Michaella Malone 3/28/13

       Class began with Ms. Lang instructing us to reread our final drafts of Paper 2 and make any corrections we found. She had our class use the rubric to score our own papers individually before they were turned in for her to grade. She also wanted us to answer the following questions like What worked well? What needed more work? What did we like about the project? What did we not like? After spending approximately 15-20 minutes reviewing our papers for the last time, we turned them in to our yellow folders and proceeded on with our class lecture.

~PINE POINTE~

www.thesociologicalcinema.com

      Pine Pointe became our main topic of discussion. After Ms. Lang played just a few minutes of the multi-media website in class, students immediately became interested in sharing their opinions about the project. Ms. Lang seemed curious in what we thought this documentary was about. Pine Pointe was a mining town in Canada that vanished. Some students felt the was viewed as "perfect" by the residents who grew up there because their memories there will forever be preserved in their minds. Since they can never go back to what was originally there, the residents of Pine Pointe never had to experience what it was like to see your favorite restaurant turn into a bank. Therefore, the people raised in Pine Pointe savor the memories of their childhood in a more positive light than most people would.
     Ms. Lang asked the class, "What role does nostalgia play?" Many students felt the idea of reminiscing is what drove the whole force behind the project. The use of a yearbook style to show three individuals reflecting on their experience at Pine Pointe also brings a sense of nostalgia. Next Ms. Lang asked the class to name all the media that they encountered while viewing Pine Pointe.

List of media:
-music videos
-photo album
-music
-badge-moving
-text
-clicking
-government documents
-interviews

www.lifetimecollective.com

         Overall, some of the students simply "hated it" and found it to be broad/overwhelming, while others enjoyed the collaboration of all the media used, especially the music because it set the mood of the whole project. After discussing the mystery of Pine Pointe, Ms. Lang shows us the similarity of Pine Pointe to our next class assignment, Project 3. Ms. Lang read to us the what the project entails and the due dates, which all this information can be found on the class website. We must 1) choose a community 2) have a purpose/argument 3) find the audience. For instance, Ms. Lang suggested creating a coloring book as your project if your projected audience was little kids. Since we ran out of time, we will continue to talk about brainstorming and our portfolios during our next class!

REMEMBER: HW IS CRITICAL RESPONSE 8

Erica Albanese

Class Thursday March 21, 2013

We began class by talking about our papers, specifically the introduction and conclusion. Ms. Lang chose five students who had good drafts to stand up in front of the class and discuss what they are doing it on and how they got there. We each had to ask one of the five people a question about their paper.

Ms. Lang then told us, despite our belief, that it actually IS possible to write a ten page paper. She strongly suggests using the Reading and Writing center, which I did and helped me tremendously.

The introduction of your paper should include a thesis and a hook. A hook can be a fact, a quote, a question, really anything that will draw a reader in and make them want to read more.

The conclusion should be a summary that “ties up lose ends” or restates the thesis. It should include a “so what?” Why does what you wrote matter? How does it effect the future? What does it all mean?

The next thing we did in class was get into five different groups and list in order the ten most important things in the paper to us. We then collaborated as a class to help create the rubric for this paper.

Homework: ESSAY DUE 3/26!!!

I chose to focus mainly just on what we did in class that day. I decided to do that this way anyone who was absent has any easy way too look back and see what we did that day. I did it this way because I feel like that is most helpful. The other media I chose to use were the pictures above. I chose this because I thought it would help make it a little funny and just give a good visual effect. My role as class blogger did not so much change my perspective of the class room but more so it just made me notice small details and remember things that I wouldn’t have remembered or noticed had I not been the class blogger.

Solomon Kravitz 3/7/13

http://www.quickmeme.com/spring-break/?upcoming

To start off class my group presented on the curious researcher, our chapter mainly focused on strategies for editing and finalizing your research paper. It turns out peer editing is only helpful if the right questions are asked.Other Strategies include:

• Highlighting quotes
• Cutting up the draft into paragraphs, and relate them to the thesis individually
• Reading the draft out aloud, to check fluency

Also I personally talked about how the book says that the sentence wording should be easy to read and not sound dry. I read out several examples of bad sentences learning that the book only has examples talking about college drug use and oral sex tendencies. For our activity we decided to ask the class to highlight all their quotes and non-quotes in different colors.

