Redesign of Advertisement Essay – Reflection

     Going into this assignment, I thought it would be easy. After I actually started writing the paper, it was harder than I thought. I didn't want the paper to be so repetitive. Luckily, I started the paper a bit early. I made an outline and I had extra time to think how I was going to tackle this essay. What I was most worried about was the minimum page requirement it had to be. I had a hard time just getting to five pages, let alone seven.

     Deciding on the ad was the easy part. I get to spend time looking through magazines catching up on some gossip that has been going on. I just had to look for an advertisement that had a specific audience. I chose the Cub Cadet riding lawn mower because everything about it was geared toward men. I thought it would be easy to redirect the ad to women.

     When thinking about how I wanted to redesign the ad I chose, I just pictured it in my mind. Why would women want this lawn mower? How would it help them? By using these questions, I was able to build a picture. Women are always on the go, and never have enough time. Using a riding lawn mower would help save time, so they can do more important things. 

     I faced quite a few challenges. The hard part for me was coming up with the ethos, logos, and pathos parts for women. I was afraid they sounded to much like the men's portion of my essay. Another challenges was coming up with multiple reasons of why women would need to have a riding lawn mower besides "It saves time". Mrs. Rinke helped me come up with a few ideas. For example, mowing the lawn is a great time for herself. She can listen to her iPod and think about things. 

    I liked the creativity this assignment needed. It was very different than what other papers would be. It helped that we got to choose our own ad, because it could be in a magazine about things that we were interested in, which would make the essay more fun. I have never really payed attention to any ads, whether it's on the television or in a magazine, but know I know how much actually goes into making them (which is a lot). Also, I have never really read a magazine before. So it was fun to sit and read interesting articles.

     Before this class, I have never heard of ethos, pathos or logos, but now I know how they are used. I will definitely use this knowledge later in life. Also, like I stated previously, I now understand how much work goes into an advertisement. I kind of feel bad for thinking they're annoying, and not paying attention to them. 

     If I got a second chance to write this paper, I would learn how to use programs such as photoshop and try to actually build the ad that was in my head. Also, I would spend more time figuring out my rhetorical appeals for the women. I only bought one magazine, so maybe I would spend more time looking at other ads as well.

     

How Pop Culture affects society

Pop culture is all around us. Its the media, books, TV's, music and even literature. In my opinion, pop culture defines modern society, especially in younger generations. They base their decisions and opinions on pop culture. It's like asking "Why did you go to Starbucks for the first time?"  You went because it was popular. Pop culture is basically what is "cool" for the time being. I've noticed that everyone is always trying to stay current with technology and trends. For example, people will spend 50 dollars on name brand t-shirts just because that store name is popular, and they want to fit in with the crowd, or people will buy the newest iPhone and wait hours, sometimes days in line when their old one works just fine. However, pop culture can be positive as well. It makes way for innovation. People always trying to come up with newer stuff to start the next fad or trend. It also helps fuel the economy with everyone buying the newest stuff.

Literacy Narrative Process Memo

Jaylene Scott

Professor Rinke

English 150

February 27, 2013

Reflective Memo

            Writing this timeline was a very fun experience for me. It gave my parents and I a chance to reminisce about our pas and had a few good laughs. The most logical place for me to start the timeline was when I said my first word, because that’s where literacy starts. I did have a hard time remembering details, I had to ask my parents a lot questions about it, and even they didn't remember some of it. After my parents filled me in on my earlier years, I didn't have a problem getting everything down on paper because I remembered the events that really influenced me.

            Something interesting I realized about my literacy development while composing my timeline that I had never previously thought of was that my mom really helped me. I knew she did the normal stuff, like reading to me every night and what not, but she did a lot more that I did not remember. The theme I decided to focus on was how books influenced my early childhood. Ever since I was young, I loved to read, and poems really interested me. I loved how they could take you to an imaginary land and you forgot about all of your current problems for a little while. It was not difficult to pick this theme, because books have always been there for me. It was the first thing I thought of and went from there. The experience of creating a timeline made me realize that I had a lot of potential, as long as I was willing to work hard for it.

            When I was writing my timeline, I noticed I only had experiences that had to do with books, so when it was time to begin my narrative, it was not hard to focus on the theme. I wrote the narrative in the only way it would make sense, in chronological order. It was not difficult to write this into a draft, rather easy actually. The literacy timeline served as my prewriting strategy, everything I wanted to say was already on paper in order. It couldn't get any better than that.  After composing my rough draft, I got rid of some stories that didn't need to be there. At first I felt like I was trying to cover way too much, so I narrowed it down to events specifically in elementary school.

            To be honest, my partner didn't really do much to help me. We spent the whole period working on his paper, and never got around to mine. When I made the final edits to my narrative, I was most definitely thinking about how I would turn the story into a slideshow. I was really worried because in the animoto slideshow, they limit the number of characters you can use per slide. I didn’t know if I was able to limit my story even more than before.

            As I said earlier, my partner and I never got around to looking at my paper. So I had to choose the 15 sentences myself. I ended up using all of the sentences I chose and more. At first I struggled with the 52-character limit. There really isn't a strategy, you just have to play around with the words until they fit and make sense. The pictures I used in my slideshow were a great buffer. My pattern was two text slides and one picture slide and so on. I would use the pictures to compliment my text, so if I mentioned a book, I showed a picture of the book. I would say half of my pictures were personal, and the other half of the pictures were from the web. They helped my story because if I said “In fifth grade...” I would then show a picture of me was in the fifth grade to help give them some visual.

