I was very excited for this class. Not only did it involve designing websites, which I love, but it would be a uniquely structured English class involving technology-based topics. This was right up my alley.  Before starting the quarter, I believed the class would be easy compared to past English classes I've taken at Santa Clara. I would make websites and engage in interesting discussions. Very quickly into the quarter though, I realized I was considerably wrong.

Looking back on my personal website, it was very apparent I had the wrong idea of what a hypertext was. I relied on my designing abilities when creating it. The site had a clean left hand navigation organized into broad topics of the site, so the visitor could find the information they wanted fast. I was so used to creating websites from an "information architecture" standpoint rather than from a 'hypertext' standpoint, which I did not even know existed before this class.

After reviewing my first website and looking at classmates’ websites, I began to figure out the definition of a hypertext. I worried less about the navigation elements of my site and focused in on my writing. Letting my writing dictate the subsequent pages made for a much more engaging experience to the visitor. I struggled immensely with the topic of my second website, though. The subject of new media journalism was very broad, and finding a niche to the topic to focus on was hard. Looking back, my second website was more of a learning experience than anything. I took steps towards making a good hypertext but my content lacked.

I’m definitely prouder of my social engagement hypertext. Again, choosing a topic was difficult but after reflecting on a past experience, I decided to focus on college athletics and education. Based on a grueling and unhappy first year of college trying to pursue varsity athletics, I decided to give it up. I learned that the general public has a very narrow minded concept of college athletics based upon watching televised games on the couch. Very few people understood what exactly made me transfer schools and stop playing collegiate athletics. I created my site to address this awareness issue.  I wanted to look at college athletics from various perspectives: commercialization, media, and education on top of discussing the problems and possible solutions for how athletics can contribute to the university’s mission.

As I began linking together the pages, everything came together in a much more natural way than my previous hypertexts. The visitor will navigate through the reading, relying on the navigation only for the essentials of the site. I think the site provides a better experience because of this. It is clear evidence of my progression from the first hypertext. The difference between my personal site to my social engagement site is stark. I think I can truly say I have more knowledge of producing information on a website now, which will only help my designing abilities.

The other technical writing ability I learned from the class is the review of the literature. In all truthfulness, I think it is an excellent way to start a paper.  By starting a paper right away, the topic being addressed will be broad and the paper will never engage and affect an audience. After writing a review of the literature, not only did I gain a good grasp of my research, I could drill down to a specific topic that has not been addressed by many or at all. While I probably will not write a review of the literature for all papers, I learned to not settle for the initial topic I had in mind. Instead, break it down and find a more specific area of interest to discuss.

The class and forum discussions challenged me at times but were consistently thought provoking. When discussing the morality of capitalism, I admit I was pretty floored. I have been thinking more and more about what I want to do in the future and the one thing I know is that I want to make a positive difference in as many people’s lives as possible.  That is quite a generic and overarching goal, but I want to pursue it for as long as possible. The class discussion allowed me to learn why this is not always easy to do. Capitalism can get in the way through personal and financial profiting. I hope to follow up on the talk and learn some more on my own.

Another topic that engaged me throughout the class was the future of education. It does not make sense why technology is not utilized further in enhancing schooling. From my experiences, school seems to be stuck in the traditional ways of doing things. It is time to re-think teaching in 21st century terms.

As an engineer and someone who would not normally take this class, I hope it was a learning experience on both ends. My counselor recommended this class to fulfill my third English requirement and I see why. Creating things for the Internet can be very logical and very ‘right and wrong’ which is why I struggled making my first two hypertexts. I slowly learned to create a website from the perspective of a content creator trying to make a difference. Each new perspective I learn in using the Internet is so valuable for me as someone pursuing a career in new media. With this in mind, this course was beneficial.