Interview with Professor MacGregor

I have chosen to share a rough edited version of this interview I had with Professor MacGregor because out of all the interviews I have done so far this one has been the most enjoyable. I imagine that is because it was very comfortable and was almost like having a conversation with someone who is just as interested in this topic as I am. Not only that but being a professor gives her a lot more credibility and it was interesting conducting that type of interview. Most of the other interviews I had were with students so what they said was mostly just to see what they thought about technology and what they had noticed on the SLU campus, however by talking to a Professor who has looked into this subject you get a different angle on the topic.

The original interview was about 20 minutes and I have just cut it down to over 4 minutes of some of the interesting information I thought Professor MacGregor touched upon. There is a lot more information that she talks about that I am not counting out, it is just for now I think what I have edited to is the most important thing to look at.

Just like my friend Sam, Professor MacGregor talks about how social networks are used as a way of representing ourselves. In part of the interview that I cut out she mentions how her class studied different social networks, like facebook, twitter, blogging, second life etc. and compared how the representation of the self was presented in these different social networks. However, after watching the interview a few times I realize that although she mentions what her class did she never explains any of the similarities or differences she and the class noticed among these different networks. This was my own fault because when interviewing her I should have asked her what she noticed, but unfortunately I didn't. However, I think this would be really important information so as the project progresses I may reach out to her again and see if she would be willing to elaborate more on that topic. Here is the short clip of her interview.



Another interesting thing that Professor MacGregor mentions are the experiments she and her students did with multitasking. I found this interesting because in the book I've been reading called, Rewired talks about the difference in generational multitasking. According to the book, "The New Generation and iGeneration preteens, teens, and young adults imagined doing more than six things simultaneously during their free time" (33). However, just like Professor MacGregor's research with SLU students, research has shown that "multitasking often leads to slower performance and increased errors" (76). Within the book there is a chart set up, which shows that Net-Gen and iGen multitask 73% of the time when they are talking face-to-face, 79% of the time when they are texting, 79% of the time when they are surfing the web, and 88% of the time when they are listening to music (82).

Overall this video is just a quick edit I have done and it just from the camera I set up as a mid shot and don't use to make close ups. While this camera stays on its tripod and rolls I have another camera in my hand that I use to zoom in on their hands and faces. When putting the project together I am going to inter cut between the two.

Also while editing this interview I tried to add music in the background but couldn't seem to be able to. I am glad I am figuring this out now than later so I can talk to Amy about what I did wrong and we can see how we can fix it.

Works Cited:

Rosen, Larry D. Rewired. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.