Using XML definitely affected my writing process because the schema gave clear direction and purpose for every single one of my lines. That being said, I still felt more comfortable writing my first draft on a word document and importing my lines later on. The spell and grammar check tool in Word is also really useful. In general I am not sure how I feel about using XML for composing singular writing assignments since it feels rather tedious for a non-repeating piece of work. In this case, XML seemed to be useful since the annotation and citation portion was repeated 4 times. Using a schema also improved my understanding of the “social action” of genres, since it broke down the bibliography in a way that it was very clear to see exactly what an author was trying to get across. I also did not seem to have many technical issues with Oxygen, though that will be more clear once the project is reviewed. However, it did leave out an element of creativity that I felt could have been useful at certain points. There were times when I felt I had trouble smoothly transitioning from one line to the other because each sentence was constrained by the element descriptions that the class has chosen. It might be beneficial, then, to use the schema as more of a loose framework for creating a genre, rather than a rigid one. Since the class looked at about 10 or so examples, I would also say that I am unsure of how many other examples of annotated bibliography would be correctly characterized by the schema we created. As we move on to project 2 and 3, I feel it might make sense to spend more time on the schema, and to possibly re-visit it after the writing has already started. I feel that the class would get a better idea of what is expected and what is constrained once the actual writing process is underway. I would also be interested in learning more about the other capabilities of the Oxygen program, since it seems like we stuck to the very basics for Project 1. I am also unsure of how convenient making edits and peer reviews is on already written documents.
