Reflective Narrative
Writing
In my Twitterive I learned a lot about different types of writing. I really didn’t know what I was doing with the project when it was assigned. I already had a Twitter account for a previous class, but I never used it unless it was for school. When we used it in this class I still struggled writing tweets. So when the project was introduced, I didn’t know what to write about. Professor Mangini talked about “place” in the next class, and that is when I had an idea. It was around Halloween that this project started to develop. I knew I wanted my place to be about Menantico Colony, which is a haunted village my friends and I visited. Knowing my place helped me create my tweets to surround a haunted theme. I made three drafts each of them led me to new ideas and where to take it. My writing advanced with each draft. In the first draft I only had a narrative summary, some dialogue, and a hint of adventure with some pictures. It wasn’t anywhere close that it needed to be, but it was a start. My second draft is the one that was work shopped in class. I had more in depth going on with this draft. I had two separate stories side by side. Since we had to use several genres I wrote one ghost story and another story of the expedition that my friends and me took. The ghost had some truth in it, but to add to the suspense I fictionalized it a little. I didn't write too much of the expedition because I was a little confused of how that would connect with the ghost story. Also, I didn't know where to place my pictures so they are just at the end. The presentation helped me find the direction I needed to take in my Twitterive. In my third draft I realized what was holding me back in my writing. My problem was I wanted to stay too close to the truth. By turning my Twitterive into a creative non-fiction my writing unleashed. I was able to form ideas where I could take both stories and combine them together. By not sticking to what happened my imagination improved my writing immensely. I thought I was done when I had my mid-term conference. However, I was not, but adding more details and description heightened my story. This last revision took my story to a level I didn’t even know it could reach. I felt so proud of it when I finished it!
In my Oral History I worked with a different type of style of writing. This was a more journalistic type of writing. Conducting an interview with Carmen Angelotti had my writing take a more questionable tone. This type of writing was trying to find out information on my research. This writing was done as a reporter. The introduction was speculation and the conclusion was an analysis to my partner’s and I research.
The Collaborative Project had me go into a research type of writing. In this project I had to use various sources and write about my findings. In this research I had a research question I was trying to answer. My research was very specific, so the information I was gathering I had to find and write concrete details.
The Multi-Genre Match took me to a different style of writing. I needed to have an angry tone and be accusatory at the same time. I have never written this way before. I wanted to add a touch of humor as well in my speech. I believe I was able to hit all three emotions. I talked to my classmates to find out where they were going with their characters, and tried to use that background information. I wanted to incorporate a past vendetta. I wrote my character to be a tough bad ass chick that never backs down from a fight. She wanted revenge and threatened her ex-opponent. This was very different for me because I never wrote a character like this before. I was nervous about acting this out in class, but I wanted to give my character her justice.
I think my tweets and blog posts grew as the semester went on. In the beginning of the semester I was unsure of how to do both. I already mentioned that I struggled with Twitter. Oddly enough it wasn’t until after the Twitterive assignment that I seemed to grasp what tweeting was. I would write about discussion in class, respond to something a classmate wrote, and even connect with my classmates using Twitter. I had to learn how to shortened my thoughts with the 160 word count hindrance. My blog post were mixed with their quality half way through the semester. While most blog posts had a good length, others I had problems with. Some of the assigned readings I had issues with understanding the material. I would reread them, but still came up short in those blog posts. After my conference I decided I would go back to the blog posts that held less information and add to them. I reviewed the readings and other classmate’s blogs to see how they interpreted them. Then I was able to add the needed information. I used quotes in some, but most blogs are my opinion of the readings. Also, I responded to classmates’ blogs during the semester. Whether it was agreeing, or giving an opinion on the subject I enjoyed doing it. I was always happy when I saw someone responded to my blog because it helped me see a different point of view or let me know I was on the right track. I tried to do the same for my classmates.
Research
In my Twitterive I had to do some research for my ghost story. While most of the ghost story is fictionalized, there is also some truth in it. A lot of the points in the ghost story start with what actually happened. I decided to expand on the past events and make it more gruesome. So in my research I looked at the Menantico Colony’s history. There were actual boys sent there to work on the land because they were feeble minded. No they didn’t actually kill their owners, that was me developing a theme. My research was on the time period it happened, why they were sent there, and the name it developed. I was not able to go back to the village, but I used my past experience going there to write the piece.
The assigned readings had research involved as well. Some readings I had to reread numerous times to develop an understanding of what they meant. For example the Reflective/ Reflexive Inquiry blog:
11/15/2011
This article was written by a teacher and her experience with reflective and reflexive inquiry. The teacher Donna Qualley concentrates on her students discovering the difference between the two. She wants to expand on different ways her students can read. Reflexive is not just reading the assignment, but being able to take the reading a step further and apply it to future work. Reflexive inquiry is looking back on your work. It doesn't matter if you’re a student or a teacher. This is applied by both groups of people. It is reevaluating your work because of something you may have heard in class, read in a book, or heard in passing. It is using the information you have gained, and critiquing your work with a new perspective. I know that I have done this with each writing arts course I have taken. In each class I learn something new about the art of writing and occasionally I will go back to a previous story I have written and make tweaks or add something to them.
