Reflective Narrative
I can smell the beach and all the smells that come with it. Summer is almost here and I have a couple things left to finish. I think to myself could this really be the end or is this just a dream. I pinch myself and realize I have never gone to sleep. This semester has been a whirlwind of new things for me. Writing Research and Technology has introduced me to Weebly, Twitterive, Oral history and a Collaborative research project. Never in a million years did I think I would ever be this knowledgeable in all of these new things. This is my last piece of the puzzle that needs to fit to make this semester complete. This page is where I would like to reflect on all things I have learned and gone through in WRT.
Google: Through this whole semester Google was my best friend. Anything I want to know I just typed in what I wanted to know and the answer was there. Of course I had to weed out the bad ones but Google is an amazing thing. It is also so useful for this class.
Weebly: Having a website is a very new thing for me until this semester and now I have two, for different classes. For Ed Tech I have Google sites, and for WRT I have Weebly. My favorite is Weebly, it is so easy to understand. It is also user friendly which in my opinion Google sites is not. I have to admit at first it took a little bit of getting used to but the class figured it out. For WRT class I really like how my website turned out. Through the websites in this class you got to see everyone’s personalities and find out a little more about them. All of the writing for this class was done on weebly. This site really allowed you to do anything you wanted. As an education major I plan to keep this website up to date, and use it for possible interviews. This website will show that I am good with technology and make it easier to bridge the gap between myself and parents. I really like this site and I am glad I was introduced to it.
Blog: In WRT blogging was a very important aspect. I was very unsure about blogging at first and often times I would write a short blurb. But by the end of the class I got it and that might have been a little too late. Now I know for future reference that I can write a lot more on the blog. It was also easier for me to write about projects that we were working on. I am not the best at reading something and comprehending twenty pages of information. I have the tendency of reading and if I don’t get it the first time I won’t go back and read it. I know that is my fault but I feel that I will never be able to read and comprehend a lot. (Why am I in college?) Blogging was defiantly my down fall in this class!
Twitter: This was also a big part of WRT class. I am not really in to twitter, I sometimes go on there. The reason I’m not into it is because none of my friends are on here. Most of the people I follow are teachers, which I had to follow for class. Twitter is really easy to use and is very user friendly. Like any new technology you have to get used to it and learn from it. I used twitter to take my tweets and paste them on my twitterive page. It really helped me get my story across for my twitterive. I used twitter mostly on my phone, because it was easy because I am always logged in. Twitter was a good resource for this class and my projects.
Twitterive: This project was a very different but cool way to incorporate twitter in to school. For this project we were asked to tweet everything that we thought or saw, and hopefully through that process a story would evolve. The thing that got me going on my project was the day I tweeted “January 26, 2007 was the worst day of my life.” After that day it was it I knew exactly what I was doing I just had to get it on to Weebly. The writing part of the project was easy, it was just hard to organize my thoughts on to my website. I had a lot to say about my house fire, but because it was so personal it was hard to remember that other people are going to read this and I forgot some parts to explain things that happened. It was also somewhat hard for me to remember that time in my life because of the blur my whole family was in. I liked adding all of the different genres into my story. It helped me get my point across when I was having somewhat of a hard time. The research of this project was easy and I did not have to go far. Most of the things I needed to input where in my own house. All I had to do is walk down into my basement to find the pictures and newspaper articles that we had saved from that time in our life. I did find something on the internet about that day that I added. Weebly was an easy site to use to add all the components I needed in to my project. Twitter was also helpful when figuring out what to write for my Twitterive. Without all the technology I used, my Twitterive would not have been created.
Oral History: This project was very interesting. I had never interviewed someone before. For our oral history interview, Lindsay Jones and I decided to use sound cloud. You can record from your phone, IPad, or computer. I downloaded it on all three devices and tried it out before we conducted the interview. Sound cloud is a very easy program to use. It is very user friendly. We had to find someone that was knowledgeable on what our research question was. So we found Stephanie Lash a dietician from Total fitness. When we got to our interviewee’s house, we talk to Stephanie Lasch and explain our project to her. She was very excited about our topic because this was something she is very passionate about. The interview started and everything was going well. Stephanie is a fast talker and we saw that we were running short on questions so we decided to add dummy questions in to slow her down. She was really a cool person to interview. She knew how long our interview had to be so she would keep looking at the time and made sure she gave extra examples or interesting facts to fill up some of the time. Stephanie was a very useful resource and said if we need any help later on this topic to not hesitate to call her. Something that happened after the interview that was not funny at the time but is now funny that we have it saved in every place possible. After the interview was complete sound cloud has two options upload now or save for later. I pushed upload now and forgot I was not connected to the internet. My face got really hot and I was so nervous that we were going to have to do the whole interview again. I would have hated to waste anymore of Stephanie’s time. And just when we thought we had to do the whole thing again because I thought it was lost forever, it popped up. Thank God. I was so glad that we did not have to do the interview again, because I felt it was so good the first time.
Collaborative Research: Lindsay Jones and I were partners for this as well. After watching Food Inc., my partner and I had become interested in the effects of a high protein diet. This idea can be taken into many different directions. So we decided to narrow the topic down to how women are affected by high protein diets. We stumbled upon many great sources which helped shape our research project. Our oral history interview was a huge information source. Not only was she willing to give us an interview, but she made herself available for any future questions we had. We wanted to make the project lively and appealing to read. We worked hard at created a page that was well-written, neat, and informative. Our research brought us to the conclusion that a high-protein diet is only safe for healthy women. A person should only follow this diet for short intervals of time because they may lack the proper amount of nutrients in other food groups. We used Weebly to help us create this project. We added pictures and different things to make it multi module. At the end of the project we realized that what we originally thought was not correct. But that’s why it’s a research project to get the answers. Because this project is a collaborative research project we worked together. At the beginning it was very dialogical working together in class. But because of time constraints we had to start working on the project at home by ourselves. We add things and then look at the other person’s website to add what they have. This was not the best idea, if I was to ever do this again I would defiantly make another website to add all of the information on one spot. This project has defiantly challenging. From finding times to
meet and work on it. My partner and I were disappointed when we found out what
we thought was right about the high protein diet was actually completely different.
We had to gear our project a different way. As you could see in the
presentations that we needed help. We researched a lot more and Google was our
best friend. The project turned out to be better the expected thanks to
Professor Mangini.
I’m happy this semester is over. But I am sad about leaving this class. I never missed a day because it was fun and exciting and always something new. The weeding project was also fun. I am glad we got to be the pilots for that. I think we did an awesome job. WRT was a fun class and I’m glad I took it. But its time to go to the beach!