Reflective Essay

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During the class of ENG-W315 “Writing for the Web,” several things were learned and several things were struggled through with minimum comprehension on my part. I was a little startled by the end of the class to see an assignment that included coding. While I have coded before (I was an informatics major for a second), this time in my life was an uncomfortably long time ago, especially in regards to technological advancements since then. So much has changed and is constantly changing. Moore’s Law has definitely had time to have effect. For my portfolio, I mostly chose the written assignments because that is where I am comfortable and also where I think I did my better work.

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The Customer Review

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For my product review, I have a huge regret. I wish I had reviewed a book since I actually do review books and read book reviews. Outside of looking to see how many stars a product has, I do not check out written reviews for products. When I re-read what I decided to write about, I face-planted onto my table. Who reviews a flashlight? The answer is apparently me. My classmates were kind despite the unexciting nature of that decision. I followed the instructions of the assignment, but the human relatability was missing, mostly because of the uncertain nature of my first review. In the final draft, I decided to stick with the flashlight as a product. I have added a specific stance on if the product was good and if I recommended it which was specifically pointed out in a peer review. I was also advised that I needed to include the range of light the flashlight produces, even if it was an estimate. As a result, in the final version, I include an estimation of distance the light would cover. In these ways, I changed what I wrote and also took the feedback of my peers into consideration. In regards to the lack of human quality in my product review, Applen said on page 3 of Writing for the Web that “‘natural human languages’ develop over time.” This is one thing that I think I still need help with, that is, finding balance between informal and toneless.

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The Blog

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My blog submission was a personal piece. Technically, both of them were/are. This was a memorable assignment because I had to write two different blog posts. The first version I submitted was inappropriate and on a sensitive topic with several triggers. On my personal blog, I have the post published but I decided that for a school assignment, it was not a suitable submission. Quickly, I re-submitted the assignment. While my second assignment is still depressing, it was appropriate. I saw this as a success. My peer reviews on the blog were good but two pieces of advice stood out: I was hypercritical of myself and the blog didn’t seem to have a direction. 

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For the first critique, I changed the language of the blog to not express doubt in my own capabilities. I am a naturally self-deprecating person. Sometimes, for assignments that allow my voice, I become too much of myself. I should have been conscious of the fact that, though this assignment was a blog post of choice, it was for school. As for the second critique, I didn’t address it. It’s not that I think that’s bad advice. Quite the contrary, but the blog was my life and was a stream of consciousness. The sad truth - my truth - is that I don’t have a direction. Sometimes, I give myself lies on what I am going to do or on a direction but when I write blogs, I try to just be honest with my individual truth. If I was writing a book, my post would have all my “i’s” dotted and my “t’s” crossed. In the real world, I’m much less put together. I like my audience to see my chaos so they can understand that they aren’t expected to have it all figured out either. Ultimately, my argument implemented pathos to an excessive degree and “to use pathos effectively, a rhetor first needs to know the present state of mind of the audience members, and she needs to know what will move them” (Applen). For me, I want my audience to feel loss even if they don’t understand mine specifically.

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The Wikipedia Edit

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My Wikipedia page edit was on the topic of used books and was called “Used Books” on Wikipedia. This was the most satisfying topic that I chose to write about because there was plenty of room to edit the page and because it was something I recently became more aware of. It is surprising to me that this was the assignment I was most interested in while also being the singular assignment that I was uncomfortable actually posting. What I mean is, all of this work was done hypothetically. I didn’t actually publish any of it to Wikipedia. Hargittai and Shaw found “that low-skilled men and low-skilled women are equally highly unlikely to contribute to Wikipedia” which explains my hesitance to publish the edits I made. I am not confident that I did a good job or did enough in my original post to even want to update the page at all.

