This portfolio on knowledge is by far the largest project I have ever completed, both in the form of time and effort and in meaning. Although I got quite a bit faster at writing responses over time, each one still took at least an hour to complete, and sometimes more if I had trouble finding a text or artwork. Then adding on editing and revising, the writing alone for this project took at least 20 hours. By far the worst part of the writing process was realizing that two of my responses were to non-Americans and having to write another response. I spotted one non-American right after finishing the first draft of my response and the second two days before this project was due after already editing and revising and believing I was completely done responding. While the extra responses (marked by an asterisk) do get extra credit, I still would not say they were worth the time. What came pretty easy with this project, however, was the MLA formatting, citations, and various grammatical concepts worked on along the way. I never had any serious issues remembering to cite my sources or formatting citations in my works cited page, and I even enjoyed learning about passive voice and where commas are supposed to go.
The final challenge I took on with my Knowledge Portfolio was building the website myself. Computer science is one of my favorite subjects, and I thought it would be fun to apply that here. I programmed the entire website in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, making use of the Bulma CSS framework to make the navigation bar easier to code. Making the website myself gave me the freedom to choose how I wanted to format everything, as I ended up going for a clean, minimalist design, and I was even able embed a video into the page in one of my responses. This final step, building the website, was probably the most fun I had with the project as I was able to connect my love of computer science with my writing and research for English, a combination I never expected to experience.
Throughout the course of making this portfolio, my knowledge about knowledge has grown immensly. While writing my first few responses I had a narrow view of what knowledge is and it’s influence on the world, simply considering having or not having knowledge. As I found more examples of knowledge and wrote more responses, especially as I started getting into artworks, which often have much less obvious meaning than text, I began considering more ways knowledge is important, from the ways people gain it to how they spread it to its effect on various aspects of one’s life. Finding ways knowledge is represented in art and literature has made me realize just how essential it is. Knowledge is central to humanity, and it is what has allowed the human race to succeed. During the early evolution of Homo sapiens, knowledge set humans apart from other species and allowed them to survive and expand as a population. Knowledge has remained just as crucial, if not more, to this day, with knowledge spreading faster than ever due to the internet and the media. This portfolio shows and describes just a few of the ways knowledge has an impact on the world.