The project began when Tim Mooney, the manager of Marketing and Communications for the Rhode Island Nature Conservancy, visited our class and stated that the organization needed website descriptions for their newly designed webpages, focusing on specific preserves within Rhode Island. As a person who enjoys hiking regularly, and the outdoors in general, I was interested because the project involved going out into the preserves and documenting our experiences within them. I worked with three other people in the class, Ava Mastrosefano, Ethan Jordan, and Jacob Fies, to divide the work and provide more minds for brainstorming ideas. This group effort was key in providing the quality of material the Conservancy requested. As a group, we designed and submitted a proposal to Tim Mooney, outlining our intentions and what we would provide for the Conservancy. In response, he suggested four preserves for us to visit, as well as a general method for us to go about creating our sites.
Overall, the Nature Conservancy wanted these new descriptions to be more concise than their current descriptions, while remaining friendly and informative. In our interview with Tim Mooney, he pointed towards the Washington State Yellow Island Preserve as a model of everything they want their new sites to be, so we began the process of planning a proposal for the process of creating these descriptions (It can be found here http://www.washingtonnature.org/yellowisland ). We each went to a different preserve, with Ava visiting the Aust Family Preserve, Ethan visiting Pocasset Ridge, Jacob visiting Francis C. Carter Preserve, and myself visiting Whitehead Nature Preserve. After receiving the advice from Tim, we set out to our individual hikes. I walked through Whitehead Preserve, starting with its trailhead at the Dundery Brook Trail, in Veteran’s Field, Little Compton. This boardwalk trail is wheelchair accessible from that entrance, and goes for a little over half a mile into a forested wetland. From there, it is a few short steps down to a grassy path surrounding Bumblebee Pond. There is a third trail, with a head on main street of Little Compton, but it was too muddy to traverse that day. I walked the length of the boardwalk path and Bumblebee Trail, and returned the same way back. I took notes of everything I saw along the way that would be interesting or beautiful, as well as my feelings and thoughts about the preserve as I walked. The photos I took of plants, animal tracks, fur, and beautiful vistas were all used and compiled into a Dropbox folder, where the Conservancy can use any photo they like. We all followed these same steps of going to the sites, analyzing the sites, and documenting our thoughts and examples of unique aspects of the sites. After visiting the sites, we put together a Google Doc, which did not receive a passing mark. This was because it was not visually appealing, messy, and did not have site descriptions that matched what Tim Mooney had requested. From the advice we received from our professor, we organized the deliverable with a clear introduction of what is within the document, what we did to achieve these goals, and gave our finalized deliverables. These deliverables consisted of a site description modeling the Yellow Island site description, a blog post highlighting each of our experiences, and the Dropbox folder of images that the Conservancy may use any way they desire. The deliverable may be found here https://zacharydwagner.weebly.com/major-assignment-two/major-assignment-two ). The main points I tried to keep in mind while writing the description for my site is that it needed to be accessible for everyone to read while still getting the Conservancy’s desires for the site in mind. I started the description with a bold summarization of the information I would be laying out in the following two paragraphs, to try to entice the audience to read further. I put emphasis on the boardwalk being wheelchair accessible, which appeals to a more broad audience, such as families with strollers and elderly hikers. My word choice was fairly basic, with the assumption that my audience were familiar with the basics of hiking and nature, and would be drawn to the site by pointing out unique natural aspects of the trails. This project helped illustrate the Learning Outcomes that we were outlined at the very beginning of class. The first major learning outcome I considered when doing this project is Discourse Community Knowledge, defined as “Analyze, engage with, and document scientific discourse in accordance with discourse community expectations and standards”. In this situation, I needed to determine what my audience is, what they would know previously, and how I could use my knowledge of biology and the site itself to inform and entertain. This also required me to intertwine what the Nature Conservancy wanted out of the structure and information to be included. In addition, Rhetorical Knowledge is critical for being able to write for another audience. Being able to take the raw notes and ideas from the hikes, and transfer them to a professional deliverable that mimics a pre-existing model is a key point, and a lesson stressed during class. If an individual sees a style or technique that they enjoy, and if they are able to mimic it effectively, then they should mimic it if it will help their own writing. Being able to apply this skill to a professional setting outside of academics was important in my growth as a student, and will help in later professional situations throughout whatever career I pursue.
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Below is a link to the final project, outlined as a physical deliverable that we handed in to our community partner, The Rhode Island Nature Conservancy. It is a sixteen page document that we worked together to complete. Ava Mastrostefano, Ethan Jordan, Jacob Fies and I all contributed to our own descriptions, images, and editing to the document to produce a cohesive document. If the Google Doc is unavailable or unviewable, please contact me and I will correct the error.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zFwQRgXPrztxH747_HuQ1SjDUTnWERUVPGTFQ0oNeZM/edit |