Write a roll question

I can't think of a question, but I did go to the last day of class.

Letter to future students

Dear future students of Sean Conaway,

After taking a semester Sean’s English 1106 class I have a couple of tips and tricks to survive. First off do not panic when you hear that you will have to write a 350-word blog post every class. At first it might seem stressful, but what you have to realize is that these posts are a lot more relaxed then a lot of the writing you are probably use to. Make sure to read all of the readings even if they are a bit lengthy, in the long run it will be worth it. This will make it so much easier to write your blog post if you actually read it, go figure, and a lot of them are related to the essays that you have to write. Another big tip is to go to class, here you will be able to learn a lot of strategies to help with your essay and writing in general. Now I know that this can be hard sometimes because he does not count attendance, trust me it is worth it. Especially since there are not a lot of grades in this class, the bulk of them being the essays, you will need all of the help that you can get. Along with that is do not be shy to talk to Sean he is a very understanding guy, so if you are feeling overwhelmed with assignments ask for an extension or if you need help with your essay talk to him about it. Most times people are afraid to ask for help, but there are a ton of resources that Virginia Tech offers to students, so try to utilize them. I know that I went to the writing center for all of my essays this year and found that to be really helpful. I would recommend that any of you guys use it for this class or any other class since it is a completely free program. I am sure that all of you by now know how important free stuff is for college students. Other than that, I would just enjoy your time in class and participate as much as you can.

Sincerely,
Sarah Vasquez

PS - I wrote most of what was or wasn't engaging and other things like that in my last blog post.

Extended Spot Survey

Everything in class has been really helpful in improving my writing, but I think one of the most effective ways was actually the blog posts. A lot of times I overthink what I write, but since the blog posts where more relaxed it helped me to just write and not think so much. I do think that 350 words is kind of a lot for some of the assignments like the one where we had to write about what we need to improve in our rough draft. Another helpful assignment would probably have to be the prickles and goo. This was helpful in writing a lot of our essays because in class I was able to learn about how to balance facts and fluff in my essays. Along with some of the reading assignments because most of them were examples of what kind of essay we were going to write. It made it easier for me to write the essays because there were several readings and examples that you gave us in class that I could refer to. The least helpful assignment was probably when we talked about the rhetorical appeals. I purely say that because in my last semester writing class we went into a lot of depth with the appeals, so I did not really need a refresher on that. Other than that, everything in class was generally useful and engaging because you showed us a lot of interesting videos that related to class. I am not really sure on what you could do to improve the class because I thoroughly enjoyed it and will definitely take away a lot of tips on improving my writing. As for the final assignment, I was not too keen on the PechaKucha, especially since I did one last semester in my writing class. I did like that the topic was on one of the essays that we already wrote, but for the sake of your future students I will recommend assigning a regular PowerPoint presentation. Even though I know that you will probably ignore that comment.

PechaKucha

I will be presenting my research article for the PechaKucha PowerPoint presentation. I chose my research article instead of my inquiry essay because I think I have a lot more information on it. Plus, I think it will be a lot more interesting talking about virtual reality rather than me talking about going to the gym at 8:00am every day. To condense my information, I will talk about three main aspects of my essay, which is the negative and positive aspects of virtual reality, where we are now with VR technology, and what we should expect in the future that will include augmented and mixed reality. From here I will add pictures of the different headsets and I want to try to add some of the websites that have already been made for virtual reality headsets. I will probably have to do screenshots of the websites in order to do go with the flow of the PechaKucha PowerPoint. Along with adding some of the graphs of the projected revenue for virtual reality products. I am hoping to really show everyone in class the virtual reality experience that different companies like Samsung, Google, HTC, and varies other companies are trying to achieve. Besides the time constraint and PowerPoint method I guess my next biggest challenge would be putting the right amount of visuals and text on each slide. That is why in class tomorrow I am planning on making an outline, looking for different visuals that will grab the audience’s attention, and condensing the information from my essay. I am not sure if I will be able to do all of that in class, but once I do finish that the final step would be practicing the presentation. One of the most important parts of the assignment is making sure that I am familiar with the information. That is another reason why I chose my research article because the information is still fresh in my mind. As long as I practice a little bit I should be able to feel comfortable to go off script a little if I forget something.

