On reduction

Reflection overall.
I have learned a lot in this course, and also in my Web Design course over the last few months. A lot about educational theory, but perhaps more importantly, I have learned a lot about the application of theory in a practical context.
Add to this the obvious lessons of anyone who is getting back into study after some time away,like how to better manage time, taking care to address the task in hand, juggling and integrating work assignments with learning tasks, learning how to better write to a tight word limit, referencing etc, and I would say this has been a productive few months in terms of what I have taken out of it.
The theory has been quite copious at certain points in the course. That is, there have been a lot of readingson analysis, design, evaluation, assessment, constructivist and other learning theories, and even the theory of correct APA application.
Perhaps some of the most important things I have learned have been about my own learning. I have learned for example that when I write a paper that starts out at 5700 word (including references)and then reduce it, to meet a word limit, to 2700 words, plus references, the process involved actually helps me to arrange my thoughts more clearly, to see associations I hadn't noticed before and therefore to constructmy knowledge as I procede.
Not that my assignments represent any apex of concise and lucid writing, but they seem to be more meaningfulat the end of the course than they were at the start. Funny enough I really enjoyed the process of reducing,distilling the meaning of my last paper into something meaningful from something that just had a lot of wordsand concepts. Having said that, please don't ask me to reduce and distil, this learning reflection. It is a bit of work doing that.