Yes I believe Professor Mangini tells us to examine the implications of our writing. It is not just about structure, or putting ideas together. We do that with our blogs and did that with our presentations on our twitterives. Donna Qualley said, “Reflexivity involves a commitment to both attending to we believe and examining how we came to bold those beliefs while we are engaged trying to make sense." I relate this to when a Writing Arts professor looks at a student's creative story. They have always told me it was essentially my work. It is my choice if I chose to make the revision they suggested. The commitment to my stories help me look beyond what I originally wanted and examining the possibilities the story can take with the suggested revisions. My stories have turned out even better with revisions.
I believe time is the difference between reflective and reflexive inquiry. In my experience reflective inquiry on my work has always been a short amount of time after I have handed in a paper. I think reflexive is maybe looking back after you have been finished with the piece of writing after a long period of time. I think reflexive is a more spontaneous reaction and reflective is a more conscious reaction.
The Oral History interview I needed to research information about school lunches. My partner and I had to develop questions to ask her that would help with our Collaborative Project. Her answering our questions helped us with our main research questions. Our research question was “Are school lunches healthier then McDonalds?” This required research on both school lunches and McDonalds. We narrowed the school lunch to the Voorhees School District. Extensive research was done on their food and McDonalds food. At the end of the project my partner and I were able to conclude that school lunch are healthier then McDonalds. Of course the documentary Food Inc. was a main staple in our research.
Technology
Weebly was my main source of technology this semester. I have never developed an entire website before. I learned so much using the Weebly website. Of course there was some ups and downs in Weebly. In my Twitterive I tried to upload a song on to my page. I went through a whole process before I found out the key of uploading my song successfully. I wrote a blog to help my classmates, so they could upload their songs without delay. Under Professor Mangini’s advice and to further my own knowledge about Weebly I emailed them directly.
10/21/2011
I uploaded a file on my weebly website but I am having difficulty playing it. It is a song and the download went through but it won't play. I only have the free account not the weekly pro, so I don't have the audio player on my website. This website and all of its content is my grade for my class. I am a college student so I am not looking to upgrade to weebly pro. I thought since the file download option was available and the song downloaded without any problems it would play fine. To show that the song plays fine on my iTunes I attached it to this email. If you could please email me with directions of how to absolve the problem to enable the song to play on my website I would appreciate it. Thank you.
So I just sent this email hopefully they get back to me soon with how to play the song because it really does set the mood for my Twitterive. It would be a shame if it couldn't play. Also instead of deleting and rearranging my layout of the Twitterive I made another page. I like this idea because it shows how my ideas are progressing.
Weebly's Response
Hi ,
The only way to have this song play on your site would be to use the audio player. As it is now, people would have to download the song to their computer in order to play it, or if they click the song, it will play in a new browser window.
If this song was being hosted on another page, you could try embedding it on your site by using a Custom HTML element. For assistance with the custom html element, please see:
Using the Custom HTML Element
Thanks for your support!
George
This response only helped me so much. I used Google from this point on to discover how to work an Embedded HTML Code. Google is a student’s best friend! I googled the song title and Embedded HTML Code hoping it would give me a result I could use. I was then able to use the 4shared website that came up to put the video on to my website. It was a long process, but I was able to learn something new and then have a feeling of accomplishment.
My partner was the one who introduced me to my added technology for our Oral History project and Collaborative Research Project. In our Oral History project we were first going to write up the interview, but then we decided it would be better to record it. We first thought we would have to upload several videos because of the thirty-minute time limit. My partner luckily came across a website that would enable us to upload our full interview. This eliminated our problem and was easy to use. The website is called SoundCloud, using this element let us put our full interview onto our websites. SoundCloud lets you record up to 4 hours. It was very helpful for our project. For our Collaborative Research Project when we gathered all of our information together we put it on Prezi. Prezi allows your audience to connect with the presentation. I loved how this project turned out! We worked really hard on it and I think the end result using Prezi shows a different way of forming a research paper. This wasn’t you standard research paper or even power point presentation. This was my first time using Prezi and I hope to use it for future classes.
I used Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail as a form of communication with the class. Twitter I was able to respond and talk about our class. I could send private messages with my partner about our projects. With the 160-word count I became frustrated so I started using Facebook and Gmail to talk and send information about our projects. I think I have come a long way this semester in all three categories of Writing, Research, and Technology. I feel my knowledge has been extended on different genres of writing, interpreting information for research, and using new technologies. It was a vey informative semester.
