My Writing Process and What I've Learned

My writing process has drastically improved since the beginning of this class. It really helps to take a project step by step instead of writing everything in one sitting with no organization or planning. I have realized that the more effort you put into planning and organizing an essay the easier it becomes to write. You don't have to sit and think about what you are going to write next because you already have an outline or some guide to the paper. It saves a ton of time in the end. I also think that my perspective of audience has changed and when I write now I think of who will be reading the essay and take that into consideration. I also never considered ethos, pathos, and logos before and how it can be used to strengthen an argument. Using a mixture of the different appeals can be a very effective way of getting a point across. It really helped to be able to have freedom with what we wrote about. For me writing about something that I actually was interested in made it ten times easier and more enjoyable. This class has also opened up my mind to see different ways to be an author through the multi modal project.

Multimedia and discussion of Project 4

So far project 4 has been my favorite project. I really enjoyed messing around with iMovie since I have never really had a reason to use it before. I also was able to meet some new people through mutual friends to interview for the project. I had a good time putting everything together and choosing pictures to put over my audio for the video file. I tried to keep everything as simple and straight forward as possible because I figured that the main point of this project was the whole multimodal aspect. I struggled at first trying to figure out how to make my project multimodal. The original plan was to model it after an online news report that would include a write up and a short video to report the findings of my research question. In the end I just began making the video and realized it was multimodal already and all the information I included in the video so it would basically just be the same thing except it would be written out. So I decided to just put more effort into the video and tried to incorporate the main reasons I found why students from northern states choose to come to Clemson. Overall I was very proud of the result and glad that I choose the topic that I did.

Mainly what I have picked up from the readings and things that we go over in class is that as technology advances media expands and becomes more available for others but since it is so available it also makes it easier for anyone to produce it. A tweet for example... anyone can own a twitter and send out a tweet that anyone in the world can see if they want to. I feel like this just gives the media a bad reputation and ruins its credibility. You always hear people say "you can't believe everything you read on the internet" well that is because literally anyone can write it. They may not know anything about the subject and could be doing it just to screw with people that are actually looking for valid information. Before technology became so advanced people could not spread information to others as easily. Today all you have to do is type in google things like "What is the best brand of carpet cleaner" and get tons of consumer reports and reviews arguing their perspectives and experiences. I think it can be a really great thing at times if used right, but it can also be horrible and be a complete waste of time.