SLO Reflection(numero tres): my writing

As I was writing my first post about who I am as a writer, I only knew the basics of writing and didn't know much else. After these 10 weeks, I have improved on my writing many ways. I have learned where my flaws are in my writing and have been focusing on those to fix it. One thing that I noticed was my writing was very unorganized. I fixed this by adding a daily routine. That was the writing outline that we did during this course. It was a great tool and I plan to use it every time I write instead of just diving head first into a paper with  no preparation. I learned many things from reading They say, I say and plan to take those lessons learned with me as my future of writing continues. After all this, I have seen major improvement and will take what I learned and move further in life.

SLO Reflection(numero dos): critical thinking and writing

Well this blog is yet again late...

Doing the précis and précis workshops allowed us to think a bit more critically. It allowed us to gather the information we obtain from the texts and fully summarize those without making them too wordy. As a result we are now capable of thinking more critically than when we first started the class. I think of this especially for me because I feel as if I have improved a lot on my critical thinking skills. Those are skills which was something I lacked during my High school years but picked up a bit in the last year.

My writing by far has improved a great deal. When I started this class I only had the mere idea of just knowing how to write. I didn't realize there was this much in-depth to it such as argumentation, analysis, and disciplinary awareness. I also learned how to properly write a thesis. Before, my thesis were just too broad and general. Now they are more specific and tend to lean towards my objective and topic. I still have much to improve on but this is a great start. After taking this class I feel I have accomplished much with my writing skills.

SLO Reflection(numero uno): close reading and research

As for the reading portion of this class, it wasn't so difficult because I took Summer Bridge prior to Autumn quarter where we read around 6 books and so reading through these 2 books was a piece of cake. As for reading scholarly texts such as West's article, I was able to easily pinpoint all the key points and sub-key points through taking this class.

Research in this class was review. One, because I had taken Running Start during High School where we were required to find scholarly sources. Second, we also did some practice on this in Summer Bridge. It was a breeze getting to the search database but I still sometimes have some trouble getting a great article. I think this is mainly because I choose some poor choice of words to use in the search. Sometimes I hit the jackpot but other times the article I find works just fine.

Revision thoughts

Revision means change for me. Something had been done wrong or does not seem right so it needs to be changed or revised. I also think of revision towards writing and normally nothing else. Someone writes a draft then revises it. That is all I hear. I don't know maybe revision can be referred to other things but I strictly refer to it when writing. This process of writing helps me write my paper better because after I get the feedback I can gather all the thoughts together and figure out really what my paper is trying to say.

Feedback for Essay 2

Man, the holiday has sure got me very unorganized about my assignments. As I am writing this, I hope that it isn't too late. I think it matters most that I did do it. Anyway, Essay 2 has gone great so far. I followed up on the things I was going to improve on and started out with an outline. That really worked for me and got me thinking about all the ideas I had as well as what order they will appear within my paper. I hope that whoever is reviewing my paper goes through all the criteria and give me constructive feedback because that is what I really need. I want to improve on my writing and the only way I can do that is to learn from my errors. One criteria that I would like them to focus most on is the argumentation. Is my argument clear or do I have to work more on bringing that out? Do I follow up with the argument as well as show clearly throughout the whole paper what my argument is? Those are the kind of things I want to know if I am doing well in or need improvement. I know I am not quite up to par with the other criteria but the argument is the most important part.

Is my blog going anywhere?

I think the approach that I will take is to just add my view on the research and my evidence that supports it. I will be using West's framework to help assist me in the essay. I will be analyzing the fiancée of my blogger from essay one. She recently started blogging again and started a whole new account. Some of the things that she does is review on products for fashion as well as blog about her personal life. Being that she started blogging again, I can make a comparison with her and Phillip Defranco. I can see how a new blogger blogs compared to an experienced blogger. That will not be my main focus though. My main focus will be finding the elements in her blog that shapes her identity. Then I will make an argument and add to the pool of research just like West did.

