Digital Stories

This cycle project is probably one of the hardest ones that we have had. However I can say it was one of the most fun. We got to write about whatever we wanted and I wrote about one of my passions, wrestling. If someone was to read this story they would not get the same emotion that you can grasp from a digital story. Yeah, its harder to make a movie but the final product can catch more peoples attention and I feel like the outcome has more of an impact. People can actually see what you are trying to explain in your narration. Also with the generation today everything is pretty much digital and students can add things to their writing like digital stories to help them. I really like the idea of digital stories despite the hard work it takes to make them. Finding the right picture or the timing of when it will show up is hard enough but the outcome is extraordinary. When I saw the drafts of davids and johns stories it was so much easier to grasp than just reading their drafts which we did the week before. The challanges that i found most difficult was recording my voice and trying to find the right pictures to go along with the story however i am not familar with windows movie moaker so learning how to use that was another channlange in itself

digital

Digital stories help in the academic field because in this day and age I feel like more people are visual learners. Although when you read a book you can have the imagery of what your thinking while you read. With digital stories they catch your attention when they suddenly start playing. I feel like it is easier to fall asleep while a teacher reads in a mono tone voice rather than if your watching a boring movie. With visual learning you can actually see what the author is trying to get across or what some text book is trying to get across to you. Outside academics digital story telling can be amazing however you still might lose that feeling of imagining your own visual story. Although i am a big fan of movies which are digital stories. For example i didnt have to read all the Harry Potter books al i had to do was watch the movies to get a basic overview of the story.  On the downside though people always say the movies are not as good as the book, so your losing the factor of not knowing everything that someone who read the book might know.

group project blog

During our cycle two project i found that collaborating wasn't really that bad. John, David, and myself never really had problems with conflicting ideas. We usually just took in every ones ideas and used them or split up the work to an equal amount. During the whole process i only got confused once which we solved by staying in contact with via e-mail. I know for a fact if i was to due this project it would have been a lot worse being swamped with all the work and constructing all the surveys. I feel like working in a group they can help you revise your work right away. You also get more ideas from your peers about how you can improve your work or ideas. I think working in a group is far better than trying to construct a survey by yourself.

sommers

Sommer's writing was really turned on the light in my head while reading it. The emphasis on how important revision when writing a paper is almost mind numbing. Revision turns out to be one of the most necessary parts when writing. I always knew it was important but after reading this it really makes me realize that i need to start revising my papers more closely and often. Then last weeks reading informed me on what was considered cheating. I didn't think half of the methods of cheating she mentioned was even cheating. Being informed about these two articles is very helpful since we are about to do our cycle two project that deals with research and citing. It was also helpful to know how important revision is.

The article that was more interesting to me was Nathan's on cheating. This caught my attention right away i mean what student hasn't been in a position where cheating is present. I feel like it surrounds a lot of students. While reading this i never even considered some of the methods she explained were considered cheating. I like this article because it makes me more aware of what is considered cheating and what i can do to not put myself into a position where i could get in trouble.

out loud

Reading out loud is proably one of my biggest fears. to be honest i thought that i was going to have to read it out loud in front of the whole class. when i found out that there would be only 3 other present it was a sigh of relief i think that it helped me in that i got to see how to write my paper better and made me see some of the grammatical errors

2 reading thing

Coughlan, Sean. "Phone Texting Helps Pupils Spell." bbc.co.uk. BBC News, 19 Nov. 2010. Web. 2 Feb. 2012.


In a newspaper article written by Sean Coughlan he talks about how there is a controversy between kids and their writing and reading due to texting. At first it states that many people think that it has a negative impact on the child's learning due to texting language. However, he goes on to say that it actually helps kids learn more. With texting kids are constantly reading and writing much like what Lunsford was saying in her article. For example if a kid text the word "l8er" they should have an understanding of what the actual word should be and actually know how it is spelled out.

I think that this article is right in multiple ways. When i am texting my friends and i dont know how to spell a word i have to sit there and play with it for a little while till i can figure out the correct spelling of the word. This method has helped me learn how to spell multiple words correctly that i use to have trouble with spelling before hand. Also computers and phones has auto correct so you can see what you did wrong. One thing that i have noticed to is that if i text my parents or someone of older age they usually do not understand some of the "texting language" that kids use this day and i usually have to spell correctly or they wont be able to understand what i  am talking about.


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 Toppo, Greg. "Social Media Finds a Place in the Classroom." usatoday.com. USA Today. 24 July.2011. 2 Feb. 2012.

In the second article that i found it is about a high school teacher who pushes his kids to use social networking. He includes it in his class and sometimes has kids plan things on theirs. His belief is that kids are brought up in the world of the 21st century and that it is a digital age and that's how they have been raised was to use things more digital. He also believes that using this method wont bore kids as much as say a regular book might. However, there is controversy on what the kids might be looking up on the internet in school. The solution they came up with was to just block certain sites like they do now. They also say they like to use Youtube videos, but the solution to that is to just pick out the videos before hand that the teacher might show in class.

I believe that this is a very good idea to incorporate social media like facebook and youtube into schools. my belief is that it will grab the attention of the students and encourage them to do better on their work with something that they are more familiar with. I think they should show more youtube videos in school and let them use facebook however with limitations appropriate for school. 

third (Clive Thompson)

I think that the study that was done is very accurate and I agree with Clive Thompson. I know for a fact that I have never had a problem with using texting language in any of my papers. However I do use texting language when I people. People are always posting on Facebook because they see it as something they like to do and the attention they get like explained in the reading. I know whenever I have to write for just a teacher it always seems like a boring unwanted task. People will write better to please audiences. You also can find out what people like and maybe generate how you write something by their responses. This is how the world is turning out to be we are moving more towards social media and sometimes communicating in a "short hand" manner is the best way. Also being able to get feedback on things like Facebook or blogs can help you in your writing knowing how to please the audience, which gives you a sense of satisfaction.

second

The text I decided to use is from my favorite comic strip Foxtrot. In this comic strip I think that anyone who has a younger sibling can relate to this and I know in my family we are always looking for batteries and whenever we need them they are no where to be found. I think this strip relates to pathos in that it invokes humor and joy to the reader because of the situation that the girl was put in. The ethos in this is that the author seems like he knows what it is like to have younger siblings that are always bugging their older brothers/sisters. Another example of ethos is that families are always looking for things like batteries, but it always seems like when they need them there never is any.