The digital writing course has taught me to appreciate and write literary narratives, create Wikipedia articles, produce a podcast, and develop a new page on my website to research the topic that had confused me: why knowledge worries people. In addition to acquiring these digital writing skills that will benefit me in my job search, I have mostly resolved my confusion about knowledge.

My most significant accomplishment in this course is my WordPress website. Previously, my posts were scattered on a single page and appeared messy on my website. Now, I have organized my pages, menus, and sub-items, categorizing my posts into different pages. I have also enhanced the design of my website, making it look more professional and attractive. In the future, when I have the time, I plan to edit each post using my editing skills, add photos to some blog entries, and publish more content. I intend to keep my website running and make it my online home.

Although the podcast is not my favorite aspect, I have learned how to start one, incorporate music, and apply fade-in and fade-out effects to the music. I have gained valuable insights from my classmates; their podcasts sound fantastic, and some even include authentic interview dialogues. I have a lot to study and practice when it comes to podcasting.

The assignment of writing a Wikipedia article has also been an incredible journey, as it has familiarized me with the process of creating a Wikipedia page. In the future, I plan to contribute more articles to Wikipedia, particularly on topics related to Chinese culture and China that are currently absent from the platform.

As Russia deployed its armies along the border of Ukraine, I conducted some research on Ukraine and felt relieved when Putin announced that he would not invade. However, on the day Russia attacked Ukraine (February 24), like many others, I began to worry that Ukraine might fall within a matter of hours or days.

But then President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared in videos, encouraging the people of Ukraine to defend their country and making his famous statement, “I don’t need a ride, I need weapons.” Like many others, I realized that Ukraine was not as weak as we had imagined. They are a strong and courageous people, willing to fight for their country!

Since then, I have been watching the news about the war every day, hoping that Ukraine will drive the Russians out! The battle has been ongoing for two months, and it is clear that Ukraine is winning while Russia is losing. This war is destined to be recorded in history as the triumph of a small country over the world’s second-largest country!

How did this happen?

From the beginning, President Zelensky posted videos showcasing Ukraine’s determination to defeat Russia, criticizing Russia, and seeking assistance from other countries. We witnessed his impassioned speeches at the US Congress, the United Nations, the European Union, NATO conferences, the Japanese parliament, and the High Court of Parliament. He spoke candidly, vividly describing the damage Russia had inflicted upon his country, and his words moved the audience. He alternated between Ukrainian and English during his speeches.

In addition to President Zelensky, Oleksii Reznikov, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, played a crucial role in their national defense efforts. He reformed the Ukrainian army, implementing a flat management structure instead of a hierarchical one. Until now, we did not know the whereabouts of Ukraine’s main army or how the Ukrainian military operated.

In the modern world, network technology plays a critical role in warfare. Mykhailo Fedorov, the youngest minister in Ukraine, turned to cryptocurrency and social media as modern weapons. Since the start of the war, he contacted Elon Musk and secured his assistance in setting up Starlink for Ukraine, ensuring that Ukraine’s network would function and communication could flow. He also formed an alliance with the renowned hacker organization, Anonymous, to hack into Russian networks, gather Russian information, and display authentic and brutal war images to the Russian people.

Iryna Andriivna Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, became emotional when discussing how Russian armies mistreated Ukrainian women. She strongly rebuked the Chinese government, which donated only a small amount of money, sleeping bags, baby diapers, and milk instead of weapons. Ukraine Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya delivered a moving speech at the United Nations in English. When the Russian delegates threatened to quit the UN, Mr. Kyslytsya declared that one cannot quit after being fired. Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer and the mayor of Kyiv, stood with the people of the city and joined the army in the fight. Ukrainian activist Daria Kaleniuk shed tears as she recounted the suffering of Ukrainian children to Boris Johnny. A Ukrainian journalist, when Boris Johnny returned to attend a press conference, trembled as he spoke. These two reporters successfully persuaded Boris and secured his promise to offer assistance.

Some people laughed at President Zelensky because he was an actor rather than an experienced politician. Additionally, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine was a lawyer, and the mayor of Kyiv was a boxer. According to conventional wisdom, they were not considered qualified for their current positions. However, their actions have shown the world that they are a strongly united group, working with great effectiveness. Each individual is utilizing their strengths to the fullest. Zelensky has established a brave image and successfully persuaded international assistance. The Minister of Defense has transformed the army structure into a more modern, effective, and less deadly style. The mayor has stood as a muscular figure, motivating his colleagues. The young minister has utilized technology to unite people worldwide in the fight against Russia. The ambassador has presented a rational image for Ukraine in prestigious conferences. The Deputy Prime Minister has strongly condemned the mistreatment of Ukrainian women by the Russians and criticized the hypocrisy of the Chinese government while defending Ukraine’s dignity. The reporters have spoken humbly and honestly, garnering support from other countries.

