Inquiry: What I have learnt this term
I have thoroughly enjoyed Media Writing COMM11007 and feel that I have learnt the basic principles of media writing and now have the confidence needed to utilise the new skills I have developed which will no doubt be of benefit when applied to writing projects that I undertake in the future.
I have learnt the importance of planning, research, communication and evaluation and just how important it is to review work thoroughly prior to submitting publicly. Especially important is to have another set of eyes on my work, or take a break and come back with a fresh set of eyes and review work again.
I realise how important it is to revise a story and make sure that the quotes are correctly punctuated.
I now have the added experience of working across a broad range of social media platforms.
When it comes to journalistic writing, it really is a case of practice makes perfect with revision of work a must.
It is important to review and edit work so that the story flows nicely so the reader can easily understand and interpret the story.
I have learnt to blog effectively, create stories, write media releases and learn new ways of creating stories via various social media platforms such as Storify.
I am also more aware of common errors and now rethink as I write paying more attention to the use of words, placement of words and the importance of the KISS (Keep it short and simple) principle so that the story is easily understood by the reader.
What I found most beneficial with Media Writing COMM11007
I found the weekly blogging activities the most beneficial. The more I write the more confident I am and the easier it gets. The more I practice blogging the better the spelling is and the better I am with the placement of words.
What I found most challenging
The most challenging activity for me was the week 10 photo essay. I really like Storify so I decided to use Storify to complete my photo essay.
To use Storify I initially uploaded the photos off my phone onto my computer. However, I realised Storify does not allow you to directly upload the photos from a computer and that the photos had to be uploaded to twitter or another photo compatible sharing platform.
I had to research and I found there are a few different types of programs I could use. I then had to register to open up an account. I found this painful and time consuming because it became a matter of trial and error and the worst part of it was it was so time consuming. I do not have a lot of free time these days but I decided to persevere with it anyway even though it would have been much easier to upload the ten photos straight onto the WordPress platform in a matter of minutes.
I had to motivate myself into believing that it is not always the best way to learn by taking the easy way out.
I found a photo sharing platform that was compatible with Storify. I realised that there were two other photos that I wanted to use so I uploaded two photos to Twitter and dated them the day of the event to make the photos more authentic and relevant to the story in proper date format.
The photo essay could have taken me less than an hour to complete by just using WordPress but I chose the Storify option which took me hours.
So, although time consuming the end result for me was a better and more professional looking photo essay that I am happy with.
Has the course changed the way I practice or think about media writing?
Media Writing COMM11007 has most definitely changed the way I write. I have more confidence in blogging and often find myself thinking of different stories of interest I would like to write.
I review my work a lot more now and I read my work out loud and edit and re edit where necessary to make sure that spelling, punctuation, grammar is correct and the story flows easily making it easier for the reader to understand the story.
Media writing is more complicated than normal writing because media writing is public therefore, it is important to convey and chose the style of writing that will appeal to a particular target of audience.
2. Practical
(a). I have reviewed my WordPress blog against the ‘Blog Writing checklist’ from the week 12 support materials/links.
I have tidied up the blog and changed words to flow better in sentences and ammedned headings and tags to relate to writing activities as per blog submission review checklist.
I adjusted spacings as I found a few double spacings and a couple of repeated words I had to delete.
I also added links to twitter account and hyperlinks for easy access to websites related to activities.
(b). I have read and re read my blogs to find and amend any spelling and grammar issues in my writings. Unfortunately I would have liked a few more student to have reviewed my work so it was up to me to check and re check over my work.
I did find repeated words which I deleted and I found spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes that I fixed. I am hoping I found and fixed as many as I could to increase my grades for this subject.
It was suggested that I enlist a more robust drop down menu system on my blog to minimise the amount of scrolling for readers.
I must admit I tried, I tried for hours actually to add a side menu widget to no avail. As it appears after navigating and reading for hours on the theme I have chosen for my blogs that only a footer menu is available.
I can create projects and perhaps place blogs into boxes on the home page of blog however, at this late stage of the game in the last week I was not game enough to attempt to change this in case I ruined the current format of blogs and made a bigger mess.
I only received my marking document from Kate this week as I had issues of my computer not opening marking document so Kate emailed this last week.
3. Technical
I enjoyed the weekly quizzes and attempted the first quiz on my own knowledge alone, prior to reading the text, even though at times I knew I would get a very low score.
On my second attempts of the quizzes I scored mostly 100 per cent after reading the prescribed textbook chapter.
I have no doubt that the textbook Hicks, English for journalists will certainly be a valuable resource for me in the future.
Kim Vuga 