After this activity Ms Lang shared her own essay on Game of thrones with us, and we all realized that she writes in much larger paragraphs then us all. After this Ms. Lang was very nice and let us go early wishing us all a happy spring break!

http://weknowmemes.com/2012/05/impin-aint-easy/

Shannon Grill-3/5/2013

Today we started class by doing a self-evaluation. We filled out a form and rated ourselves on our class participation and left comments explaining our reasoning behind the score we gave our selves. We could also supply Ms. Lang with ideas on how to improve our individual participation.

After we all finished our evaluations, group four presented on chapter four of the Curious Researcher and taught us what to keep in our mind while writing our first draft. The first part of the presentation focused mainly on thesis statements. They discussed how to structure them and what should be included in them. They then went into discussing how to cite sources and the different ways to handle quotes. Some ways of handling are by:

            -Grafting

            -Sandwiching

            -Billboarding

            -Splicing

So when writing our first draft we should:

            -Focus on your thesis or research question

            -Vary your sources

            -Remember your audience

            -Write with your notes

            -Be open to surprises

Instead of doing the group’s project, which we will do later, Ms. Lang had us review what thesis statements are.

First, we must keep in mind that:

-Titles are italicized and capitalized while journal articles are put into quotations

-Just because it is in a database doesn’t mean it is scholarly

-And just because it is published anywhere doesn’t mean it is credible

We then watched a young girl rap about thesis statements. It was funny and annoying.

Remember that a thesis is not a:

-Statement of fact

-Opinion

-Statements of belief or faith

After reviewing what a thesis was, Ms. Lang had us do an activity. First we were required to write about our research topic and write at least five sentences. Then we passed it to the person to our left. Next we read what our neighbor wrote and summarized it in three sentences and then once again passed it to the left. Finally we read the next paper and summarized the three lines into one sentence. From this one sentence we could now create a thesis statement.

Homework:

Chapter 5 of the Curious Researcher

First Draft of our second paper (2 copies)

            Half Draft (5 pages)

                        Should have:

                        -Thesis

                        -Analysis

                        -Research

                        -Citations

                        Should not have:

                        -Conclusion

                        -Firm Structure

Lauren Jewell's Blog 2/26

Today a Graduate Assistant from Strozier gave us a quick presentation on easy ways for us to find resources using the databases available to us through the library.  

lib.fsu.edu is the link to our library's website.

Here we can find different databases (that we can search for by subject).  These databases will be of great help for our research papers.  

**Academic Search Complete is one of the best & the one that Heather Recommends**

When searching the databases be sure to put your main search terms in quotation marks (i.e. "big bang theory") so that the search engine knows to search for these words together.  Use other key words to help narrow/broaden your search - "AND", "OR", and "NOT" will help specify what exactly you are looking for.

Another database that was suggested, specifically for this paper, is called "Genderwatch".  This database can help with specifics in gender stereotyping.  Also consult the anthropology databases when looking for sources specific to stereotyping.

For our Annotated Bibliography we need 4-5 sources in MLA format:

• At least 1 scholarly journal article from a database (Academic Search Premier, Lexus Nexus, etc.)
• At least 1 reliable Web site
• 1 to 2 sources related to an opposing viewpoint of your argument
• The remaining sources can be of any genre of your choosing
  

If you ever get stuck while researching, you can always go to the "ASK US NOW" link on the library homepage and talk to a librarian ANY TIME the library is open!
OR
You may schedule an appointment to meet with a librarian one on one.

Another great source for writing your paper is the reading and writing center fsu.mywconline.com 




If you have any more questions about databases or finding resources you may contact the Graduate Assistant Laura Browning at lab12@my.fsu.edu.  

DON'T FORGET TO TURN IN YOUR ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY BY MIDNIGHT ON THURSDAY 2/28!