Each person fulfills their role, working together to form a strong leadership group for Ukraine. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that they will ultimately defeat the Russians and lead Ukraine towards a better future.

I started my WordPress website in April 2019, and for my Digital Writing course, I opened another WordPress website focused on the topic of knowledge worries people. However, a few days ago, when I was revising my posts and websites, I realized that it was unnecessary to have two separate blog websites. Instead, I could merge the website for my course into my existing blog as a new page.

Under the “Menu” in the “Appearance” section, I organized my pages into Home, Literature, Daily Life, TV/Movie/Music, Knowledge Causes Worries, and Contact. I also categorized my posts accordingly. With this structure in place, I began editing and revising my posts.

Firstly, I revised “Eight Chinese Classics You Must Read” by replacing it with the version I had edited for a blog writing position. Additionally, I made several grammar corrections to my “Play Review—Twelfth Night.”

I have now revised all of my posts under “Knowledge Causes Worries.” For example, I added references to “Understanding the Internet,” corrected grammar and usage mistakes in “My Digital Literacy Narrative—Television and I,” changed the title from “Television and I” to “Television and Me,” and capitalized “Narrative” in the title.

One of the main areas I focused on was revising my podcast titled “The Chained Mother of Eight in China—How Knowledge Worries People.” Unlike a research paper or printed article, the goal of a podcast is to deliver the content clearly and directly to the audience through listening. As a result, the podcast script should resemble a speech or dialogue. Keeping this in mind, I rewrote certain sections of my podcast.

In the original post, I used several long sentences with multiple clauses to describe the suffering of the poor women. For example, “Because this chained woman once was a beautiful 12-year-old girl and was kidnapped and sold to many men, who raped and tortured her, hammering off all her teeth and cutting off her tongue tip, now she becomes psychotic and is locked by a farmer and forced to give birth to at least eight children.” I have now rewritten it as, “Because this chained woman was once a pretty girl and an elementary school student. At the age of 12, she was kidnapped and sold to many men who raped and tortured her. They hammered off all her teeth, cut off her tongue tip, and damaged her vocal cords to prevent her from resisting. When a journalist found her, she had been locked up by a poor, uneducated farmer and forced to give birth to at least eight children.” Additionally, I added an opening line, “Hello, everyone; welcome to Ying’s channel,” to create a friendly and relaxed atmosphere for the audience.

Apart from revising the podcast script, I also improved the recording based on what I learned from my classmates’ podcasts. I divided the background music into four parts, inserted it before each paragraph, faded it out at the end of each segment to introduce my narrative, and removed any long pauses.

Running a website is not easy; it requires frequent log-ins and updates. My plan is to revise all of my posts, add a design, and make my blog my online home where I can share my confusion, thoughts, and feelings. I hope to eventually use it as a platform to promote my novels and connect with like-minded individuals.

After reading the assignment requirements, I came up with three topics for my Wikipedia article: a book called “An Unfinished Life” written by Yu Juan, Ming Chu-cheng, my favorite political scientist, and TCK Publishing, the publisher I love the most. Although the author of the book has a link on Wikipedia, there is no English version or English introduction for the book, making it potentially difficult for English readers to understand. In the case of Ming Chu-cheng, there is a Wikidata page that provides information about him. Furthermore, the Wikipedia article requirements suggest that writing about a person is the most challenging. Therefore, I decided to choose TCK Publishing as the subject for my first Wikipedia article.

Since 2018, I have been applying for writer or editor positions at TCK Publishing. The nonfiction editing test involves editing the founder’s speech about the company, its mission, services, and advantages. To meet the requirements of Wikipedia, I searched for reliable sources that discuss the company and its founder and CEO, Tom Corson-Knowles. I selected a few independent and trustworthy sources to use as references.

After gathering the necessary information, I created an outline for the article, including sections on the company’s background, values, business scale, and the authors they have published. I completed my paper in Microsoft Word using the Chicago style with endnotes. During this process, checking each author to see if they have a Wikipedia page took a significant amount of time, as there are 46 authors, some of whom share names with existing Wikipedia articles.

Although I read the requirements for creating a Wikipedia article, I still needed to study new knowledge. Therefore, I revisited the criteria, Article Wizard, and tutorials. I signed up to become a Wikipedian and created my page. I copied and pasted the content from my Word document onto my Wikipedia page. However, the linked items did not appear on my page, so I had to manually link the Wikipedia pages to the related authors, requiring careful attention to avoid mistakes.

The challenge I encountered was linking the endnotes to the cited sources. Adding references to the endnote numbers was simple, but I spent a long time figuring out how to properly fill in the author’s name, article title, URL, and retrieval time using the cited sources template. During the editing process, I frequently previewed the article to check for any necessary corrections. Once I was satisfied that everything was well-done, I submitted my article.

