Austin's ePortfolio

Reflection

 For my Open Letter, I wrote about tragic loss and overwhelming trials in my life and how I was able to overcome those adversities using the barbell as my vessel.  I wanted to write about this personal topic specifically to troubled teens who have experienced, or who are going through difficult trials in their lives.  I wanted this audience to know that these trials that they experience are apart of life, and how we react to them tends to shape who we are as individuals.  My Open Letter evolved into a Remediated Open Letter and then into an Accessible Open Letter.  For my Remediated Open Letter, I decided to make a video based upon my original Open Letter.  Instead of putting text with my video, I only used photos and music to tell my story.  Our next mission was to make either our original Open Letter or Remediated Open Letter accessible to an audience with a disability that would be unable to access or understand our letters/projects due to their impairment. I chose to make my Accessible Open Letter accessible to those who are deaf. I used the video I created from my Remediated Open Letter and added captions so that this audience may better understand my story and message to them.  

There were some challenges that I faced in my work in this course. For our last two projects we got the opportunity to do them in any format that we wanted to.  I am someone who likes a challenge and thought that making a video for them would be fun. I don't really make videos and definitely didn't know how to edit them in order for them to look and sound good. This was a great opportunity for me to learn something new that may possibly come in handy one day. There are so many different forms of language and writing. I feel we don't even realize that just about everything in this world is governed by some form of language. I have never liked writing, and I'm still not the best at it, but this class has given me a new perspective on language and writing that makes it more interesting and enjoyable. Thanks Professor Howe for helping me view writing and language in a way that I never saw before. The skills, knowledge, and appreciation I have gained from this class will follow me and help me throughout my personal and academic studies. 

Open Letter

Accessible Open Letter