Flat World Tales: Reflection

After finishing the Flat World Tales Project, a wikispace writing project where we met and collaborated with schools from Colorado and Korea to write and revise stories about our culture, here are my thoughts on the project:

1. What did you like best about the project and why?
The only requirement for this project was that it had to relate back to our culture. I liked how it gave us that wide range of options to write pretty much whatever we wanted. My experiences in English consisted of mostly analytical papers on whatever text we were reading and maybe a short story now and then. It was great to go through the semester working on a big story writing project and learning the small things in a story that matter.

2. What did you like least and why?
The feedback sheets were a bit repetitive. I'd write about how they could improve or change one thing or how well they did in a certain area, and essentially the same question would come up a few lines below. It felt like I was writing things over and over again and giving the writer a lot of nothing to read.

3. What was something surprising that you learned about the other students (from other schools)?
To be completely truthful, I was surprised to learn the kids in Korea could even write in or understand English... It was more surprising to see how well they could write, grammar put aside. Their stories had interesting plots and more importantly amazing details. The storylines they chose allowed them opportunities to intertwine emotional scenes and they fully utilized those opportunities using similies from their culture, details, and descriptive vocabulary.

4. How do you think the project affected your writing?
I'm guessing it's helped me, for one, to recognize the specific aspects of writing that I should focus on correcting. Looking at other people's papers and giving feedback on whatever we were working on that week helped me to understand and exercise recognizing the good and bad parts of a story in that one category. Following the feedback from other school to fix my own story in these particular categories further helped me exercise how to revise. Having other people read my story showed me things I didn't catch before. Overall, I think this project did help my abilities to revise my writing.

5. Describe the most challenging aspect of the project.
It was hard to apply the advice and feedback to my story. Unless it was something really specific, like someone saying I should change a certain word or sentence into this word or sentence or pointed out a specific point in the story that needed work, I couldn't figure out what I could do to make it sound good or better. When people said things like, "Your transitions need work" or "It's not very original", I wasn't really sure what to do or how to fix it.

6. Offer some advice to future participants.
If you don't think you're getting sufficient feedback, ask other people whether it's someone else working on the project, a friend, your teacher, etc. And if someone gives you great feedback, ask them for more feedback later (after putting them on the star feedback list), maybe making a deal to give them feedback too. Keeping up with deadlines is also important. Seeing as how every week is something new, in order for you to get the most out of this project, namely getting as much (hopefully good) feedback from kids you normally couldn't get feedback from, you'll have to meet the deadlines.

7. Other comments.
Podcasts: While the time in class was plenty for most of the people in our class, I think there should be a more convenient way to work on it out of class for those who might have needed more time. (Me.) The podcasts, or at least mine, didn't fit in PAI or my flashdrive so I could only work on it in that one room we worked on them in class. Most of the times I tried to work on it in there, a class was working inside and even when there wasn't a class, there wasn't easy access to headphones. Maybe use the Language Lab? (Easy access to headphones and usually has computers free even when there is a class.)