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FW: Constitutional Amendment

---

Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:01:31 -0700
Subject: Fwd: Constitutional Amendment
From: chrispercy75@gmail.com
To:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Colleen Hermann <rottgirl7@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 10:54 AM
Subject: Fwd: Constitutional Amendment
To: Colleen Hermann <rottgirl7@yahoo.com>

--- On Mon, 6/20/11, robojax@comcast.net <robojax@comcast.net> wrote: From: robojax@comcast.net <robojax@comcast.net> Subject: Fwd: Constitutional Amendment To: "Belt, Brian & Cathy" <brian.belt@frontier.com> Date: Monday, June 20, 2011, 8:40 AM Subject: Fwd: Constitutional Amendment I have cleaned this e-mail of all other names, sending it to you in hopes that you will keep it going and keep it clean. This is something I believe in, and I hope you all read it all the way through.  The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.  Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.  I'm asking each addressee to forward this email to people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise.  In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.  Congressional Reform Act of 2011  1. Term Limits.  12 years only, one of the possible options below. A. Two Six-year Senate terms  B. Six Two-year House terms C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms  2. No Tenure / No Pension.  A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.  3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.  All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people.  4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.  5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.  6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.  7. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.  8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12.  The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.  Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.  If each person contacts people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive the message. Maybe it is time.  LET'S FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree, pass it on.

Final Portfolio

I would say that I have really expanded my writing ability after this semester in English 102. I took an English class my last year of high school that was equivalent to an English 101 class, so I guess I could say I already had some college writing experience, along with my engineering class. I honestly thought that English 102 would be more or less along the same line as my previous English classes. For example, I figured it was going to be about researching and structure at the college level, with lots of essays. I was pleasantly surprised at what it actually was.

My previous English classes taught me how to effectively write and get my thoughts onto paper in an understandable way. I’ve been told that I’m an excellent writer, to my surprise, so I was actually counting on more of the same thing in this class, what with English being among my personally least favorite classes. However, I felt that the class wasn’t aimed at how to research and write, but more about who we were researching for and writing to. Looking back on my other English classes, I realize now that most of my essays weren’t built around focusing on my audience as much as what I was trying to say. My engineering class last semester started teaching me to focus my writing to a particular crowd, but I would definitely say English 102 was much more focused on that. With the Blog and the Website, my audience wasn’t just my instructor, but my classmates, the Service Learning, future students, etc. In using the web as a medium, I also had to use new methods of organizing my writing. I’ve been used to the standard 5-10 paragraph essay, with the occasional 5-7 page paper. That was just paragraphs, organized the same way as far as presentation goes.

In this class, though, I got to change things up. For example, the website was great for this. With the website, I could organize everything even more than just the next paragraph; I could create an entire new tab devoted to one aspect of my topic, and in that one tab multiple, separate and titled paragraphs supporting that topic. Using what we read over in the book, I also started thinking more about visual messages. Since this was a website, I didn’t need to only use words. So I would definitely say this class challenged me to think outside the box with my writing. I had to think more about my audience, and how to present to that audience. I would have to say the website was a definite challenge for me. As I said, I’ve been used to the standard method of essays and papers, so writing my topic in this way was much more complicated. While it does require more effort for a quality website, it definitely makes for a more appealing topic than a few pages of text. This, combined with my engineering class, has really got me thinking about new ways to present my information.

I would have to say that the thing I was the most proud of was the revision of my website. The first version of it was, admittedly, terrible. I was sick at the time, and could barely get out of bed a few days, but I’m still disappointed in what I called a website. Now that I got a chance to revise it, I took the time to make sure it was what I wanted it to be. I went back to re-organize a few things I was unhappy with before, added images that I was lacking, and just overall improved the entire website. Now it is at a level I would be proud to say I made. While not perfect, I know, it is much more to my own personal expectations.

