What I learned at school today …

Assignment: Write an end-of-semester blog post that catalogs, explores and details how your writing for and understanding of digital environments have changed. Specifically:

• Discuss how your writing has changed since the beginning of the course
• What you have learned in the course that you think will prove most useful going forward
• What unanswered questions remain for you
• How this course could be enhanced, improved, changed (be brutal!)
• What the instructor could perhaps do to better facilitate maximum learning

More than the sum of its parts

At the beginning of the course, I viewed the course title “Writing for Digital Media” as the three (actually four) words that made it up:

Writing 

–verb (used with object)

1.	to trace or form (characters, letters, words, etc.) on the surface of some material, as with a pen, pencil, or other instrument or means; inscribe: Write your name on the board.

2.	to express or communicate in writing; give a written account of.

3.	to fill in the blank spaces of (a printed form) with writing: to write a check.

4.	to execute or produce by setting down words, figures, etc.: to write two copies of a letter.

5.	to compose and produce in words or characters duly set down: to write a letter to a friend.

…..

Digital

–adjective

1.	of or pertaining to a digit or finger.

2.	resembling a digit or finger.

3.	manipulated with a finger or the fingertips: a digital switch.

4.	displaying a readout in digital form: a digital speedometer.

5.	having digits or digitlike parts.

6.	of, pertaining to, or using data in the form of numerical digits.

7.	Computers. involving or using numerical digits expressed in a scale of notation to represent discretely all variables occurring in a problem.

8.	of, pertaining to, or using numerical calculations.

9.	available in electronic form; readable and manipulable by computer.

…..

Media

–noun

1.	a pl. of medium.

2.

(usually used with a plural verb) the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely: The media are covering the speech tonight. …..—Usage note Media, like data, is the plural form of a word borrowed directly from Latin. The singular, medium, early developed the meaning “an intervening agency, means, or instrument” and was first applied to newspapers two centuries ago. In the 1920s media began to appear as a singular collective noun, sometimes with the plural medias. This singular use is now common in the fields of mass communication and advertising, but it is not frequently found outside them: The media is (or are) not antibusiness.

Integrating content 

This course has given me the opportunity to integrate those words and to understand that together they are both more than the sum of the parts and different.  I’ve learned to think of who the reader is, perhaps a:

1. coworker
2. fellow sports fan
3. classmate
4. newspaper reader
5. random web surfer

and tailor my writing accordingly. I’ve learned that the online reader will view the writing differently than the print reader, and things need to be organized to maximize what might be only a fleeting moment of the reader’s time, for example:

1. organize things in chunks,
2. use headlines and mini-headlines,
3. use bullet lists like this one,
4. break the post so that the interested reader will be able to expand and the casual reader will not be threatened by its length.

I’ve learned (what now seem to be simple) tricks in the WordPress software to embed links and graphics, to use headers and page breaks, and to keep up with who is using my blog. I’ve learned more HTML, most of which was a refresher of things I had long ago forgotten from days of coding pages on geocities.com in the late 90’s before they had a page editor that auomated things.

What will I do when I grow up?

I suspect that much of my use of the course will be in blogging (whether for personal whim, sports fans, or for coworkers, legislators, and lobbyists wanting to keep up with legislative news) but some of its use may be for memo writing where the recipient will be able to click on embedded links to go to more documentation, fact, or opinion. I had not realized until a few weeks ago that the version of Microsoft Word I use has the same icon to embed a link that WordPress and other blogging software has.

I still need to learn formatting, font size, placing and sizing images in more relevant places, and how to tweak page appearance to be more appealing. I also need to learn how to sift through information overload to find what is relevant without being drowned.

Annoyances 

I’ve been annoyed with the Blackboard message board format where it is impossible to keep up with subject headers as threads get longer.  I’ve been frustrated by the lack of synchronicity between the course book and the various places that the online syllabus appears. It was not until many weeks in that I realized that the course book predated the online syllabus.

Excellence 

I’ve found the course to be incredibly useful, my classmates to be uniformly helpful with nary a flame on the Blackboard discussion board. The questions posted each week by the pair of students leading the discussion have been great. I’ve found the instructor to be knowledgeable about the subject matter, willing to come to the rescue of threads that need help.

This course has been the best of the three I have taken, although I am sure that the other two courses laid a great foundation for this one, and those taking the classes in a different order will say the same things about their third or fourth class.

All I Really Know I Learned in Kindergarten 

I take to heart the words of Robert Fulgham in All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten* as I planned each week how to get the work done “Live a balanced life, learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon.” (page 2), and when things bog down “…just lie down and shut up and wait…” (page 95)

 *text found using the “search inside” feature of Amazon.com