The real final assignment...LOL

I was wrong about the last assignment entry being the last one.  I think it safe to say that since this is the last week of the class that this will truly be the last assignment.

Here is the assignment:

Summarize your reactions to the other group projects. How do they compare with what your group has produced? Do they seem to have the same idea of their audience? Do they incorporate the same level of audience choice or control? How do the multimedia aspects compare? Explain.

Did other groups seem to have some good advice for your group? Explain.

Here is a breakdown of the projects

Projects:   

Evenings-English concentrations

Afternoon-RPG game with vulgar language

Weekend Team A-Info tree

Dupuis Robertson-childhood dropouts

Henry and Potampa-children’s literature

Weekend Team B-Using Facebook for school

Wednesday-children’s literacy

Tuesday/Thursday-Multimedia options

Our Evening group produced a website that focuses on the individual concentrations within the English Department.  It is an interactive website that allows the end user to make choices and navigate the site in their own way.  The Afternoon team created a RPG game that I had trouble with.  It has some vulgarities in it that really don’t seem to be appropriate for the English Department’s website or any University website for that matter.  A game that is to be included on the English Department’s website that included vulgar language, that one team member admittedly said her boyfriend put in the game is insulting to the department and the school in my opinion.  It just sends the wrong message for the college.  Weekend Team A created a presentation that was quaint with its “tree of knowledge” as I call it.  You can go to a different branch and click to get more information about the topics.  Dupuis Robertson did a really nice presentation about children who have dropped out of high school.  I liked that it didn’t just give facts and figures about high school drop outs but that it included short videos about the children individually and included links to a website that can show you how to help the problem.  Henry and Potampa did a wonderful presentation on children’s literature and the way that it has changed over the decades.  I loved the inclusion of the popular book titles for each decade.  I not only remembered the books that my children read as well as some that I read as a child.  Weekend Team B created a presentation about using Facebook and social media for school work, study groups, and other uses.  In today’s age and the social media savvy of students, this is a great tool.  Wednesday’s group also used a tree idea to address literacy in the United States and ways in which to build good “roots” in reading for children.  Finally, the Tuesday/Thursday group created a presentation that shows the alternative multimedia options to use for school presentations other than Power Point.  There were several in this list that I knew nothing about.

I don’t believe that all the groups had the same idea of who the audience would be.  I think Weekend Team B and the Tuesday/Thursday group had the same audience in mind that our team did.  They seemed to be as focused as we were on the serious college student.  I don’t think that the incorporate the same amount of audience choice that our team did.  Our project was a truly interactive site, it required quite a bit of thinking and decision making to move through the website.  I also think that the multimedia incorporated in our project is eye catching and appealing to the user.  I do feel that good advice was given in the many suggestions of changing the name as I didn’t get the “What to expect when you’re expecting….English” either.  

Reflections on Final Project

Here is what I believe to be the final assignment for my English class.  I debated on filling in fluff or being honest.  I chose being honest.  Let's hope it doesn't reflect poorly on my grade!

Reflect upon your final project. In what ways is it exceeding your expectations? In what ways falling short? What turned out to be helpful resources? In what ways has your understanding of your audience changed since the beginning of the semester? In what ways has your understanding of the material your project covers changed? Explain.

Our final project is a website.  I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it has exceeded my expectations because I understood this class to be about “Finding my e-voice”, learning how to write online, not about creating websites, html coding, and the like.  I am trying to be positive about this but I’m feeling very overwhelmed that I don’t know enough about programming and such that I feel like I am falling short in this.  I can’t really tell if the project is falling short because first, I don’t know enough about programming to be able to say and second, I feel like my team mates are almost dismissing me because of it.  An example of this is that I submitted my part of the project on a Word document; I got an email asking me to convert it in such a way to make it easier to put in the website format.  I was honest with them that I had no idea how to do that.  I haven’t heard anything back from them yet. 

I found the English department website to be quite helpful.  It is somewhat difficult to find everything but with enough looking, the information is there.

My understanding of audience has changed a great deal since the beginning of the semester.  I have now learned that I can change the way that I write based on the audience that will be reading it.  It’s not all about academic writing. 

