COMM 310 · WEEKLY NOTES
What I’m Learning While I Work
This blog is where I write about communication, design, digital skills and some of the things I notice while teaching and creating.
Some posts begin with a class assignment. Others come from a training session, a design problem or something that did not work the first time.
I do not want this page to become a collection of perfect answers. I would rather use it to document what I am learning and how my thinking changes along the way.
Read the Latest PostsOctober 9, 2026 · Digital Media
Publishing on Medium Felt Different
Publishing a feature article on Medium, outside the classroom rubric, raised a harder question: does the story still hold up for a reader who owes it nothing?
Read the post →October 8, 2026 · Communication
Newsworthy and Sensational Are Not the Same Thing
A difficult personal detail could have become the headline. Why the newsworthy angle and the sensational angle are not the same choice.
Read the post →October 7, 2026 · Communication
A News Story Still Has a Person Inside It
A journalism interview becomes a lesson in compassion: how to write true, difficult details without reducing a person to their hardest moment.
Read the post →October 6, 2026 · Communication
Interviewing Changed the Way I Write About People
A 30-minute interview about leadership turned into a lesson about listening for answers that do not arrive where they were expected.
Read the post →October 5, 2026 · Design
ClearWeek Started With a Very Ordinary Problem
A creative brief for an imaginary student-deadline app becomes a short case for subtraction, in interface design and in writing.
Read the post →October 2, 2026 · Design
Ten Headlines for One Article
Ten headlines for one article taught a graphic designer’s lesson: sometimes the simple, honest headline beats the clever one.
Read the post →October 1, 2026 · Digital Media
Two Conversations About AI in Moungali
Two interviews in Moungali, on the same topic, produced two very different views on AI — and a more honest article because of it.
Read the post →September 30, 2026 · Coursework Reflections
Blogging Is Making Me Notice What I Actually Think
Five weeks into blogging for COMM 310, Alliance notices he is not only writing more — he is starting to hear when the writing does not sound like him.
Read the post →September 29, 2026 · Communication
Feature Writing Gives Me More Room, but That Can Also Be the Problem
News writing forces fast decisions about what matters. Feature writing gives more room — and that freedom turns out to be its own kind of challenge.
Read the post →September 28, 2026 · Faith & Reflection
Editing More Than My Writing
A week of heavy editing in COMM 310 got Alliance thinking about correcting small things in life, one sentence and one moment at a time.
Read the post →September 25, 2026 · Design
Design Cannot Rescue an Unclear Message
Good design cannot fix a message that was never clear to begin with.
Read the post →September 24, 2026 · Coursework Reflections
Fifteen Headlines for One Story
Writing fifteen headlines for one press release turned out to be an exercise in deciding what the story is actually about.
Read the post →September 23, 2026 · Communication
What I Would Change About My Social Media Posts
Introducing the same video on Facebook and LinkedIn taught me that publishing on a platform and writing for it are not the same thing.
Read the post →September 22, 2026 · Digital Media
Why YouTube Is Still the Most Powerful Platform for Me
Of all the platforms I use, YouTube is still the one built for showing someone exactly how to do something.
Read the post →September 21, 2026 · Faith & Reflection
What I Want My Social Media to Be Useful For
Doctrine and Covenants 4 got me thinking about what actually counts as useful work when so much of it now happens through a phone.
Read the post →September 18, 2026 · Video Production
The Part of Video Editing Nobody Sees
Finishing a two-minute video for COMM 310 took far longer than two minutes, mostly because of decisions nobody watching will ever notice.
Read the post →September 17, 2026 · Training
I Still Learn While I Teach
Teaching computer skills means admitting sometimes that I don’t have the answer right away, and that has turned out to be useful.
Read the post →September 16, 2026 · Video Production
The Script Saves Time Before the Camera Starts
A script and storyboard save time by moving decisions before the camera starts rolling, not during it.
Read the post →September 15, 2026 · Video Production
My Script Looked Different Once I Had to Say It
Writing the script for my Coach Alliance video taught me that a sentence can look fine on paper and still sound wrong out loud.
Read the post →September 14, 2026 · Faith & Reflection
What I Choose to Put on a Screen
This week’s Article of Faith 13 reading made me think about the connection between what I create for other people to see and what I choose to consume myself.
Read the post →September 11, 2026 · Digital Media
The HDMI cable was not the problem
Before a computer training session in Brazzaville, my projector stopped displaying my laptop. I was quite sure I knew what was wrong. I wasn’t.
Read the post →September 10, 2026 · Digital Media
Why I still teach Excel
New digital tools appear constantly, but Excel keeps returning to my training work for a simple reason: people have real problems to solve with data.
Read the post →September 9, 2026 · Coursework Reflections
Why professional writing matters to me
My professional work started on the visual side, but I keep finding situations where design cannot carry the message alone.
Read the post →September 8, 2026 · Communication
Knowing who I am writing for
I write for students, clients, viewers, and professors. Using the same approach for all of them would make little sense.
Read the post →September 7, 2026 · Communication
Speaking so people can understand
Teaching has shown me that knowing something well and explaining it clearly are two different skills.
Read the post →