Overall, I have learned a lot in this class. I learned about how to better organize my writing and change my focus to the audience, thinking outside the box more. I also learned that communication is very important. In the Service Learning Project portion, communication became critical, and I was given the responsibility to get information from our Service Learning agency, the Discovery Center of Idaho. This included getting answers for our interview beforehand so we could formulate a script, as well as making sure everyone was informed of any change of plans or schedule conflicts. Our plan for the video changed drastically as we began, starting with me taking over half of the filming, something I wasn’t even supposed to do in the first place. This wasn’t due to anyone’s fault, just difference in availability. Being able to effectively communicate what needs to be said to everyone was very important, and after not accomplishing that a couple times with the people at the DCI, I quickly learned that.

As far as how I can use these learned lessons, I can easily see why I need them. Since I’m planning on being an Engineer, either Civil Construction Management, these lessons will be critical in those fields. Effectively getting a message to people could be the difference between a successful product and a disaster. In that field, I can easily see myself needing to know how to structure my writing to different audiences. For example, I would have very different write-ups for fellow engineers and design teams than I would for company executives or non-Engineers. It just calls for different writing, and I would say this class definitely showed me some methods to accomplish that. It at least opened my eyes to new ways of writing, seeing as I’ve kept to the same style of writing through high school. Also, I thought you might be interested to know that, now that I got to be involved in a Service Learning class, I will plan on looking for other Service Learning classes for next year, and am thinking about possible volunteering anyways. Thanks for the great semester.

Website URL

http://re-dsicoveringdiscovery.weebly.com/private-education.html

Final Portfolio

During the semester’s English 102 course, I have become a much more improved writer and have gained a lot of knowledge about the whole writing process and what it’s all about. I really enjoyed this English class for a few different reasons, I thought that it was much different from the other English classes that I have taken, which made it much more interesting and a lot more fun to learn.  The Service Learning Project during this course had a huge impact on my learning process during this class; it really opened my eyes about how much of an impact volunteering for the different agencies has on the community and the others involved.

At the start of this semester, I was a very inexperienced writer and had much room for improvement. As we began to go into depth on the college level writing process, I began to get much more familiarized with what it was all about and found ways in which I could improve my own writing. After much hard work and dedication all throughout the semester, it seems to me that it all paid off and turned out to be a positive learning experience.

 Collaborative learning and having my peers to look at my work, was a major part of improving my writing, it really helped me learn more about how to improve my writing and make it more interesting and fun to read. Having other peers writing on the same topics really allows you to get ideas and helps you to move in the right direction, when you are stuck in your own writing process or just need new ideas. I encountered some major writing difficulties during this class, but as I mentioned before, having your peer’s thoughts and writing styles to look back on, had a huge impact on my own writing and really allowed me to improve.

Making a website, this was a major challenge, but in the end was a success. I have had very little website making experience and this assignment really put my knowledge to the test and allowed me to become more familiar with my service learning agency, gathering research, and making a website in general. Doing research was a major part in the website project, and it allowed me to really learn a lot more about how “hands on learning” impacts those involved. Creating the website, was a very fun way to let our research projects be seen, it made the research part of this assignment much more fun and easy to find topics for my website, rather than writing a traditional research paper.

Service learning was the main focus of this class, which made it very different from any other English class I have had. Having service learning as a main focus of an English class really helps make the class more fun and interesting; it also allows us, students, to encounter different style of learning during an English class. I thought that the service learning was a huge success and made the class much more fun. Interacting with other people that directly involve your service learning partner allows us to really expand in the learning process and do something that directly impacts others, instead of just writing papers and things like that, that a normal English class would encounter.

This English course had many important aspects to it that will directly affect my writing style in the future. I think that after learning how to put research into a website, writing in MLA format, and allowing your writing to flow and make sense will really allow me to really express the different styles of writing characteristics I have achieved during this class and put them to the test in the real world. Learning these new writing styles, helps broaden my writing knowledge which in turn helps me put this new knowledge to the test in a working situation and will allow me to show what skills I have gained and how they can be used.