You can probably tell that I have some things figured out which means that I am not struggling that much on this essay. The only thing that will stress me out is procrastination which is my own fault. As of the essay, everything seems to be under control. For the procrastination issue I will work this out on my own.

Essay 2 and my articles

I am still currently on a search for the one article that will be used for my essay. I have found two so far that I might consider using. For the sake of this assignment I will give an annotated bibliography for one but these articles won't necessarily be included towards my argument. I might find something better out there as my search goes on.

My articles:

For the sake of saving time and since this isn't much of an official works cited, I won't cite these sources, but I will leave a link.

1. Networked Exchanges, Identity, Writing
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=18&hid=9&sid=1c5c8b7c-164b-4174-8ee8-4c2d39bb5d73%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ufh&AN=32771568

2. The Psychology of Blogging: You, Me, and Everyone in Between.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=20&hid=9&sid=1c5c8b7c-164b-4174-8ee8-4c2d39bb5d73%40sessionmgr10&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ufh&AN=33608450

3. Digital dressing up: modelling female teen identity in the discursive spaces of the fashion blogosphere.
http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=9&sid=dcb7945b-2621-4c2b-b5b7-04c3f1097f20%40sessionmgr14&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=52062897

I will be doing an annotated bibliography on number 3.

In this article the author Chittenden, Tara asserts that blogs can represent a teenagers identity. Through her research of a fashion blog she is able to recreate the identity that the blogger is presenting. She suggests that "how teen girls conceptualize their online visual representation may offer a resource for how they come to realize their emerging offline identity". She is saying that through the process of online visual representations such as blogs they can come to realize their emerging identity in the real world. This article gives a good added on research to the already existing pool of research of social identity through blogging.

Essay 2 Updated, Responding to West

Today I am going to do these blogs a bit different. Normally I would just answer the assignment and get it over with. Today I am doing it a bit more casually and you an already tell because I am writing this part.

So today our professor has updated Essay 2. Instead of there being one option, now there are three options. We aren't limited to just writing about our first topic which was writing about our own blog. We can also write about a different blog and apply what west's framework to examine the blog or research and locate three other scholarly articles that have a similar conversation to West's. I, however, will be sticking to the original assignment. I wanted to take a challenge for this second essay and examine my own blog which the Professor said was a little more difficult. I also wanted to do the second option which is to examine another blog and apply West's framework to examine the blog but a question hit me. I wondered if I could continue examining the blog we did for essay one but instead use a similar layout as West to complete the examination.

Question to Professor Thompson: Can we use the blog from essay one for our second essay?

Just a little question for our professor since I know she is following us.

My position in the article is agreeing with the argument. Yes it is easy to agree with something but you still have to put the facts behind the agreement, otherwise it becomes useless. So I will respond to West by adding to the research with my own examination of a blog (either mine or the blog from essay one). I will basically provide my own research and my own thoughts into the whole situation. The way I see this is that it is really hard to disagree with West's argument and honestly I really don't know how I would if I had to without any guidance. I find it easier to simply agree and put forth my thoughts as well as the evidence to prove that. Then how will I apply West's essay to mine? Well I will simply quote from her the things that I find as evidence that connect with the blog I examine.

Boy this blog post has got me completely engaged with my work and made me think about my essay thoroughly. Now I just have to stop procrastinating and do it.

Article Reading

I'm going to start off by mentioning this as a note to the teacher. I can't access the 3 step quotation analysis on the resources page but its a helping handout so I guess it isn't required.

After reading West's article it got me thinking about our class and how the article reminds me a lot about our own class. Our class is similar in a way that we also use weblogs as our assignments to help us learn. These assignments really help us reflect on our assignments as well as gather our thoughts about what we have accomplished. This article gives us three examples of bloggers from her class to give us some details as to what the bloggers are like. Overall I think this article was very helpful to get us thinking about the whole picture.

