Reflective Letter

Compared to the beginning of this semester and this unit, my writing has changed a lot. Before this class, I used a very general format for my writing. It followed the basic five-paragraph form, like most writings in high-school. I suppose the one thing that I consciously kept in mind was always presenting both sides in my writing. I would cover both my side and the opposition, and then compare the two to show why mine was better. Through this class so far, however, I have taken the audience into more consideration. It hasn't necessarily changed the content of my writing, but more the tone and style, based on the audience. For example, my blog posts have been made keeping my instructor and peers mostly in mind. With the other four members of this blog focusing on the same main ideas around the Discovery Center, and from our discussions, I would categorize my writing for the blog as being less formal and basic. I don't really need to go into depth about some of the concepts concerning the Discovery Center because they already know them.But when I write for my website, my audience perspective completely changes, as does my style. With the website, my audience goes way beyond the classroom. The audience, for my website, is based around professors, teachers, parents, government officials, etc. with an interest in improving education. To that end, I tried to keep my message clear and simple, but sound authoritative and serious enough for more administrative and academic readers.

While speaking on the website, the actual research topic I had in mind changed constantly. I started with something along the lines of "Does providing interactive experiments help students learn?" and ended up around "How interactive learning benefits students and why it needs to be expanded." As I was researching from one topic to the next, I kept coming up with realizations that made my current topic obsolete, and so I had to change it, make it fresh and actually research-able. In fact, my works cited for my website doesnt even include all the sites I wanted to use, just the ones used in my most recent topic. While this was frustrating, I think it was good that my topic was evolving. It was becoming more defined and specific, enough to write about without being too vague.

Part of the problem was I was trying to make some connections with my volunteering at the Discovery Center. I usually walked around, talking to visitors and asking them questions about the exhibits, if they understood the exhibits, and generally getting them to think about the whys. Due to the interactive method of the Discovery Center, most visitors could figure out how the exhibits worked themselves. I saw lots of parents teaching their kids, or the kids trying to teach their parents. It made it very difficult for me to help or get visitors thinking, mainly because the exhibits were already doing that.

The link to my website is: http://re-dsicoveringdiscovery.weebly.com/