Summey 1

Kelsey SummeyApril 28, 2015Ms. IngramUWRT 1102FINAL PORTFOLIO ESSAYIntroductionAs you click the wix.com link to enter my e-Portfolio, you arrive to a black page with a huge picture as the background. The picture consists of the National Security Agencys (NSA) logo with the name of the agency written around it. The logo is a Bald Eagle with a shield in front of it. This logo is my immediate way to appeal to my audiences visual mode of communication. As you scroll down, youll see a small paragraph that is centered within the page. Within the paragraph, I gave a brief description of what my e-Portfolio is about and encouraged the viewer to enter it. This small paragraph appeals to my audience through the linguistic and spatial mode of communication. The last item on the page appeals to my audience gesturally. I placed a small icon that shows a hand clicking on a bullseye. This icon opens the doors to the remainder of my e-Portfolio. It leads directly to my Table of Contents page, which is another way that I appeal to my audience visually and spatially. Within my Table of Contents page, I have constructed six different colored boxes that line the page symmetrically. These boxes all have different names on them. For example, I have a Final Portfolio Essay box and a About Me box. This Table of Contents page is a great and easy way for my audience to navigate through my e-Portfolio in an organized, neat manner.Final Portfolio EssayStarting the writing process for this essay was a lot harder than it was in UWRT 1101. I was extremely confused, and I felt that I had no idea where to start. To get a breath of fresh air, I decided to create an outline of everything that was to be included in this essay. This outline can be referred to as my Process Work Artifact One. This outline was very simple and straightforward. I listed out all the headings that will be a part of the essay, and they mirrored the tabs in my e-Portfolio. Underneath all of these tabs, placed all ten of my artifacts so I will remember when to talk about them. Lastly, under some of my headings, I listed the main points that I wanted to hit. This artifact was simply here to give me some guidance.Multi Genre ProjectThe first artifact listed on this page is Process Artifact Two, which is the start of my traditional research essay. Before actually starting my multi genre project, I believed that the most logical way to present my information would be in the form of a research paper. Because of this, I immediately started typing this paper. Thirty minutes into the paper, I noticed a huge disconnect between me and the audience. There is no way that Congressmen and Congresswomen are going to find and read this research paper; I am only be realistic. Because I could not take the risk of having this disconnect, I figured that this paper was not the best way to present my research to my audience.The next artifact on this page is the Writers Notebook Artifact One, and it is the warm up that we did on March 19th. During this warm up, I explained who my audience is and how I was going to connect to them. I stated, "My audience is the Supreme Court justices and the lawmakers of Congress. I plan to connect with them by sending them both a personal letter, which will show that there is an actual concern with this topic. I will also share a mash up video with them so they can acknowledge the different opinions/points of views of the topic. The next activity that we did on March 19th was Speed Dating. In this activity, we were to talk to every member of the class about our audience and how we were to connect. In the first round of Speed Dating, I talked to Tim. Tim showed a lot of interest in my topic and thought my ideas were good. The one thing that caught my attention was when he said, The mash up video may be too time consuming. He was absolutely correct! I could not figure out how to do it on my computer and finding all the YouTube videos to go inside of it was a bit stressful. After being graded and receiving feedback, Ms. Ingram left me a comment that made me one hundred percent sure that I was not going to be doing the mash up video. She said, I wonder if this genre would appeal to your much older audience. This is something that I had never thought about, and Ms. Ingram was right, my older audience would not get on YouTube and look at this video. It would not make sense for them too. I immediately threw this genre out and looked for other options. The last artifact on this page is my Process Work Artifact Three, which is my Multi Genre Project Outline. In this outline, I laid out what my project was to consist of: Personal Letter, Flyer, and the Reflection. I then went through and put some of the key things that I wanted to discuss in each of the subcategories. For example, in the personal letter, I wanted it to be a bit more formal, and I wanted to introduce myself. The flyer was to be a bit more casual yet informative. I was sure to remind myself to mention things such as the date, time, and place of the event. Throughout my writing process, I referred back to this outline on multiple occasions, mainly to keep myself in check.Personal LetterThe layout of my letter page is pretty simple. When opened, the background of the page is the same flag that states, Restore the Fourth. This background appeals consistently throughout my Multi Genre Project tabs. When the reader scrolls down, they will see the embedded final draft of the letter. At first glance, the reader could see highlighted parts of my final. These highlighted regions are the result of the feedback Ive received.The first