I was completely convinced that I was going to drop the class after the first few meetings.  The work that was involved seemed to be overwhelming, and on top of that, I had never touched, or even heard of Dreamweaver.  The closest I've been to designing a website, was admittingly and embarrassingly, Myspace.com.  After learning the basics on how to design a site, I didn't feel as intimidated, so I went directly back to my room and started on my personal website.  Coming up with the general outline of the website, however, took hours on its own.  I just couldn't get the hang of Dreamweaver for hours on end, and had to eventually just play around with it.  When I finally had my final presentation of my personal website, I felt more confident in my abilities.

For our final project, we were to create a website that portrayed a specific low-wage job and the lifestyle that was included. My website altogether contains twelve pages, averaging five internal links on each page, a navigation bar with five links, and ten external links linking to five different pages.  It includes 2,378 of my own writing, about 2,040 words in the printable version, and a seven item annotated bibliography with links to three online sources, information for four more library-based sources, and a description of each.

I had, before anything else, viewed other people's websites to see what I liked and what I didn't.  I also looked through ones where people made certain design choices that I incorporated into my own.  After reading Liu's article about online readers, I had put together a first draft of my site that took her advice in using short web pages. I had decided to make it simple so that it wouldn't draw attention away from the information that would be presented. In doing this, I had tried not to put a navigation bar, but that proved to be unhelpful to readers. The first two introduction pages, however, do not have this navigation bar aspect to it. In fact, the first page only has a few of the pages (the printable version, review of the literature, bibliography, learning essay, and the design choices), while the second page provides a first person narrative in which internal links are provided within the paragraph that navigates throughout the site.

Creating the website itself and its content was relatively easy. The hardest part was trying to figure out which of the subjects were to be highlighted, and have their own page. After this was done, the annotated bibliography was pretty simple. The review of the literature, however, proved to be quite difficult. I couldn't get a grasp of what it was supposed to be about, so I tried to skip it and continue on to the printable version, hoping to go back to it after, which I eventually did.

In dealing with the printable version, it felt that it was more or less the same to write than a regular linear paper. This conclusion, however, is assuming that I'm including all the time and effort put into the content of the rest of the website as well. For the printable version, I found myself having to fill in many missing transitions that aren't needed between each of the pages in the website. Also, many of the information overlaps and I found this difficult to organize, while in the website I was able to link together multiple pages that were connected with relative ease.

The critical thinking rubrics page didn't have one or two definitions that applied to me. Rather, I related to bits and pieces of many. The general idea of Halpern's, however, applied to me more than others. “Critical thinking is sometimes called directed thinking because it focuses on a desired outcome.” This most related to me because I had a goal to work for, and it was this goal that shaped my decisions for the website. This project was very visual, and because of this, my goal, along with having solid information to back it up, was to make it visually appealing to my audience. I think because there are two aspects to this project, it made me more willing to do it, because if I ever felt that I needed a break from writing, I could work on the website itself, and if I ever felt overwhelmed by the website, I'd switch to working on the writing. If there were more time, and I was to continue working on this website, I would probably work on doing more research. I would put up more information about child labor, and how to help.

All in all, this class definitely opened my eyes to the internet. I had never really put much thought into blogging, or even knew what hypertext essays were. It put a spin on normal English classes, and was a nice break from the old routine. I had also learned to be proud of my work. Because our website along with our writing pieces would be posted online, and it was our assignment to actually go and look at other people's website, it gave me incentive to do the absolute best. I've never been one to show or tell what I've done in front of the rest of the class, and in fact, I've never liked people other than the teacher reading what I've written (hence, I hated doing peer responses), but now I feel slightly more comfortable in doing so.