December 2008 Archives

Hello everyone, now I am going to present you my final project for my Writing for Internet (EL236) class. In this semester, I have been learned a lot from the text books, the professor, Dr. Jerz, and all of you, my classmates. Here, I want to say thank you all, who gave me opportunities to study the technique of website writing as well as creating interactive fiction game. Some people might ask me, why a Chinese native speaker would like to participate English literature major. In the beginning of semester, I told that it is because I want to pursue my Journalism dream. However, after these three months, I realized the much deeper reason in my heart. That is because my desire of writing, my desire of language.

I write to make the world alive in my notebook. I write to create a world vivid in the paper. I write to memorize my life. I write to forget about life. I write to undertake the great moment around me. I write to find those moments in the world that nobody would notice. I write to find out the truthful determination in my heart. I write to appreciate the reality I have been through. I write to confirm my faiths that I owned. I write to doubt the opinions that I had. I write to see the beauty. I write to create the beauty. I write to destroy the beauty. I write because I believe I can write. I write because I doubt I can write. I write as a writer. I write as a student. I write as boy. I write as a man. I write as any role I think I can be. I write as any role that I do not think I will ever be. I write to pursue my dream. I write as the pursing of my dream. "I write" is my dream itself.

Seventeen years ago, I first time picked up a pen and try to learn how to write from my grandpa. I was astonished by the passion under each of Chinese character. Then couple of years later, I read the translated version of Count of Monte Cristo. I believe that is the first time I had interest about English literature. Unfortunately, I did not start learning English during my earlier educations. The first official English class that I had was in Seton Hill. Today, I still remember how exciting it was. Compare to three and a half months ago, now I know better about English. I know how to use MLA, APA, and AP style. I also know how to utilize the intense phrase in my contexts. In my final project, I will demonstrate you my ability of internet writing by creating an individual website.

In China, I have learned how to play with HTML codes for years. However, in Writing for Internet class, I learned the way to compose a good piece of context and made conveniences for readers, rather than please the audiences by using web designing skills, which I learned in China. In this project, I majority use my personal experiences as the sources to illustrate a real story happened between some Nigerian Scammers and me, and hopefully it would give people some tips that they may think are useful in the future.

My final release version does not have much difference from my beta release. However, by modifying the last three goals from my beta report, and took some suggestion from Dr. Jerz at last Wednesday's class, my website has stood up quite a lot. The changes are:

1. Add Homepage button on the top-left corner.
2. Use blockquote style instead the quotation marks, and change the style of font in those quotes.
3. In order to help the website search engines, say Google, to find my pages, I replace those "Click Here" links to new names that indicate their context.
4. Put in the information about further scamming.

Originally, I tried to shorten my story as well as add more emotional expressions in it. However, I gave up those plans due to some other students' suggestion, which is my pages look fine, and it would be better that it is objective.

In the approach of winter, we finally meet the end of semester. Look back the last three months, we experience diversity subject matter to Internet Writing. In the beginning of this semester, I faced a great challenge towards understanding and reading, including on class listening and assign reading. Now, the situation turns better, but I still have difficult on these aerials.

In this month, we were majority focusing on the final project. I have switched my project from IF game to website. The reason like I wrote before is that I can create a piece which more people will be interested on. By putting efforts on my final project, I learned several new technique for creating website as well as writing.

Blog entries are a very interesting part of this class. Three months ago, I imagined the achievements I would make on this aerial. It was significant. However, today I realized because of my limited time and energy, I did not accomplish the goals I wished to reach in the beginning.

Same things happened in other classes. In this class, I also dreamed to accomplish an IF game well, but eventually I did not achieve it well. Objectively, I have a lot of classes, both for literature and graphics design aerials. In addition, due to my personality, the dorm room life is not the best way to activate my efficiency. Therefore, all the unsuccessful goals are excusable. However, I do feel I need to make a change next semester. In order to centralize the limited attentions to one aerial, I put my course majority on graphics design faculty. In the same time, I will try to improved my English reading and listening skill by some personal training.

Here are the blog entries I post:

Q4: Beta Reports

The Beta Report

Perfect? I guess not!

Term Project Progress Report

Here are the suggestion I made for my peers:

Chelsea Oliver's

Daniella Choynowski's

Jed Fetterman's

Andy Lonigro's

Aja Hannah's

Alex Hull's

Here are my final release, The Nigerian Scammer.

