Course Reflection

Wow so the semester is almost over already! It seems like it was just yesterday when we first started with this class. Looking back I would say it was pretty cool. I had taken the standard english 105 class a few semesters ago and obviously it didn't go to well for me to be taking english 105 again lol. First and most importantly to me, I think our class had a good chemistry. It never felt wierd to talk in front of the class or anything like that. Everyone seemed very comfortable and I think that all starts with the atmosphere the teacher brings into the classroom...easy going and very conducive to learning. I definately liked that. Working on the computer and doing all our assignments based on the computer use was something different than I am used to but it was ok. I liked learning how to use dreamweaver to create web pages....something I thought I would never be able to do. I never once felt like i didn't want to come to class which is a good thing. I had fun going to class. As far as what I didn't like. Well of course I'm going to complain that there were to many things to do meaning like the blog posts constatly, but that wasn't even really that bad. It just forces you to stay on task which is a good thing. Overall, i would say i learned alot this semester and have improved my writting even more. I enjoyed this semester and have no regrets.

Synthesis

To be honest, the hardest part in writting something acedemic is getting started. Usually writting something acedemic requires research which i always think is going to take like a million years and just the thought of that scares me. So i procrastinate. Once i start feeling the pressure to get something done is when i do it...lol i know thats terrible isn't it? In all reality, its not really that hard. Finding sources and going through them just requires some focus and can get done in a day or two. Knowing how to research is a big part in making things go quick. So, just getting stated is the hardest for me.

I do sometimes have problems with spitting out what i want to say. Like in my head i know what i want to say and it makes perfect sense and i understand it but i just cant get it out like i want too. I have trouble sometimes explaining what i'm trying to say. I can usually figure something out but i guess you could say i have a problem with this.

As far as citing stuff, never had a problem with that or incorporating stuff. I feel i was taught well in doing that in high school.

I think i actually like writting acedemically more than creatively. I'm a very objective person so writting on facts or actual issues is more fun to me than writting someting creative. I like to be able to have acedemic sources with facts to back up claims than have nothing to work off of when writting creatively.

Multimodal Reflection

Going into this multimodal project, I knew it would be posted on the internet meaning my audience could be broad...very broad. But for the most part, it would relate more to someone who was interested in e-security issues or someone with an e-business. Knowing that this could be viewed by almost anyone, i wanted to make sure I presented my stuff well becase i didn't want to look stupid. Knowing this could potentially be read by a computer guru i didn't want to dumb down my information to much. I tried to keep a fine line of keeping it simple where someone who didn't know anything ablout computers could understand and still maintaining some technical stuff that was easily understood like encryption. I think i did a decent job at adressing my audience.

Obviously, I would have liked to make my page more appealing to the eye with layering things and 3-D boxes and different fonts, sizes, and colors but i'm not really that good using dreamweaver yet. I would have liked to make it look more professional overall. Enough of bashing myself lol. One thing i like about the stuff i do is that i always make sure my ideas flow together making a nice comprehensive paper. I feel i did that with this assignment. I tried to keep it as organized as i could and easy to navigate. As far as do i feel like i had enough time to complete this? Yes, and yes we had more than ample time to do what we had to do.

Researching for this project wasn't too bad. Once you showed us that library hunt thingy it really helped me and made things go alot faster and smoother. I found plenty of relevant and acedemic articles on EBSCOhost that i know i can use and are reliable. The hardest part was just getting started. Once i did that i found all my stuff fairly quick and started putting the assignment together. Overall, i am pleased with the outcome . For not ever doing something like this i feel i did ok.

CLAIM

Virus protection is crucial to ensure businesses can remain running without constantly having to repair glitches that come from viruses

Research

Ahh good old research. We are all familiar with doing research from high school. It usually would consist of getting a topic and having to dig through information from all sorts of places and formulate an educated paper. It seems like I've done so many research papers over the years. When researching, I always do it the same way. I make sure I know the prompt of the assingnment so I do exactly what is asked, I gather relevant information from wherever I can whether its through books at the library or using the internet and google to using the Purdue Calumets' online library and databases. Once I have my info I take out whatever I can use and write it down and cite the exact page where it came from. The last step is writing the paper. This is just simply putting your information in a logical and comprehensive order. I know MLA is used more for liberal arts and creative writting and APA is used basically for papers related to science. We always have to cite information we didn't know about and give credit to the author who did know what he was talking about. We use other peoples work because it proves accuracy and authority when someone reading your paper knows the information say for instance it came from a professor at Yale.

Podcast

http://student.calumet.purdue.edu/~balaza1

:Hpertext Reflection:

Finally it's over! So looking back at this assignment I would have to say overall I am pleased. Considering I didn't even know what a hypertext essay was and had no idea how to create one, I would say this first one went ok. When we first began this project, it was fuzzy to me and I wasn't quite sure what our objective was. Once the prompt was actually clear in my head and I knew what we were supposed to do I was on a roll!..and I was having fun doing it.
I think I did a very good job keeping my summary and hyperlinks very clean looking and functioning. Overall I believe I maintained a professional look and feel to my page. I suppose if I had more time and more experitse with dreamweaver, I'd be able to make my site "look" alot cooler. It would just be appearance making it look nicer, not necessarily better content wise. I tried to make sure all the information I put down was clear, understandable, and easy to read for anyone on the web who comes across this. Since this is on the world wide web, that means anyone will be able to access this making my audience potentially huge!! With that in mind, I just tried to sound educated and present myself the best and most professionally I could. I think anyone who comes across this will like what they get, an easy to read, informative,brief little summary about cognitve enhancers with the authors comments on how he feels about this issue.
Thinking about it, I'm very happy with the outcome of this. I know I do a good job of keeping things in general simple and to the point, and thats what I did with this assignment too. I did my best to do what was asked of us.