Levy Dervan
Section 2: Artifacts
analysis of choice of ePortfolio
The reasoning for choosing webstudio as my choice for an eportfolio is because of its focus in privacy and open source. the core function of webstudio and made open source and anyone can help contribute to the code and improve it. Also the focus into privacy is a big reason to choose this over the larger website builders like wix.
This I Believe
When i was younger i was always so curious about how everything worked. in 5th grade instead of watching cartoons or playing outside i was with my brother watching and asking him all sorts of questions about how he was building his computer and how everything worked, from what is a CPU to why the fans are curved inwards. Even as an adult i've learned to keep that childlike curiosity, because now i'm a junior in cyber security student working on computers everyday. I believe in never loosing that childlike curiosity because is fuels growth and discovery. as i got older i still kept on with my curiosity. whenever i had an issue weather it be with my own computer or with my xbox breaking i would always be the one with enough curiosity to learn how it worked to fix it. i would spend hours upon hours reading form post and technical documentation to learn how to make my PC run faster or to get a smoother networking experience on my xbox. I just kept on reading and learning and eventually i got really tech savvy. I became the technical support of my house thats full of software engineers. I've seen younger kids that want to learn become very successful in robotic competitions. some of the smartest minds had started from just being curious. they stayed curious, and they grew and progressed information. i believe in holding onto that curiosity. to keep striving to more, because however much i know or learn, i know there is infinitely more to explore, to understand and to wonder at. Curiosity keep me humble and growing, and keeps me connected with the world to learn at large. This I believe.
Week 5 Assignment Submission
The group i have the most kinship with is my east asian friends that ive meet in argo hall. The most important thing about this community of was find a sense of belonging. A month before i moved into the dorms here at UWF, i met my roomate online, and we started to talk, while we didn't talk much it was enough to get my foot into the door to become good friends. During the first week of me moving in i got to meet my roommate's other friends in argo and that eventually grew as we all met more and more people. the group became a mix of all different types of cultures, Yoon who was born in korea to Lewis who lived all his life in taiwan, i grew up asian american but i was always engulfed in Vietnamese culture. brain and ryan both grew up in different countries. all of us have our own unique places we grew up in and yet we share so much culturally. I picked these photos to show the social life that east asian culture all shares, while we drink a lot and sing karoke, its a different atmosphere we dont drink as much beer, instead we drink rice wine like shoju and sake. and karoke is a lot bigger deal for us then in the west. the pathos of the pictures is the strong sense of community that we all share together in our parties. the logos is all the pictures is the idea that since we share a more similar culture its easier to become faster friends. for example the karoke as seen in one of the pictures is one of the main social thing we all share in. Also the picture of sitting outside with a cigarette is while not as healhy it also a very common part of party culture.
Did the exercises this week make you think? (2) What about? (3) What would have made this exercise easier to do? Why?
this exercise did make me think about all the people ive met in the past month, and what i see as kinship. what would have made this assignment easier would have been a shorter word count. im used to having my responses to questions short and concise however a large word count requirement just forced me to pad out my responses.
Week 8
draft on the left and final on the right
reflection questions:
a) What did you learn about speech writing between last week and this week?
ive learned quite a bit about the speech writing process. mainly how different it is from a normal style of writing. the flow of the sentences have to take into account the flow of speech and the breaths needed when talking.
(b) What did you learn about the revision process from this week's reading and from revising this week?
the biggest thing i've learned from the revision process was how time can help show many of the issues that i could not see before. with the time of about a week difference from when i made the essay ive grown as a person and had a new perspective and was able to see more flaws in my speech. the process reminds me of the iterative process that is done for the engineering process. where a project is remade and refined over and over until we run out of time or ideas.
