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At the start of the semester, I was a bit worried about taking this class since I hadn't taken an English class before. The large class size was especially intimidating. I'm not used to having classes where we are encouraged to participate, so I found the online postings to be very helpful. It's nice to have time to think about my response to a reading or class conversation without needing to come up with what to say on the spot. Though I like the online aspect of this class, it was stressful at first to know that everyone could read my work, especially my web events. This is something I am still getting used to, and I find it helpful to read others' postings and web events to learn about their ideas. As a group, I think this online forum is a good way to get our thoughts out. For the people who don't always talk in class (including myself), I think it's interesting to read their online postings. Towards the beginning of the semester, I think we were encouraged to make comments on each others' posts, so I think we can all do a better job with that.

Individually, I am learning new and exciting ways to convey information. I've demonstrated this through my web events, where I am learning that there are non-traditional ways to do a paper. I've stayed away from English classes because I find it difficult to express my ideas in the tradition paper format, so exploring new formats allowed me to get my ideas across while learning from the process of writing itself. I think this is also true for us collectively because I've seen some very interesting web events that are also in a non-traditional format. From watching "Conceiving Ada," I noticed that a lot of the science, especially computer science, was non-realistic. For the future of our class, I think it would be interesting to explore what makes science realistic or not. I would like to see the difference between true computer science and how people perceive what it is. A new movie that explores this topic is "Source Code." This movie suggests that being inside a computer program (the source code) can enable a person to cross over into another person's identity. This movie seems to be a good example of non-realistic science, and I think it would be interesting to learn more about this.