Through the creation of my first Wikipedia article, I learned the importance of writing with an objective attitude and maintaining a neutral point of view. I sent my article to TCK Publishing and received feedback suggesting that I provide more information about the company’s history. I will search for additional supporting sources to address this feedback. When comparing my article to those of other publishers on Wikipedia, I realize that I still need to learn how to add an infobox, divide my article into sections, and make the lead section more concise.

My favorite writer, Sanmao, from Taiwan, once shared a story about a boy in the Western Sahara Desert, where most people are illiterate. The boy had a strong desire to learn how to read, and Sanmao taught him basic knowledge. However, in the end, he didn’t acquire much knowledge, and Sanmao remarked that it was fortunate because knowing too much would bring unhappiness and even pain. As a teenager, I didn’t fully grasp the meaning behind Sanmao’s words.

Twenty years later, while attending college in the United States, I gained a wealth of knowledge that I hadn’t acquired during my education in China. However, the more I learned, the more concerned and pessimistic I became about the state of the world and humanity. Particularly when I discovered environmental damage, climate change, population growth, wars, and historical falsehoods, I felt disheartened. I wondered why knowledge often leads people to worry and pessimism, and how one can overcome this negative realization.

In this topic, I aim to explore the nature of knowledge, how individuals acquire knowledge, and ways to overcome worries and pessimism associated with it. I will compare my educational experiences in China and the United States, the subjects I studied, and the perspectives I gained as a young person and later in life. During my youth, I focused solely on memorizing information to achieve high scores, enabling me to gain admission to a better school or secure promotions. Knowledge served as a means to improve my life. However, now I contemplate the significance of what I have learned and seek to connect that knowledge to my community, country, and the world as a whole. I have decided to find answers through research that will provide comfort and broaden my understanding of knowledge and the development of the world and humanity.

By sharing my insights, I hope to offer assistance to anyone who shares the same sense of confusion. My goal is to provide guidance and help individuals find solace in their quest for understanding.

I had no idea how to create a podcast, and I wasn’t even familiar with what a podcast was. To educate myself, I searched online to learn its definition and listened to podcasts using the Apple App and a post by my classmate, Heather Herbaugh-Abourezk. Through this exploration, I discovered that a podcast is an audio recording accompanied by background music.

The most crucial step in podcast production is establishing a theme, and fortunately, I had something on my mind that I wanted to express. Since January 27, when news about the “chained mother of eight” began circulating online, I became deeply invested in the story. I spent considerable time reading news articles, watching related videos, and engaging in discussions by leaving comments on posts. The four contradictory investigation reports issued by the local government further piqued my interest. The government sought to suppress this news and prohibited public discourse about it. In my social media platform, Xiaohongshu, I attempted to comment and write articles about the incident, but the media censored my remarks and eventually banned me from posting anything. These censorship measures and government control prompted me to contemplate China’s political system. Concurrently, the story of the unfortunate woman, who had once been a beautiful 12-year-old girl and had suffered rape, torture, and confinement, with her teeth knocked out and her tongue tip severed, filled me with anger, as it did many other Chinese individuals, especially those with daughters. This anger inspired me to reflect on the knowledge I had acquired in China, leading me to decide to discuss it in my first podcast.

With my podcast topic established, I needed to learn how to create it. I turned to YouTube videos for guidance and discovered that the first step was to download podcast creator software. I initially downloaded an app called Audio Editor, which was a music recording editor. I then obtained background music from a Chinese website, selecting a somber-sounding piece to match the tragic nature of my topic. However, I encountered difficulty in pasting the background music into the Audio Editor. I revisited some YouTube videos and downloaded another software called Audacity, which allowed me to successfully add the music and record my narration over it. Initially, the volume of my narration was too low, so I re-recorded it while adjusting the volume accordingly. Additionally, I realized that the background music was too long. Following a tutorial on YouTube, I learned how to trim it to the desired length.

After completing the editing process, I listened to the final product to ensure everything sounded good. I then saved it, which automatically converted the file into an MP3 format. Finally, I submitted the podcast to the assignment page and shared it on the discussion board.

The internet is a world with the same structure and functions as the real world. Invented and formed by the people who live in the real world, the internet is a fictional world where people benefit more or less from it, no matter which country or field they come from. Though there may be some differences in the fictional world, the core quality is the same. It is like the world of heaven or hell, which has people, land, water, fire, and plants, and all these elements are created according to the real world. People communicate, build communities, share information, establish policies, look for friends, make money, and solve actual problems in the internet world. The internet connects the whole world and offers conveniences for people in all fields. Without the internet, this online course cannot benefit many students; we cannot access information and news from other countries without the internet. The internet is a world that is built upon and serves our real world.