section of my Multi Genre Project was the letter that I wrote to the United States Congress in Washington, DC. I chose this genre over others such as a newspaper article or a blog because it allowed me to make a closer connection to my audience. Congressmen and Congresswomen would not pay attention to no-name bloggers, and what if my article never got published? Theyd never get a chance to hear what I had to say or notice me whatsoever. The only option left on my list was the letter. Since theres no way to connect with and chat with the government physically, I thought that the letter would be the best way to reach Congressmen and Congresswomen. Throughout the letter, I tried to make it as personal as possible. An example of this is the very first sentence of my letter, which states, I am an eighteen year old college student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and I am writing to express my concern with the NSAs Metadata Program. It allowed them to know exactly who I am and the sole purpose behind the letter. Another way I connected to my audience personally was in the last two sentences of my letter, which stated, There is no reason we should be going through this right now. Do the right thing and make it illegal. My last two sentences lets Congress know that I am serious about my concerns and that I am serious about having changes made. Under my final draft of my letter, I have created a short slideshow of the feedback Ive received from Ms. Ingram and Mackenzie Belton. This represents my Feedback Artifact One. The feedback that Ive received consisted of much editing and a little criticism. There wasnt a lot for me to do, mainly because I was sure to be extremely detailed throughout draft one and draft two. The biggest flaw that I had to fix was the wording of one sentence, which explained what information is gathered from the Metadata Program.FlyerThe next section of my Multi Genre Project tab is my flyer. When the reader comes to this page, theyll see a familiar background, consisting of the, Restore the Fourth, flag. After scrolling down, the reader will be able to see the final draft of my flyer and the feedback that Ive received. The reasoning behind creating this flyer was to reach my audience indirectly. This means that I wanted to get Congressmen/women to notice this cause through other people, specifically other Americans. I also wanted to appeal to my audience in a very creative way that will catch eyes while providing reliable information. Shelby agreed with this purpose, as she said, Great job! Creative and shows legit issues with great evidence. This flyer is advertising a march, entitled M3, and that stands for Metadata Madness March. Participants would be marching because they are mad about the metadata program. In this flyer, I demonstrate visual, spatial, and linguistic modes. The words I used and the placement of these words showed that I invested time into the spatial and linguistic modes of communication. I bolded some words, colored others, and changed the font size often. This was to draw the viewers eyes to certain parts of the flyer, specifically the most important ones. To demonstrate the visual mode, I added in multiple pictures. The picture on the top left is a group of protestors, which would try to get participants motivated for this march. The top right picture is of a man holding up a sign that says, Hands Off My Meta-Data. The last picture on this flyer is the American Flag, which shows patriotism. My goal is to appeal to viewers pathos by making it seem like this march is the patriotic thing to do. I also appealed to the viewers pathos by mentioning things such as, Protect our 4th Amendment Before its too late. I also stated, Its Our Duty! Appealing to the audience ethically was harder than I thought it was going to be. Because I had to put information on a flyer, there was not room for long, in-depth sentences. There was only room for brief statements, so it was my job to figure out how to win my audience over with few words. I believe that I accomplished this through The Why section of my flyer. In bulleted form, I have listed reasons why this march is logically and ethically correct.The last section of this flyer tab of my Multi Genre Project is a continuation of my Feedback Artifact One. Throughout this feedback, I received great advice from Mackenzie Belton. She made me think deeper into the purpose of my flyer, and she made me reconsider the layout. For example, she stated, Why choice of colors? Explain in your FPE. She made me ask myself, why were these colors important? Did they have any meaning to me before? Do they interpret something? I contemplated for a long time, but I eventually found my answer. Another example of the help she provided was when she gave me advice on my layout. Mackenzie stated, Maybe think about bullet points. This was a great idea! Instead of having long, drawn out sentences explaining the purpose of the march, I could just use bullet points. Her feedback was extremely constructive!ReflectionUpon arriving to my reflection page, you see the same background and layout that is featured in the letter, flyer, and multi genre project pages. After scrolling down, the viewer will see the embedded reflection final. At a first glance, some may think that it looks boring and plain, but this is only because of my APA format cover page that was required. Below the final draft, I have listed three artifacts that have helped me develop my reflection.The purpose of my reflection was to reflect on my whole writing and thought process of my multi genre project. It was