Welcome to my ePortfolio! Here you can find reflections from all of my papers for the fall 2019 semester! To locate a specific reflection, simply click on the title of the paper located on the top of the web page. If you wish to preview each individual reflection, scroll down to the bottom of the web page. Here you can find short previews under each heading for my reflections.
My growth has been significant for this class. I can only assume the intended purpose of this class was to make us better communicators through visual, written, and oral presentations. I believe that I have achieved satisfactory marks in this class based on evidence on my presentations and essays. With this in mind, let me elaborate.
Presentations were something I was fairly novice at. I feel I improved in this sphere of the WOVE. Our presentations, such as our panel discussion, proved to be concise main ideas on my slides, while orally communicating the details behind those main ideas. Some new discoveries I made are effectively citing graphs and charts in the power point to let the audience know where you received that data is important. I also found using effective color schemes draws the audience to the slides so that they pay more attention. The thing that has probably been the most challenging thing to me is the communication between group members. I never had great group members in high school, but that changed in this class. Dividing up the work was actually discussed, unlike past years. I rather enjoyed this challenge and working with my peers to create a fantastic final product.
It is easy to see my growth as a writer when comparing my first and my final paper. Our first paper for this class, written back in August, was a summary on a book about the diversity and funding of public schools. One of the biggest critiques that I have on my paper would have been my lack of transitions. I thought my thought processes for each body paragraph and the surrounding details were sufficient. However, I felt I could have better communicated and flowed my paper. For example, the second paragraph closing sentence is as follows: “Parental influence on the segregated New York schools was very evident to Hannah-Jones and many other parents.” This is then followed by the introductory sentence of the third paragraph: “Hannah-Jones’ daughter initially succeeded in her low-income public school.” I felt I could have better found better transitions, because the audience could be easily confused since those two sentences are not exactly similar.
My final paper for this class was our documented essay. In my opinion, this was our hardest assignment, because we had to formulate a panel discussion, while writing a long essay that had to have a sufficient amount of details. I felt that my paper flowed and the topic was extremely relevant to many Americans. This is probably the reason why it was so enjoyable to draft. One thing I did well in my paper was my transitions between major ideas in my paper. The best way to show this is to cite a transition between the first main point of my essay and the second main point: “Americans are put at even more of a disadvantage when debt and student loans are required to be paid back on top of high housing prices (Gold). Expensive higher education is the next big barrier that Americans face.” Both of these transitions directly relate to one another and I feel that it flows accurately. My entire documented essay was focused on how Americans face high cost barriers when trying to achieve the American dream. This transition is effective since it relates the high costs of living, which transforms into debt to student loans, which also attribute to debt.
I have enjoyed my time creating essays for this class. By analyzing one aspect of my writing between the first and final paper for this class, you can see that my transitions between big ideas has improved. Using my peers I have been able to see where I struggled as a writer before coming to Iowa State. Peer review is an effective way to find the areas where I need to work on as a writer. I hope to continue these practices as I continue on with my education as a Cyclone