As it comes to a close: Portfolio 4

As this semester comes to a close I've taken a minute to step back, take a breath from EL 236, and look at exactly how much my relationship with online writing has grown. I'd like to say I was okay when I started, but to be completely honest, I didn't know html from if and couldn't have guessed as to what each included. I never thought I'd say this, but I think I actually like online writing. I'm going to be honest, I wanted to get through this class, because my computer skills were lacking, yet, through this course I feel confident in my knowledge about the internet, and comfortable with my abilities to form a basic webpage, create an interactive fiction game, and complete usability testing on my own website or others.

The last phase of this semester, from the last blogging portfolio till now, has mostly consisted of our relationship with and development of our term projects. I chose to create a writing website entitled The Write Direction. I'll admit it, at first I thought this was going to be the most difficult, uniteresting thing I'd have to do this semester, however, it was quite the contrary. I've had a great and enjoyable time developing my website. One of the reasons is that I was able to apply much of what I learned throughout the semester. For that reason I think it was the most rewarding final I was involved with. But also, because I have found a certain interest for designing web pages, especially ones that deal with what I'm interested in, such as writing. I've had a great time with this project and am including my final batch of blog entries since they are all related to the development of this website.

Entries:
Writing and the internet, who would have thought? was the beginning of a long journey. This was my first blog entry introducing my idea and a rough outline of what I wanted to accomplish. The feedback I received on this entry helped me develop my first draft of my site.

First Viewing was an entry that introduced my site in the very early stages. It was very rough and needed a lot of touch up, and it's evident how much it has developed since this time.

Getting There was the latest look at my site. This was the entry for the beta testing and it proved to me the most helpful entry for me because of the feedback I received from my classmates. In my head the site was close to complete, but my peers helped me see some things that weren't quite finished yet and needed elaborated on.

One of the things I like most about the class is the out-of-class interaction that also leads into peer learning. I feel that I learned much about my own work from my peers. It's different than coming from a teacher or a professor that's on a different level than you. Our natural instinct is to impress our peers, so during the construction of my site, I wanted my classmates to see the best product possible. Because of this I was also able to take their suggestions to heart and really apply them to my site. Along with numerous comments and suggestions during in class workshops, I really appreciated the comments from my peers on my blogs during my reflection of my progress toward the term project. Jed, Meghan, Chelsea, and David helped out at the beginning of my process and near the end I received helpful comments from Dani, Jackie, Aja, and Dena. I feel like I learned the most from this because these students were doing the same things as me. We were all learning together.

Interaction with other's projects: Here are a few examples of my comments for my peers...
Comments about Chelsea's site
Helpful comment on David's blog
Comment on Jackie's blog
Helpful tip for Aja

Hopefully I've helped my peers as much as they've helped me. I really enjoyed this final part of the course and believe that it is a result of working with people instead of working alone on a final exam or something of that nature. I feel like I've learned so much more this way, granted, this is a different type of information. I feel very accomplished and thank everyone for their help.