Reflective Letter
The title of the course I created this website for is Writing, Research and Technology. This course forced me to look at myself and what I know about these three things. It also aimed to inform me and change what I think about these three topics. For this final piece I will be reflecting on my knowledge and the changes I underwent in dealing with the topics of writing, research and technology.
Writing
This class challenged my traditional views of writing and certainly not in a bad way. This is going to sound completely delusional as a writing major but I pretty much hate writing. Crazy I know. It is just that it has always been the same thing: five paragraph essays and ten page research projects. When entering this course, judging by the title, I thought it would just be more of the same. I would research a topic, write ten pages on it and use a computer to type it up and print it out. Writing, research and technology. Bam. But this wasn't the case at all. There were no essays and no ten page research projects. This type of writing is engrained in all of us from the time we start school and it was so refreshing to be able to break the mold for this class. The Twitterive involved a lot of writing but it was creative, in short amounts and in different genres, this made it fun and interesting to complete. And the collaborative research project was nice because we could go and research a topic and learn interesting things without knowing when we were done we need to complete a giant and grueling paper. In addition, collaborative writing was something I had never done too much of before. This was also nice because you are able to pull ideas, voices and view points into the writing which would be nearly impossible to do if done by only one person. In between the big assignments we were asked to blog and create microfiction pieces. More genres of writing I had not written in before this class. This writing was not bad either, short and sweet, nothing like a five-paragraph essay. And twitter, the best writing of all! I only have to use 140 characters? Sign me up! Before when I thought of writing I never thought of blogs and twitter or prezis and microfiction. I hated writing before this class and don't get me wrong, I still do hate research papers and essay's but as a result of this class I can no longer say I hate all writing and as a writing major I definitely see that as a good thing.
Research
Research. Ugh. Here is another thing I hate. Not because I don't like learning new things but because it is a long, boring, process and it is usually done for a giant research paper. It is always the same, find ten sources but they cannot all be from the internet and write a paper on them. But just like writing, this class challenged my ideas of research. We did use sources from online but this is not all our research was about. We did actual field research for our oral history/collaborative research project. The interviews were interesting and fun to conduct. We were learning about our topic first hand and not reading what someone else on the other side of the country wrote six years ago. Being able to include these videos in our final project was also very cool. We were able to show everyone the research we conducted on our own. Just like I still don't love essay writing, I still don't love research but this class definitely challenged my notions and peaked my interest in the different types of research.
Technology
Technology. Okay, I can't say I have ever hated technology, after all I was born in the nineties. I was introduced to and reacquainted with, however, several different forms of technology through this class including twitter, weebly, digital, flipshare youtube, viddler and prezi.
Twitter: I have had a twitter account for a while now but I never ever tweeted. I primarily used twitter to follow sports writers and other people because it is the fastest channel for finding out what is going on with different people and sports teams. In Intro to Writing Arts I used the account to tweet a little more but not too much. This semester, however, I have used it more than ever and I really am able to see the value in it. And no I am not just saying that. Twitter is a way to broadcast something in a quick and concise manner. I love that you can type in a subject and see what everyone is saying about it. I used to think that I really had no followers that would care about what I would say but the search function makes that irrelevant. Using twitter was really helpful for class because I was able to go back and look at the things I think about often. I will definitely use twitter after this class because now I can't go a day without checking it.
Weebly: I had never created my own website before and it was pretty cool and worked really well for the purpose of this class. Weebly is nice and really easy to use. I like the layout and the simplicity of adding the pages. I had web design in high school but remember very little from it so a site like this is very useful. I liked using it for this class because it is a good way to display the types of projects we did for the class. However, I will have no use for a website outside this class so I will probably not continue using it. If I do ever have a need for a website though I will definitely know where to go.
Prezi: For our collaborative research project my group decided to do a prezi. This works really well for what we want to do because we want to use a bunch of different elements including text and youtube videos. In addition, it is a little more fun and looks better than a boring traditional powerpoint presentation. Prezi was really simple to use and looks great. When given the opportunity in the future I will definitely use this over a traditional powerpoint.
Video Editing and Sharing (Youtube, Viddler, Flipshare, iMovie): Let me just start by saying filpshare sucks and youtube sucks. Using a Flip camera was really easy but the flipshare program is not that great. I was excited to see that I could upload to youtube directly from flipshare. The catch is it can only be ten minutes though which doesn't work with a thirty minute video. In addition, there is no easy way to edit videos in flipshare. Thank God for viddler or else our oral history project would've been a mess. I was able to upload a full thirty-minute video by way of vidler. In addition, I love iMovie, a video editing program on mac that I didn't even know I had. I was able to edit our videos down to the parts where our interviewees were defining their allergies and talking about eating out with no problem. Once edited I was able to upload straight to youtube from iMovie and then straight to prezi from youtube. I discovered that youtube is great for uploading short video clips. Once I got the hang of things editing through iMovie was really easy and all the programs work together flawlessly. I don't know if I will ever need to edit a video again but if I do I am definitely now more comfortable with the process.
Being introduced to all of these technologies was very useful and even if I don't love them all, I know they are available to me and how to use them.
Twitter: I have had a twitter account for a while now but I never ever tweeted. I primarily used twitter to follow sports writers and other people because it is the fastest channel for finding out what is going on with different people and sports teams. In Intro to Writing Arts I used the account to tweet a little more but not too much. This semester, however, I have used it more than ever and I really am able to see the value in it. And no I am not just saying that. Twitter is a way to broadcast something in a quick and concise manner. I love that you can type in a subject and see what everyone is saying about it. I used to think that I really had no followers that would care about what I would say but the search function makes that irrelevant. Using twitter was really helpful for class because I was able to go back and look at the things I think about often. I will definitely use twitter after this class because now I can't go a day without checking it.
Weebly: I had never created my own website before and it was pretty cool and worked really well for the purpose of this class. Weebly is nice and really easy to use. I like the layout and the simplicity of adding the pages. I had web design in high school but remember very little from it so a site like this is very useful. I liked using it for this class because it is a good way to display the types of projects we did for the class. However, I will have no use for a website outside this class so I will probably not continue using it. If I do ever have a need for a website though I will definitely know where to go.
Prezi: For our collaborative research project my group decided to do a prezi. This works really well for what we want to do because we want to use a bunch of different elements including text and youtube videos. In addition, it is a little more fun and looks better than a boring traditional powerpoint presentation. Prezi was really simple to use and looks great. When given the opportunity in the future I will definitely use this over a traditional powerpoint.
Video Editing and Sharing (Youtube, Viddler, Flipshare, iMovie): Let me just start by saying filpshare sucks and youtube sucks. Using a Flip camera was really easy but the flipshare program is not that great. I was excited to see that I could upload to youtube directly from flipshare. The catch is it can only be ten minutes though which doesn't work with a thirty minute video. In addition, there is no easy way to edit videos in flipshare. Thank God for viddler or else our oral history project would've been a mess. I was able to upload a full thirty-minute video by way of vidler. In addition, I love iMovie, a video editing program on mac that I didn't even know I had. I was able to edit our videos down to the parts where our interviewees were defining their allergies and talking about eating out with no problem. Once edited I was able to upload straight to youtube from iMovie and then straight to prezi from youtube. I discovered that youtube is great for uploading short video clips. Once I got the hang of things editing through iMovie was really easy and all the programs work together flawlessly. I don't know if I will ever need to edit a video again but if I do I am definitely now more comfortable with the process.
Being introduced to all of these technologies was very useful and even if I don't love them all, I know they are available to me and how to use them.
