Metacognition: Mashup

    Although I have worked on projects like the Mashup before, this was the first time I dealt with connecting various works and sources on such a large scale. I didn't know how to approach it.

    There were two ways to approach the project that I saw. Either we could plan out the structure of the Mashup carefully, or we could use sources where they seemed to fit with the flow, and hope for inspiration. We tried a combination of these methods at various times; I still do not have an overall preference.

    I did note that when we took the time to plan out our mashup, we created up a greater meaning to the project, with more diverse aspects. However, this drained time. For instance, we spent at least three hours over the course of our project in order to finally decide what the theme and sub-theme would be. The pre-structuring of the Mashup also hampered our realization of new ways to address the theme.

    This is where the uncontrolled creation based method was useful. Becuase we didn't care about including poor sources in our list of potential materials, we compiled a variety of viewpoints , from foreign policy to philosophy to teenage angst. Most of these did not appear in the Mashup, but it allowed us enough elements to chose quality segments that fit into our blog.

    On the other hand, when I tried to just write my portion of the analysis paragraphs with this "go with it" method, the results weren't as useful. Although my paragraphs were finished quickly they were poor quality and I needed to edit them several times to get them to the right level. This probably would have been the best method if time was not an issue, but with the limited time frame of our Mashup my initial uncontrolled method lost valuable time on editing.

   As I learned from issues like this, the emphasis on time for this project really changed the dynamic of my work.At first I approached the project idealistically. Yes, in a perfect world, the best way to create a Mashup would be to let the ideas flow and then slowly refine them, in order to create a final project that is as insightful and authentic as possible.

    However the high school world of weird schedules, random fieldtrips, and the approaching end of the year is not perfect. Pragmatism needed to come into play and so we had to plan out our Mashup before we knew exactly what was going on , tweaking it along the way. Luckily we were able to find a balance.

   I naturally resented being forced to counteract  excitement and idealism with a measure of pragmatic realism, but from this current perspective I appreciate it. As great as grand plans, authenticity, and ideals can be, without molding them to reality they have no impact at all.