peer review 4

This peer review is the fourth and final one we had to do for the class. As I look back on the other peer review blogs I noticed some differences, though there was one similiar thing I found. This similarity would be the lack of people actually editing papers. I found this time around to be a lot like the last peer review. Even though we were assigned to groups of 3 or 4 people only only person commented on my paper. The only peer review this didn't happen was the first one. I think that might have to do with the fact that it was the beginning of the year and everyone was trying to do there best at school. I don't know what happened after that but each peer review I got less and less people editing my papers. If I could offer an advice it would be to find a way to moniter peer review so that people would have to do it. If people knew they were getting graded or marked down because they weren't doing peer review I believe they would do it. For me it was frustrating that I would do my part and edit my fellow students' papers and my paper would not get the same sentiment.
On the other hand there were some differences that I liked. For one I believe the advice became better over time. While I got a lot of editing on my first paper the advice was not that helpful or it didn't help as much as I would have liked. Personally I believe this is because we had gotten more comfortable with editing papers the more we did it. The comments I recieve now help my paper to be better. The same aspect applies to the advice I give people. In the beginning I found it hard to edit papers because I didn't know what to look for or how to convey my comment to people. But with practice and realizing what I would like to hear about my own papers helped me become a better editor.
For the most part I liked doing peer review. I felt that the advice given to me made my papers better. That is not to say I always took the advice but they did make me think about my paper and how to improve it

looking back

Making this movie was an interesting way of connecting what we've learned in class to film and writing. The first thing that comes to mind is that film making is a technology that has been evolved from writing. This can be connected to an earlier reading assignment. Baron's idea is that literacy evolves. From stone tablets to paper to movies. I learned from making our film that movies are just words put on tape. Thus, in a way when we make films we are writing. It does not seem like it but thats because writing is changing to fit into the modern world. Writing's main goals are to spread knowledge and words. But now instead of doing this by paper and pen we are "writing" on film.
I also think that this assignment helped connect the ideas of writing and technology. In a previous assignment we had to make our own writing tools to prove writing is a technology. This was part of Ong's article on writing as a technology. This new assignment did the exact same thing. We wrote using a different tool than normal. As technology becomes more advanced we can think of new ways in which to write.
The thing about our film is that we actually did do a lot of writing. When I think of film the first thing that doesn't come to mind is writng. But during the movie making process over half our time was spent writing. The first thing we did was write our script. This helped us figure out what to say and what to put in our movie. It occured to me that writing is very important to films because if there weren't scripts movies would probably never be made. Then in the filming we wrote. Since we didn't want to just have a person talking we needed to show some action. Thus we decided to film one of our characters writing the examples we chose to include. Even while making a movie writing was always on our mind. We couldn't make the movie withour some, in our case a lot, of writing.

youtube

So far I like the project we are doing involving youtube. But then again we haven't actually posted our videos on youtube. I guess I'll have to see the final results in order to see if youtube was good or not for this project. This is because I have not yet dealt with the issues presented by Alexandra Juhasz's essay. Her issuaes deal with the backlash of youtube for the classroom. I'm sure the issue about uninformed people coommenting on the videos will come up but I don't know how I'll feel about it yet.

I have seen connections with writing and video in my project. To start with my group had to organize a script that went the movie. This is where writing comes in to movie making. Since we are not seasoned actors it would be hard to just ne on screen and adlib. The main idea for our video involves writing. I'm not just talking about how we have to talk about writing either. My group plans to write out examples and video tape them. In ways like this I see the connection between film and writing.

On the other hand this is an assignment, so a lot of planning and work goes into it. I find it more difficult to see the connection between writing and low budget films found on youtube. I find this to be true because youtube is the kind of program that I view as just being there for fun. While writing components are in there, writing does not seem that involved as the project we are doing.

Peer Review 3

I thought this peer review went better than before. I felt that this time I got better advice on my essay and clear ways in how to improve my essay. The negative is that even though we were assigned groups at this point only one person has edited my paper. So while that person gave excellant advice I would have like more variety.I also felt more comfortable editing papers. I knew what to look for in editing and when to give advice. Through the other two reviews I was finally able to get a sense of what my fellow students wanted from their editors. Of course editing may be easier because I felt that people's papers were more thought out this tome around. A fact I believe relates to the fact that students now know what is expected to be in their essays.
When looking at my past review blogs I notice some changes but also things that haven't changed. The most obvious for me is that in all my essays I didn't feel like I got as much editors as i would have liked. The first time around we had small groups so I only had one, maybe two editors. During the second project I only had one editor until I pleaded with the class to review my paper. This was weird for me considering I felt this review had the best chances for getting a lot of reviewers. I don't know if I'm not giving my reviewers enough time to edit before I check my essay or if they are simply not reviewing my paper. Perhaps in future there should be more monitering on these review sessions.
But as I said there has also been changes which I believe have been for the better. In the first review I was just getting used to editing papers and people were just doing the same with my paper. Therefore I thought it was harder to know when and how to give advice. I also thought the advice on my paper was not so great. But with each peer review I noticed I get better at the editing process. This is also true about the advice given to my papers.
For the most part, the blogs that I looked at would agree with me on the positive changes of the peer reviews. The idea of not enough editors was mixed among the students. For some it was a problem just like me and others must have been fine because they didn't mention it.