The material for our project was the concentrations offered at IUPUI within the English Department.  When I first transferred to IUPUI, I didn’t even realize there were so many concentrations within the English department.  I learned that although quite different, they have the same basics.  An English major at IUPUI offers so many ways to use an English degree depending on which concentration you want to follow.

Voice Assignment

Here is another one of those assignments! 

Here's the assignment:

Considering your SL avatar, your blog, your wiki entries and the work you’ve done with your group project, do there seem to be aspects of your personality that are emerging as constants within your digital communications? Explain. Are you incorporating new elements into this emerging voice? If so, what?

Here's my answer:

In considering my blog, wiki entries, discussion boards and the group project work that I have done so far, I think there are definitely aspects of my personality that always come through.  I am keeping things simple and clean.  I find it odd that I can be long winded, so to speak, but it is still a simple message.  I am finding that I am enjoying writing on my blog the most.  I feel that more of my personality comes out there than anywhere else.  I can write about the things that I am passionate about, even though what I do isn’t necessarily what is in vogue today.  I feel that the blog lets me be me.  I do think I am incorporating new elements in this new and emerging voice online, for me, most notably the use of contractions.  I still can’t quite get over the fact that I have turned in college work with contractions in them!  I am also working very intently towards becoming more relaxed in my writing.  

Group Voice

Here is another one of my class assignments.  Just a bit of info, we are working on interactive presentations to be included on the English Department's website that covers the concentrations within the department, their requirements and why someone would chose the concentration.

Do you feel that your voice is being adequately represented in your group project? In what ways? Are there ways in which you feel your voice is being overlooked or is missing? Explain. How do you feel you might best assert that voice, or do you think your “voice” is incompatible with your group project? Explain.

I do feel that my voice is being represented so far in our group project.  We are doing our project on the concentrations within the English Department with each us taking one of them and one of us taking the introduction.  Although my major is Writing and Literacy, I was given Literature.  That’s ok, it’s giving me the chance to explore that concentration a little bit which I wouldn’t have otherwise done.  I enjoy reading but I dislike English literature which I am totally blaming on having to read Beowulf in high school…LOL.  As to my voice being overlooked, I am feeling a bit of that.  In all fairness, I missed the first chat session as I was dealing with a bad Ethernet card here but I read the chats and the information on the Wiki page and felt good about what was expected of me.  When we got into the chat this week, there was quite a bit of bickering between some about things that I thought had been addressed last week.  Half the members were involved in it and the other half were asking questions and I, for one, had asked questions that were just lost in the bickering.  I resorted to sending an email to the members during the chat.  This at least got my questions acknowledged.  I don’t think my voice is incompatible at all.  I think it is a large project and there was a little confusion but I just think that good, bad or ugly, you can’t second guess each decision each time we get together as a group.  Once a decision is made on the scope of the project, we need to work with it and move forward.  I think, in time, it will all work out.  

Online games

Here is another one of my assignments!  A little bit of explanation is in order. In this class, I was exposed to the game Second Life.  It is an interactive game that puts the player in an alternate reality type of thing.  I guess World of Warcraft is another game of this type.  I don't generally play these types of games so I'm very uneducated when it comes to them.  The chapter we had to read described a little about these types of games.  That said, here is the assignment and my response...

Have you played any games like what is described in this chapter? What types do you prefer? Why? What kinds of choices and controls were you offered as a player? How did these affect your experience? Explain.

The only game like those described in the chapter that I have ever played is the short time I spent in Second Life that was required at the beginning of this course.  I am not a fan of these types of games.  The games I have played online are more types of thinking games like “Words with Friends” or “Candy Crush”, I’m not the virtual world kind of person.  For “Words with Friends”, I have the choice of what word I want to spell out based on what letters I have and what words have already been played.  It’s pretty simple.  It makes me think and expand my vocabulary.  It also challenges me when I play against my friends to find the best words for the most points.

Story

Here is another assignment.  I will include the instructions for the assignment so as to not confuse the reader.  Or at least to try not to confuse!