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In my Wikipedia page final draft, I’d like to be more specific with my diction and not use the same words repeatedly which was pointed out to me in one peer review. The other peer review I had mentioned how I referenced certain things like the increasing market for used books without providing any sources and numbers to support those claims. While I didn’t include actual numbers, I included a source that has these numbers with the hope that a person with marketing and economic knowhow would add to the page. This will eventually lead to properly expressed major and minor premises and formulate a more logos forward argument in the way that Applen suggested on pages 184 and 185 of Writing for the Web. I understand that logos in a discussion means more than just facts and figures, but because this is a commons-based platform, I am not required to give all the information. Just my individual input. I definitely needed to include them to support the claims I made in regards to the growing markets and the environmentalism of using used books rather than buying only new books.

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Creating Instructions

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For the assignment “creating instructions,” I chose to use something I am familiar with. I chose to write instructions on how to package fragile items. My career and/or “side-gig” is selling crystals on Etsy. Since it is a single person endeavor, I do everything. Part of “everything” is packaging the products and this is one area that I definitely learned via trial-and-error. It is something I would like to potentially stop other people from suffering through since damaged or broken products equal money that is lost. For me, this is almost more personal than my blog though I think, assignment-wise, I did better at the blog. 

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One reason I think I did better on the blog was the video aspect of this assignment. In the original, I used Kaltura, which was recommended. I wish I had used something else in hindsight. I do not know how to download it after uploading the video to Canvas. I don’t have the file any longer on my computer or in my trash. As a result, the video is lost to me. Even if it wasn’t lost, I was unsatisfied with the video overall. When it was filmed, my room was a construction zone. The walls looked messy with drywall compound everywhere and an old, brown paint covering the walls without the compound. I also look messy. I was wearing informal clothes with no make-up on and my hair in a lazy bun. I don’t have an issue with the “I-don’t-care” aesthetic, but with the state of my room, it made for an underwhelming presentation. The part of my video that I liked the most was how much I “look(ed) directly out of the image (video) at the viewer” (Jones & Hafner 61) and “demand(ed) some kind of response from the audience” (Jones & Hafner 61). In this case, the response I was demanding was the attention of the audience. So, despite how much of a mess the setting and I were, both of the peer reviews I received commented on how engaged they were. In my edited draft, I am not re-doing the video. I only did the video because it was for a grade. In truth, I am extremely uncomfortable being filmed. I have no interest in trying to control my shaking hands for a second video. My anxiety is too bad for me to make that choice of my own volition.

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Along with the video, I also included a written set of instructions in my rough draft. Both of the peer reviews I received told me they enjoyed the written instructions being given. Looking over the written instructions, I realized that I could have given at least one picture a description to explain that the picture was an example of an incorrectly packaged box. I also plan to change the placements of steps three and four. The steps may have included some seemingly obvious information but for this assignment, I treated my audience as someone who is being introduced to packages for the first time. I was told in one of the reviews I received that this inclusion of basic information was appreciated, so I intend to keep it that way in the final draft of the instructions.

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Conclusion

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In summation, I am coming out of this class with more knowledge than I had when I entered it. Since every assignment related to books or articles, information was collected that can be used repeatedly. In fact, I had a research paper in a separate class this semester (Spring 2023) that was inspired by something J.D. Applen said in the book Writing for the Web. The pupil experiment talked about in Understanding Digital Literacies of tracing pupil movement to determine how people process/read webpages correlated with Bewilderment by Richard Powers. I was ecstatic to see a crossover from a book I was reading for fun with a book that was assigned for class. Learning about how logos, ethos, and pathos are used digitally versus in a written essay is something I know will be useful in my life going forward. Even though I tested poorly, I learned a lot this semester and I have already begun implementing the gathered knowledge in other places.

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Works Cited

Applen, J.D. (2013). “Writing for the Web: Composing, Coding and Constructing Web Sites.” Routledge. 2013.

 

Hargittai, Esther., & Shaw, A. “Mind the Skills Gap: The Role of Internet Know-how and Gender in Differentiated Contributions

to Wikipedia.” Information, Communication & Society, 18.4 (2015), 424–442. 

https://doi-org.proxyse.uits.iu.edu/10.1080/1369118X.2014.957711. 

 

Jones, R.H., Hafner, C.A. “Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction.” Routledge. 2012.