When I registered for this class, my motivation was to fulfill yet another prerequisite for pharmacy school. I chose Professor Dillon's section over other available sections because it was classified as a CIC, a computer integrated course. I always try to pick the CIC courses over the more classic versions because I feel technological competency is an integral skill for success in the future. I also enjoy computers, so if I have to complete a requirement I might as well do it in a way that maximizes my interest and thus my learning. Upon reading the course description I became really excited about the class. It had been titled, Writing For The Web, much more appealing than the alternative section, Intermediate Expository Writing. Given my recent 4.0 in English 131, and what I considered a vast knowledge of HTML and all things internet, I figured this class would be a piece of cake, not to mention the time I wouldn't be spending writing paper, after paper, after paper. Wrong again...

I worked harder in this class than I have in any other English course and the effort was actually not exerted begrudgingly. As a rule of thumb, classes that take up a lot of my free time are usually not rated very highly on my Best of UW list. However, I feel every minute spent completing the requirements for English 281 were both valuable to my learning and fun. I don't feel like my time and energy was wasted at all. I soon found myself enjoying every project that was assigned. The project I enjoyed the very most was the hypertext assignment (left). It was our first, and I consider it my best of the four assignments. Not only did I spend significantly more time on this assignment than the others, I felt I learned the most from it about style, layout and the limits of HTML.

Considering how little I knew at the time I completed the first assignment, I think I really did a good job, and that was pretty much the basis for my decision that Assignment #1 was my best work of the quarter. Assignment #2, restyling a page, takes a close second to the first. This was where I learned the most about manipulating style sheets to change the aesthetics of a web-page. I attempted implementing style sheets in the first assignment, and although I was pleased with that result, I was much happier with the outcome of my work for assignment two. (below)

Each new assignment built on the skills mastered by completing the previous assignments. I really liked that because if I couldn't quite get something to work the way I wanted to in one assignment, I usually had figured out how to do it by the time the next assignment was due. This also made it really fun to watch the progress made throughout the quarter. For my final project I was able to combine everything I had learned in the past nine weeks. I decided to build a website for my charity, The Aldora Foundation, which I started this summer. It is linked in the next frame. The site has many hyperlinks, a style sheet and is made up of tables within tables. I've also implemented some new tricks, like imbedded frames, pop-up links, and images I manipulated with The Gimp. My project also includes a new element that wasn't a part of the curriculum, a form script that allows me to collect information from site viewers which is then emailed to me. As my charity grows I plan to continue utilizing what I learned from Dr. Dillon in English 281 to improve the site.