Project #1 Reflection

This is by far one of the more creative type projects that I have done. After choosing my topic, I began to dig deep into it and everything seemed to fall in place. I think the website idea was a good choice because I found it hard to express everything concerning this topic in just six photos. Creating a website is still very new for me, however I am happy with my final result. Deciding on what to put on each page was a small hill, though after researching more, those pages quickly filled up. My website has six pages, each containing a different type of information to give the reader an understanding of the topic. This site contains an introduction, background knowledge, pictures, videos, personal stories, and my personal essay on the last page. I put a table of contents on each page, which resulted in easy navigation throughout the website. I wanted to get more creative with this, though my knowledge behind creating a website is limited and I had to just give it my best shot. Overall, I am very pleased with the result and hope the hard work pays off.

The essay, though a little longer than I wanted, contains a large amount of information to support my advocating proposal. Deciding how to format the paper, such as how many paragraphs to have and what to have in them, was an initial problem for me. I decided to stick with the standard five paragraph essay and devote only one body paragraph to proposing the advocation. The other body paragraphs, leading up to the proposal, give the reader a complete understanding of the topic.

The photos above are snapshots taken from three different pages on my website. As seen in the pictures, the appearance of my site is straight forward, with an all black background and headlines in bold red lettering. I like this look and feel that it makes the site look more professional and easy to read. The website link is...

http://sites.google.com/site/athousandbombs/Home

Advocation

When thinking about my topic, I knew I wanted to choose a topic that I was both interested in and motivated by. To satisfy these two, I narrowed my search down to two topics, animal cruelty and bomb testing. These are two topics that I may not have very strong feelings for, however, they interest me and I have no problem advocating for them. Both these topics contain an extensive amount of information and photos, making the research for the two easy and fun.

I chose to advocate for no more bomb testing by the United States. After doing some reasearch, I became very interested in the topic and became satisfied with advocating for the subject. The amount of indivuals who sufferd and are still suffering from these bomb droppings is mind blowing and stomach crunching. The bomb's radiation have the ability to affect individuals thousands of miles away from the actual testing sites. The radiation causes extreme cases of cancer, mutation, and a wide variety of other illnesses. Atleast half of the 215 bombs exploded were done at the Nevada Test Site and the others at Pacific test sites. Extensive searches have been done to show others the horrible effects of these bombs and that these effects will stick around for years to come.

My project will include photos and a written essay, both concerning the effects of bomb testing and why stopping them can do nothing but benefit the United States. I want to include photos to that bring the cancers and illnesses to life for the reader. I believe choosing photos is one of the key aspects to this project, because it can bring my words in the essay to reality for the reader. I want to include cold hard facts about the bomb testing that can hopefully change the reader's view tward the subject.

Screen Capture Of Your Desktop

After reading this assignment, I became very confused, mostly because taking a screen shot of my computer is extremley new to me. After messing around with it for a while, I realized this feature is actually interesting and I began to think more about the contents on my screen. In this picture I have three windows open that consist of the internet, iTunes, and my Biology 130 lecture notes. While on my computer, these are the usual windows open, with an exception to the Biology 130 notes, that can be other class notes as well. I usually have iTunes open becuase I enjoy listening to music while doing my homework and I think doing so makes me a better worker. I have a window containing my Biology 130 notes becuase I am often looking back at my notes and finishig them because my teacher lectures fast. The final window, containing the internet with tabs consiting of Blogger, UMD email, and C-Tools, is almost always open when I am on the computer. I am always on my email, continuously recieving email from teachers and financial aid, C-Tools checking for new class assignments, and rarely Blogger.com, which I usually only use for composition classes. After analyzing my picure I realized I have a lot on my screen at once. This tells me that I am a multitasker and doing so does not phaze me.

I thought for a long time on how to answer the two questions posted with this assignment. The questions are somewhat confusing, though I will try to answer them to my fullest capability. I think composing changes shape in digital spaces by making it more summarized. I say this because when I work on my computer with these windows open, I am involved in each with much detail. However, when looking at the picture, I can summarize what I am doing in just a few sentences becuase the digital space shows all this at once. I think we can better understand digital composing processes by doing them more often and looking at them in further detail. If this is an example of digital processing, which I think it is, I think we can understand them more by answering more question concerning them, exploring them, and ultimatley doing more of them.