Are we there yet?? Week three was definitely a struggle. I am not sure if the frigid weather had something to do with my lack of motivation but something surely did! This week entailed a lot of writing, reading and producing. We had 3 daily creates, 10-stars worth of writing assignments, create our new character, and reflect on a reading and video. Daily Creates To start these are my 3 Daily Creates from this week. These Daily Creates were from Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunday: You can’t go wrong with… This first create was something you can’t go wrong with. I felt like a million things came to mind when I saw this Tweet, and finally narrowed it down to two. I thought well, you can’t go wrong with either, so why not post both? I took both of these pictures in Florida. One on the left was of a sunrise on St. Augustine Beach and the second was a picture flying somewhere over Florida during a sunset. Tuesday: Show us your best mask This second create was to show our best mask! The responses to this was pretty funny. The snorkeling photo I took last spring while snorkeling the Florida Keys was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this tweet. I believe other classmates posted pictures of snorkeling goggles as well- great minds think alike! Wednesday: How they did it before This third daily create was also fun! I actually ended up googling “how they did it before” and actually saw a few things I have never seen before! I came up with road map because when my parents used to drive me to soccer games, I was responsible for getting them there. This is literally what I looked like!! Now that my brother is in soccer, he simply brings up his phone and Siri gives my parents the directions. Oh how things have changed! Writing Assignments When I first saw that our assignment bank assignments would be coming out of the writing assignments section I almost panicked! I like to write, but not under pressure. So I was worried that these would be rushed given the crazy week I have had. But overall they weren’t too bad, I just wish I had more time! 3.5 stars: For this first assignment, we were asked to blog about our dream vacation. This blog was kind of fun actually! I decided that I wanted to take an extended vacation and travel around the world. It did take a while to compile all of the places I wanted to go, and towards the end they weren’t as in depth but I think it turned out pretty well. 2.5 stars : For this second assignment, we were asked to to time ourselves for 10 seconds and in those 10 seconds come up with a list of things we are thankful for. I found this fairly simple and kind of eye opening! In 10 seconds I identified what I was most thankful for and that felt good. I also added a quick picture of myself. 3 stars: For this third assignment, we were asked to take a poem and create a parody of it. This was my one assignment that tied in our theme! I had fun doing this poem though it was a bit difficult to do. I think the most difficult thing was to find a poem that could be turned into a secret agent theme. 1 star: For the final assignment, we had to create a haiku from one of our favorite fairy tales! This assignment was actually quite simple and I really enjoyed it! Character Dossier When I first read this assignment piece, I was very unsure of how I would tackle creating a character. I played around with many different ideas and introductions but this one was by far my favorite. I think the greatest struggle about this assignment was the time in which I had to create it. Mostly because this is possibly going to set up future stories. I struggled with how much should I reveal? How far should I take the opening scene? Who should Nadia be? Come from? Where is she going? Etc. Etc. I eventually settled with the story I posted mostly because of sake of time. Which is probably actually best because otherwise I might sit on this character development for a while! Nadia’s code name ends up being Golden Eagle which I thought was an awesome name. I came up with it by googling native animals/birds in the French Alps. I’m not sure how I came up with the name Nadia and John Smith, but something tells me that the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith had a huge help in the name. Which brings me to our story analysis. Story Analysis Mr. and Mrs. Smith is one of my favorite movies and I can’t believe I didn’t realize how much it relates to our secret agent theme! For my story analysis, I decided to re-watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith and analyze it. I enjoyed this assignment because not only was I able to re-watch one of my favorite movies, but I was also able to watch it in a new way! This time watching it, I really paid attention to the story-line shape. Something that was talked about heavily in the video we watched this week. I even drew my own version of the story-line of Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Slack Questions The final part of this weeks assignments was to answer some questions regarding blog titles. Here is my response: A good blog post title is engaging and easily catches the reader’s attention. I believe a good title for a blog post is not only engaging but also short and simple. I don’t mean simple as in bland, but I mean that the post is creative and simple to quickly read and understand. Good blog posts are creative and have a visual aspect to it. If you can paint a picture from just looking at the title, it’s likely a good title and will intrigue someone to find out more by reading the post! I think what’s different for writing for the web versus print is the creativity of the page or blog itself as well as the length of the writing. Online writing must be concise because people are constantly looking for the next best thing and will continue on if it takes longer than five minutes to read. Writing for the web also allows for visuals, which is something I enjoy most. I enjoyed having these questions to consider all week when making blog post titles, because it made me question if my title was engaging or catches the readers attention enough. Final Thoughts This week was certainly a crazy one! I think overall it turned out decent. I wish I had spent more time on the character dossier but I am still happy with it! I am happy the week is over, and the best thing about this course is that there are no two weeks alike. So, I can’t wait to see all the exciting new things we get to try out next week!
