I took this class in the Fall 2020 semester and it was the last thing I needed to complete the Civitae portion of my degree. It was a different sort of class than anything I had taken before because most of what we did was work together as a class to create a website about queer history in Virginia. I had not created a website for a class before this one, so it was cool to learn something new throughout the class. Of course, there were still the times where we did some research individually. The rest of the time we worked in small groups or as a whole class of people. We used Wix to create our website and I helped figure out the design for the website and see what work from each person or group, depending on the assignment, should be shown to the public through our website. I improved upon my website building skills and communication with the groups I was in through many different ways. This class made me more confident of being able to communicate and reach out to others and allowed me to acknowledge the importance of technology in today’s world.
The finished website is what I have linked below:
https://queerheartofva.wixsite.com/queerheartofva
To make this website we all had to look at each other’s work through folders available to the class in Google Drive and figure out whose were the best. The class would discuss this at times and then would decide which ones were the best. Our professor, Dr. Hannah Dudley-Shotwell would agree with us and then the design group I was a part of would put our choices on the website for anyone to see. I learned that critiques from other students can be very helpful and improve the chances of my work being seen on our site. I also learned that there are many different ways to communicate with the people that were in my groups or in the class as a whole. We would use the comments on our Google Docs, text messages, Discord, and Zoom as ways to communicate with each other. There was never a time where I could not get in contact with someone I needed to for the end project of the website to be complete for the class. There was a lot of value in teamwork in this class. Though Covid was still going on, this class showed me how we could blend in-person and online work into a product for anyone who wants to view the website and add on to important subjects in the world today. This class let me make a small difference in today’s world.