Tell a story about something that happened to you recently. Notice how you use the elements you’re reading about … character development, sequence of events, pace, conflict, point of view, resolution, etc. How does your use of these items affect the story?

My neighbor, Pete, stopped by the other day to talk about the jam and jellies I make.  At Christmas time, I had made gift baskets for my neighbors that included some of my jams and jellies among other things.  He bought a few more jars of some of the ones they liked best, the Triple Berry being their favorite.  Pete is a “City Boy” and went on and on about the fact that there are still people out there who make homemade jams.  He was quite animated, talking with his hands as well, in asking about how I make jam and if I can make specialty jams.  I told him I am always willing to try new things.  He’d told me a story about some cherry-jalapeno jam that his mother-in-law had bought for him and his wife.  He said although they like it well enough, they weren’t fans of cherry.  Pete and his wife Andi wanted me to make them a Triple-berry Jalapeno jam.   I told him I’d give it a shot.

The following week, I had some time so I thought I’d work on this recipe.  I picked up some jalapeno peppers at the grocery.  I had berries in the freezer.  I had already researched various jams and jellies with jalapenos in them.  I was a little nervous because I wasn’t finding any recipes with a mix of berries in them so I was totally winging this.  I made a small batch of the jam, processed it in the jars and waited. 

I am not a fan of jalapenos in general but I don’t like to share any of my products without knowing what they taste like.  When I had finally worked up the nerve to taste it, I was surprised that the jam had a little bit of a bite but not too much.  The spice wasn’t overpowering.  Even when we eat at a Mexican restaurant, I appreciate spice as long as it isn’t made so hot just for the sake of being hot.  The jam was an interesting flavor, you could pick up the spice and the berry flavors and I think they mixed nicely.

When I took a sample jar to Pete, he immediately opened it and grabbed a spoon.  In between bites, he’s excitedly telling me how good it is.  I told him I wasn’t sure on the spice level and needed his opinion before I made more.  He tells me that “It’s great for regular people but, we’re from Arizona and we’d love to see more heat in it!”  At which time, his wife steps in and just looked at him.  Between bites, he says “Hi, honey, do you want a taste?”  Andi replied “you could make some biscuits or toast or something”.  Pete just said “It’s great from the spoon!” as they both laughed.  In this short conversation, Pete has eaten half the jar of jam.

It’s fulfilling to see something appreciated that I made.  To them, it’s just a jar of jam.  To me, it’s my creation.  And I truly love sharing that with people!

In thinking about how the items we are learning about affect the story, if I hadn’t set up the character in who was Pete, the story would be confusing.  Without the sequence of events, such as mentioning giving the gift baskets at Christmas, Pete coming back for more jam wouldn’t have made sense.  I think that conflict (he wanted Triple-berry jalapeno jam) and resolution (he got Triple-berry jalapeno jam) were both handled in a way that kept the story from bogging down.

Communication

Once again, here is another one of my assignments.  We are beginning a group project and today the professor is asking us to discuss communication.  Here is the assignment and response.

How is communication working out with your group? What tools have you tried using to facilitate communication? What has worked especially well? Explain. What hasn't worked as well? Why not? What might you be able to do to help your group communicate more effectively, or what are you and your group members doing that seems to be producing successful communication?

It has only been a week, but so far, we appear to be struggling with communication.  It might be because we are just starting this phase of the project and part might be because Spring Break starts tomorrow.  It might also be that we have not yet narrowed down where it is best to communicate.  “K” (again, I don’t feel comfy posting names without permission) and I have posted in the Evening group’s page in the Wiki section but haven’t gotten any response yet.  I think I will send a message to everyone in the group in both Oncourse and through the campus email as well.  I think we need to come to a consensus on where we will be meeting most of the time.   I like the idea of the Wiki Evening group’s page for general information as it is something that we can post and check into as we have time.  We can also use an Oncourse chat or Skype when we all need to meet at set times.  I think it would be important to have someone assigned to post the results of those meetings in chat or Skype to the Wiki group page so that we have something to reference back too.  I think this would eliminate confusion and help if someone is unable to attend the, for lack of a better term, “face to face” cyber meeting.

