Final Portfolio

So I'm actually pretty excited to get started with this portfolio. It's fun to see the final product of hard work. A sort of second motive for this portfolio is that it means the semester is ending!
I am really happy to be almost done with everything. Half the time I feel like I haven't actually done anything. When I glance back, I think, what the hell did I do these past months?
And then looking over everything I have to compile for the portfolio, I'm really proud of everything I did. It's always a good feeling to see your hard work put together. Only a few more weeks!

Website

When creating your own website, you have to pay attention to a few things. First off, you must have a plan. This may seem a bit obvious, but I have witnessed many pointless websites that get no traffic at all. It is also important to remember that a website is a lot about looks. If it looks jumbled, messy, or confusing, people are not going to waste their time with it. For behind the scenes, you need to make sure that your coding is correct. If the html does not match up, then the viewer will see either a blank page, or a whole lot of jibberish. The next thing to think about is how you're going to promote the site. Before people can go to your site, they have to hear about it. Once you have a steady traffic, it's just a matter of maintaining it and keeping it up to date.

http://www.1stsitefree.com/
http://www.thesitewizard.com/gettingstarted/startwebsite.shtml

IA Project Outline

Audience: Animal shelters across the United States that still use euthanasia as a common option for dealing with injured animals and overpopulation. It will also be directed to the general public.
Purpose: The purpose for directing the project towards animal shelters in America is to influence them to change their ways and to focus on no-kill methods of handling their animals. The purpose of directing this to the general public is so that they can gain knowledge and understanding about euthanasia in animal shelters and, in turn, possibly donate funds or volunteer their own efforts to make this change.
Exigence: The situation at hand is that too many animal shelters are allowing euthanasia to be a common option when dealing with injured or old animals at animal shelters. This is an inhumane way of handling with animals. Unless all other options have been attempted and a generous amount of time has been put into trying to rehabilitate animals, euthanasia should not be used. It is understandable that some animals are in more pain than can be helped, and the only option is to put them to sleep. However, many shelters are taking advantage of this option and using euthanasia to clear out space in crowded shelters and to put animals to sleep that seem to not be improving.
Genre: This project’s genre will be a website. The main page will focus on information about euthanasia and how it is currently being used. There will be links that will connect to shelters which practice no-kill methods. This will be used as an example of how animal shelters don’t need to use euthanasia as a common option. There will also be a gallery of animals that went through drastic rehabilitation that would have been put to sleep at any regular shelter. On the site, there will be a donation link where people can use online accounts to donate money to the Humane Society for the purpose of finding alternate treatments.

Essay Feedback

Once again, the essay feedback was really helpful. Prof. Scott made some really good points. When I was writing my essay, I felt that it sort of dropped off at the end, and I wasn't sure how to conclude it. Also, because it is my friend's story, Prof. Scott made a good point that it creates a better effect if I keep it that way so that it doesn't seem that I am as biased about the topic.
Another thing that Prof. Scott made me aware of is that my essay has two focuses right now. I should pick one and direct my writing towards that so I can make a bigger impact on the reader.
Other than that, I think Prof. Scott covered the areas I was shaky on. Of course I'll have to go over my grammar and organization of everything, but for the most part I got the feedback I needed.

IA plan

Ok, so for my Initiating Action project, I think I'm going to stick with the website idea. Basically what the website would be about is getting out information about euthanasia and why all shelters should ban it. The main page would have general information about euthanasia and no-kill shelters. It will also include information about animal abuse and the rehabilitation that is needed to save these animals. Included would be links to shelters around the US that are already no-kill, along with descriptions of their mission and why they chose this path. There would also be a donation option if you want to donate money to the Humane Society. I will also include a gallery to animals who were saved thanks to a no-kill shelter. Hopefully, this website would open portals to options that people may not have thought about previously, or just get information out to those who may not have heard of no-kill shelters at all.

Class Discussion

The class discussion yesterday helped a lot. I found that even when I was hearing about other people's projects, I was getting ideas about what I could do. It also helped to give feedback because giving advice to others opened up more possibilities had I just been thinking about my own project. It also helped me get more of a direction of where I was going and what I wanted to focus on. When I first read over this project, I felt it was repetitive and I wouldn't be able to come up with something new. However, after the class discussion, I felt more like I could expand on it and I knew what I wanted to do. I also like the fact that I can be creative with this and it's different from the normal English writing project.