An apologia is not an apology (a false cognate) but an explanation and justification of one's actions. It addresses the justness or appropriateness of choices one has made, presented in the context of explicit principles and ideals to which one declares adherence. It also implies the existence of a body of people on whom one's actions have influence and impact, as well as an audience in the position to judge the quality and candor of one's self-analysis and to compare it to their own perceptions. One aim of your final paper, then, should be to explain and justify the design choices of your finished website in relation to:
Because your audience for this paper is academic and the overriding purpose of the university is inquiry, the other primary aim of your paper will be to address in some way the guiding questions of the class:
Thus you will frame your apologia in the context of, and as support for, an argument that you make in response to these, or related, questions.
For this paper, I'd like you to consider an academic audience including me, the authors of the readings we have done this quarter, and your classmates.
Given the academic audience of this paper, in order to establish ethos, you will need to make it clear that you have read others' ideas on these and related matters. Engagement with the course readings is the obvious (and most efficient) way to do this. You are welcome to do additional research and reading if the course readings aren't sufficient to the purposes your argument.
You are encouraged to draw on previous writing assignments (including blog entries) as raw materials for your paper. This does not mean that the paper will be just a conglomeration of previous work. It does mean that you should review the writing you have done for this class and consider developing ideas from and revising relevant segments of this previous writing.