Draft

Ben Weinhart

Prof. Benander

English 1001

4/19/2018

Final Reflection

My writing is one that is unique to me and me alone. The way that I go about purposing my work so that others may consume the fruits of my writing changes based on the assignment. For this final reflection, I am purposing the audience to be tailored towards that of a few, considering almost everyone that comes to my website will click on the research report, perhaps a lot after being directed from my public youtube video. Be that as it may, this final can still be stocked full of information.

Specifically from my research report, the thing that almost everyone will go to when they visit the website. Since it takes such an iconic shape on the site, it’s natural that it should also be written to a very broad audience, but not take to many liberties as to dissolve the relevance and educational aspect towards the reader. From when I started the essay to where it ended up are two very different things. When I first started writing it, I was trying to write it in the sense that others would know the fundamentals of what I am talking about and be able to just jump right in and start reading. This is quite simply not the case. When going about several reviews and assignments, I realised that the target audience shouldn’t be those that already know about the subject, but for those that are ready and willing to learn something new.

By doing this, I am able to capture a broader audience into my net and catch their attention to my writing. To accomplish this and to continue this fishing metaphor, what I needed to do was widen out the net while making the individual strands thicker. What I mean by this is that I needed to stretch out my writing so a larger audience as a whole could understand it, while I did make a lot of areas simpler, there are still ones that are quite complex in nature as to give more experienced readers a reason to be reading the report. This ultimately resulted in my purpose towards the audience to be one of learning and discovery. Learning an entirely new concept can be exciting to many and also daunting if there are 2 very distinct parts of the aisle to stand on. I helped to make that choice a little easier by showing them that there is a middle ground, from there, they can decide which one fits better for them and their lifestyle. Could it be a nice concept that they might try out once or twice? Or could this be something that they can use in their everyday lifestyle?

Enough on that though. After all, i’ve talked quite a bit about the audience I am writing for, but what about my analysis behind it? To answer this would be quite a journey, so lets start. My thoughts process is one that can be considered unique to many; the way I go about tackling problems is quite different than lots of other people. The way I like to go about things is to go into something headfirst and try to collect as much as possible on the subject. Then, I am able to write something that is completely comprehensive of the material that I just took in. This helps for assignments, since I am able to usually write a final draft as a rough draft, and then go about polishing without adding or taking out too much. I feel that this is a better writing style for the reader as they get more raw thoughts than refined ones, this allows them to potentially feel more emotionally connected to the subject as I am writing my first thoughts on the matter, this could very well be their first thoughts if they were to go through the same research.

To tie this to assignments for this class English 1001, I would say that each one is quite similar, but a bit different. For the annotated bibliography, I was still under the impression that I was writing for a more complex audience, and not writing so ambiguously for another. So I researched articles that require an advanced level of comprehension on Cryptocurrency, specifically Ethereum. I did include some articles about the markets and Bitcoin though, so I think I know what I wanted to write, and what I needed to write for the report.

To actually writing the report itself, I tried as I said previously, to make it simpler for a reader just getting into it while still maintaining complex aspects for more advanced readers. This in itself is quite a simple task as one thing that may be simple to one person in the Crypto world, may be dramatically different to that of another. Kind of ties back into the whole fact that nobody can attain infinite knowledge and there is always more to be learned.

As I go further on into the report, I mention some impacts that this will happen, and is happening to individuals and societies as a whole. For individuals, it’s an exciting new thing that they can dump endless hours into, It can also be a convenient way to do certain things, such as transacting things. For Society, there are larger impacts, exciting of course, but some harmful. The environmental aspect is one to be taken into account. With lots of electricity being consumed per day, it really starts to add up after a while. This gives insight into how my report was structured.

For the genre recast, I actually enjoyed doing this the most out of all. At this point, I had a clear idea of what audience I am writing for, and a clear direction in which to take it. I know that a lot of the more studious viewers for this particular subject will most likely prefer textual information as opposed to auditory. Not in all cases of course, but that is the best way to process a lot of the information out there at the moment. So I was structuring my recast for an audience who might have heard a thing or two and want to get their feet wet. I went about doing this by creating a simple guide explaining some of the benefits, what it is, and how to get started. I went about doing this in a Narrated Powerpoint video which I later uploaded to youtube.

To move on to the Theory of Writing assignment, this one was likely the easiest one if I had to put them all on a scale. Going back to the rough draft is final draft idea that I have, written items such as this and the one I am currently writing come quite naturally to me, I just need to have an idea of what to say and my fingers do the rest. What I talked about in my Theory of Writing is actually quite similar of to what I am speaking of earlier in this piece. I like to think that I have a rather unpredictable writing style, and this kind of amplifies it up a notch.

