is on the ropes, but as the finale montage continues, we see the drug trade just as robust as ever, albeit controlled by some new blood. It appears at the episodes end that the drug game has not changed…just got more fierce. In addition, we see the return of Omar, up to his same old tricks, and just as charming as possible. The reason I attributed this to McNulty is that in this episode, McNulty has this aura of “what the hell did I do?” after the sentencing of Avon’s gang. He comes to realize that all of the work they did, all of the arrests that were made and the dealers taken off of the streets, not much has actually changed. The drug trafficking is just as prevalent and the body count is not going to drop drastically.

Season 2, Episode 1: Ebb Tide

For this episode, I used the “What They Might Have Done in Social Media” web assignment. This episode was a new start for several characters, but a new start is not always a good thing. McNulty is kicked to the one place he did not want to go: Marine Division. He is now a lowly officer, choking on diesel fumes and salt spray. I used FakeBook and the twister web app to crete fake profiles for McNulty, and had him tweet this from his new job on the force.

Season 2, Episode 3: Collateral Damage

For this assignment, I decided to try my hand at creating a design assignment. This was an assignment that we had discussed at one of our “ds106 Lunches”. I am a huge fan of the show “Community” and the moment Omar walked on screen in “The Wire”, I recognized him from the role shown above. Every time I see Omar in The Wire, I can’t help but compare him to the biology professor above. The actual GIF was created the same way as all of my others have been: I ripped the video from YouTube, processed it using StreamClip, and created the actual GIF in Gimp.

Daily Creates for the Week:

Again, I fell behind on daily creates this week. I only did two of the three. But I think the two I did are REALLY good. Or maybe I’m just pandering…so who knows.

On 9/10/14, I did the lune poem creation. I explained the reasoning behind this in the actual post here, but I’ll post the image again below.

On 9/12/14, I did the favorite mathematical expression assignment, which is explained further here!

Take care, and I’ll see you all next week!

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McNulty’s Tweet: F*** Rawls!!!

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I had posted this in my weekly posts, but I wanted this to be filed separately in the assignments category, you know, so it’s easier to find and all.