Essay 1 Writing Process

I figured that the writing process that we followed for this class was someone helpful to me. If I were to add anything it would be a brainstorm/outline before the first draft. I found out that I was missing this part of the writing process because my ideas were all scattered in my paper until the revision where I finally got everything in order. Adding the outline process will allow me to organize my ideas into different sections like where I will include my thesis or my paragraphs with examples to support my argument. The brainstorm will help me gather my thoughts.

I notice that my writing feels unorganized and not so much gathered or processed when I don't do my outline. So I will have to start adding that to my process. I also notice that I tend to write better with music on and sitting by myself in my room. If I have any sort of distractions, I am unable to concentrate and write a decent paper.

The whole process was very helpful to my learning. I normally follow this type of process so there is nothing new but it is no matter what a great process. If I didn't follow this process I probably would be lost turning in a paper that is no where near a 4.0 paper.

Reflection on Essay 1

The writing process for essay one went really well. I like the writing conferences that we had because it gave us a chance to get together as a group and talk about each others papers. The readers review also gave us a chance to see what others think about our papers. With all the comments that I received I was able to better write my revised draft before it was time to turn that one in. I liked the whole process because it helped and if we didn't go through the process I would have probably done worse on my revised paper than how well I did now. I still think that I have a lot to improve on that this isn't where it stops. I believe that my paper still has a lot to fix and that it isn't perfect. This process just made it a whole lot better then what it could of been originally.

Implementing They say, I say into my essay

After reading part 1-2 on They Say, I Say, I reflected more on my essay and thought about anything I can do to make things more enjoyable to read in my essay. I thought about making an argument on my paper because my paper really lacked the argument side. I am also not very good at creating a strong argument for any of my past papers. During my reflection, I have realized that my whole draft essay was just a basic summary and examples with facts to support it. There was no argument whatsoever. I thought to myself "what a better way to make my paper interesting instead of a flat out response to the research question". I'll be using the ideas I gain from chapter two and throughout the book to help create a argument for my paper. The templates will be a great start for me.

Blog: Writing and Research

I think one of my strengths was speaking to the whole group and speaking loudly. That is one of the things I focus most on. I get nervous when I talk in front of a group so that doesn't help either. If there was anything I would change it would be adding some visuals. I had a visual to show but unfortunately we didn't have enough time for me to show it. For my blog though there weren't many images so it was hard to find something good to put in but I feel that every powerpoint presentation should include some sort of visual that way it doesn't keep the audience from being so bored just reading text. Something else I would improve on is the content in the presentation. I feel as if I didn't contribute enough content wise for my presentation. I think I made up for it by explaining every single bullet point. Presentations reach a point where theres too much information on one slide. I felt that mine was below the minimum because it only included like 4 bulleted lines with one or two words. I think of the presentation to be like a reminder as to what you are talking about. It is sort of like a note card. Then again I also think that there could have been a bit more information. Overall I think my presentation went really well besides the fact that I was really nervous.

What to add to my research?

I am suppose to pick a section from "Blogging" that I must add to my essay. One of the passages I will choose is from the chapter of "Blogs as Self-exploration". I chose this section because I feel that it has a connection with my blogger. My blogger does a personal blog and even though he posts about his personal life, he sometimes posts about his current situations as well as his past. With his current situations he normally reflects what he has accomplished or failed and tries to revise the outcome. It did not matter to him what he did in the end. Most of his posts will consist of himself exploring his life, like self-exploration. That is why I chose this section to add to my research.

Research Changes

Based on feedback from my group and the teacher, I am on track and the only thing that my blog lacks is a thesis. So the only thing that I will work on is the thesis. I might also make changes to better connect the elements in my paper. This is because I feel like my paragraphs don't flow so well. That is why I am working on making connections. I will also form a thesis for my paper. There is nothing else I believe I can change. I have backed up my elements with examples from my blogger. All I really am missing is the thesis and maybe a better connection between my elements.