Here are my peers' portfolios.

When we started doing this final project, I had a clear map of what my website is going to look like. Now I had already achieved my purpose. However, I believe that I can keep working on this website on certain aerial.

1. Shorten my story.
2. Add more emotional expression.
3. Put in the information about further scamming.

Ron Mannon, my roommate, claimed my website is lack of multimedia. He wanted to see a cool flash banner with explosion and Nigeria holocaust. Then he indicated my website has so many words, that most reader would not like to read though the whole story. Rather than literary narrating story, he suggested me to add more personal emotion. More slangs and abuses would be work. In addition, he showed lack of interest to my suggestions about how we can avoid scamming on internet. In fact, he demonstrated if I create a piece of rap music as the background melody to curse the scammers and teach the readers simultaneously, the affection would be much stronger.

Obviously, I cannot take all of his suggestion above. Nevertheless, his suggestion about adding more personal emotional demonstration would make the story more interesting. On the other hand, moderately shortening my article seems to be another wise suggestion for me.

In Dr. Jerz's email, Scammers targeting people who've been scammed, he wrote, "Just FYI... http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/30/scammer-targets-peop.html." The web link is a news article pointed the face that some scammers or scamming organization are targeting the people who have been scammed. They send a letter and tell people that the victim has been selected as a "lucky victim". The victims will get a huge amount of money from Nigeria. Physiologically, the victims have some common characters, like they would easily trust stranger. Therefore it is very possible for them to get into a further scamming. Reminded by Dr. Jerz, I decide to insert this information to my story. Hopefully, it can be read by more victims.

Since I have already done well in the beta version, I really do not have much things can do for my final release. I actually have a little regret about that I have done too well before I release the beta. I considered putting in some fancy special effects on my web page, like my roommate said, but eventually I think they are not necessary and efficient. When all is said and done, this website is a website that testing our writing skill, but not designing skill.

In a nutshell, I had a significant improvement during this experience. In addition, I gained a lot of priceless proposal from my classmates Jessie Dylan, Alex Hull, and Andy Lonigro. My professor Dr. Jerz and my roommate Ron Mannon are also helpful. In turn, I also made suggestions for Chelsea Oliver, Daniella Choynowski, Jed Fetterman, Andy Lonigro, Aja Hannah, and Aja Hannah. Here I propose: "Thank you for all your help, and congratulations for everyone that you have done brilliantly in your projects."

Now is the end of semester. Both student and professor are busier than they are last three month. Last month, I did the photographing for basketball game, opera, and the football game. I also have been asked if I would like to be the temporary photo editor for next coming issue, and I agreed. However, I have also been informed I was no longer being needed for that position after a week. It was a shame, because I guessed I can learn so much from photo editing as well as co-working with other editors. However, look back this semester, I've gained a lot of benefit from this course.

Setonian is a big deal in the hill. Every time people told me he or she saw the pictures I took for our paper, I felt extremely complacent. The shame is I've not submitted any articles successfully. Nonetheless, in my Basic Composition and my English as Second Language courses, my writing skill has been proved that it has improved significantly. In this case, I see the possibility for me next semester.

There is always a negative side of thing. In this course, the professor and students were losing the faith to me - not the faith of believing I can improve my English to a better level, but the faith of trusting I can help the newspaper in my English level in certain timing. No doubt, there are a lot of weaknesses in my writing - wordless, fragment and many other grammar problems. Almost all my papers have been mark as "unreadable". Nevertheless, the situation changed in the last class - my paper first time was critiqued as readable. Yes, it did not follow the AP style - so what, it proved that I was improving, like I always had being! It feels really good that see something substantial illustrating the progress I made.

I am willing to take Media Lab next semester. Part of the reason is because this course can help me with me English. The other part, I will say, is that it connects me and other Journalism major students. I am glad to see that we've done a gorgeous team-work this semester - the election website. Now I can say that the team-working is more important than individual accomplishment, and we've killed it.

In the approach future, some of us will leave this team, and some new faces will appear. I believe those who will go are going to bring out experiences to their further studies or society works; those who will come are going to bring new conceptions to this team. Here, I bless the leavers, and anticipate the comers!