In my Twitterive I learned a lot about different types of writing. I really didn’t know what I was doing with the project when it was assigned. I already had a Twitter account for a previous class, but I never used it unless it was for school. When we used it in this class I still struggled writing tweets. So when the project was introduced, I didn’t know what to write about. Professor Mangini talked about “place” in the next class, and that is when I had an idea. It was around Halloween that this project started to develop. I knew I wanted my place to be about Menantico Colony, which is a haunted village my friends and I visited. Knowing my place helped me create my tweets to surround a haunted theme. I made three drafts each of them led me to new ideas and where to take it. My writing advanced with each draft. In the first draft I only had a narrative summary, some dialogue, and a hint of adventure with some pictures. It wasn’t anywhere close that it needed to be, but it was a start. My second draft is the one that was work shopped in class. I had more in depth going on with this draft. I had two separate stories side by side. Since we had to use several genres I wrote one ghost story and another story of the expedition that my friends and me took. The ghost had some truth in it, but to add to the suspense I fictionalized it a little. I didn't write too much of the expedition because I was a little confused of how that would connect with the ghost story. Also, I didn't know where to place my pictures so they are just at the end. The presentation helped me find the direction I needed to take in my Twitterive. In my third draft I realized what was holding me back in my writing. My problem was I wanted to stay too close to the truth. By turning my Twitterive into a creative non-fiction my writing unleashed. I was able to form ideas where I could take both stories and combine them together. By not sticking to what happened my imagination improved my writing immensely. I thought I was done when I had my mid-term conference. However, I was not, but adding more details and description heightened my story. This last revision took my story to a level I didn’t even know it could reach. I felt so proud of it when I finished it!
In my Oral History I worked with a different type of style of writing. This was a more journalistic type of writing. Conducting an interview with Carmen Angelotti had my writing take a more questionable tone. This type of writing was trying to find out information on my research. This writing was done as a reporter. The introduction was speculation and the conclusion was an analysis to my partner’s and I research.
The Collaborative Project had me go into a research type of writing. In this project I had to use various sources and write about my findings. In this research I had a research question I was trying to answer. My research was very specific, so the information I was gathering I had to find and write concrete details.
The Multi-Genre Match took me to a different style of writing. I needed to have an angry tone and be accusatory at the same time. I have never written this way before. I wanted to add a touch of humor as well in my speech. I believe I was able to hit all three emotions. I talked to my classmates to find out where they were going with their characters, and tried to use that background information. I wanted to incorporate a past vendetta. I wrote my character to be a tough bad ass chick that never backs down from a fight. She wanted revenge and threatened her ex-opponent. This was very different for me because I never wrote a character like this before. I was nervous about acting this out in class, but I wanted to give my character her justice.
I think my tweets and blog posts grew as the semester went on. In the beginning of the semester I was unsure of how to do both. I already mentioned that I struggled with Twitter. Oddly enough it wasn’t until after the Twitterive assignment that I seemed to grasp what tweeting was. I would write about discussion in class, respond to something a classmate wrote, and even connect with my classmates using Twitter. I had to learn how to shortened my thoughts with the 160 word count hindrance. My blog post were mixed with their quality half way through the semester. While most blog posts had a good length, others I had problems with. Some of the assigned readings I had issues with understanding the material. I would reread them, but still came up short in those blog posts. After my conference I decided I would go back to the blog posts that held less information and add to them. I reviewed the readings and other classmate’s blogs to see how they interpreted them. Then I was able to add the needed information. I used quotes in some, but most blogs are my opinion of the readings. Also, I responded to classmates’ blogs during the semester. Whether it was agreeing, or giving an opinion on the subject I enjoyed doing it. I was always happy when I saw someone responded to my blog because it helped me see a different point of view or let me know I was on the right track. I tried to do the same for my classmates.
Research
In my Twitterive I had to do some research for my ghost story. While most of the ghost story is fictionalized, there is also some truth in it. A lot of the points in the ghost story start with what actually happened. I decided to expand on the past events and make it more gruesome. So in my research I looked at the Menantico Colony’s history. There were actual boys sent there to work on the land because they were feeble minded. No they didn’t actually kill their owners, that was me developing a theme. My research was on the time period it happened, why they were sent there, and the name it developed. I was not able to go back to the village, but I used my past experience going there to write the piece.
The assigned readings had research involved as well. Some readings I had to reread numerous times to develop an understanding of what they meant. For example the Reflective/ Reflexive Inquiry blog:
11/15/2011
This article was written by a teacher and her experience with reflective and reflexive inquiry. The teacher Donna Qualley concentrates on her students discovering the difference between the two. She wants to expand on different ways her students can read. Reflexive is not just reading the assignment, but being able to take the reading a step further and apply it to future work. Reflexive inquiry is looking back on your work. It doesn't matter if you’re a student or a teacher. This is applied by both groups of people. It is reevaluating your work because of something you may have heard in class, read in a book, or heard in passing. It is using the information you have gained, and critiquing your work with a new perspective. I know that I have done this with each writing arts course I have taken. In each class I learn something new about the art of writing and occasionally I will go back to a previous story I have written and make tweaks or add something to them.