With the new age of the internet upon us now, the use of grammar has shifted so drastically in ways our ancestors could have never imagined. The advent of forum posts online has now become large-scale tech monopolies with hundreds of thousands of users active every day. This created a new age of data and information traveling all across the world at light speed. This new dawn of innovation has made the idea of "micro-blogging" and shorter forms of communication. With microblogging and places like Twitter, people argue that the notion that grammar is less needed in this age.
Back before the days when everyone carried around a cellphone, much less a smartphone, people carried around pagers to be able to be contacted when they were out and about. While a pager can be called, it has no way to talk. It was just enough information to be able to find who called and have a short message attached to it with numbers. People would have to find a payphone to call the person back. The limitation of only numbers for the message led to a whole list of pager codes that everyone seemed to know. For example, 911 was used as a very urgent need to call, and 143 meant I love you. While obviously they are just short-hands for the actual message, they set a pattern of the modern-day form of short-hands we still use today.
Further into history was the rapid adoption of cellphones and, with that, the idea of texting. While it could do more than just numbers, texting was still limited to the T9 dialing of cell phones of that era. This led to a new form of short-hand and less of a need to be grammatically correct. Phrases like Be back later and by the way, were abbreviated down to BBL and BTW respectively. With such significant limitations, text grammar became much less needed in everyday text and started to fall out of fashion.
In the Modern day as we know it, without the limitations of T9 dialing or only numbers for messages, we have kept using the abbreviations from the past. In contrast, some may argue that grammar is less needed in this day and age. It has been more vital than ever. Grammar was never fully put aside; it was only morphed and changed. With smartphones, the use of bold and italics has added a new layer of tone and grammar to what was before. Formal and professional writing still has its place with traditional grammar rules. The new age has created a new set of rules to express tone and ideas through. If anything, grammar has become more critical than ever. It merely just morphs and shapes with the new age, just as it has been doing throughout time. Places like Twitter have a set limit on how long a tweet can be, so it leads to the average tweet using more of a casual and abbreviated style of grammar. The limitations of the site and platforms led to the new rules of grammar being used.
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With the new age of the internet upon us now, the use of grammar has shifted so drastically in ways our ancestors could have never imagined. The advent of form posts online has now shifted to large scale tech monopolies with hundreds of thousands of users active each and every day. This created a new age of data and information traveling all across the world at light speed. This new dawn of innovation has created the idea of "micro-blogging" and shorter forms of communications. With microblogging and places like twitter people argue the idea of grammar is less needed in this age of age.
Back before the days when everyone carried around a cellphone, much less a smart phone, people carried around pagers to be able to be contacted when they were out and about. while a pager can be called it has no way to talk about. It was just enough information to be able to find who called and have a short message attached to it with numbers. People would have to find a payphone to call the person back. The limitation of only numbers for the message led to a whole list of pager codes that everyone seemed to know. For example 911 was used as a very urgent need to call and 143 meant i love you. while obliviously they are just short-hands for the actual message being set sets a pattern of the modern day form of short-hands we still use today.
Further into history was the rapid adoption of cellphones and with that, the idea of texting. While it could do more than just numbers texting was still limited to the T9 dialing of cell phones of the age. This led to a new form of short-hands and less of a need to be grammatically correct. phrases like Be back later and by the way, were abbreviated down to BBL and BTW respectively. With such big limitations of text grammar became much less needed in everyday text and started to fall out of fashion.
The Modern day as we know it, while without the limitations of T9 dialing or only numbers for messages, we have kept using the abbreviations from the past. While some may argue grammar is less needed in this day of age. It has been more vital then ever. grammar was never fully put aside; it was only morphed and changed. With smartphones the use of bold and italics have added a new layer of tone and grammar, to before. Formal and professional writing still has its place with traditional grammar rules. the new age as created a new set of rules to express tone and ideas through. If anything, grammar has become more important than ever. merely it just morphs and shaped with the new age just as it has been doing for all throughout time. Places like twitter have a set limit on how long a tweet can be so it leads to the average tweet using more of a casual and abbreviated style of grammar. The limitations of the site and platforms led to the new rules of grammar being used.
