WRITING PROCESS ANALYSIS

Anne Lamott suggest that in order to write a good paper, a shitty one is first necessary. She says that it helps her to almost produce a form of word vomit which she then cuts pieces away from until it is where she wants it. My writing process is basically exactly the same as when GWRTC started. I had never put thought into how I wrote papers, I just did it in whatever way worked for me. We have all been taught tricks and strategies to make writing easier, but I have found that my way works perfectly for me. I have done my process the same way for as long as I can remember which is literally just sitting down and writing the paper all the way through. After I write a good amount, I go back to read it but only to help myself remember where I'm going with my thoughts. It may be a time consuming process, but apparently it is working. Confidence in my writing was completely lacking until this year, more specifically this semester and even more precisely, with our writing class. The only thing that has changed about my writing process is my confidence in it.

TROUBLE WITH DIGITAL STORIES

Being completely technologically challenged, taking on the project of creating a digital stories had me worried at the start. I had never done anything like it, but with the help of iMovie and many tutorials it ended up being a breeze. Since my digital story only consisted of pictures that I had taken, I did not have to mess with bringing videos off of YouTube and putting them into my project which could have made the project much harder. iMovie ended up being very easy to use so problems with creating my story were minimal to none. The only part of the project I had a lot of trouble with was uploading the video because first it was necessary to change it to a compatible version, but luckily loading it to YouTube was just as acceptable as uploading it to JMUTube.

VALUE IN DITIAL STORIES

Digital stories without a doubt hold value in academia, and outside it. Academically speaking, it is important to have a variety of mediums in which students can learn. Simple lecture and a wordy presentation of information is efficient, but not always entertaining for the students making it harder to learn from. When there are forms of technology at our fingertips that also allow us to be quietly entertained paying attention is difficult, but if the material is presented through something such as a digital story it is much easier to focus and retain information from the modern, attention-grabbing video. Outside of academia, digital stories hold just as much value. People can create or capture memories and stories from the past in a way that describes them better than a simple photograph or verbal story based on memory.

GROUP PROJECTS

Group projects tend to cause problems with the members as well as problems with the actual project, but I lucked out. Our group works well together, and does good work. The only challenges to working with other people, in my case at least, was making the work flow as if only one person had done it, but I think we ended up doing a really good job. It is always hard to make deadlines for each other and decide when to do work because everybody is going to have different schedules and different slots of free time, but in the end it all came together. Even with spring break right in the middle of our work time, we managed to do everything in a timely manor. The only way that the project would have differed if I had done it alone would be that it would all be in my words rather than my group members as well. The research and actual work we did for the project was done really well to the extent that if the project had been an individual project, I would have done it exactly the same way.