Potential introductions

In the last decade, there has been a rapid rise in technology in science, the work force, or just simply in entertainment but what’s next. The answer is virtual reality, in the past couple of years several companies have been researching and releasing virtual reality headsets in particular. All of these are made to immerse oneself into another world with life like qualities, so that people can explore the world without having to leave their house. Even though they have had little success so far it is projected that by the year 2020 virtual reality will have over $120 billion-dollar revenue. With very high expectations that it can alter human’s way of life by potentially improving the military by replicating combat without actually having to go to combat or doctors performing lifelike surgeries without having to do it on a real human.  There are so many different possibilities of what virtual reality can do to the world. While some people are, excited and promoting virtual reality, products others have speculations about some of the possible repercussions that could have on humans. That is why this article will go into depth on how this might affect society, were we are now with technology, and what people should expect form it.

Imagine having the capacity to travel all the way across the world to China, touring places like the great wall of China or performing open heart surgery all at the comfort of your home and that is what virtual reality is trying to achieve. A world so realistic that people will immerse themselves into the product for scientific, military, or maybe just entertainment purposes. Currently there are several tethered and mobile headsets offered by Google, Samsung, HTC, and more that have tried to create this with little success, but in a couple of years that could change. Companies all over the globe are looking into this technology and it only takes one product to break through the barriers and become mainstream. That is why it is projected that in only three years there will be over $120 billion-dollar revenue on virtual reality. The question is how will this impact all of us. Many people are hopeful and believe that only good can come from this while others are focused on the multitude of possible repercussions. This essay will focus on both points of views along with where we currently are with virtual reality and what everyone should expect from it.

Fake News

The 2016 election was one of the most controversial elections in probably the United States history. It was a full year of negative political ads and several articles that were made up about both candidates, which made it difficult for some people to tell what was real or fake news. Samantha Subramanian focuses on Veles, an 18-year-old boy from the Balkan nation that made thousands of dollars through creating fake news. This story within itself is pretty interesting, but since most people in the United States saw several of these fake news articles everyday shared through Facebook or tweeted it was able to resonate with the audience. That is what was able to give this piece a human element because it was about something we all know about and it gave insight to Veles life. That is similar to the documentary that we watched in class, when they were able to talk to internet trolls. I would say this is a more effective piece then that one because it gave us more information on the guy, so that we could see why he decided start writing these articles. As most people expected it was for money, but it was a little bit more then that. He lived in an underdeveloped neighborhood with limited opportunities and when he got the chance to get some of the material things that he otherwise would not be able to afford he took it. This appeals to the audience’s emotions or pathos, so that they can feel a little bit of sympathy for him. Overall that made this an entertaining piece that I thoroughly enjoyed, along with I am sure the majority of the class simply due to how relatable it was. Most people watch shows or read books because they can relate to a character or the story. In this case, it was a story that we were and are all too familiar with. Even though the election is over just like the article said there are still thousands or maybe even millions of fake news stories that we could find on the internet.

iGod analysis

In an age where almost everyone around the world has some sort of technology in their household whether it is a phone or laptop, most people seem to question how far it will be able to advance. Nicholas Carr tries to answer this in iGod by taking about different companies such as Google and Microsoft plans for the future, which is to create artificial intelligence. A term that a variety of people are scared of or tentative about, but is interesting to learn about. In the past couple of years there have been several advance in technology and yet artificial intelligence is still hard to imagen having. Carr shows us in this article that we are not as far off to making it happen as many people think. That makes this topic relevant and engaging to the audience because he is able to use companies that the reader knows and most likely uses every day and talks about their future goals. Later on he even reveals dates that people have predicted computers and people will be more connected. That definitely appeals to younger audience, who is eager to see what is going to happen next with technology.  Although overall it was a pretty good article I still think that he could add some information about the effects that this advancement in technology might have on society or on people to make it more relevant. He mentions that Bill Gates is not too keen on the idea of making artificial intelligence, but he does not really go into depth about why. It would have been interesting to look more at that side because later on in the article he talks about the benefits of it. Along with going more in to depth about what they are currently doing to create artificial instead of talking so much about the past. It felt kind of repetitive to me at the beginning when he talked about several different interviews where Google talked about how their goal is to make artificial intelligence.