also my job to conduct a rhetorical analysis on the entire project. I had to explain why I chose my two genres, expand on my thesis, explain how I used the modes of communication, and explain how these genres appealed to my audiences logos, ethos, and pathos. The easiest part of my reflection paper was explaining how I used the modes of communication. In the letter, I only used the linguistic mode of communication. This was a very formal letter, so there was no room to add in any images or any relatable items. As for the flyer, I used the spatial mode, linguistic mode, and visual mode of communication. The flyer consisted of multiple pictures and text that are located in separate, differently colored boxes. The flyer is very appealing to the eye, and it catches many eyes, mainly because of the bright colored boxes. The hardest part of the reflection was trying to figure out how I appealed to my audiences ethos, pathos, and logos. For the longest time, I believed that I only appealed to my audiences pathos and logos. After receiving feedback, I found that I appealed to my audiences ethos by being a United States citizen. As for pathos, I made my audience envision what life would be if these freedoms were taken away. Logos was appealed to in my letter, as I explained my concerns and argued them accordingly. The reflection of my multi genre project is a great way for my audience to better understand the development and thought behind my project in its entirety and the genres involved.The first artifact that helped me develop my reflection was my Process Work Artifact Four, which was the rough outline for my overall reflection. For draft one, I created this outline in hopes of gaining a jump start on my actual writing process. Its very simple, as I just went through the multi genre project assignment and answered all of the rhetorical analysis questions one by one. Though it was brief and very broad, it allowed me to put my ideas down on paper, and I referred to this outline very often.My Feedback Artifact One is the next artifact listed on my page. This is the draft three of my multi genre project, and I received a lot of great feedback from Ms. Ingram and Mackenzie Belton. While reading this draft, I noticed that I had a lot of grammatical errors that needed to be fixed, so they were sure to make me aware of them. When talking about how I used all three of Aristotles appeals, Ms. Ingram wanted me to think further, especially on how I appealed to my audiences ethos. She wrote, Ethos you are also an American citizen. How else have you established ethos? After reading this question, I pondered for a long time on how else I have established this. Being a citizen led me to connect to my audience in another way; since we are both citizens, we share the same rights, freedoms, and liberties. If I am concerned about having my liberties taken, then you should too. The last major change I had to make dealt with my use of the APA format, and this leads to my last artifact on the page.Wild Card Artifact One is pictures of an APA help website that I consistently referred to while writing this paper. In the reflection, Ms. Ingram and Mackenzie pointed out a lot of mistakes I was making in regards to my APA format. I didnt have a cover page, my in-text citations were bad, and my reference page was totally incorrect. I believe that Mackenzie thought I was writing in MLA format because she stated, APA? Or MLA? I was really embarrassed, and I needed to fix this quickly. With the help of this wild card, I was able to make all these changes quick and effectively. Visual Bibliography I have experienced a lot of technical issues with my visual bibliography page, and its mainly because of the embed feature on Wix. I embedded my Prezi, but now it show up, so I had to make a link directly to the URL site. It may not be a big deal to most people, but it makes me pretty mad. Anyway, when the link is clicked, it takes the reader to my final draft of my visual bibliography. The reader will see a very colorful Prezi that includes a lot of information inside of it. On the right side of my Prezi, I decided to list the title and the research topic of my project. On the left side, there is a lot of different colored sticky notes that are evenly spaced out. This allows me to appeal to my readers visual and special linguistics. McKenna agreed with this, as she said, I liked your layout and colors makes it appealing to read. When starting this bibliography, I had a lot of trouble noting and making connections between all of my articles. Olivia noted this as well because she asked me, Arent you supposed to include your thoughts/connections into this part of the project for each source? To fix this, I created a Key Terms list under all of my references so that I would be able to recognize familiar terms and names. This worked quite well; there were a lot of names that came up time after time, so I was also sure to make a large note of them. The sole purpose of this visual bibliography is let my reader know where exactly I got all my facts from in a way that is not boring and bland. I think that Ive achieved this.The first artifact that helped me develop my visual bibliography was my Writers Notebook Artifact Two. This artifact is a reader response letter that explains my concerns with the process of my visual bibliography. At this time, I was very uneasy about my whole bibliography. I felt that it was way too broad and that it was not going to be useful to me in the long run. I stated in the letter, Ill have to keep looking up more sources just to support my project, and thats