Unit 3 Reflection

Looking back, this portfolio project has really challenged my partner and I throughout the entirety of the journey. While it did prove to be rather stressful at times, I feel as if being able to choose our topics throughout this class has granted me the opportunity to show a more creative side and divulge into research that really interests me, rather than just doing an assignment for the grade. This ability to connect with our research allowed us to interact more with our assignment as we did not necessarily feel forced to meet deadlines. Sports have always been apart of our lives, whether it be growing up playing on the field, or watching football on Sundays, there really is not a time that either of us could remember being without sports. 

There were several points throughout this project that we both struggled immensely. One of our main issues stemmed from the fact that this research was passed along to a new partner. As Michael initially began the research, it was hard to get a new member up to speed on what he had previously worked on. Working in a group setting can always serve to be a challenge as you need to rely on someone other than yourself to get work done in a timely matter, and also connect to the material in the same way that the original partner did. Time management always becomes an issue when it comes to projects as we both had several other classes to juggle, and two completely different schedules. Being that we are on two different paths, it was difficult to find a time where we were both available to work on the project at the same time together. 

Specifically, with the creation of our Prezi presentation, neither of us had previously worked with the platform. This led to many issues in its creation as we first had to determine if it was the right software for us to work with, and then further learn how to use it to the best of our ability. Having to learn this was not necessarily the hardest part of our journey but it was definitely difficult as we both grew up using Powerpoint as our default. While it may seem odd to choose a new platform for our final research project, we decided it was our best option to keep our listeners engaged. Prezi incorporates the ability to jump back and forth between different texts and images in order to draw attention. We did not want our readers to lose out on the importance of our presentation and realized that this will also be a learning opportunity for us to gain a new skill with the program. We also felt it would be best to relate back to ESPN as we argue within our paper that they continuously help to further technology. For example, ESPN created a new mobile app for fantasy football drafts, just as Prezi created this new platform for people to use in their daily lives. This connection aided us in the incorporation of a Prezi presentation.

As I began to do my research on ESPN and technology a few Units ago, I had to come up with a pitch.  My original pitch was, “My blog is about how technology allows ESPN to find, reach, and expand their audience in a way that best interests the company and it's viewers.”  I put this on my Twitter account so my followers, who are primarily teens and young adults, could give me feedback.  I received a few responses from my close friends, but none were very helpful.  I felt as if my blog did not get as many responses as I would have liked because it was not very engaging.  As I look back on my first few assignments and layout of my blog, I see that it is bland and uninviting.  When I compare my blog’s layout to others in the class, I can see that they put extra time into the aesthetics.  

Due to this, we, as a partnership, decided it would be best to use Prezi to encourage teens and young adults to explore the research we are submitting to our blogs.  We feel as if many in our generation take technology for granted and do not truly appreciate all of the strides some of our favorite industries have taken in order to stay ahead of the curve.  We would love to inspire further research to be done with how technology has influenced ESPN and the sports culture.  If our research, in any way, sparked someone to think of how technology influenced another field outside of sports we wold also be grateful to be shedding light on this.  

Although we did not work on this research together the entirety of this class, we both still had to take previous feedback into consideration when creating our final project for Unit 3.  For John, going through Mike’s previous projects and reading all of the research along with the comments was hindering but key.  John also had to see how Mike took the feedback and incorporated it into the next unit’s research.  

On Mike’s Unit One Portfolio, Kyle commented, “The future of sports media is certainly conjoined with written information, bringing up the question, what direction will this point sources like ESPN in the future when communication with a more tech savvy audience?”  This truly got Mike thinking on how he could twist his original thoughts about ESPN and expand them for different audiences.  When we as a partnership disused this, we looked back into Mike’s latest research and found the Unit Two Portfolio to be more helpful to pull information to portray in our Prezi.  

In essence, we feel that this class has expanded our ability to connect with others.  When we look back at our first blog posts, we can see ideas that have so much potential, but were not thought out fully.  As we progressed, our thoughts became more clear and we aimed to target our specific audience with technology.  Peer review along with our Professor’s feedback held immensely.  We both felt that the turning point from when our ideas began to take off was after we analyzed the abstract/pitch.  This allowed us to clearly make our thesis and allow for a specific audience to be obtained.  This class was difficult at times but with such an open ended topic, it made us always want to power through because we were doing work that interested us.  Through all of these struggles, we overcame to get to our final portfolio.