Technical writing

One frustration I had with technical writing was figuring out how to explain to the person who was writing the directions down what I did.  Another frustration was understanding the other person's directions when some of them were unclear.  However, there were some triumphs with the technical writing.  One triumph was being able to have a finished product.  Another triumph was being able to somewhat comprehend the other team's directions to be able to make their product.

Reader

Tan's teachers encouraged her to pursue a career in math or science because she got better grades in those subjects and got in a better percentile.  They also encouraged her to pursue these careers because she was got lower grades in english than in math and science.  They miscalculated her ability in english because she wasn't getting good enough scores on papers and on achievement tests.  Also, they didn't encourage to pursue a career in english because of the english which she had grown up with which could have impacted her scores.  These are all reasons why she was discouraged to pursue a career in english.

The point that Tan is making with this story is that she uses different ways of speaking depending who she is with.  For example, when she is speaking in public she uses a more formal english and when she is with her mom she uses simpler english.  This shows that the different people that she is with has an impact on how she speaks to them.  She does not speak formal english with her mom because her mom does not speak english very well.  Her mom does not speak english well because she immigrated from China and did not grow up speaking english.

This point fits in with the larger argument of "Mother Tongue" because the title of the story suggests that there is something to do with language.  Also, the story talks about her journey with being a writer and how she speaks to different people.  The story mentions that she did not have much support from her teachers to become a writer.  As well as this it talks about how she would often have to pretend to be her mother in order to get certain things accomplished.  This is a good story because it talks about how there are different ways to talk to certain people.

Digital Story topic

My digital story topic is my experience volunteering at the Rainbow Centre in Peru.  I chose this topic because it made an impact in my life.

Journal 3

Digital storytelling can help 'revolutionize' the narrative experience because it helps people have some record of a memory.  Also, it allows people to show off their creative side when creating the story that they want to tell.  The "Digital Story Cookbook" says, "Stories are the large and small instruments of meaning and explanation that we store in our memories".  This is the definition that Roger Schank gives in the Cookbook.  There are different ways to tell a story, but digital storytelling is the one that is used with modern day technology.

Digital storytelling allows people to have a chance to be able to tell their story in a different way.  They can use different techniques, such as the music and the images being used, to convey their story.  The seven steps that the cookbook talks about are useful in order to create a good story.  Each of the seven steps is important for the digital story because each step helps to strengthen the story.  They also provide some guideline to the story because for some people it is harder to come up with a story to tell.

Journal #2

The article "Student Metaphors of Themselves as Writers" is organized by categorizing the different metaphors by different themes.  This helps organize the article because it makes it easier to distinguish the different types of metaphors that the students wrote.  The sections that follow one another for the most apart are the opposites.  For example, metaphors of process and speed and metaphors of fear and courage follow it.  In my opinion, these types of metaphors are opposite from one another in terms of confidence with their writing.

The central claim of each section of the article is a different type of metaphor.  The different metaphors are process and speed, fear and courage, control, silence, and invitations.  This shows that there were multiple ways that the students thought of themselves as writers.  Also, the central claim of each section is that every student thinks of themselves as different types of writers.  Each section helps to guide the article together.

The overall thesis of this article is that having the students write metaphors is to help them figure out what kind of writer they are.  Each section that the article has gives examples of their metaphors, which helps with the thesis.  Also, all of the metaphors that were given as examples help to support the idea that the author has.  The thesis of this article talks about how a teacher had students write metaphors about them as a writer so he can get to know them better.  This article is good because it gives different ways that the students wrote about themselves as writers.

Journal Entry

I agree with Middlebury's College's policy because Wikipedia is not the best option to get information from.  However, the links that the pages provide could help with getting more accurate information.  Wikipedia could be used as a starting page to jump off from, but it should not be used as a primary source of information for a paper especially in college.  I agree with the policy because students need to realize that there are better sources of information than Wikipedia.  The policy is set in place because the faculty think that something should be done about the number of students using Wikipedia for one of their sources.

The other policies mentioned in the article are fair because it will teach students not to use Wikipedia.  It is a good idea for some deduction to be made in the grade if Wikipedia is used.  These policies are in place for a reason because too many students are using Wikipedia to get information for their papers.  The policy that is mentioned in the article are not to use Wikipedia as a primary source, which is a good policy.  To deal with the problems of Wikipedia the faculty could deduct some points from the paper to make the students realize that they should not use Wiki as a source.

Entry 9

After watching the first part of Into the Wild and reading the book it is obvious that are many differences. One of the differences is that the movie used more detail to describe Chris and what he did on his many adventures.  Another difference is in the movie it talks about his parents during their graduation and the book does not mention that at all.  Also, the film shows the parents getting mad at Chris because he did not want a new car as a graduation present. A similarity between the book and the movie is that they both follow the storyline of Chris's adventures.  However, the film depicts Chris better than in the book.  The film also does a good job showing the scenery.

The film does paint Chris in a different light than Krakauer does because it uses different techniques to describe Chris.  The film often shows Chris with the different jobs that he acquires on his adventures, such as the grain elevator.  The film and the book both show Chris as being a hard-worker through Krakauer's words and the actions showed in the film.  The light that the film paints Chris is hard-working and shows his emotions better than the book does.  Films are normally better to show emotions because films are meant for viewing and books are meant for reading.

Film does screw our sense of reality and romanticize tragedy because no one would watch the movies.  Film is one of these things where it takes away a sense of reality because sometimes reality is not kind to us.  It romanticizes tragedy because films like to play with our emotions and make us feel certain ways.  This is true in many movies, such as the Disney movies.  Films often do things that are not possible in reality and that is what makes people want to watch a particular movie.