The working process of the internet is complicated and detailed, with terminologies similar to the working process of the human brain. It can be divided into the server-side and the browser side. The whole process includes four steps:

1. Users type a word or several words into the search bar of the browser, which enters a URL.
2. The DNS server receives the request and starts to process the input words, assigning orders to different servers to retrieve all the related data from other computers (forming the World Wide Web).
3. The server responds by sending data via the “HyperText Transfer Protocol” (HTTP), and the data are displayed as “entries” or “websites.” Sometimes the content is not a website but a PDF; in that case, the browser parses the data as HTML (HyperText Markup Language) code, and the entry shows up as a PDF-style text (Schwarzmuller, 2019).
4. Before the websites show up on the page, there are three languages used on the browser side to add color, style, and dynamic content. HTML determines the structure, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) handles the styling, and JavaScript adds dynamic content.

For internet users, search is an essential skill. People use the internet to search for all kinds of information, text, or pictures and choose the best ones to meet their requirements. I worked as a data entry professional and gained a lot of practice in searching online. My job involved finding information related to people, movies, TV programs, music, government, biology, and sports, in both English and Chinese. I had to find the best translation names and descriptions, which required filtering through numerous websites. Apart from official websites, we needed to identify the most appropriate and primary sources. One assignment involved identifying the users’ intentions based on the words or sentences they entered in the search bar. This assignment highlighted how the internet deals with data. For example, if a user inputs the word “volleyball,” there will be entries related to volleyball for sale, the definition of volleyball, how to play volleyball, etc. Through this assignment, I learned the importance of knowing what to look for when conducting a search. If I don’t know the exact thing or name, I need to figure it out before filtering the right information from the displayed websites. This approach helps me avoid the mistakes described in “How to be a better web searcher?” (Russell and Callegaro, 2019).

References

Russell, D. M. & Callegaro, M. (2019, March 26). How to be a better web searcher: Secrets from Google scientists. Observations. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-to-be-a-better-web-searcher-secrets-from-google-scientists/

Schwarzmuller, M. (2019, April 15). How the web works. Academind. Retrieved from https://academind.com/tutorials/how-the-web-works

TCK Publishing is an American-based book publisher founded by Tom Corson-Knowles[1] in 2011. Headquartered in Granger, Indiana, TCK Publishing follows a remote working style, with its international employees working from various locations across the globe. TCK Publishing does not charge fees to publish books or pay advances on royalties but instead pays 50% gross royalties[2].

Making a difference, authenticity, learning, connection, and freedom are the values of TCK Publishing. The publisher’s mission is to help writers earn a full-time income from book royalties. Their blogs provide information and resources related to reading, writing, publishing, editing, fitness, health, and news.

In addition to publishing books, the company offers courses to train authors on self-publishing and hosts award contests. TCK Publishing has provided courses such as eBook Publishing School, How to Become a Full-Time Author, Unleash Your Creative Genius, The Complete Kindle Publishing Course, How to Write Nonfiction Like a Pro, Email Marketing Mastery, Systemize Automate Delegate, and How to Build Your Website Like a Pro. They have also held TCK Publishing Reader’s Choice Book Awards contests[3] and short story awards contests[4].

TCK Publishing releases books in various genres, including business and investing, self-help and how-to, health, fitness and dieting, religion and spirituality, general nonfiction, historical romance, contemporary romance, thriller, science fiction, horror, young adult and middle grade, and children’s books.

Authors published by TCK Publishing include Kevin Horsley, Mary Christian Payne, Michelle Paisley Reed, Dr. Veronique Desaulniers, Mort Orman, John Del Gaudio, Susan Campbell, Christo Hall, Franziska Iseli, Dan Johnston, Kusha Karvandi, Debbie Drum, Heidi Eljarbo, Rochelle Katzman, Peter Wood, Jenna Ryan, Joseph Kassabian, Ellie Crowe, Phyllis Perry, Ntathu Allen, Dan Janal, Julia Daniels, Shami Stovall, Angelina Allsop, Michael Mackintosh, Clive Fleury, Vishal Reddy, Mark Spivak, Keith Hendricks, Shai Plonski, Sarah Warren St. Pierre, Don Hartshorn, Jon Richter, Wendi Tardieu, Victor Gold, Peter Yang, Johnny Payne, Michael Cordell, Sez Kristiansen, Dr. Bruce Chalmer, Melissa Steginus, Jeff Morrill, Dr. Bohdanna Zazulak, Maclen Stanley, Lucas Hault, and Jerry Manney.

[1] Gati, Eric. Learn from the Master of Kindle Publishing: Tom Corson-Knowles. The Daily Interview. Retrieved April 15, 2022.

[2] TCK Publishing Official Website. Retrieved April 15, 2022.

[3] TCK Publishing Reader’s Choice Book Awards. American Writers Museum. Retrieved April 15, 2022.

[4] Short Story Awards Contest. The Writer. Retrieved April 15, 2022.