Overall, I think that this was a good class and really allowed me to broaden my views on the writing process and what it’s all about. We went into depth on topics I wasn’t really that familiar with, but after working towards the goal of learning these new writing styles at a college level, I think that I have become much more advanced in my writing.

http://howdostudentslearnbest.weebly.com/

Cover Letter

Tim Mattson
English 102
May 10, 2011

Cover Letter

When I first started class in English 102 I was expecting a lot different atmosphere. I was expecting just the typical boring English class where you just write a paper and turn it in. I honestly was not looking forward to the class. I definitely had a negative perspective in the beginning. Only thing I was happy about was the fact that I was almost done with taking English classes for the rest of my life. I never thought of myself as a very strong writer. I’m more of a visual person. Give me a camera to film videos and I could voice my opinion a lot stronger then in writing. My grammar has not always been the best I always forget small items. When I’m writing I don’t know why but I can never think of what to say. I always read other peoples papers and they sound so sophisticated and perfect. I look back at mine and they are just horrible compared to what some people can do.

My thinking process has changed as a writer a lot through this whole course. I figured out it doesn’t matter what other people do or how well their paper sounds. Just to focus on my own paper and do the best that I can do. I learned how to thoroughly analyze a course and what I have learned well this course. I learned that writing papers is not my strong point. My strong point is when it comes to technology. Give me a website to build or a video to make I find it way more interesting than just writing. Even though in a website I’m just writing I’m more engaged in the project because I find the website part to be very interesting. I found a good way to find sources that I never thought of before. That’s by taking a look at someone else’s work and looking at the sources they cited. Ever since I started to use that technique my research time has been cut in half. That is definitely a time saver.

I’m of the improvements I have done with my writing. I can notice a difference in the way I write. Some things I’m not so proud of this semester is that I underestimated my time. I took on a full time job thinking I could do it. It was alright the first few months. Later I found myself getting worn out day by day. I didn’t do the best I could in this course. Did I learn a lot in this class? Yes I did. I learned probably more in this class than any other class. I did find myself crunched for time and getting behind in my school work.

My website revision went great. I took a look at the review sheet. I completely agree about the title on how it could lose my audience quick. I choose a new appropriate title. It’s not the best I have not always been the greatest of thinking of titles. I put into consideration of the pricing and deleting it. I felt that I should keep it just for extra information if someone were to be curious about estimates or specs. I did add an extra tab all on the different cultures between Mac and PC. Many things I have read online I could relate to in real life. The studies between PC and Mac people are amazing. I don’t want to spoil it so you will have to go to my website to read all about it.

The way I’m going to use what I have learned later is probably in a future job. From my time at the Discovery Center and the different audiences we analyzed it gives me a good notice on what to write about. In the future if I’m even writing a resume this course has given me a good perspective on who might be reading it and what I should be careful about writing about. That’s just one example in your job even a simple email could say a lot to another employee. There are so many different areas that I will continue to use what I have learned in this class. All I can say it has been a great learning experience and I found it very exciting to do the extra work with the Discovery Center. Even thought I might not get the greatest grade in the class I felt I learned a lot from it.

Website URL http://pcvsmacwhichoneisbetter.weebly.com/apple-prices.html
Sorry I can never seem to get the website url to link correctly.

Portfolio

Cover Letter

Arriving in English 102 second semester with pure high school writing experience under my belt, I was unsure of the expectations I would be help to, unsure of the type of writing, and unsure of how much writing would be required.  I had been through years and years of formal writing at a college prep school; MLA was crammed down our throats and teachers emphasized the use of proper English without any conjunctions or “be” verbs.  While all that stuff is handy, what we learned and how we wrote assignments is totally different from that which I had been taught previous years.  The service learning based curriculum of this course was geared for digital rhetoric where writing for a target audience did not need to be crazy Nazi-formal like teachers in high school had stressed.  Because we were posting our writing to the internet, where writing is less formal, there was an ease about writing which let words flow, apposed to overthinking everything trying to sound intelligent.  The biggest change I have experienced this year is to be more relaxed while writing, not to stress out diagramming sentences or organizing my paragraphs in a strict 8 sentence format.  This has helped me establish my voice as a writer, my own style which I own, not the type of writing where everyone’s papers look the exact same!