For these pieces of content, they need to have good ideals behind them, or else everything would just crumble apart and I would be at a loss for the desired enthusiasm to make the cogs in the machine turn. Taking a step back, the way that I get most of my ideas for what to write is just taking in the surroundings. Some things may look a little different every day in life, while some things can take drastic changes. For me, I would like to think that I push the boundaries of my own sphere of influence, to capture new horizons that will eventually lead me to formulate a plan of action.

The overarching question I had when going into this assignment, was how and what do I want to learn more about this thing? I had some ideas already formulated to answer those questions, but I needed to be precise in answering this question as it would likely define the person I am going forwards. For this, I don’t think that I have answered it completely, I may never do that, but I have at least gotten closer to the impossible goal that has been set forth.

As for revising these, all that I really have to do is just change some words so that they grammatically work better together, also there might be some typos or areas where I can improve my word choice in the matter. I only had one time this semester where I actually had to add more than a paragraph, in fact, it was a whole section. I think that this is likely due to me just being lazy when I was writing it, and forgot to include it into the final piece.

For the video editing portion, that was fairly simple and straightforward as well. What I did to actually create the video, was record the individual slides on seperate audio slices in Audacity. Once the audio was recorded, I then adjusted the timings so that there wasn't any background noise such as clicking to start/end the recording, or moving in my chair. After editing the audio, I just played it back while recording the slides in Open Broadcasting Software (OBS). This gave me a complete video to upload straight to youtube.

Finding the information to complete all of these assignments, included techniques that I used in the past to find reliable articles to present a piece of information that might be useful to me in my writing; and also be educational to the reader, as to give them context, or heighten my credibility towards them. The sources that I did locate for my research report were ones that I have not experienced beforehand. The searching process was also quite interesting, I probably found 5 times as many potential sources for the report, but didn’t meet up to standards of credibility or amount of reliable information that might be gathered from them. As such, I only stuck to sources that provided a reasonable betterment of the topic that I was discussing in the particular section of the report, and that completed the report as a whole.

For the video, I actually did quite the opposite in terms of locating these sources, I have heard and used every single source I discussed in the video, this includes all the types of wallets, exchanges, and having significant experience with the mining softwares. So essentially, I already had the information I needed, I just needed to list where to get these items or where to go on the internet to get the information you need to get started using these services. Because of this, I actually spent more time looking for pictures to be my background than I did actually looking for the information, as I either already had the information, or I have used it previously and would recommend it.

Using Google Docs as my primary writing utility for this class is one that I actually find to be a lot better than Microsoft Word. For one thing, with Google, you can have multiple people editing on the same document with the full functionality whereas with Office 365, it has limited functionality and a moderately confusing GUI (Graphical User Interface). For Google sites though, I probably couldn’t have picked a better website complete this assignment on, it was quite quick to pick up and easy to understand. This is of great assistance to me as I am one to get frustrated at things if I can’t figure out how to do something that I want to do within an hour or so.

Using these 2 in conjunction has been the primary backbone of the work that I have done for this English 1001 class. There may have been some hiccups along the way, such as forgetting to publish the website right after completing a quiz, done that one a few times. To losing track of where I put my document that I was working on, therefore having to spend more time than is required to either find out which email account it’s on, which computer it’s on out of a possible 10 options, or to more annoyingly see if it’s somehow in another location that I may put items on an infrequent occasion. Overall though, they have been of great help and I plan on continuing to use these services as I progress throughout my life, at least for the time being until something better comes along to be the “next big thing.”

To wrap this up, I have learned many a thing from this class. I for one think that my writing has notably improved after taking such a class that has caused me to think more critically of the pieces that I am writing. This is now the second major research report that I have completed im my life, the first one being named “The Penny Debate.” In which I talk about whether the federal govt. should continue to mint pennies, or stop. This project was also my senior capstone that all of us had to create.

I also think the use of technology was quite helpful in this class, I was more easily able to see information through online sources such as blackboard or my UC email. Where I would not be able to access these items with such an ease if everything was taken down on paper and not digitized. This especially helped in the various projects that we were doing, as I could work on something anywhere as long as I had my laptop with me. The same could be said with paper, but I couldn’t edit paper as easily or instantly teleport that paper 10 miles away to work on it. I look forward to seeing where this path may being me, and us as a society in all. Thank you.