Black Hole analysis

Michael Finkel does an amazing job in “Black Holes” mainly due to his point of view or his take on black holes. He centers his information on what the famous theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein, thought about black holes. Finkel states in the article that although Einstein knew that black holes where a possibility he could not imagine the world producing such a thing.  This sort of grabs the reader’s attention because it was one of the few things that Einstein was wrong about. Now several years later tons of scientific facts have proven that they do in fact exist. A majority of scientists never wanted to claim this because of Einstein’s opinion. That perspective is what helps engage the audience to keep reading it ,while still being able to be factual and portray all of the facts by using Huxley’s 3 directions. At the beginning, he used Einstein as a historical reference that everyone would be able to understand. Then he goes more personal into what it would feel like as an outside observer to experience getting to slip into this black hole. This was one of the most interesting parts because you could picture yourself getting pulled into the black hole and getting ripped apart, yet it was all very factual. I was still able to learn all of the elements that goes into producing and getting into one of them. From this article, I took away not only a ton of information about black holes, but different techniques I could use on my next essay. The most important tip was probably to get the audience involved somehow whether it be putting them into the shoes of someone experiencing whatever I am writing about or by giving them real world examples. Either way I would probably need to do it in a fun and factual way like when he said that some physicists called getting ripped apart in a black hole call it getting “spaghettified”. I also really liked how he kind of did subheadings by bolding important phrases of a paragraph, this made it a lot easier to keep track of the article.

"Overly Documented Life" analysis

In A.J. Jacobs “The Overly Documented Life” he tries another experiment, recording every day so he can look back at every moment and fact check himself. Similar to his “Unitasker” chapter in The Guinea Pig Diaries he chose to write little headers, so he can emphasize some of the steps to the audience. Overall used the dinner conversation method that we talked about in class. That means that he writes mainly informally for entertainment, adding jokes here and there to grab the audience’s attention. While still incorporating a decent chunk of facts, so the reader can understand the experiment better. Some examples are the google glasses and the Bell method. That is the main method that he used to do his experiment. After doing his experiment for a while he realized how he changed psychologically at first, he stopped doing things like peeing in the sink because he did not want to see the recording. Quickly he figured out that it did not really matter and continued doing it. It was pretty interesting how he compared that to reality TV programs. I do think a lot of those shows the people get so used to the cameras that they start acting like themselves again. All to go with his overall theme that life does not need to be recorded. Although it seemed like a good idea it tends to make life more boring because people guard themselves when they see that they are being recorded. Most times it is better to just live in the moment and interpret events the way with think they went. This is something that I completely agree with because I have always felt that experiences are better than pictures and videos, even though those can be nice too. It addresses another major issue that many people have including himself, which is privacy. As I mentioned before many people feel uncomfortable being recorded, when he found out that his post from his mood app was public he was enraged. As many others were when he told them that he was filming them.

"Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisions?" Inquiry or not

“Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisons?” by Danah Boyd illustrates how even with this new and innovative technology that we have today, race is still a huge issue in the United States. Most people argue that the internet connects people around the world, which gives them tools to be more tolerant. This is not the case in today’s society people do not take the opportunity to utilize these tools. Boyd does tons of research interviewing various students to prove this point. That is why I think that this is an inquiry essay, specifically an exploration. Boyd is engulfing himself into the internet culture endlessly observing the social divisions that the youth has made by taking notes and adding some of his own reflection. Analyzing how Myspace and Facebook in particular has created a cultural boundary between young people. Several people that he talked to did not even notice that there was social division, until Boyd pointed it out by looking at the people that they are friends with or their comments. Most of them where from people of the same race or background as them, due to the simple fact that people hang out or talk to people that they share things in common with. Then reflecting to himself that the internet is not the answer to solving this longstanding problem. People are the only thing that can fix this, because we are the ones who make up the daily norms, so we are the only ones that can change it. It is not enough to rely on endless amounts of information to stop racism anymore because most people do not look at it. Instead the internet has amplified the issue by calling people who use one website “ghetto” or “lower class” then another.

Map out of inquiry essay

For my inquiry essay I am, planning on doing an experiment. For my experiment, I will wake up every day at 8:00am to go to the gym, which should give me a little more free time during the day. Throughout the year, I have struggled with time management. A way that I have thought about fixing this problem is by waking up early to go to the gym, but I have always been too lazy to do it. Now that it is an assignment I will have to do it and note how it effects my everyday life. Hopefully it will help me have a more consistent schedule that will help keep me on track throughout the day. Overall it is a proven fact that exercise has millions of beneficial effects on someone’s physical and mental health. There are also a lot of benefits to working out in the morning. First, it enhances your metabolism by starting off your day working out and eating. That makes your body do one of three things; it can use it as a source of energy, it can replenish your body, or it can store it for later. It can also form some sort of consistency, which just means that if you go later on in the day you are more likely to be tiered or feel overwhelmed and not go. By getting it over with in the morning you are making it a priority and will not have an excuse to not go. This is one that is super important to me because a lot of times when I have a lot of homework or I am just tired from the school day I end up not going. Since I am so use to doing some sort of physical activity throughout the day that if I do not go I feel bad about myself and it is harder for me to sleep. Another positive aspect is that it prepares your mind for the day and works kind of like coffee for some people. Research has shown that it improves your focus and mental abilities throughout the day. Like I said before it helps you get longer and better sleep at night, especially if you go early in the morning like around 7 or 8am.

"Consider the Lobster" vs "the Unitasker"

The main difference between “the Unitasker” and “Consider the Lobster” is that one is an experiment and the other one is exploration. In “the Unitasker” A.J. Jacobs, tried to limit the number of times that he multitasked throughout the day for a month or so, researching different methods to help him like meditation. “Consider the Lobster” on the other hand researched the lobster community by analyzing Main Lobster Festival, the background of the lobster, how they cook them, some controversial issues that people have with them, etc. All of that made “Consider the Lobster” a little more factual and formal then “the Unitasker”, which was more of a dinner conversation. Although Jacobs still had facts and was performing an experiment, he tried to add more comedy then the lobster article. What they both had in common was that the authors had to do research in order to write their article. Jacobs researched different forms of meditation by using the Wii and reading different books about it. Wallace, who wrote “Consider the Lobster”, researched practically all aspects of the lobster in his article. They used different methods to get their point across due to their different audiences. “Consider the Lobster” was written for a former magazine called the Gourmet, so its main focus was on the culinary aspect of the lobster, describing why so many people are against eating it. “the Unitasker” was a chapter in a collection of experiments for a book called The Guinea Pig Diaries. This was made more for entertainment and would probably have a more youthful audience then the lobster article. Both had a definite question and similar responses to their question. In “the Unitasker” Jacobs was trying to see if he could go a full day without multitasking and in “Consider the Lobster”, Wallace was trying to answer if it is ethically okay to eat lobster since they are boiled alive. Neither one of them got a straightforward response to their question. Jacobs never actually went a full day without multitasking, but did learn to stop doing it as much to enjoy the smaller things in life. Wallace, found faults in both sides and concluded that it is too abstract of a question to respond too.    