The specifics of what I have learned in this class have been the topics of lateral research and using Wysocki as a way to look at digital media differently.  Those two elements greatly contributed to my work in unit two, making up the bulk of how I would acquire information and how I would present that information to my audience.  I spent a lot of time during unit two fine tuning my website making it visually appealing while paying attention to what I had learned from Wysocki; keeping in mind the fonts I was using, the organization of the page, and the color of items I was using.  My most accomplished project this semester was the creation of my website; knowing that I can take a simple idea such as labeling and turn it into a huge project with a custom website with tons of information.  The ability to research anything I want is a huge advantage for discovering all sorts of information quickly without having to read millions of books in the library.  Lateral research was another new idea which I had not learned in high school, which would have been extremely useful!  But really it is common sense…using your source’s sources as a way to navigate and discover new information and material which otherwise may be hidden.  Lateral research is an idea you re-discover and say to yourself, “why wasn’t I doing this in the first place?”  I count myself one of the lucky few who found really helpful sources early in the semester, and using lateral research, I was able to complicate my ideas and think about things differently early on instead of rushing to find a topic I could research and use for my unit two work.  I contribute the quality of my work to the strategies we learned in class accompanied by fighting the urge to procrastinate and finish assignments early.  

Turning in my unit two work I was very pleased with what I had accomplished, and made sure to eliminate as many flaws as possible to cut my workload during finals week.  While I was pleased with what I had created I knew it was perfect, everything can be tweaked or fine-tuned; concerning my website, I received feedback of other’s perspectives regarding issues they thought would improve the quality of my work.  From Jeremy’s feedback I focused on working on the front page and “where to label” section mainly organizing how the introduction page would set up the following pages and how the “where to label” could be modified to be more clear on what I was trying to communicate.  From a fellow classmate’s feedback I realized a few of my pages had too much plain text, where the reader would get lost/bored with what they were trying to focus on.  Looking at my website from other’s perspectives I organized the first page and its introduction to be as clear as possible to what the website is all about.  The majority of my corrections to my unit two work was cutting the “fluff” from the bulky pages and adding in some visual elements to appease the reader.  Lastly, knowing that the majority of internet users do not read every word of a sentence while browsing the web, underlining and making important concepts bold would help readers understand and remember what they had read, drawing their eyes to focus on what I want them to focus on.  

What I have learned from this course will help me in situations beyond the classroom; there are certain skills which I have learned which I know will help me, and there are always possibilities of encountering issues I will be able to apply these skills towards.  Already I know when I will start my dental office up after college I will definitely be able to use my ability to create website to get my name and company out in the public.  Even with business cards and advertising, I will be able to use the things Wysocki emphasizes in her work to help me create more effective tools to communicate my practice to the masses.  From the service learning side part of English 102, volunteering in the community reinforced the great feeling of accomplishment one gets when giving back to society.  Volunteering is great because you contribute to the world for a cause; you serve others which in return you get the satisfaction of knowing you are helping others.  I plan on volunteering this summer at the University of Washington Medical center, and I would not be looking forward to this as much if I had not volunteered this year at the Discovery Center.

Website URL: http://discoverlabeling.weebly.com/

Reflective Blog 3

The other day, we had more birthdays again. It wasn't as chaotic, thankfully, and this time I was able to help with one of the demos. This gave me a chance to really see how involved and fun the demos are for the kids. The demos may seem like simple, easy to understand concepts, but to a child it may not be. The way the DCI presents the topics helps make it as easy as possible to understand. The kids also really want to help with the demos, and they love it when they do get to help. This just shows how well the DCI system works. It really is fun and interactive for kids, and truly does help them to learn difficult concepts.