Blog research progress

From my last post I decided that i wanted to follow a sports blog. To be honest I was struggling a lot to find a blog that would keep me interested as well as be a good candidate for this research. Not to say that I am not interested in sports but I just didn't think someone blogging it would keep me entertained. With this in my mind I set out to search for a new topic. So I have switched to the subject of Pop Culture. There is this blogger (I guess you can call him a vlogger because he makes video blogs) that really caught my eye. I have been following this user for quite some time but recently for 2 months stopped following him. When I say follow I mean subscribed yet I haven't really watched his video log posts. I am subscribed to his other channel which is more news oriented and I have been keeping up with that one. I have skimmed over some of his new video blog posts and they seem to be very random in general. I assume he will talk about that certain topic in the title within his videos and voice his opinions about it. His website is http://phillyd.tv/ and the place he keeps his video blogs is http://www.youtube.com/user/PhilipDeFranco. I personally would not reference his main site because he does not keep his video blogs updated with his youtube account. You can see that it is in a blog format and he links his videos with an embedded video itself but it is not up to date.

So with that cleared away I want to answer the question that was asked. I believe that because I am using a video blog as my reference, I can much easier pin point identities that the blogger has expressed. I can do this easier because it is like I get a one way face-to-face time with the blogger and have it almost feel like an actual conversation. Don't get me wrong though it is still going to be hard work analyzing these blogs to find his identity that he portrays. I just have a better vantage point than others because they don't exactly get that same one way face-to-face time when reading a written blog. I mean surely you can imagine the writer speaking as if you and the blogger were the only ones in the room. It will get the same effect. So far I have not been faced a difficult challenge in analyzing this blog. The blogger expresses himself very much and voices his opinion to his followers that care. From the recent video I find evidence that he is self conscious of his health. He starts a new weight loss program for himself where he tries to lose 20-30 pounds in 30 days. I guess one of his identities is he cares very much for his health and wellness. Throughout all his blogs he talks about different things mostly pertaining to him or just things about pop culture. It gives me a lot of room to work with and I hope to dig up some more elements that may help me support my argument.

Blogging by Jill Rettberg

Bloggers more and more these days are becoming part of the mainstream media. Rettberg says "On an everyday level, as blogging has become recognized as an important part of the media ecology, bloggers have been more likely to receive passes to press conferences and political conventions, which allow the bloggers to report first-hand on these events rather than leaving them to rely on reports from traditional journalism"(Rettberg, 89). Instead of bloggers having to rely on journalists for their concrete information they can get the upfront, close and personal experience. The way I think of it is that it is a primary source rather than a secondary source. Since blogging has become part of the mainstream media, it is almost certain that bloggers will get a chance to join a press conference or do an interview just like journalists have been doing for quite some time.

In response to this I think it is great that bloggers get a chance to become journalists. They get to cover all the controversial material out there and present it on their blog site. It certainly gives the society more resources to cross reference with. It may even give other journalists more sources to cross reference with as well. Before blogging came into the mainstream media bloggers had to reference to other journalists who got their information from primary sources. This meant that their information is secondary and very unreliable. Now these bloggers can get their information first-hand and it allows for less referencing to other journalists. Being a blogger and journalist is almost identical now that blogging has entered the media.

Writing and Research

If there are any two types of blogs that I want to study it is either a personal blog or a filter blog. I want to see what it is like to be in someone else's shoes by following their blog. I also am very interested how the filter blogs work. I imagine that for a sports blog the author would post updates on things going on in sports. I am not quite sure about it but I am really interested in seeing one. If I were to pick one over the other it would definitely be a filter blog about sports. I hope to gain more knowledge than I can ever imagine from blogs as I study a blog about sports. Hopefully in the near future I will start my own blog. I plan to make that blog about a topic I chose rather it being an assigned assignment that goes towards my grade.

Who am I as a writer?

I am not much of a writer. I can say that I am a work in progress and forever expanding my knowledge of writing. I don't write much unless it is required in class. I never really write for fun. Most of my writing is done as class work when assigned to do so. I feel like I can invite writing into my life and learn much more as well as using it later in life.