Weekly Post 7: 11/1/2021-11/7/2021

This semester the class was given an assignment to make a mini tutorial that was technology related. I was easily able to pick my topic since it had to do with something I am familiar with. For the assignment, I decided to go with a Windows 10 feature in which someone can have their mobile device, such as a cellphone, connected to their windows computer. One is able to receive notifications and text messages through their computer as well as access their phone’s screen through their PC.. Since I tend to use this feature almost every day for productivity reasons, it was easy for me to write up the mini tutorial, but because of my familiarity and over-confidence with the software, I missed covering simple and minor details in my writing and made myself miss out on getting full points on the assignment.

Even though some segments of the assignment were easy, such as gathering the images, it did take some time to get them since I had to get both the perspective of the mobile device and the Windows 10 computer for clarity reasons as well as my need to be thorough. I had to make sure that the reader was able to see both perspectives and understand they are in the right step of the tutorial or that they are not a step ahead or behind when doing this process. I also had to remember to label all the photos and to credit it to myself since I took these images from my own phone and computer as screenshots. Since this assignment required 3 images, I feel I was easily able to surpass that requirement and because I did so, I believe that my images were very effective and made my tutorial very clear to the reader.

Although this assignment was easy for me, I overestimated my writing ability. In my feedback I learned there were minor mistakes in my writing. Capitalization and consistency were two of my weakest points, as well as my inability to clearly get a point across without causing confusion. For example, I did not capitalize “Play Store,” when I should have since it is the name of an application that most android devices use nowadays. I know that I did not check these minor mistakes due to my overconfidence and, as a result, I will not get a 100% on this assignment. But, minor mistakes aside, I believe that the biggest hit toward my assignment is how I was unable to explain why we should be doing certain things in each step. This mistake was likely due to my inexperience. I should be mindful of my clarity and writing readability during these assignments in order to not let it happen again. Even though I earned a relatively high grade on this assignment I was unable to get full marks due to easily avoidable errors in my writing.

Based on the feedback from the grader I believe that I should have slowed down my writing process and taken my time. I should not have overestimated my writing ability and instead should have looked over my writing one more time to catch these mistakes that I had overlooked. A measure I will be taking in order to not make these mistakes again is to read my writing a-loud to myself and my peers. I hope that by doing this I or they will be able to catch these mistakes and make them known to me so they don’t slip through the cracks so often. I also believe this will help with my primary issue of clarity as I often fail to get my point across and instead cause unnecessary confusion for the reader. By reading my work out-loud to someone they will be able to criticize my clarity and thoroughness so then I can fix it before submitting the assignment.