Reflective Blog 3

As the final reflective blog, and given that this is supposed to represent the cumulative experience I have acquired, I wanted to wait until close to the end of our unit to post. I have put in roughly twenty hours at the Discovery Center and enjoyed every minute of it. The atmosphere is welcoming and the exhibits are fun and interesting even with repetition. Of all the observations I have made while there, parental involvement, creative freedom, interactive learning, I never quite noticed the one that tied them all together: community.

It wasn’t until I started researching sources for my unit two revision that I discovered what my observations had in common. It is the community which determines what is important and places emphasis on what it values. When I say community I mean everything, from television to conversations to what is celebrated and why. When the community comes together and builds something, we are saying that is worthy of our attention, that is important. The message children get is by what “that” is: is it a stadium or a research lab? A university or a golf course? By having a place which is dedicated to lifelong learning and interest in the sciences, we as a community are saying that it is something we value. Children see this and understand it, whether we think they can or not.

The observations I made of the interactions between children and their parents are a direct reflection of this understanding. A child asking how something works and why tells me that they think it is important to know, and that gives me hope for our future. Because it shows that intelligence and culture are still viewed by their parents as important, and children are seeing that. The community decides which skills and characteristics are important by deciding what is worthy of its attention. My desire is that we as a country will eventually realize that the only thing that really matters is the development of our youth and their education.

Ancient Sparta valued only the physical: strength, combat skill and courage. They were the pinnacle of military might and power in their time. Few stories and fewer historical figures are known from their culture, and but for one awesome movie, even fewer Americans would know Sparta even existed. Athens valued both the mind and body: culture, art and science. They were the creators of the modern democracy. Ask yourself: to what extent and in what area has each of these civilizations impacted the modern world? What did each community value and how was it displayed in their community? Which civilization contributed more to our way of life? Now ask yourself this: what do we value and how is our community showing that? The discovery Center is one shining example of our community showing that it values knowledge and intelligence. I hope that it continues to do so for a long time.

Reflective Blog 2

Sorry these didnt get posted sooner, had them saved.

So the other day at the Discovery Center it was something of a madhouse. Sundays are fairly busy anyway, but that day there were three different birthday parties. The first started early, so there were kids there for the entire five hours I was there. While its usually not a problem, it was very hectic. Once each group was done in the backroom, all the kids spent the rest of the time out on the main floor, meanwhile the parents kind of wandered around with them. It seemed like more than a few of the kids were completely unsupervised by their parents, which meant I had to make sure they weren't completely out of control. At one point, when I was in another room, a few of them actually knocked down one of the heavier exhibits. When I got there, it was fallen over and none of the kids that did it were there. When I picked it up, it had actually shattered the tiles underneath. I later learned that a mother of one of the kids complained that the exhibit almost "fell" on their kid. We figured it had to have been because of the kids, but parents wont hear that.

Busy day.

Reflective Blog 3

I just got back from the discovery center. It was a rather slow day not that many people again. I'm hoping that I can go on a weekend because most of the times when I go its very slow. I just now reached over my 15 hours I have kind of lost track how many hours I have done. There are some people that have been volunteering for years and have about 5000 hours. That is a lot of dedication to one company for free. The green room for the camera is pretty cool. I always wondered how on tv they had the background and ect.

Reflective Blog 2

Yesterday at the discovery center it was pretty busy there were school field trips in and out all day. I helped one of the guys fix the tornado simulator. That changed my day up a lot. I would really enjoy to have there kind of job and just work on experiments all day. I helped in a class room for a while try to keep all the kids in line and teach them how to do experiments. I must say I'm not much of a kid person but it was pretty fun.

Reflective Blog 1

My time at the agency has been great. I noticed i few days ago that when i went in that weekdays are pretty slow. Sometimes they have classes come in. The other day it was silent. There wasn't a whole lot of people. Maybe because it was so nice and warm outside. I did get the time to mess around with all of the experiments. I had the change to kind of talk to the people that have been working there for a while.