the last thing I want to do. Ms. Ingram humbled me and brought me to reality by saying, But, often, thats realistic. Youre striving for an inquiry project, not for a research report. All your frustration tells me that youre doing this right. Though I did not enjoying feeling frustrated with my work, her statement brought me to ease. Another concern I posed was that I had no way to connect all of my references together. This brought me to the idea of the Key Terms list, and in the long run, it worked quite well for me. I also mentioned that because I am going to be a business major, I will be having to use APA for all of my research; therefore, I decided that I will start the learning process through this visual bibliography. The last artifact that is on my page is my Wild Card Artifact Two, which happens to be two YouTube videos. In my visual bibliography, I used these videos as two separate sources. After viewing them, I couldnt help but to! The first one is entitled, I Spy With My Little Eye: NSA Part 1 by Billy Johnson. In this video, he gave a lot of informational background of how the government led up to this metadata program. He also explained how and why the information was leaked by Edward Snowden. The second YouTube video is the second part of the first video, and it is entitled Meta My Data: NSA Part 2. This video had an entirely different purpose than the first one. In this, he explained what all this metadata is and what the government could find out from all this information. These videos were very interesting, and I enjoyed watching them. The sole reason I decided to use these two video are sources is because they give my visual bibliography a slight edge. Most people cite long, boring articles that no one really wants to read. These videos were extremely entertaining while they provided a lot of information. Another pro is that having multiple peoples opinions of one subject leads to a great, constructive debate, which is good for any cause. Throughout this project, I was sure to keep his ideas and opinions in mind.BlogThe blog that I have taken the time to complete is the one activity that I had to do consistently throughout the whole class. This blog coincided with all the other assignments that Ms. Ingram gave the class. For example, we used blog one as our way to share a couple of things that we thought were interesting to us. During this blog, we dived in to this whole inquiry project, and we did take a breath of fresh air until we reached blog nine. In blog one, I talked about the topics that I thought would be very interesting to research. My three topics were, What are the 10 most controversial political topics of 2014 2015? Why is there such a large wage gap in most careers? Is social media negatively influencing lives and persuading individuals to give into illegal/addictive behaviors, such as drugs, alcohol, and tobacco? I thought these were very great topics to research, but little did I know that my final topic had nothing to do with either of these. Olivia commented on the blog and said, I like that your inquiry questions are all different and vary from one another. Id have to agree with you when you say that your best idea is to go with your first inquiry question. You will be able to touch on many different topics with this question but I would also be sure not to get too broad in doing your research. Try to stick to one thing and not become too invested in things that arent related to your inquiry question. I totally agreed with her, so I decided to begin my research on the social media topic.After working my way through blog two, I immediately noticed that this social media topic was not for me. Ms. Ingram repeatedly told us to choose a topic that we did not already have an answer for, and I could answer this question in fifty different ways. I believed that social media was negatively affecting our society because of the very explicit graphics of the sites. For example, twitter timelines sometimes show videos and photos that show explicit language, racism, sexism, and nudity. Children now have access to these sites, and it is not a good thing for them to. None of the research that I discovered challenged my thinking, so I was extremely bored. I immediately switched directions and started researching the NSA.In blogs three through nine, I expressed my passion for the topic on the NSAs metadata program. Every single day I conducted research, I was always sure to find more information about it that would challenge my side of the argument. The one thing that I loved about these blogs was how they helped the writer develop. We wrote blogs on how to figure out who are audience was, the purpose of our research project, and the ways we were to present all this information to our readers. Our blogs were basically the outline to our whole project, and they served a great purpose. They were essential to my learning and development as a researcher and a writer. MidtermIn UWRT 1101, I made a table to show my key concepts, and it appealed to my audiences visual mode of communication, so I thought that I would do it again.Key Concepts Im Engaging WithKey Concepts that Challenge Me

1. Critical Thinking2. Independent Inquiry and Curiosity3. Responsibility for Learning1. Making Connections2. Providing and Receiving Feedback

