Over the course of this semester I have learned a majority of things in Writing, Research and Technology. From creating our own Weebly site, to creating our "This I Believe" page, to doing research for our advocacy project and our social media investigation, I have learned a majority of new things. I feel like my writing has grown as a whole and I really enjoy using Weebly for my own personal blog use. 

Blogs

Throughout this semester we have had readings and assignments in which we had to post a blog response. Looking back on my blogs I think that this was a really good way to organize our thoughts on important subject matters. I like the fact that all of our thoughts are visible in one tab and we don't have to go back through our word documents to find them. I also think it's a good way to remember different articles that we read because we can easily link the site to our blogs. I also really liked how we could easily access other blogs and voice our opinions through the comments section. 

This I Believe

The "This I Believe" project was probably my favorite one of the semester. We had to really think of what we were passionate about and what we wanted to share with our classmates. My belief was to "just keep smiling." I wrote about my relationship with my Mom-Mom who had Alzheimers and a specific story when she told me those very specific words. I showed my belief through an additional tab on my Weebly account that showed pictures of reasons why I smile. I challenged others to think about all of the things that they can smile about and how you can turn even the most negative situation into a positive one. Along with this project I learned how to use Soundcloud and how to make a photo slideshow on Weebly. When I presented I felt a sense of relief because I was sharing something so personal about my life but also that I believed in strongly. 

Advocacy Project

For the advocacy project I worked with Molly on how social media sites can be linked to depression. We worked together to create a separate Weebly page that portrayed how sites like Facebook can cause sadness and low self-esteem. People look at other people's pictures and can start to believe that other people's lives are so much better than theirs and that they are happier. By doing research we found that this is a growing topic that is getting the attention of many news stations and news journals online. 

Molly and I worked together to complete our annotated bibliography for this project. Although I have made annotated bibliographies before, I forgot what the specifics were and had to re-learn how to put it together. I learned how to make a design plan and all that goes into planning for that. I learned about pathos, logos, and ethos and how it related to my social media depression advocacy. When we presented our project we showed a video from Fox News that reported about this upcoming issue. I think that a lot of people in the classroom could relate to our advocacy because most of our audience, if not all, had a Facebook. 

Social Media Investigation

The social media investigation was the most challenging project for me. I compiled a group of tweets that were about food. Before this project, I never really realized how many other people tweet about food. I know I tweet about food a lot and used a lot of my previous tweets as support. I found out that people tweet about food for different reasons. It could be about cravings, something they are eating and like or dislike, a recipe, something they want to try, or different food places that they are at. I also found out that many people tweet while they eat and it is almost a habit now for people to post pictures of their meals on Twitter and Instagram. I had a hard time finding another source that would support my argument, but I think my primary sources can prove a big point to my readers. Overall, I enjoyed collecting data for this project. I learned a lot about collecting research to use it in an argumentative paper. 


Overall, I learned so many different things in this class. Without this class I would have never gotten to learn about Weebly, how to incorporate research further into papers, and how to advocate for something we believe in. I will definitely take what I have learned in this class and use it in the future. 

I do believe that the majority of people on Twitter center their tweets around themselves. A tweet allows you 140 characters to share what is on your mind, and most people are thinking about their feelings and emotions. I think that people use Twitter to complain a lot or say what they are eating or doing. A small majority of the time my Twitter followers are posting about other important news, but that is a small majority of the time. I think that people on Facebook are just as narcissistic. Their pages are filled with tagged pictures of themselves. I do think, however, that people are starting to post more about important causes and stray away from every little thing on their mind. I think most people rely on Twitter to do that now. I believe that most of the time people are complaining or reflecting on their lives or others they know. 

The article that stuck out to me the most was "Is not joining Facebook a sign you're a psychopath?" Right from the start the title caught my attention. I immediately thought no before I started reading any of the article. I wondered why not being on Facebook is a bad thing? I personally wish I had the strength to get off of Facebook. I feel that it mostly makes me sad when I'm looking at other people's pictures an status' and they all look like they are having a better time than me. On Facebook, I find myself comparing my life to others. If a person is off Facebook that tells me that they do not need the social media to have a life. They can reach out to their friends on their own and not worry about what their pictures look like. I don't think it is a sign that you are a psychopath. I think you can certainly look back at people who are psychopaths with Facebook and catch signs there though. I didn't feel like the article I read had enough research behind it to try and pose this question. They used one example of the murderer in the Colorado movie theatre shooting. That is only one example of a psychopath not being on Facebook. I think the article could have tried to find more evidence to prove their claim.