Week 6 Blog SMC planning

STEPS THAT PREPARED ME TO WRITE

1. Reading scicomm articles to have a reference for how successful finished products are organized/written. Similar to watching professional athletes compete, I learned how professional writers write. “Review a Scicomm Article for Story Elements” is where I read through the 4 articles provided & determined their patterns of success.

2. Doing extensive research on my species of choice, especially writing annotated bibliographies. Since I was required to summarize so much information into so few sentences, it clarified what the main takeaways/important information from each research article was. 

3. Organizing my intended writing plan in The Pitch & receiving instructor feedback as I edited my pitch helped me determine that my initial research article choices were insufficient for the assignment’s demands. This allowed me to find the ‘best fit’ article to write my essay about. 

4. End of Week 4: Research Overview & Research Articles was a fun assignment for me, as I focused on researching damaging anthropogenic effects on owls (my chosen animal whose well-being I care about). Furthermore, I learned a lot about how rodenticides are a major threat to food webs, especially to predators. This is a strong foundation for a potential focal point for my advocacy project.

LITERATURE REVIEW REFLECTION → DOCUMENT LINK (review this in later weeks)

• I am confident that my essay meets most of the objectives. I utilized a variety of sources to further my argument, & I MLA formatted citations. 

• My thesis accurately summarized the focal topic of my essay. 

• I employed some scholarly ethos. (Allopreening, hand-rearing, non-breeder).

Improvement areas

• I didn’t organize my narrative in a fashion that was as easy to follow.

• I did a terrible job of writing everything into a story narrative. I focused on briefly summarizing related research studies rather than telling an engaging story through my drafts. This is an area that needs major improvement.

SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN PLANNING

• I haven’t decided on an issue to tackle in my social media campaign; I’ll decide between one of these three in the coming days.

• Spread awareness about dangers of rodenticides to food webs

• Spread awareness about urban disruption to owls/how cities can be made more hospitable to owls/other birds of prey

• Spread awareness about importance of insect populations as a food source for owls & their prey