The Monopoly of the QWERTY Design
For this assignment, I chose to examine the birth of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard and the inability for other typewriter keyboarding systems to gain a share of the market. Prior to venturing into this topic, I opted to provide some history on the inception of the typewriter to provide context. Prior to starting this project, I thought I knew some history about this keyboard, but interestingly, what I knew was a myth.
Having many years experience in iMovie, I opted for the challenge of working with a new program, Camtasia. I have been curious about this software and had been planning to use it to create screen capture videos for my technology students. Seeing as I have been procrastinating on learning this software for over a year, I decided to figure it out. Learning a new software while completing this project in a timely manner was challenging. Thankfully, it operates similarly to iMovie, so my learning curve wasn’t too large. Challenge number 2 was discovering the software lacks the ability to add in credits at the end of the video (or at least I couldn’t locate this feature). I ended up dedicating a large portion of my time to this aspect of the video creation (for less than 30 seconds of air time).
I found this assignment challenging but very rewarding. I found the creative process of representing my words with images that capture the essence my words a fantastic experience in the “realization that language can have a visual as well as aural dimension” (Bolter, 2000).
PDF Script Document:
Link to YouTube Video:
References:
Bolter, J.D. (2000). Writing space: Computers, hypertext and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
Qwerty. [Photograph]. Retrieved from Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. http://quest.eb.com/search/115_2749898/1/115_2749898/cite