Intervention Appendices

The question I was answering asked for my understanding of the variables involved. I believe it was important that I conveyed my understanding without making it my opinion. As in any research assignment, I had to be clear that anything I put into words could either be supported by evidence or stood as generally accepted knowledge. Perhaps that is a risky assumption – generally accepted does not make an idea universally known and accepted, and in the future I need to acknowledge that more fully.

The post could definitely have improved if it was written retrospectively about this issue – while politicians have been making noises about supporting the communities for decades, the current plan is the first time words seem to have met actions.

I feel as though I made an effective use of available research. There is currently a great deal of opinion and not a lot of empirical research about the intervention plan, so I look forward to seeing some research in the future and hope that it will be positive! In lieu of research about the current issue, I referred to relatable topics such as work with petrol sniffing problems and racism.

My use of APA style was relaxed for this assignment, as it is supposed to also make sense in the situation of a blog. I generally use L. J. Burton (2002), and I believe that I have matched it as much as possible. I decided to use both abstract and introduction as unlabelled intro paragraphs, to avoid confusion (split by the concept map). In doing that I needed to say different things in each, but I believe the summary-nature of those paragraphs still meets the general style. Unfortunately correct indentations in the reference list don't format too well on this kind of text field.

As I understand it, I came close to the readability targets: FK = 12.2, FR = 39.2. My paragraphs were shorter than I usual write (<130 words per par.) for kindness to the reader and to maintain some kind of attention. I also stayed inside the word limit, with 1371 in the main body of the blog.

In terms of online engagement, I believe that I adjusted my writing style for the post to make it more internet-friendly, taking into consideration that more school-age children, people with English as 2nd language etc wouldn’t follow the way I write naturally. I usually like to be grammatically precise and I prefer using longer, more descriptive words. That itself is restricted by the readability analysis, which made a challenge for me.

My interaction with classmates through blogs has been limited. My post about Rwanda (http://sociallyunaware.blogspot.com/2007/08/ghosts-of-rwanda-tangents.html) was responded to by Ndekezi, and I felt it important to acknowledge that with my own comment, and recommend him to any others reading it. I am torn because I am passionate across a huge variety of areas, but having chosen my topic it was important to focus and look up the opinions of others – while not many in this class have taken up the subject, people everywhere have it very strongly in their minds. The one comment I definitely remember making for another student is here: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6348947234907771962&postID=7257011567064836259