Reflective Letter

Compared to the beginning of this semester and this unit, my writing has changed a lot. Before this class, I used a very general format for my writing. It followed the basic five-paragraph form, like most writings in high-school. I suppose the one thing that I consciously kept in mind was always presenting both sides in my writing. I would cover both my side and the opposition, and then compare the two to show why mine was better. Through this class so far, however, I have taken the audience into more consideration. It hasn't necessarily changed the content of my writing, but more the tone and style, based on the audience. For example, my blog posts have been made keeping my instructor and peers mostly in mind. With the other four members of this blog focusing on the same main ideas around the Discovery Center, and from our discussions, I would categorize my writing for the blog as being less formal and basic. I don't really need to go into depth about some of the concepts concerning the Discovery Center because they already know them.But when I write for my website, my audience perspective completely changes, as does my style. With the website, my audience goes way beyond the classroom. The audience, for my website, is based around professors, teachers, parents, government officials, etc. with an interest in improving education. To that end, I tried to keep my message clear and simple, but sound authoritative and serious enough for more administrative and academic readers.

While speaking on the website, the actual research topic I had in mind changed constantly. I started with something along the lines of "Does providing interactive experiments help students learn?" and ended up around "How interactive learning benefits students and why it needs to be expanded." As I was researching from one topic to the next, I kept coming up with realizations that made my current topic obsolete, and so I had to change it, make it fresh and actually research-able. In fact, my works cited for my website doesnt even include all the sites I wanted to use, just the ones used in my most recent topic. While this was frustrating, I think it was good that my topic was evolving. It was becoming more defined and specific, enough to write about without being too vague.

Part of the problem was I was trying to make some connections with my volunteering at the Discovery Center. I usually walked around, talking to visitors and asking them questions about the exhibits, if they understood the exhibits, and generally getting them to think about the whys. Due to the interactive method of the Discovery Center, most visitors could figure out how the exhibits worked themselves. I saw lots of parents teaching their kids, or the kids trying to teach their parents. It made it very difficult for me to help or get visitors thinking, mainly because the exhibits were already doing that.

The link to my website is: http://re-dsicoveringdiscovery.weebly.com/

Unit 2 reflective letter

Tim Mattson
Jeremy Brandstad
English 102
27 February 2011
Reflective Letter

In the beginning of this unit I was unsure on how what I would write my question on. By doing all the exercises in class and talking to other people about their work it became very simple. Everything just seemed to fall into place by the end of this unit. I had some technical difficulties with the website. Sometimes the solutions to problems were right under my nose but it always took forever to find them. As an example when I was trying to change the background of the picture, that took me forever to figure out. All I had to do was click in the right spot to change the background color. I ended up taking a few hours just trying to figure some way to change the html code for the color. Instead it was so simple. Of course this is expected when using technology it usually never works the way you want it to.

My research strategies have changed drastically. Ever since we learned about finding an article and then looking at those articles sources, it’s great. I keep asking myself why I never thought of that myself. It’s obvious, but no one ever thinks about checking the sources. I started to use this tool and I noticed my time I take researching on the topic is cut by about 40%. That’s a lot more time that I could use doing something else. Wikipedia can be a good source finder. I would never use the information off of Wikipedia. I would use the sources that were listed on Wikipedia. With Wikipedia anyone can change the information but the sources are cold hard facts most of the time.

The way I write and think about my audience has changed a lot since the beginning of this unit. I use to never think about what my audience cared about. I would only think about what I thought was funny. For example if I was going to add a picture normally I would add the one that I thought was the funniest regardless of the vulgar language. When I was working on the website, I saw many pictures that I wanted to added. Then I stepped back and thought twice if I should add them or not. Yes, they were probably funny but what kind of am I giving to my reader? I would always think about what we talked in class. Would this picture distract my reader? Would this picture make my reader not want to read what I have to say anymore? My different outlook on my audience has changed the way I consider what to add.

