Throughout this last spring quarter, I have learned a great deal through this English 138 class concerning technology and writing. At
first I was somewhat skeptical of this class and not really sure what to expect, since we were reading about various behaviors on the Internet
that I had never really participated in. Through our discussions as a class concerning these topics, I was given a much broader view of how people
perceive the internet as well as how they choose to use this tool in a variety of ways. Through this learning essay I will reflect on some of our
projects and readings, as well as class discussions that I participated in while attending this class.
The project I had the most trouble with and was the least willing to participate in, was our requirement to create a second life avatar
and explore the world of second life. As I have previously stated in many of my counterpower posts, I am not much of one to spend hours on the
computer chatting with people and meeting strangers online. I choose not to use things such as AOL instant messenger because I feel it is incredibly
distracting, and I would much rather spend time talking to someone on the phone or in person. When it comes to meeting people online, I have had
pretty much no experience with this kind of situation, especially within Second Life. My first and pretty much only time exploring Second Life was
with a friend who also had no real experience with these situations. We tried to meet new people by striking up conversations with strangers on the
‘game’ but we failed miserably and didn’t find anyone really willing to socialize with us until we had been searching around the virtual world for
well over an hour. Now that I have completed this class and am no longer required to sign onto second life, I highly doubt I will re-enter this
virtual world. However, since I was required to do so previously, I can now at least understand the basics of what someone might discuss when talking
about second life. I’m not a complete foreigner to the subject.
One of the more frustrating yet satisfying projects was by far the video that we created within second life. Although my group and I had some
incredible difficulties when it came to saving our project, once we had completed the entire video it came together very nicely, and I was very pleased
with the project. Although I’m not sure if I will need to compose a video in the future, this project helped me prepare the video I created for my
final project, with great ease.
It was through the class discussions concerning our reading, where I feel I learned the most in this class. Our class included people from
various majors, backgrounds, technology skill levels and opinions. These greatly contributed to how far we were able to move within our discussions
as well as the amount of information we were able to understand by listening to one another. I feel it is through each other that we were able to form
new opinions concerning any ideas we may have held previous to this class. I feel my opinions have changed somewhat towards things like second life, as
well as blogging and creating websites. Most importantly through my research and development of my final project, I can understand why someone would
want to make a unique contribution to the world using the Internet as a tool in publishing their opinion.
My final hypertext project includes a variety of aspects. There are 14 different pages with a wide variety of information on each. I included a
review of the literature, splash page, interview page as well as an annotated bibliography. I chose not include any external links since they tend
to distract from the main site of reference. Internal links are almost entirely found on the splash page, however there are some links that refer back
to the annotated bibliography. The complete project contains approximately 2,600 of my own words. I have included several pictures from the internet
that are cited at the bottom of each page. |