Yes I believe Professor Mangini tells us to examine the implications of our writing. It is not just about structure, or putting ideas together. We do that with our blogs and did that with our presentations on our twitterives. Donna Qualley said, “Reflexivity involves a commitment to both attending to we believe and examining how we came to bold those beliefs while we are engaged trying to make sense." I relate this to when a Writing Arts professor looks at a student's creative story. They have always told me it was essentially my work. It is my choice if I chose to make the revision they suggested. The commitment to my stories help me look beyond what I originally wanted and examining the possibilities the story can take with the suggested revisions. My stories have turned out even better with revisions.
I believe time is the difference between reflective and reflexive inquiry. In my experience reflective inquiry on my work has always been a short amount of time after I have handed in a paper. I think reflexive is maybe looking back after you have been finished with the piece of writing after a long period of time. I think reflexive is a more spontaneous reaction and reflective is a more conscious reaction.
The Oral History interview I needed to research information about school lunches. My partner and I had to develop questions to ask her that would help with our Collaborative Project. Her answering our questions helped us with our main research questions. Our research question was “Are school lunches healthier then McDonalds?” This required research on both school lunches and McDonalds. We narrowed the school lunch to the Voorhees School District. Extensive research was done on their food and McDonalds food. At the end of the project my partner and I were able to conclude that school lunch are healthier then McDonalds. Of course the documentary Food Inc. was a main staple in our research.
Technology
Weebly was my main source of technology this semester. I have never developed an entire website before. I learned so much using the Weebly website. Of course there was some ups and downs in Weebly. In my Twitterive I tried to upload a song on to my page. I went through a whole process before I found out the key of uploading my song successfully. I wrote a blog to help my classmates, so they could upload their songs without delay. Under Professor Mangini’s advice and to further my own knowledge about Weebly I emailed them directly.
10/21/2011
I uploaded a file on my weebly website but I am having difficulty playing it. It is a song and the download went through but it won't play. I only have the free account not the weekly pro, so I don't have the audio player on my website. This website and all of its content is my grade for my class. I am a college student so I am not looking to upgrade to weebly pro. I thought since the file download option was available and the song downloaded without any problems it would play fine. To show that the song plays fine on my iTunes I attached it to this email. If you could please email me with directions of how to absolve the problem to enable the song to play on my website I would appreciate it. Thank you.
So I just sent this email hopefully they get back to me soon with how to play the song because it really does set the mood for my Twitterive. It would be a shame if it couldn't play. Also instead of deleting and rearranging my layout of the Twitterive I made another page. I like this idea because it shows how my ideas are progressing.
Weebly's Response
Hi ,
The only way to have this song play on your site would be to use the audio player. As it is now, people would have to download the song to their computer in order to play it, or if they click the song, it will play in a new browser window.
If this song was being hosted on another page, you could try embedding it on your site by using a Custom HTML element. For assistance with the custom html element, please see:
Using the Custom HTML Element
Thanks for your support!
George
This response only helped me so much. I used Google from this point on to discover how to work an Embedded HTML Code. Google is a student’s best friend! I googled the song title and Embedded HTML Code hoping it would give me a result I could use. I was then able to use the 4shared website that came up to put the video on to my website. It was a long process, but I was able to learn something new and then have a feeling of accomplishment.
My partner was the one who introduced me to my added technology for our Oral History project and Collaborative Research Project. In our Oral History project we were first going to write up the interview, but then we decided it would be better to record it. We first thought we would have to upload several videos because of the thirty-minute time limit. My partner luckily came across a website that would enable us to upload our full interview. This eliminated our problem and was easy to use. The website is called SoundCloud, using this element let us put our full interview onto our websites. SoundCloud lets you record up to 4 hours. It was very helpful for our project. For our Collaborative Research Project when we gathered all of our information together we put it on Prezi. Prezi allows your audience to connect with the presentation. I loved how this project turned out! We worked really hard on it and I think the end result using Prezi shows a different way of forming a research paper. This wasn’t you standard research paper or even power point presentation. This was my first time using Prezi and I hope to use it for future classes.
I used Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail as a form of communication with the class. Twitter I was able to respond and talk about our class. I could send private messages with my partner about our projects. With the 160-word count I became frustrated so I started using Facebook and Gmail to talk and send information about our projects. I think I have come a long way this semester in all three categories of Writing, Research, and Technology. I feel my knowledge has been extended on different genres of writing, interpreting information for research, and using new technologies. It was a vey informative semester.