There are three main things I cover for my experience with this class
1. What I knew about the class when I was starting
2. What the class workload was like
3. How was the tool for writing blog post was

Going In

The name of the course is Digital Rhetoric and Writing, but this still leaves the question of what rhetoric (red-or-ik) actually is and what the course entails. When I was starting off this course I asked my mom what the rhetoric meant, though text because I had no idea how to say it. She simply explained it as “persuasive speaking”. From my experience with this course, I have learned that rhetoric encapsulates so much more than just the speaking aspect.

What Class is Like

The class is more time consuming than hard. There are a lot of long and a few somewhat hard readings, which would be assigned on a Tuesday and due on the Thursday. Something to keep in mind for this class is time management, but preparing ahead would be easy enough once you realize what you are in for.

A few of the texts, like the Multiliteracies one, use bigger words which can make it harder to understand what they are trying to say. Although the blog post assignments only required three terms, I found myself looking up terms that were just adjectives rather than an actual concept a lot of the time. Because of this, I found myself rereading parts of the articles until I understood what was going on.

But once you understand the article, the blog posts are not hard to write. There are various tools out there to help you take notes on the readings such as, Diigo and Evernote. Although I never found myself using them, they can be helpful to some people and should be looked at!

At this point in time, I feel like I have a very strong understanding of digital rhetoric and what the purpose of this class is. Not only that, but I see the way that we are using digital rhetoric ourselves within the class. Which just show the efficiency and benefit of taking this class.

WordPress, the Tool for Blogs

WordPress is the main platform we used for the class and before I discuss it, let me give some background to myself: I am a 22-year-old who will be graduating from Kutztown this semester with a degree in Computer Science. I am someone who knows their way with technology and has built a website out of pure code, as well as using templating site such as Wix for an actual business.

Now with that said, I would describe WordPress as a website where you should not know coding. I found it extremely difficult and just confusing to learn. You must select a blog from a template and cannot edit it other than the background colors/images and font style. I tried changing the font color using HTML code, but the theme of the blog still made the font color black. By using CSS code, you could easily customize the blog page, but sadly you cannot add CSS until you upgrade, which means buying it. I was looking for a blog that fit my style for a long time, and I am still not exactly happy with my choice but it is the best I could find. As far as creating a free blog, WordPress does its job fairly well. But as far as creating a unique and free blog, it could allow more.