Project Team Members

Here is another one of my class assignments.  To make things a bit less confusing, we are beginning work on a group project.  It is up to us to decide what it will be about but it will be posted on the English Department’s webpage on the IUPUI campus website.

Take another look at the "Project Two Teams" wiki page, as it should now list the three groups for the final project. Reread your team members' skills and knowledge text. What do you notice about your team members? What strengths do you see on your team? How will that work with what you perceive as your strengths? How will it offset your perceived weaknesses? Explain.

TEAM MEMBERS

• K
• J
• T
• D
• R

TEAM SKILLS

K.  / Writing, Organizing, Design (Depending on medium), Willing to learn new things / Nights M-R (After 8pm.), Friday's (Noon-5p, usually). Can access campus if needed, but prefer online. Can be flexible.

J.  / Photo, video, and audio editing, writing / online (not SL) evening/night (after 9 is best)

T.  / Writing, Organizing / Monday and Wednesday after 4, online or on campus

D.  /writing/online not SL/Wednesday, most evenings, Sunday

R.  / Writing, Organizing / online

Since I am required to discuss my classmates for this blog assignment and I don’t think it fair to list their names without permission, I will refer to them by their first initial only.

The biggest think I noticed about our team is that all of us listed our strong suit as writing.  Most of the team also lists organization as well.  I am also one who considers myself to have strong writing skills.  I think that if we decide to go with a project that is heavy on writing, all of us having writing as a strong suit will allow us to break the project down so none of us are overwhelmed. 

I’ll be the first to admit that the online skills required to create a multi-media project of this size is my major weakness.  Anything beyond creating a Power Point presentation will be new to me.  Seeing that we have a couple of people on the team who do list strong skills in photo, video and audio editing and additional design work will be very helpful to offset those skills that I lack.  I think this will come into play in how we divide up the work.  We, as a group, have enough diverse skills that we should be able to create any project we decide on.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Peer Review Process

Here is another one of my assignments.  The paper I wrote was about the creation of this blog!

Reflect upon the peer review process for project one.  Did you get some helpful feedback? Is there anything you could have done to improve the quality and helpfulness of the feedback you received? (Ask leading questions, post earlier in the week, etc.) Can you think of a question you would like to have added to the peer review questions? If so, what? When reading your peers’ work, did you gain a new understanding of the assignment of its value? Explain. Did reading your peers’ work help you with your revision? In what way/s?

Submitting my paper for the peer review process was rather intimidating.  I mean, I have written papers before, many times.  Those were more formal, traditional research type papers and they weren’t submitted to my peers, only to my professors.  I read and re-read my paper for a couple of days before I finally bit the bullet and hit “submit”.

I got some positive feedback on the creation of my blog and how it represents me.  I also got some feedback questioning how this relates to me and my life.  In reading over my paper for yet another time, I feel that it does adequately represent the fact that I live a clean and simple life. 

I’m not sure that there was anything I could have done to improve the quality and helpfulness of the feedback I received because I did post earlier in the week but only had two of my fellow students review my paper. 

I think the questions were thorough and covered the aspects of the assignment. 

In reading my peer’s papers, I noticed that some of them created avatars that were almost exact replicas of themselves, some who created a fantasy version of themselves and some who started with a fantasy version of themselves and later changed it to be a more accurate version of their true selves.  It was interesting to read their reasoning for each of their choices.  I am of the thinking that I need to have mine be a true and accurate representation of me.

I don’t think reading my peers work caused me to change my paper in any way because I created something that truly represents me. 

Media Writing

My experience with writing for media is somewhat limited.  I have created Power Points for prior college classes.  In writing for things like a Power Point presentation, one must recognize that information has to be clear and concise.  This requires that the information presented doesn't include any frivolous or unnecessary text.  The information must be to the point and not include jargon or other technical terms unless the audiences you are presenting to are in the profession that would generally use this jargon or technical terms.  I find this very different from the types of academic writing that I have experience with.  In academic writing you have to be much more thorough in your text.  Just as you must be clear in writing in the academic area, you have to be very clear in other media, most often with far fewer words.  For me, my strengths are being able to focus my words on my topic, which will help me to work towards those clear and concise bits of information.   I can also be said that my strength is also my obstacle.  I tend to want to be too thorough in my writings, wanting to leave the reader with very few, if any, questions.  I will need to be cognizant of that and work to be concise in writing for other media.