            I love the song I chose to comment my theme in the slideshow. The song was called “Happy” and it did everything I wanted it to. At first It started slow, just like my slideshow, and then as time went on, it sped up, just in time with the story when I really started getting into the core of my literacy story.

            After I watched the video again, I could honestly say I’m very happy with it. I’m proud of myself and I’m very happy with the grade I had received. The challenge was really fun with me. I wouldn't change a thing.

In your own words, Digital Literacy

From Virginia Heffernen

1. I don't think my teachers in elementary, middle and high school did not prepare me for the tech requirements in college. If I could write them a brief email in regards to changing their curriculum, I would suggest that they not only have a computer class that teaches you how to use the full potential of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, but also integrate the use of computers in ALL of the classes. In my high school, laptops weren't allowed to take notes and what not. Also, college now has a lot of assignments that you need to turn in online, usually on Moodle. I wish high school would have taught me how to use this because my first week of College, I missed an important assignment because I couldn't figure out how to use it at first.

2. I want to be a Doctor with my own office someday. Lately doctors have been using iPads and laptops to keep track of patients and patient records instead of clipboards and filing cabinets. I do believe my schooling here at OU will prepare me for this :)

3.I do feel I write better in a more relaxed setting (like blog or email) because I feel like I don't have to be as formal. If I had to write a paper, I would have to worry about MLA format, and a page number requirement. Here, I feel I can get right to the point and say what I feel, and not worry about fluffing up my paper. 

4. If I were a teacher, I would attempt to better prepare the future generations for these future high tech jobs we might not even be able to imagine by simply teaching them everything I know about it. That way, they will only have to add on the new stuff they learn, and not have to start from the very beginning. 

5.I do agree with the main thesis of her paper. We need to stop treating high school students like children and prepare them for what college is going to be like. How can our future generation be successful if they don't know how to use the technology properly in college, College will be the only thing between them and their career goal.

Literacy Time line

Theme: How books and Poetry influenced my early childhood

First word – “ dada”

Early childhood –

-Mom would make bubble letters of the alphabet and I would color them in. We also used to sing the ABC’s together ALL the time.

                -Mom would always read Green eggs and Ham to me (another book she red was Cinderella and I made fun of her because she would always read the characters in funny voices)

                -I wrote my book and made it out of cardboard called “the little kitten”

                -My favorite poem was mother doesn’t want a dog in a poem book

                - I spent most of the day playing Sega games. Following the dialog helped me learn how to spell and what not.

                -In 2^nd grade, we always had spelling quizzes

                -Had to do a lot of book reports

-My teacher assigned a book that we had to read silently in class, then she would call us up one by one to read it out loud and it would record on a tape recorder. She then played it back to our parents at the parent teacher conference to show our progress.

-In 3^rd grade we had to write a fictional story and I based mine off of “Snow white and the seven dwarves” And later got a writing award for it.

-In 4^th grade I tried to join a poetry club. I had to memorize 3 short poems, but I only got around to memorizing two poems.

                -In 5^th grade, we would play jump rope, and sing rhymes that have to do with saying the alphabet or little songs.

-I also started to learn the basics of an essay (5 paragraphs)

-I danced for 7 years. Learned to keep a beat and learned the lyrics of the songs. I also had to keep count in my head,

Middle school –

                -I got a MySpace without my dad’s permission – got into a lot of trouble.

                -I used it anyway and wrote all the time to my friends and posted comments.

                -I really started to like reading books in my spare time

High school –

-Reading/writing was my highest score on the ACT

- Wrote my first research paper

Ending:

A hope for the future

Summary and Response

The comic strip titled Two Questions by Lynda Barry is about a girl who used to love to draw. The two questions "Is this good?" and "Does this suck?" creeped into her life when she was in first grade. The two most popular girls in her class really liked the picture she drew, her teacher even liked it too. Her next drawing wasn't as good. It made the people in her class think she was stupid, dirty and lame. She stopped drawing for her own pleasure, and started listening to the critics. She wanted everyone to like her again, so she kept asking her self "Is this good?" "Does this suck?". As she grew older, she noticed kids stopped drawing, one by one. Then, she started to realize that those two questions made her dread drawing, and it made her lose that happy feeling she used to get. Her advise is to draw for yourself, not for other people. Express yourself and draw what makes you happy.

I can relate to this story because when I was young, I kept a diary and I loved writing short stories in it. As my school career went on, I stopped writing for myself and started writing for the grade. If the instructor gave us a controversial topic, I always chose the side that was easiest or what I thought the teacher would agree with. I never wrote my own feelings down. After reading this, I realize I can write for myself AND still get a good grade. Sure it has to be in MLA format and all instructors have their own criteria, but I can still find a way to make the paper my own :)

Hourihan Blog Post

1. A blog has many features. For example, According to Meg Hourihan's article What We're Doing When We Blog a blog has the posts collection, links, and the time stamp. The posts collection is a neat feature because the newest posts are always at the top of the page, which means we don't have to scroll through and find what has been changed or added. The author of the blog can also post links. The links can help reference where the information is coming from. Lastly, the time stamp allows others looking at the blog posts to see how recent that post is, and it can help them figure out an update pattern.

2.Before September 11th blogs were primarily personal dairies. But now, blogs have become very popular and used for media purposes. 

3. I feel like keeping a blog in this class is easier than turning in a whole bunch of papers. I also think it is a great way to express yourself because you can have backgrounds and what not. The only disadvantages I see is that when you post something it is very public, and some people might not like that.

4. Blogging is kind of like "self publishing", or a free write. There are no limitations and no rules, just write what ever you would like :)