With the different course readings they have been helpful in forming how I finished the unit project. I have received many helpful hints. The source hint was probably my most favorite I use that more out of everything. This is something I won’t ever forget I will always use it. Overall I felt I learned a lot from this unit. I enjoyed building the website that was a fun new experience.

Here is a link to my website enjoy! http://pcvsmacwhichoneisbetter.weebly.com/
For some reason the internet linking is not working sorry.

Reflective Letter

My thinking about rhetorical choice started as a simple design: me speaking to an audience. I never truly considered the finer aspects of what that entailed. I tried to be as honest and open as I could, framing my thoughts in an understandable manner. However, it wasn’t until this unit that I really began looking not so much at what I was saying, but how I was saying it. I noticed from the readings that people didn’t really care to read what I wrote if it was not in some way related to them. I began organizing my thoughts around a target audience; one which I believed would be interested in what I had to say. I started choosing my sources differently, finding people who were not only experts in their given field, but who had a specific point that fell in line with what I was trying to say.

My writing style, though at times effective, began in a static and not very influential form. I rarely considered my audience and usually wrote for myself. I used to think if I composed my thoughts and presented them properly, people would take notice. My research was focused on sources which I found appropriate according to my own standards, disregarding the complexity of the information they had and how it may not be comprehensible by some. I did research the “hard” way: Google searches en mass (I used to do card catalog searches when I was in high school so these searches didn’t seem so bad). I paid little attention to what was being said about the topic from others, more concerned with my own thoughts than how I could incorporate others into my discourse.

Every aspect of my compositional style has changed, from the readings (specifically Peterson’s “Writing for a Web Audience”) and various classroom discussions regarding personal experience. I see how using the power of the internet can enhance and emphasize your point without sacrificing quality. I can choose a topic and frame my initial thoughts around what others find interesting about it, but lead the discussion towards what I want to address. I present my ideas in such a way as to appeal to the audience I’m targeting. I choose sources that have material that is simple but solid, easily understandable from the source itself and doesn’t require a translator to interpret (which eliminates bias). The most improved section would be my research style: lateral research have saved me hours upon hours of site searching as well as improving the content of my sources and their application towards my research topic.

Moreover, I have found that my source integration and argumentative style has become more focused and effective. I have a view point that I want to support and find multiple sources which are close to what I am thinking, but on varying sides of the subject. I then create a discussion amongst them and eventually use their evidence in formulating my ideas. When I begin researching a topic the first step for me is to understand the discussion and the “sides” that are present, then to choose where I stand in relation to them. This can be tricky as I usually find myself creating my own “side” as I usually believe in limited portions of the others. When deciding what I believe I am aware of my personal bias, my own values and stereotypes that hinder objective reasoning. I know I can’t eliminate it, but I can understand it and when I am being biased so as to avoid eliminating sources because they don’t agree with me.

When I started my volunteer service I had very little experience with active research and found myself hesitant to approach people. This affected my writing as I had trouble incorporating my service experience into a complete thought related to my research topic. However, after reading Wysocki’s “The Multiple Media of Text” I began seeing my volunteer service as its own multimedia source and one which I could analyze using the same methods he described for other sources. This opened a whole new door and I started looking for more interactive sources, ones which were easier to comprehend but also thought provoking. I found Ted Talks videos and they fit perfectly with my rhetoric. More to the point, they were relatively short, full of useful and pertinent information, and they were captivating: the ideal source for any researcher. These are now the foundation for my ideas and thoughts regarding our cultural relationship with education. After compiling and integrating my other sources into categories which compliment their strengths, I used the Ted Talks sources to round out the overall tone of the supporting evidence. The website I created (http://culturaleducation.weebly.com) utilizes all the information I compiled and presents it together in under a single idea of changing our methods of education to better serve the intelligence of children.