Lauren Lopez ENGL 1102 Ingram 4/20/13

Portfolio Essay I put a lot of time in putting my e-portfolio together online on Weebly. I made sure to make everything easy to read and navigable. I also labeled and enlarged many pieces of my work. The theme I chose is a dull peach and pink color to give the viewer a soft feeling when the look over my website. The font theme is also script, which may or may not be a problem to someone who cannot read script, but it goes with the color. Each different page I have also has a small place at the top to place a photo. Each photo I chose I felt would be interesting to the viewer and were all taken by me. This is a small attempt I made to connect with my audience personally. I put my portfolio pages in this order; Portfolio Essay, Exploratory Essay, Annotated Bibliography, Multi-Genre Project, Midterm Essay, Blog, and RRLs and Warm-ups. I put this essay first after home because it was stated that this essay be one of the first things my audience sees. I also feel it is nicely placed this way as an introduction as to why I have certain items in my Portfolio. This essay also explains what each individual piece contains and what it is about. I put my Exploratory Essay next because that was the first major assignment we worked on in class. In my exploratory essay page, one can obviously find my exploratory essay. I had the most fun and educational experience working on this particular essay and researching information for it. The topic was What are you passionate about? I researched my passion, whales, and rose questions such as, Why Killer Whales are commonly misinterpreted as whales

Lauren Lopez ENGL 1102 Ingram 4/20/13 when they are dolphins, and Whales importance to the Earth. I did tedious research to answer these questions, find evidence, and back it up. Where I got most of this tedious research was from online on sites I sited and wrote about in my Annotated Bibliography. Having my annotated bibliography placed after the essay I pieced together after researching the sites in the bibliography works perfectly for me. This is like siting me sources to me after writing that big essay. Everything I wrote in my annotated bibliography, I wrote more on, utilized, and elaborated on in my exploratory essay. This was basically improving my writing for me. For example I wrote in my annotated bibliography, I wanted to know why the Japanese are so hung up on killing an endangered species and why they started in the first place. Then in my exploratory essay I elaborate on this by saying, Not only do some countries kill whales for consuming, but also for oil, cosmetics, candles, soap, corsets, perfumes, and even tennis racquets and umbrellas. This quote lists examples of products that bring in money after whaling and collecting their carcass. This gives the reader a better idea for what purpose someone would want to kill a whale in the first place and what the reward is. My annotated bibliography basically gave me a layout to work with my exploratory essay. Ms. Ingrams feedback at the very end of my exploratory essay was very helpful when she wrote about possible inquiry when she states, Does whaling happen for any mystical or spiritual reasons? This was very helpful in reminding me to elaborate on the motives that the Japanese have for practice whaling. Stefanies feedback on the back was also helpful when she encouraged me to give a personal experience as an example to connect more with the reader. Lastly, my wildcard was interesting to do because it

Lauren Lopez ENGL 1102 Ingram 4/20/13

gave me another perspective on how to rearrange and look at the different paragraphs of my essay since I had to cut them out and rearrange them. I ended up not using this method, but I do think it could be helpful in other students cases. Next I placed my Multi-Genre pieces after my annotated bibliography. Being that it is the final product of both my annotated bibliography and exploratory essay, I felt placing it after them would work best. First I placed photos of my pop-up book project and PowerPoint presentation as a slideshow to capture my audiences attention and show them a visual representation of my finished project. Working on the pop-up book was difficult. I had to look up on YouTube how to create one. After I looked it up, it was kind of fun but hard work. I selected certain points to work with and incorporate from my exploratory essay and annotated bibliography into this book. I then sketched out and thought of a picture to go along with this caption as I show in the photo underneath my PowerPoint where I brainstormed my plans for the book. I placed my reflection essay at the very bottom of the page beneath my projects and feedback because I felt since it is a reflection on the whole project, it belonged at the end. I did not expect to reflect on my reasoning of my projects and to think of it on a deeper level, so writing it took a bit of thought. As I stated in my reflection, overall, The modes of communication I relied most heavily on were the linguistic and visual modes. I appealed my project to the audience by using all three of Aristotles appeals. First I used logo because I used many facts and reasons. I provided hard evidence and even used an analogy when I compared wolves to whales. I also used logical structure for my argument. Secondly I established a persuasive ethos by claiming authority,

Lauren Lopez ENGL 1102 Ingram 4/20/13

establishing credibility, and coming clean about my motives. I backed up my claims and right away stated my motives in the titles I used for my project. I not only used these modes on my project, but throughout my whole e-portfolio. I enjoyed Ms. Ingrams positive feedback on my project as a whole although I do not really respond to well when told to elaborate more on things I have already elaborated on. Reading over what she had to say made me see I did leave out a few points that I should have elaborated on, but I felt the reflection was fine the way it was. I do think what she wrote was excellent feedback, especially when she tried being helpful by even giving me reference to look back on in my essay. Lastly, I threw in a photo of the printed list of genre ideas Ms. Ingram was kind enough to supply the class with. Without this paper, I would have been at a total loss of what to do for my multi-genre project. Thanks to this paper, I was given many options to go about my project and I am very appreciative of it. I feel the midterm essay was a good assignment to do because it made everyone look back at the syllabus and pull things out of it to talk about. It also instructed us to go and analyze one of the example e-portfolios Ms. Ingram posted on Moodle for everyone to use as reference for when they did their own portfolio. This essay also helped me with my exploratory essay and multi-genre project because it instructed me to come up with an inquiry question to base them on. I also felt the instruction about imaging ourselves with people involved with our chosen issue at a table was a clever idea to give us better insight on others opinions. I also threw in my brainstorming for this essay to show my process of how I went about planning it out.

Lauren Lopez ENGL 1102 Ingram 4/20/13

The last two pages I have on my Weebly are my blog page and RRL and Warm up page. I put these two last because I felt they were in less importance of my other pieces I did for this class. I have four blogs on my Weebly. The first was an introduction to the class and what my previous class was like. I found this helpful to introducing myself to the students and well as my teacher. I enjoyed how she was interested in our personal experiences. I also enjoyed my second post where I had to write about my favorite spot on campus and analyze what the builders had in mind when they created it. This was to warm us up for analyzing and preparing us for our upcoming essays. Lastly, I had already reached my amount of artifacts, but I threw in some reading response letters and a warm up to fill up my portfolio more. I felt the more information I kept and documented the better. Finally, the two key from the course I engaged with the most was independent inquiry, like my exploratory essay, and providing and receiving feedback. I always enjoy the feedback I receive. Although I could not show feedback I gave to another student, I always try to be more helpful than they were to me. The grade I feel I deserve is probably a B. I did not fully utilize all of my feedback and fix my essays accordingly. I also left out some minor key points that were pointed out and I was told to elaborate on. Overall though, I completed every assignment as I found fit to the best of my ability and made sure to include all of the work I completed this semester in my e-portfolio.