In my midterm I stated that the three key concepts that I was most engaged with are critical thinking, independent inquiry and curiosity, and responsibility for learning. As listed in the midterm, I was great with critical thinking because of the way I went about choosing my audience. During class on February 12, 2015, we had to create a conversation between the people that would be at a roundtable, talking about my project. I created a very detailed script that included all the people in my blog. This required a lot of thinking because I had to get into the persons shoes, whether or not I agreed with what they were saying. The next key concept that I talked about was independent inquiry and curiosity. I established this by changing my research topic due to boredom. My previous question about social media was already answered and I had nowhere else to go with it, so I decided that I wanted to change. This change demonstrates curiosity because, at the beginning of this project, I was extremely interested and ignorant to the facts that were related to the NSAs metadata program. Overall, I am very happy that I decided to change my topic. The last key concept that I mentioned was that I responsible for my own learning. Just like in UWRT 1101, I felt that I was left alone to figure out how to work through all these assignments, and in fact, I was left alone. Ms. Ingram guided the class by give subtle hints, but she was sure not to do the work and thinking for us. For example, I had the hardest time trying to find research that was actually useful to my project. This was mainly because of the wording of my topics. Through trial-and-error, I found a topic question that allowed to me get the required research.Now at the end of this semester, I feel that I can create a new table. This table would look similar to the table up above but without any challenging concepts. I thoroughly believe that Ive mastered all of the key concepts, but because of time, I cannot go in-depth with all of them. Therefore, I will only talk about making connections, providing and receiving feedback, the writing process and revision, and getting out my comfort zone. Key Concepts Im Engaging WithKey Concepts that Challenge Me

1. Making Connections2. Providing and Receiving Feedback3. The Writing Process & Revision4. Getting Out my Comfort Zone5. Intellectual Growth & Maturity 6. Multi Modality of Print/Digital Texts7. Rhetorical awarenessNONE

With much work, I engaged in the two key concepts that originally challenged me. As for making connections, I engaged in this key concept through my visual bibliography. I decided to create a Key Terms list, which allowed me to see how all of my sources linked together. This was extremely useful, especially when I began trying to figure out what sources to use in my reflection. The next key concept that originally challenged me was providing and receiving feedback. I can now say that I have mastered this key concept! At the time of the midterm, the only feedback we were providing and receiving was of the visual bibliography. This did not help me at all, and I was not sure how to actually give and receive feedback. Now that we have starting giving and receiving feedback on actual drafts, I feel that I am engaging a lot better. After receiving and providing feedback, I was able to work on my writing process and revise a lot of my work. I got a chance to practice this concept by finishing all of my major assignments. We had to submit multiple drafts of each, and by the final draft, I felt that I perfected it, to a certain extent. The last key concept I would like to talk about is getting out of my comfort zone. The multi-genre project allowed me to get out of my comfort zone because my usual comfort level is the traditional research paper. I know that Im pretty good at writing papers, so that would be easy. I wanted to try something different that would challenge me, and after doing it, I figured out that I thoroughly enjoyed it.An artifact that helped me develop after my midterm was my Feedback Artifact Two, and this was feedback that I received from Ms. Ingram after I turned in my midterm. Through this feedback, Ms. Ingram told me what my grade was to be if the class ended at the moment. She stated that I would have received an A, but I had to go back and revise my midterm. I did not read the assignment thoroughly, and I missed the fact that she wanted me to talk about five different key concepts. Her other feedback was sure to mention all the ways that I could engage myself and help me become better with my key concepts.Grade ReflectionLast semester, I completed this course with you, Ms. Ingram, and I received an A for all of my work. This semester, I mirrored my efforts to those of last semester, and I believe that I should get an A again. During this semester, I was always sure to do all of my assignments completely and turn them in on time, with no exceptions. I also applied myself in all ways possible and used all of my resources to the full extent. If I had a question, I made sure that Id ask you so that my performance in class was better. As for myself, personally, I engaged in my research, and when I hit dead ends, I tweaked a few things to get me back on the right track. While looking at the grade scale, I also believe that I deserve an A. The grading scale was sitting beside me while completing this essay, and I was sure to mark things off as I went through. For each artifact, I explained how it helped me develop my major assignment. As for quoting, I made sure to quote from at least five other writes and from myself multiple times. I talked about the key concepts in my essay, mainly in my midterm section because I explained how Ive grown over the past semester. Lastly, I believe that I did not leave any questions unanswered. I was beyond sure to provide dubious amounts of information for the reader to receive.