Reading and writing about comics, part 2

For this blog assignment I looked at Chase's part one blog entry here. Here he talks about a comic located at http://funnyninjas.wordpress.com/. Using Scott McCloud's book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, I felt that he did an excellant job talking about one aspect of the comic. He made me think about the icons being used that I had not thought about before. He showed me the relationship between what the book explained and the comic showed. However, he did only talk about one aspect so I want to mention some other thing I saw in this comic.
The first thing I want to discuss is time in the comic. This pertains to chapter four in McCloud's book. Here McCloud attempts to explain how time works within panels. McCloud explains that though there may be a lot of things going on at seemlingly the same moment time is moving forward. I got this point in Chase's chosen comic. Here the characters are speaking through bubbles. While it looks like they are speaking at the same time you can get a sense of order. By looking at what each ninja is saying you can tell what is being said first and which one is the reply. Of course as McCloud mentions the fact that people in America read left to right helps us in this observation. The ninja on the left side usually begins each panel with a sentence and the right sided ninja replies. Even when this does not happen it is easy to tell what happens first.

mccloud part1

For this assignment I chose the comic Piercing by David Gaddis.  The link is http://www.davidgaddis.com/piercing.html. This fits the definition of comics that Scott McCloud used in his book Understanding Comics.  To him comics are side-by-side sequential visual art.  This work by Gaddis exhibits that and that is what makes it a comic.  There are also other elements of the book that I see in the comic.  This first thing I noticed is the type of sequencing.  McCloud states that there are different ways in which a comic is sequenced. The first type I noticed the aspect to aspect one.  Here, as McCloud states, it "passes time for the most part and sets a wandering eye on different aspects.  You get this a lot in the first few panels of Gaddis' comic.  But Gaddis also includes other sequences too.  For instance he has action-to action which shows one action being taken place to the next action. Then there is subject-to-subject which is still staying in mind with the same scene or idea.   

I also want to talk about the time in between the panels.  Even though there is not a lot of moment-to-moment sequences  I was still able to read the comic in a continious manner.  I knew what was happening even though Gaddis didn't draw it.  McCloud talks about the theory of  this by saying that by the scenes showed we can determine what was not shown.  After reading McCloud I got a better understanding of comics and was able to guess more on what the author was trying to say.

pictures and texts on the web

For this assignment I used the barnes and noble homepage. Here there are a lot of examples apply to the text. First of all there is a balance to the webpage. In the middle there is all the text and pictures. On either side you will find an even amount of green space. What is on one side is on the other. There is also balance in the text. In the middle there are 4 topics that are posted in rows of two. Each column has two topics and the subtext is also equal. There is also emphasis on this website. This goes with the balance of the green panels. These plain sides give way to focus on the important text the website wants you to focus on. Plus, things like new books or sales are given more space and large lettering. This makes your eyes focus on the spot they want you to see. Also like mentioned above their are columns are broken into topics. This is a means of classification. They are classify the types of books available on the side of the website. Description is also given. On the page there are a few pictures of books covers. But that is not enough to sell the reader on the book. On the side it gives the name, author, price and the option to read more about the plot of the story.

peer review part 2

I think that this peer review was better than the first one. This time around I felt I gave sound advice, even when it was dealing with something bad. Also I believe the advice I got was better and will will really help with my revision. This is not to say the first peer review was bad because I believe it allowed the class to break the ice on editing. I know I got the hang of it the second time around.

I liked and disliked wetpaint. One the one side it was good because mostly no body knew it was you editing. Call me a wimp, but I think it is harder to be unbiased when the person you are editing knows you who you are. On the flip side, because we were not assigned editors, some people, me included, looked like they did not get as much advice as others. Some people got 4 or more edits while the last time I checked I only had one person edit my paper.