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Did you learn anything by writing an Open Letter? What did you learn?
I learned quite a bit from writing an open letter. most importantly like with any other tool it has its times where its very effective and others when its not worth the cost of the electricity to upload and send to the person the letter is addressing. More so when a larger company that is only bound by shareholders or companies that dont need to care about the outcry of a vocal minority will the idea of an open letter fail. However in smaller companies or companies that do care about the vocal minority; like a small open source non-profit like the gnome foundation, will an open letter work very well. An open letter works really well for starting a grassroots effort to make change. by using a more casual feel to grab the public's sympathy and effort it makes a eaiser thing to rally behind to get the core idea of the letter done.
b) Are you beginning to edit your writing before submitting it? Why? Why not?
Absolutely, less so at the end of the writing but during the writing process, i change and rephrase to better flow the sentences. it helps create a nice break of spilling out any and all ideas i had about the topic at hand, while stiill staying in the semi-rhythm writing has.
c) We are trying to learn how to persuade people for a cause in this module. Do you feel you are learning how to do that?
absolutely. i'm starting to see now how even the structure of words can change how a message can be conveyed. both an open letter and a speech while having very different styles of writing they have the same basis of trying to persuade the reader.
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Dear Elon Musk
As an avid twitter users, and now X'er on X.com, i have seen countless changes to the platform, from the dawn of twitter, to it being listed on the New York exchange; and now it being bought first by elon musk and now X.ai. the rapid and senseless changes to the platform since the buyout have degraded the experience and culture that was formed on X (now formally twitter). With the senseless need to make X profitable the creation of X Premium and X Premium+ it spiraled out of control destroying the ground that twitter and what the blue checkmark next to a name meant. that was once a symbol of authenticity and superiority became a tool of hatred and prejudice. making the blue checkmark for anyone willing to pay the toll of 3 dollars monthly weakened the power it had. Adding on to the abhorrent changes was the increasing of the character limit for a single post. the identity of then twitter was based around the limitation of the 140 character limit. micro blogging was the niche twitter fell in. however with the bump of the character limits for x premium changed up too ten thousand characters it completely destroyed how X (formally twitter) used to look. Ultimately all these horrid changes break the unique identity twitter used to have and it lost the charm it used to have.
With hope
Levy Dervan
X. “Premium Sign-Up.” X, https://x.com/i/premium_sign_up
Links to an external site.Accessed 24 Oct. 2025.
week 11 Speech and Reflection Questions
hey yall, lets take a second to breath. i get were are all tired, i get were all hungery, and i get even more that were all irritated at everything, including each other. However we all know snipping at each other helps no one. it makes us work more sloppy, it makes us take longer and it ultimately hurts the patient. if were gonna get this done in any reasonable time we need to shape up and get through this. We have about 2 hours left in this surgery and we have to finish strong. I don't want make a patient suffer for something so small as bickering. We made an oath to do no harm and i intend to make sure we all keep our oath today.
the tone taken should be an empathic and down to earth feel; Similar to the Bullhorn speech by George W. Bush. The body language should be a calm but sertn energy. Not one of power but on direct and pressure. As for clothing choices scrubs would be the only appropriate thing since its in an operating room. While having a prepared speech can sometimes be usefull in this case responding in the moment would feel the most sincere and work the best. everyone would be standing but facing me since they are still in the middle of a surgery.
Reflection Questions:
(1) Is it a useful skill to communicate to bring unity?
its absolutely a useful skill, with today's day of civil unrest creating unity is vital for getting anything done
(3) What did you learn from this assignment?
i learned that creating unity is not just about what you say but how you say it and the context there in.
(4) Why did you make the choices you made in creating your speech?
keeping a down to earth and grounded sense helps keep everyone down to a more functional and professional level. the goal was not to create unity between different ideals but to come together to finish a project.