The Unitasker analysis

The Unitasker was a chapter in A.J. Jacobs novel The Guinea Pig Diaries, here a man is trying to do an experiment to see if he can go a full day without multitasking. The whole chapter is a mixture of both the dinner conversation and Aldous Huxley’s 3 directions that we talked about in class. It was written pretty informal starting out with a story about him and his wife almost dying in a car crash, to show the motivation behind his experiment. This goes with the dinner conversation, where someone talks about their own personal experiences. Similar to most diaries he writes mainly about his own personal thoughts, while trying to become a unitasker. He asks several questions to himself and even adds some jokes, all in a way that you would sort of talk to a friend due it being a diary. Then it goes into Huxley’s 3 directions, when he starts to become more factual and do research. An example of this is under" just sit" when he hears about meditation. Apparently, a lot of studies have said that it is a great way to practice focus, which would help him with his experiment. When he practiced it and failed he turned to research stating that that he was reading a “knee-high stack of meditation books”. All of that going along with two from Huxley’s 3 directions, which is looking at the factual or concrete. At the end it goes to number three when he talks about what he learned from experiment. His main focus with his experiment was to try to eliminate multitasking all together. In the end, he learned that people can multitask, but they should do it in smaller doses. A lot of people have stopped living in the moment to try to do multiple things at one time. Even when someone is just talking on the phone and mopping it still effects the conversation that they are having. Once in a while we all just have to stop what we are doing and put “nickels in a watermelon bank” or focus on one thing at a time. This is a more abstract and universal concept that many of us do not really think about.

Self- Evaluation CRA

The overall message of my rough draft is fine, but I need to refine my thesis and go more in depth with the topic. I did identify the audience and the rhetorical elements like pathos, ethos, and logos. I did not really answer why he used those elements to get his point across. I kind of just touched the surface on all of the elements, when I need to dig deeper and analyze all of my sources more for this rhetorical analysis paper. Since this is a rough draft there are a lot of little grammatical mistakes and redundancy throughout the paper that I am going to need to fix too. I could also probably work more on the flow of the paper and add more transitions. The best way to do that is to compare and contrast the articles to add kind of like a bridge that we talked about in class. That way my paper can be less choppy when I am going from one point to another. I forgot to add in text citations too, so I will need to go back and fix that. Along with my annotated bibliography because I did not add a description to the tweet like I did for the other two articles. I am going to need make my essay longer because it is under word count and hopefully I can read it over to spruce up some of my vocabulary. Adding that will probably help my paper flow better. Even with all of the things that I have to work on, I think that I have a solid starting point. My sources are good and I have touched bases on how they relate to the message that I am trying to get across. Once I fix everything that I mentioned before, get help from my peers in my peer mentoring workshop in class, and probably go to the writing center then I think I will be ready to turn in my paper.

Thesis/Question

Why do informal sources make issues more personal than formal sources?

Consider my sources:

"Text of President Trump's ObamaCare Executive Order." Fox News. FOX News Network, 20 Jan. 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. <http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/20/text-president-trumps-obamacare-executive-order.html>.

This is the text on Trumps executive order to reduce Obamacare in the United States by making it more flexible. That means that they will do anything that they can under the law to delay this act to lessen some of the financial burden that Obamacare has put on the states. This article is targeted to the American people, so that they can be informed on this new executive order. It is set up into six different sections each one highlighting what the act will do ease the burden of Obamacare. This adds to the overall purpose, which is to reassure all Americans on this controversial issue by showing them all of the positive things that this executive order is going to do.

Consider my sources:

Lee, MJ, and Tami Luhby. "Trump Issues Executive Order to Start Rolling Back Obamacare." CNN. Cable News Network, Jan.  2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. <http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/trump-signs-executive-order-on-obamacare/>.

