COM315 Round Up

It’s hard to believe, but I’m just a mere seventeen days from graduation. It’s kind of scary, really. These four years have flown by, just like everybody said they would. But this isn’t a time for depression. Instead, I’ll be going over COM 315, Writing for New Media, and giving reflections on the class.

I don’t think there is just one thing that I can call “most valuable” when it comes to things I’ve learned from this class. But I can narrow it down to two. The first is blogging and RSS feeds (the two are related enough to be folded into one). I had a lot of fun with these assignments, whether it’s my rants about how horrible people are or even posts for class assignments, like choosing a good screen capture program. I thoroughly enjoyed blogging and don’t plan on stopping. And RSS feeds are great for me: I’m not a big fan of watching the news, but the feeds I subscribe to keep me up-to-date on many of the happenings in the world. I just need to add some more news-specific ones (I’ve only got a few Wall Street Journal ones at this point).

The other valuable thing I’ve learned is web design. For class we only had to make a very basic website, but learning HTML and how to use Dreamweaver let me help my roommate/close friend design his website (with which we’re still having issues). It’s also a great thing to be able to put down on a resume.

To be quite honest, I was most surprised by the fact that there were only four people in the class (from two the first day). It’s the smallest class I’ve had, followed by my freshman English class that had six. It also surprised me that web design isn’t insanely difficult–on a basic level. I was able to put together a simple site with relative issues. Of course, I’ve run through the gambit of easy and head-smashing-on-the-table difficult problems while working on my roommate’s site.

Before the first day of the class, I was assuming this was going to be, largely, a writing class (hence the name Writing for New Media). But at this point I would not consider COM315 a writing class. The only true writing we did was for our blogs. However, all of the other writing classes I’ve taken taught the students how to write. I didn’t feel like this class did. Sure, there are considerations for writing for the web, but it didn’t take thirty one-and-a-half-hour classes to learn that. It took, perhaps, five minutes. I think it would be beneficial to rename the class simply “COM315: New Media.” I’m not sure why we didn’t learn writing when that’s stated in the name of the class, but it’s not really a disappointment: I’m a professional writing major so I’ve had plenty of time learning writing.

I like that I was able to write whatever I wanted (more or less) in my blog, along with the required blog posts. There really would be no other way to get my views on the ultimate badass out to the public, otherwise. Not that anybody ever reads my blog other than Dr. Webb, though.

I really enjoyed this class and benefited from it greatly. I think it wouldn’t have been as good a class were there more students enrolled. With only four of us, Dr. Webb was able ot tailor the class more towards what we each wanted to learn, which was cool. I definitely would recommend this class to other students, but it’s not like any of them are reading this post anyway.