Cody's Blog 2/21

Thursday Ms. Lang opened class by discussing and going  more in depth about the media paper that is coming up as well as ironing out any details that we still may be having about the project. Furthermore, if anybody has any questions you can check out the requirements located here: https://campus.fsu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_6376613_1%26url%3D

Next came the Chapter Three presentation out of The Curious Researcher by Bruce Ballenger, from Nate, Garrison, Julian, and Sam. The group went on to discuss the two steps of "Getting into a Conversation with a Fact" and talked about the proper way to summarize as well as paraphrase. Next topic was plagiarism in general and also how to avoid it. The group told us that whether intentional, or not, that plagiarism is a serious offense and highly punishable. Also noted is that there is a fine line between paraphrasing and plagiarism to which the group gave us a helpful guideline that explained how we were to never use more than ten to twenty percent of quotations in your research paper because after that point it becomes less and less your own words and more of reproducing the words of other people. Their group also spoke to us about note taking, specifically double entry journal. All of these points where geared toward helping us with our research paper to make sure its done well and correctly.

Continuing their presentation, they directed us to use the computers at our desks and we practiced narrative note taking on the article "Baghdad Burning" by Riverbend. To do narrative note taking you are supposed to read the article for about three to five minutes and then start writing with the leading phrase being "What I understand this to be saying is.." and then continue to respond on the piece that you just read.

Finally to wrap up class we split into groups by counting off one, two, three, four,.. to read about "Level Up" exercises which are as follows:
1-Credibility check
2-Purpose
3-Context
4-Audience
5-Argument
Each group was passed out a packet about alien articles and we went through the steps to determine if they were sources that we would want to use for a paper. After each group had presented a little bit about the article that Ms. Lang had given to them, we went through as a class classifying them into the five different levels (noted above) and it was determined that if you "leveled up" to level four or five then it was an acceptable source to use in a research paper.

That pretty much wrapped up class and everybody's homework was to do some research and be prepared for class on Tuesday when the librarian is coming to class to show us how to use FSU's library system.

Hope everyone found this useful and informative!

Miles' Blog Post ~ 2013/02/12

This particular blog-post may or may not be different from the ones you guys are used to.  It's basically an outline summarizing the things that happened in class that day (the 12th of February).  I hope you guys find it useful and amusing and informative and stuff.  :)

1. We depart for English class
2. We sit against the wall
3. We enter class when the teacher shows up
4. People babble
5. The teacher starts talking
6. We're told to not be rude during the presentation
7. Crots papers come back Tuesday next week
8. We prepare for the first group to present
9. Some kid hit on the teacher's boots
10. The presentation begins (the following are summarizations of parts of the presentation)
1. Curiosity is fun!
2. Find an interesting topic because uninteresting ones are boring!
3. Categorize stuff
• Columns, rows, and groups; oh, my!  
4.  Make a list, go away, add to the list, go away again, come back, go away... ad nauseum.  Then review.  
5. Phones and water bottles are inspirational!
6. Make questions
7. Let's talk about iPhones!
8. Write some words for a research paper about iPhones or water-bottles
• You can do Android if you don't like Apple/iStuff
9. Words make us think of other words
10. Let's talk about recycling!
11. [distractions]
1. Someone hit hit a computer
2. We giggled amongst ourselves
3. The teacher admitted to having hit computers, herself
12. They talk about recycling
13. They finish
11. We clap
12. The teacher starts talking about our second paper
• We're gonna look at the media's portrayal of groups
13.  We need to understand the following: 
1. What's a  community?
• Group, subgroup, church, class, clique, etc.
• Communities are defined by commonality
2.  What's media?
• The stuff on the internet 'n' stuff
• We discuss media for awhile
• We didn't come to a very specific conclusion of what media was, just that it encompassed things like TV shows, newsmedia, etc. 
14. Make a list of 10 things
• Either 10 communities,
• or 10 medias.
• be specific
• Pick stuff you're interested in
• You can also do 5 of each, or really any combination of communities and media so long as they add up to 10
15. Pick two of those things to explore further
16. Explore them further
17. Set aside predefined notions
18. Pick your favourite topic, or come up with one if you didn't like the two you chose earlier
19. Write some questions to explore it further
20.  Make sure to focus on media portrayals
21. Due Thursday on BlackBoard before midnight
• 500 words
• Community and media you're looking at
• Guiding Q's
• Why are you interested in this topic?
22. The teacher will be absent and a substitute will take her place on Thursday

Welp, that's all, folks!  This is everything that happened in class on Tuesday in a nutshell.  I hope you enjoyed or at least got some use out of this.  Remember to heed the bold bits!

Oh, and I didn't have any pictures in mind for this post, so I just found this generic English meme: