Wikipedia Reflection

While working on the Wikipedia project, I did my best to incorporate the most information I could into my section. As I was writing about Literacy in the classroom, and being a former education major, I felt I had a strong knowledge base of how classrooms work and how multimodality needs to be incorporated into the classrooms. I worked to present the information I found through Gunther Kress' book Literacy in the New Media Age to present clear information on the changes of the classroom and the incorporation of technology.

While working on the editing process, I just worked through my section making sure that my writing was clear. I wanted the information to be simple, not containing any unknown terminology. Wikipedia is for all people and I wanted my writing to be understandable by everyone, not just a specific audience. I went through my section, defining any unknown terms, and clarifying any vague concepts. Finally, I just focused on the grammar and punctuation, making sure my presentation was acceptable.

Throughout the writing and editing process, I did struggle in writing for a general audience. Most of the writing I do is for classroom assignments and for a teacher, who has a background information on my topic. Writing for an audience that doesn't know about multimodality meant that I could leave no vague terms or not explain a concept.

Mostly I did enjoy the writing process. I think I learned more about how to focus my writing to a general audience rather than a specific one. I think that my section of the wikipedia article is clear and coherent.

Editing Analysis: April O'Neil of Teenange Mutant Ninja Turtles

When editing the April O'Neil article, my goal was to eliminate incorrent grammar and superfluous wording, among other things. The article is pretty poorly written, but still provided good information. Large chunks were written in passive voice, adding unnecessary wording and creating extremely awkward sentences. I did my best to rephrase them, while still keeping the same meaning in the sentences. I stuck with Bazerman's rules of intertextuality, trying to put the article in to clear understandable words. Some of the sections were very "professionally" written, like someone writing a research paper, while other parts were lax in grammar, punctuation, and cohesion. I did my best to fix most of them.

Other areas of the section were too over simplified. April O'Neil's relationship with Casey Jones and her job  as a reporter were key plot lines to various incarnation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Sections about her and Jones' relationship were glossed over, usually only a few sentences, while details of her job as a reporter were minute details or not expanded upon.

In fixing and/or pointing out these errors I hope I clarified what was confusing and removed the poor grammar and passive voice from most of the article. I think the article has good potential but with its poor writing, I don't think it will  appeal to most people.