Trump is issuing an executive order to reduce Obamacare, which has the potential to affect almost 20 million US citizens. Before being elected he promised to repeal this act and has been working on coming up with a new plan. Now many Republicans who have been so adamant about taking away Obamacare, have seen that this is going to be something a lot more challenging then they expected. CNN is targeting this message to the Americans who will be affected by this. They are showing how much more complex the situation is then a lot of politicians, specifically the Republicans, have led on. They did this by quoting professors and vice presidents of foundations to emphasize how lengthy the process of repealing Obamacare will be. Along with using different headings to break up the article to get their overall point across like “Even as they repeal Obamacare, Republicans still have to fund it” or when they stated that “Republican lawmakers are quickly learning how difficult it will be to overhaul the law”. All of this goes with the theme that repealing Obamacare is going to be a long and grueling process.

Consider your Topic and Issue

1.      My subject would be healthcare/Obamacare.

2.      I chose this topic because it is currently a huge issue in the United States that I am not really that informed about.

3.      I want to look at healthcare in the United States in general and then look specifically at Obamacare, which is the affordable care act that is currently implemented in the United States. I want to look at both because I know somewhat about the healthcare system, but I probably need to look up more information in order to be able to effectively talk about Obamacare.

4.   I would probably use Wikipedia to get a general idea of what it is and then look at other articles from fox and CNN, since those are both platforms that have strong opinions on this matter.

Cyberbullying

Women have always struggled to gain the rights that men have had for centuries. Now with the internet, soaring in popularity some women feel that some of their rights are being stripped away from them. Unlike in the past, people can now make fake accounts and say whatever they want to people though social media in particular. Amanda Hess, a female journalist, took it upon herself to write about this in “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”. Here she does a superb job explaining, how social media sites like Twitter have given men the opportunity to demean women. Mainly targeting males, who have brushed off these cyberattacks that have been inflicted on her for the past several years. Hess, as both the narrator and author, builds a concrete argument with not only her own personal examples of cyberbullying, but several statistics from women who work in position of powers to the percentage of internet users. All backing up her dispute that the government should take action to stop women from getting abused online. She notes that Twitter has made a couple of adjustments like the report abuse button to help, but ultimately this problem is far too big for them. Hess address that some people believe that you can disconnect from an account to solve this, but in this day and age it seems utterly impossible. Everyone in the world from a 5 year old to a 90 year old seems to have a phone or computer. That’s why she seamlessly adds some visual arguments of cases such as Criado- Perez and her own cyberstalking experience, to help the audience picture how serious some of these online attacks can be. Even as complex as this situation is to solve she was still able to propose an idea to solve it, which is adding an act to the Civil Rights Act. These additions have been affective in the past, so it could potentially help resolve this issue. Either way she uses several rhetorical strategies like ethos, pathos, and logos to emphasize the dire need for change.

Effects of Technology

Throughout the years there has been a rapid rise in technology, giving most people access to a wide variety of resources and tools around the world. The main reason for these inventions are to help everyone connect with one another and collaborate. Charles Seife proposed in “The Loneliness of the Interconnected”, that instead of keeping us connected it has isolated us from reality. Despite having all of this information at our fingertips, we tend to only look at articles, shows, or tweets that support our ideas. Ignoring statements that contradict us even when there are blatant facts proving that what we believe in is wrong. Seife continues to support this by using a wide variety of examples showing some of the extreme cases. Such as the cult that believed that a flying saucer would take them away or the president of South Africa questioning whether HIV caused AIDS. All of them emphasizing how they have been able to find groups of people with the same ideology as them to support their delusion. Seife targets mainly the millennials to understand this problem, since they are the ones who were born in this technological era. They are the ones who have the potential to try to change this behavior by simply being open to more information and looking at both sides of an argument. After that they have the capacity to form their own opinion. Otherwise as a society we will end up going backwards by letting other people spew our thoughts. This is seen on all social media sites nowadays because everyone wants to convince someone else they are right, in order to build up their support group and give themselves power. Selfie does an excellent job showing his audience how technology has affected our opinions or thoughts and even destroyed some people’s lives. Ultimately, he believes that if we all open our ears to the “noise” around us, then we have the potential to use technology in a beneficial way. By looking at the vast array of information that we have to think for ourselves and connect with the world around us.