Style Academy

I wish there was really a school called Style Academy...
http://styleacademy.byu.edu

Anyway, I am really interested to start exploring this website more. Honestly, I probably won't do it on my own time, but if/when we have to as an assignment, I know it will be worth my time (and not just 'cuz of the grade.) I really liked the video about learning to combine sentences. I feel that, for me at least, the idea of run-on sentences has been drill into my head for most of grade school. They are bad, and you have to keep your ideas concise! But now, they are opening us up to a new style of writing. Yes, the ideas still need to be coherent within one sentence, but it makes it more interesting to embellish it a bit.  You don't have to sound like a robot while writing - WOW!

Not to sound shallow, but I also like how short the videos are. If a teacher asked us to go watch a 45 minute tutorial on how to use an oxford comma in the proper way . . . I might be a little hesitant to comply with that assignment. Don't get me wrong, I might find that fascinating, but I have to be in a particular mode for that lengthy of a video. And I mean a very particular mode. Because the videos on Style Academy run at 10 minutes or so, I am not only more willing to watch them, but I can recognize that the information they are giving is exactly what I need to know, without all the convoluted fluff to make them sound smart. ("The Oxford comma, also known as the Harvard comma, originated at - Princeton")  

So ya, I like to learn new, minute bits of information, but I don't like spending hours trying to find the answers I am looking for. This is a perfect mindset for our internet-run generation, and also a pretty good one for learning new things on Style Academy! I also hope that the activities in the videos will help me synthesize the information as I am learning it.