There is an article online written by Austin Kleon describing how to share your creations with the world. I think the best idea he had was the first one: You don’t have to be a genius.

This idea means that you don’t have to be experienced and you don’t need to follow in the footsteps of others. It’s all about knowing who you are and what you want to do. If you ever want to have your creativity noticed, then it needs to be your style that you’re using to make your creations. If you only copy others then people will just look to those creators instead of you. I believe that this is the most important idea because it’s the basis for becoming the creator you want to be.

I read two articles regarding copyright. The first one was about Huey Lewis and the Ghostbusters theme.

In 1983 Huey Lewis and the News released “I want a New Drug” and then in 1984 the Ghostbusters theme was released. After listening to both songs, it is pretty obvious how similar the songs sound. It doesn’t seem to me that it is a coincidence either because Columbia Pictures had asked Huey Lewis to make a song for Ghostbusters before the theme was made.

The second article I read was discussing if a tweet can be copyrighted or not. Unsurprisingly the answer was: it depends. While there is no clear line for what can be copyrighted and what can’t be I think there are situations in which tweets could be copyrightable material. Something like general statement as a tweet would not be able to be copyrighted but maybe something like a short poem or song lyrics that are tweeted out could be.

Copyright and patent laws are a big deal in the world today. Everything is a Remix explains everything about it. I believe that creators view copyright as a roadblock that they have to try and find a way around to be able to create their works. The opposite point of view is most likely held by large corporations or other creators that have people trying to build off of their creations. Copyright shuts down a lot of people’s ideas for creations. Some might see no way to bring their ideas to life because of copyright laws.

Things to consider when repurposing other’s work might include not using the same places, names or events that are in someone else’s work and avoiding taking material directly from the original work. A risky approach to adapting a work would be taking directly from the source material in a way that is clear to anyone consuming your work that you took it from there.

This semester I plan on drawing inspiration for my work from other works while staying far enough away from the other works so my work can’t be seen as copied.

So, first post on the Digital Literacy Blog. There was a lot to get done during week 1 from getting accounts setup to researching 80s culture.

For starters I got in contact with Dr. Genereaux to have a video conference using Zoom. It was nice being able to talk to him about this class especially since it is online. I thought that Zoom was a great tool to use for video conferencing.

After that I began setting up this blog, creating an avatar and creating several new social media accounts.

I created my avatar by uploading an image into Gravatar and cropping the image. I plan to use this avatar for all my social media accounts.

The social media accounts I created are:

1. Twitter: @gannon1980s
2. Flickr: gannon29
3. Soundcloud: gannon1
4. Youtube: gannon1 – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUbliFk7brAqvqdUaFafQFg
5. Vimeo: gannon1

The Hero’s Journey is a great concept for storytelling. One of my favorite movies that follows this concept is Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. The Star Wars movies are some of my favorites and I think they follow The Hero’s Journey quite well.

I think some of the best storytelling from the 80s is from movies that came out during that decade. Some of my favorites are Back to the Future, Ghostbusters and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I would suggest these movies to anyone interested in 80s media.

The 1980s had many important events happen during the decade. Among these the space shuttle Challenger exploding was a very tragic incident. On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff killing all 7 members of the crew on board. The cause of the accident was found to be something called an O-ring. The O-ring sealed one of the rocket boosters but there were issues with it working as intended because on the day the Challenger took off temperatures were below freezing. The Challenger incident is a very interesting topic to look into as it influenced many things about space travel after it happened.

Overall I’m excited for this semester and can’t wait to see what I will learn.