what others are saying

For the most part I believe the class is having the same thoughts that go along with mine. Chase mentions in his blog that I thought about too. Williams book was focused on why things should be done that way when Strunk just told you what to do. I also agree with Chase's blog when he talks about how Strunk dealt with grammar more than Williams did. But I have to disagree with him on the fact that Williams was easier to read and understand. For me, personally, sometimes I had to reread what Williams wrote to make sense of it and I could not read it for very long with out skimming or losing focus. Not that Strunk and White was a page-turner, either. I just could force myself to pay attention more to Strunk because his ideas were short and to the point which is what I like to see when I'm reading about style. On the other hand I liked that Williams did explain his reasoning. If he hadn't I would have been even more lost reading his book. Like Chase, I, sometimes, too need to hear the why in order to do it properly.
This leads me to Rachelle's blog. I felt she made some interesting points that I did not make in my blogs. Like her I found Strunk's rule to omit needless words to be good. But like Rachelle, I too didn't really get how to do that until I read Williams and he explained how it could be done in depth. At times like that I like Williams more that Strunk and White. But then again Williams and Strunk focused on two very different things. Strunk did not reaaly go beyond discussing grammar like Williams did. While I liked and learned more from Williams I did not like when he got into other elements of style. Then it got more boring than Strunk and White.
But other than a few differences I felt that most bloggers were writing the same opinions that I had about the two books.

comparing

I believe that Williams took a different approach than Strunk and White but still managed to touch some similiar subjects. But their ideas were usually conflicted. The one thing I really liked about Williams' was his way of breaking writing myths. The bad thing is that some of the myths he discounted were ones Strunk had written. Like I mentioned in another blog Strunk and White talked about omitting long sentences with lots of words. But Williams mentioned how long sentences were good as long you were clear about the subject and verb. So now I am at square one in dealing with long snetences. Should I use them if I can or lose them like Strunk suggests?
Besides touching similiar subjects, these two books were very different from one another. While Strunk and White just stated the rules and gave examples more or less, Williams' took the time to explain each rule in depth. This was useful because it gave me understanding on why I should do it that way instead of memorizing it and just doing the rule. On the other hand, I felt that Stunk's rules were more relevant. I felt I took more from his book on writing than I did Williams'. I may not understand why I had to do those rules but I got clear cut ways of writing.
While I may not know which one is better when learning the proper grammars of writing, I do believe it is important to look at both because it gave me a better understanding on how to write.

revising with williams

original sentence:
Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive University whose roots date back to 1849, when the Michigan Legislature designated it as Michigan’s first institution to educate teachers to serve the public schools. At that time the Detroit school system was only 10 years old and the transition from one-room school houses had just begun.

New Sentence:
Mighigan Legislature started Eastern Michigan University in 1849 as an institution to educate teachers to serve public schools. At that time the 10 year old Detriot school sysetem had just begun the transition from one-room school houses.

I changed these sentences because they were too long. Not that this is a bad thing. But as Mr. Williams states in his book, this is a problem when subjects and verbs become unclear. This happen in the first sentence. The two subjects presented were the Mighigan Legislature and Eastern Michigan University. By applying the rule I was able to make it clear what the point of the sentence was more clearly. In the second sentece there were nominalizations. All the extra words that had no meaning were thrown out. This was done by taking the "and" out for starters because it was not needed. Just managing the words better allowed for a more clear sentence.

elements of style

I found William Strunk and E.B. White's The Element of Style both helpful and dated. The first two parts of the books I did not find helpful. A lot of it was either common sense or wrong in my opinion. The first rule is a good example of this. This explains how to add possesive form to words. I believe they were wrong or dated to write that a person is supposed to add the 's at the end regardless of the last letter. I was always taught not to do this if the word ended with an "s." Rather I should just put an apostrophe. Also I thought the rule about not using periods to replace commas was common sense.
But there were some helpful things in the book. My favorite section was the misuse of words. This section taught me how to correctly use the words I use. I never realized how wrong I was in substituting some words for another. Another thing that I feel will help my writing is the section that wrote how a person adds to many words to their sentences. When I read the examples I realized how often I had used those wrong sentences. While this book had its bad points I believe it will help my writing.

peer review, part 1

I thought the peer review went well. Although there were some problems with everyone in my group getting my essay. I felt I got the kind of help I needed to hear. Things I didn't notice about my essay, my reviewers did. I liked that I got told the highlights of my essay as well as the parts that needed improvement.
Reviewing other people's essay was not bad either. I was a little nervous about giving bad comments at first but as I started reading the essays I realized I needed to give them advice if it was needed so it could help them. While I did comment on the good stuff too, I wish I would expanded on those comments as I did with the bad ones. All in all peer review was good

Writing Technologies

The writing technologies that I use a lot are pens, pencils, keyboards, paper. The only thing I do not use everyday is probably a pencil. When I was younger I used only pen/pencil and paper. For a while I messed with a type writer, but it was not until the computer that I really started using the keyboard. But I still use the pen and paper. In fact, for most papers I write I will write the first draft on paper and then type it on the computer.
I do not think there is a writing tool that I try to avoid. I may not use them all the time, but I really do not have any that I hate using.

What is style part 1

When applied to writing, I believe style is the way in which something is written. The way an author puts words together is his/her style. Metaphors and allegories are a type of style authors might use in writing. Style also has to do with form. A certain author's style might be to write in prose or in narrative. This is to say that each writer has his/her own style of writing.

first entry

Hi