Links & icons

Here's another one of my assignments!

In your reading, Gerrand quotes David Riordan as saying, "Infinite choice equals a database.  Just because you can make a choice doesn't mean it's an interesting one."  Think about this quote and its implications for multimedia and writing.  What are the implications for you as a writer?  Explain.

As I think about the quote by David Riordan, “Infinite choice equals a database.  Just because you can make a choice doesn’t mean it’s an interesting one.” It makes me think about some of the websites I have been on in the past.  I think of this like just because you can make a clickable link or icon doesn’t mean you should make a clickable link or icon.  Would I love my blog to be like some other blogs I have seen with all these icons and links to click on?  Sure, I would.  But at this point in my blog, I don’t have enough going yet to warrant all those clickable links.  They would in essence be links to one item.  That would not be an interesting choice and would in fact be annoying to my readers.  It would just be easier to simply write out the information to begin with.  I think that once you get enough varying information that a database would make sense in keeping the information organized and easily accessible for the reader is the time that one should look into icons and clickable links.  When there are interesting choices to make.

Experiences in creating a blog

Here is another one of those assignments.  I didn't dream that starting a blog would be such an adventure!  LOL

February 2, 2013

Setting up this blog was as much of an experience as actually writing on it.  What did I find challenging?  Pretty much the entire process!  I read all the suggested items our instructor linked on our class page so I had a pretty good idea what each part of the blog was and what to include for the class.  I just had to figure out how to get mine going.  A friend suggested a template and my teenage daughter showed me a “Googled” list of suggested sites with free templates.  That wasn’t overwhelming AT ALL!  I spent HOURS checking out site after site after site.  I finally found one I thought would be great and hit the download button.  When I tried to open it and actually create the blog, I ran into even more problems.  It was time to admit I needed help.  A dear friend came to my rescue, showed me that I had chosen a bad template that had a problem in its ‘coding’.  I’m sure that my deer-in-the-headlights look assured her that it was okay to tell me I should abandon what I’d spent hours finding and go to the blog site and use one of their templates.  Why didn't I remember that suggestions from a teenage girl are never simple?  At this point, we were able to get a simple and clean template set up and got the blog up.  I really have to thank Lety of Real Simple Solutions!

What did I find most enjoyable?  I had the blog up and fonts chosen and the basics done.  I hadn't written a word of the actual blog but I was enjoying that I had something that I thought was pretty cool looking up and running.  Wait.  Now what?  What was I going to write?  Other than my assignments, what was I going to write?  I finally wrote the first entry.  And then I just sat and looked at it.  Was I ready to hit enter and put it out there for the whole world to see?  My friend said “Just doooooo it”.  So I hit publish.  It’s out there now.

Now to remember to breathe until I see a comment or ten!

Why I took the class

Here is one of those "assignments".  I'd written it a few days ago but was having trouble getting the blog up and running.  I told you, I'm a country girl, I'm great with a trowel and hoe, technology...not so much!

January 26, 2013

I chose to take “Finding your e-voice” for several reasons.  I wanted to stretch my limits a bit.  I write research and other academic papers well.  At the time when I learned to write papers, it was required to write very formally with very strict rules.  That is what I know and that is how I write.  In today’s world, more and more work is being done online and we are, in general, a less formal society.  That meant I needed to learn to write more informally.  I thought this class would be a great way to try to break the old habits I have in the way that I write.  I feel the strengths that I bring to the table are the fact that I know the basics of English writing.  Obviously, the biggest obstacle I have is going to be getting comfortable with a more casual style of writing.  I have to realize that a contraction here and there isn't a bad thing!  I think the best way to overcome this is simply by practice.