Five Concepts of this Class

At first, the idea of answering this question seemed a bit daunting to me. We have covered so much in this class that narrowing it into five categories felt almost unfair. However, after thinking about it for a little while, I came up with five that I think sum up this class fairly well.

The first category/concept is reading. We have done a lot of reading in this class to help foster our understanding of how texts are formed, how they interplay with other texts and the environment around them, the differences between print and digital texts, and so on and so forth. By reading so many articles by so many different authors, we were able to view different perspectives on similar topics; it helped foster a wider understanding of the ideas we were reading about. We also made our own reading materials in that we created texts (and wrote essays explaining those texts), learning first hand what it takes to make something readable and easy to understand for the audience you're attempting to reach.

The second category/concept is analysis. I would say most of this class is about analysis. We are constantly looking at and discussing different texts, and viewpoints on texts. Learning to analyze what text would be best suited for an exigence, where to put that text, and what to put on that text are all major steps in the world of WEPO. Without analysis, we wouldn't understand the point anyone was trying to make with the texts they present to the world.

A third category/concept is design. Like any kind of artists, we writers definitely need a design phase to work out our ideas and notions, iron them out, and actually make them production ready. We learned about the various designs you can use when creating a text-- videos, social media posts, chalking, buttons, stickers, and even (but probably not) posters. Each one of those designs has various pros and cons to it, and by knowing those you can choose accordingly and make your text the best it can be.

The fourth category/concept is assessment. Once the text is created, it's a good idea to look it over and really make sure it's the best it can be. That's why we did drafts in this class-- by providing a first wave effort and then getting feedback from others, we were able to take a second look into our projects and maybe see some points (both good and bad) that we didn't before.

And, finally, the last category/concept is editing. A first draft is never usually a perfect draft, so after the assessment phase it's important to go back and fix any tweaks that you or your peers found.