reflective letter
Part One: Multi Modal Writing
This course has taught me about how there are many more ways to convey information than in just the traditional format of writing essays. Furthermore, I had to learn that within these new styles of writing, the way I presented the information had to be different as well.
Starting with this website itself, I had to really look at what goes into making a website. Having grown up with the internet, seeing a website was not a shock to me, but making it flow well and easy to use was something I have never experienced before. I had to think of who my audience could consist of and how to style my website to cater towards them, not necessarily to what I would want. This meant that I could not just write everything using only soccer terminology. Explaining the concepts and words that are not used in everyday language for most were crucial when I was making my website.
In my review of literature, I decided to try and educate my audience on what the differences between soccer violence in the U.S. and England were. From the many sources that I collected, I had to condense all of that down into a passage that was short enough to capture the reader’s attention. Simultaneously, I had to write it in a language that was simple enough to be understood by many and still made me sound credible. To do this I paraphrased and quoted many authors in scholarly articles, but I only used the information that was most important to the topics I had created.
Making my infographic was probably the most interesting part of this whole course. Taking the information I gathered, picking out the most important phrases, making a poster of sorts with different pictures and colors, and then presenting it to a variety of people was different to say the least. My first attempt at the infographic was all over the place. I thought that the point of one was to just throw the most important facts onto the screen for the audience to see, but I was sadly mistaken. After having Professor Julien and a couple of classmates look at it, I realized that I had to show my readers the message I was trying to convey, similarly to what I did in my review of literature. All of the facts had to have some sort of connection to each other with pictures to go along with them. In the end, I ended up with an infographic that simply explains what causes soccer hooliganism while explaining what a soccer hooligan is.
Starting with this website itself, I had to really look at what goes into making a website. Having grown up with the internet, seeing a website was not a shock to me, but making it flow well and easy to use was something I have never experienced before. I had to think of who my audience could consist of and how to style my website to cater towards them, not necessarily to what I would want. This meant that I could not just write everything using only soccer terminology. Explaining the concepts and words that are not used in everyday language for most were crucial when I was making my website.
In my review of literature, I decided to try and educate my audience on what the differences between soccer violence in the U.S. and England were. From the many sources that I collected, I had to condense all of that down into a passage that was short enough to capture the reader’s attention. Simultaneously, I had to write it in a language that was simple enough to be understood by many and still made me sound credible. To do this I paraphrased and quoted many authors in scholarly articles, but I only used the information that was most important to the topics I had created.
Making my infographic was probably the most interesting part of this whole course. Taking the information I gathered, picking out the most important phrases, making a poster of sorts with different pictures and colors, and then presenting it to a variety of people was different to say the least. My first attempt at the infographic was all over the place. I thought that the point of one was to just throw the most important facts onto the screen for the audience to see, but I was sadly mistaken. After having Professor Julien and a couple of classmates look at it, I realized that I had to show my readers the message I was trying to convey, similarly to what I did in my review of literature. All of the facts had to have some sort of connection to each other with pictures to go along with them. In the end, I ended up with an infographic that simply explains what causes soccer hooliganism while explaining what a soccer hooligan is.
Part Two: Critical Thinking
My critical thinking skills have grown significantly since I first began this course months ago. Gathering research about my topic was the easy part for me since I have been doing that for many years, but being able to condense such a large amount of information was challenging. For example, making the infographic and review of literature were very tough. In my review of literature, I had to find the similarities in content between many different sources. Then, I had to take the most relevant pieces of information from those groups and paraphrase them into a few paragraphs so that the audience could get an idea of what information would be in my project. In my infographic, trying to make statements with as few words as possible proved to be a challenge. I had to keep on rereading my sources, and each time I did so I would notice that there were words that could be omitted and were not necessarily pertinent to the topic at hand. Learning this has proved useful to me because now I can quickly read a source and pick out the most important information to be able to synthesis it.
Part Three: Writing Process
When I finally came up with a topic for my autoethnography, I had no idea how to go about getting started. I was thinking of all the different requirements and sources that I would need to have along with all the blogging and reading that I would have to do, and I was a bit overwhelmed. At first I was skeptical about creating a website because it is not a traditional way of writing a research paper, but I was open to the idea. However, the thing that helped me get started with my project was creating and working on my website. When I began working on the website, it was the breath of fresh air that I needed It was an entirely new entity that I had no experience in and I had to do a lot of research on what went into making a decent website. All of the constant revision and tweaking got my creativity flowing, and coupled with researching what was needed for a website, the requirements for the assignment began to break themselves down into smaller portions that I could easily begin thinking about. Now that I am done with my project, I feel as though I have a new way of taking on large projects efficiently.