Super Blog!

I believe using blogs was convenient to a certain extent, but it also could be very stressful sometimes. Doing them helped me to stay on task with what was going on in the classroom, however getting started and connecting with blogs website was very confusing to what I and most students are probably not used to using on a daily basis. My proposal to better the online blogs would be to use a different source that is useful for one to use, discuss the assignment in class more frequently what the blogs will cover, and allow more time or fewer assignments due to the papers being turned in every other week.

            My biggest problem with blogs was how to even create it. Your instructions were accurate, but because I was unable to familiarize myself with the program, it took awhile to adjust and learn how to function the site. Even to this day, I am still unaware of the things you can do on the blogs. For example, every student I would assume has, or once had, a Facebook account. Because students are familiar with how this program works, they would feel beyond confident in turning in their assignments. For one, they most likely are on there enough hours of the day, and two; they would notice the assignment because being on there so frequently. By using Facebook, you could set up a private account that only students in your class would have access to open up their account and attempt their assignment. Because students have a better understanding for Facebook, finding their fellow students would be no problem. When you assigned our blogs and asked for our account names along with our group member’s names, I never could to this day find any of my student’s accounts because of the difficulty of looking up their names by their accounts. Facebook, however, gives a broad search to find anyone throughout the world by just the type of their name, or even first few letters of their name. I believe setting up Facebook would be the easiest route for students to feel comfortable in doing their assignments with ease.

            Not only would a different source be beneficial to you and both students, but discussing the assignments more frequently in class would help beyond what you could imagine. I feel when I know the assignment is due Wednesday night at midnight, and I have a few days to work on this, despite my other assignments, I find you explaining in class what exactly you expect from us can make a big difference. Not only would it help to remind the students about the assignment in general, but it would help to guide the students in what direction and expectations you have for the blogs. Some students, like myself, feel scared to even attempt an assignment having no assistance what so ever. Not to say you never mention the assignment, but a bit more elaboration could help me and the others who feel intimidated to try assignments on their own with little or even no guidance. My proposal to better the blog assignments would be to take at least one to two days a week, if given an assignment once a week, and to take rather ten minutes towards the end of class to discuss and remind the students about the topic, when it is due, and a brief explanation of what to expect.

            Because so many students have assignments in other classes, they feel as if fewer online assignments would possibly lighten their load of stress. Doing an English paper turned in every other week can stress me out as it is. Writing the paper makes me focus 100% on getting a good grade. Doing this helps me to forget the importance of my other tasks for passing your English class. Not that I intentionally want to skip the assignment, but having other assignments in English and other courses have me easily forget. I believe by doing fewer blogs in your class would have students stressing less to focus on other courses and writing their papers, which for the main purpose, is far more important. Doing less assignments online would allow you the help discuss what the prompt is for students to soak in the information rather than to feel obligated to just write a sloppy answer for the credit needed. By allowing students to soak in the information would allow them to focus harder on turning in a legit response to help better themselves and practice their class for future assignments whether in your class or beyond. When grading wise, if the fewer assignment situation does not work out, make the assignments worth more points making the students understand how important the assignments really are. Some would think, because there are so many assignments given, they feel they can slack off because obviously there are many prompts which must be divided into smaller individual grades rather than more points.

            Overall, the ability to better the class due to blog assignments would be to use another source to where the student is confident in using, discussing the assignment more frequently to capture the attention of most procrastinating students, and to allow fewer assignments worth more points to help make the students realize how importance and serious the grading is worth. I find these proposals easy to understand and actually realistic solutions that could help you prepare for next class assignments you present to your students next semester.

Week 13

At University of Louisiana at Lafayette, students can not schedule their classes for the upcoming semester without meeting with their advisor first. My first experience with getting advised was horrible. All I would hear in any of my classes was, “Have you been advised yet?”  Hearing this drove me insane because I was new to being advised. During summer orientation, my department advisor was able to go to each student in my group and tell every one of us to take specific classes with very few options. After going to each class for my first semester, time for advising            was soon to come. Although the only difference it seemed like with my friends and I was that they had all had received emails from their advisors explaining to them where to meet for getting advised. I, on the other hand, had to wait for an email, that never came, then I decided to finally write my advisor. Not only did I write my advisor, but I had to wait a few days to receive a four word response that read, “Meet in Moody Hall.” 

Week 12: "A Week in the Life of a Part Time Teacher"

1. a. They could possibly propose for a monthly meeting to catch up on things specifically with school. They could ask what was right and wrong to them to fix things.
     i. This request should be allowed to work around with time because it has no cost. If teacher's were there to teach, they could at least be there to have meetings.
     b. They could propose a request for a teacher who would be willingly be there only for students with problems that occur daily.
     i. This request, in my opinion, would be simple if they could find a teacher with the time at the same cost that a teacher gets paid to listen to student's problems and consider them.
2. Her problems make her have less confidence within herself which decreases her will to help people.
3. a. The students could request a counselor to be available on school days.
     i. This request should be fine if they school were able to hire a counselor and get paid a fair amount salary. The timing would be important for the counselor to be available for the students whenever needed.
     b. Another request could be student-teacher conferences once a month to allow both students and teachers to talk with one another to discuss problems and their grades.
4. The administration cut the lab's budgets.
     a. Another cause would be not being able to work enough hours in the lab.
     b. One argument an outsider can say is that the person can work hours in other labs or a library to help receive hours.
5. a. The teachers part can not request to be as "picky" due to the fact that they are the higher power within the school, therefore they should be shown as an example.
     b. I think the student's part of requesting proposals should remain the same because they are the one's paying for school. If they weren't paying for the school, then there proposals would not be considered so delicately.

Monday Nov. 7, 2011 Online Class Assignment

1.     After reviewing the information about the drafting introduction on page 3, review your own intro and decide what you can do to:

a.     more clearly show what is at stake for your issue:

-If I focus on satisfaction over dedication then you may get lazier and forget what your main goal is in your career.

b.     more thoroughly contextualize your issue with background information (this is helpful for both intro and conclusion)

-For background; gym owners trying to satisfy the customers besides themselves. I can go into more detail how gym owners attempt to satisfy themselves over customers.

c.     write a few sentences for a. and b. that you will insert into your next draft.

Being satisfied with your job leads to being too relaxed, and when your relaxed you do not want to do important tasks for your job so your business fails. For example, if a customer were angry about his/her food being undercooked, they have a right to order the employees to cook the food to their taste without the employees having a problem with them.

2.     Review your topic sentences of your body paragraphs:

a.     Whether you are doing org. plan 1 or 2, your topic sentences should contain the criteria that you are discussing in the paragraph.  (Review bottom of page 4 and all of page 5). 

b.     If you have any main topic sentences (do at least two here) that don’t contain the criteria of your definition that you are about to discuss in your paragraph, paste the old sentence, then write the revision of it that you will change in your next draft, like this:

                                               i.     OLD SENTENCE:   Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful.

                       ii. NEW SENTENCE: Some people would think that only going to work to get a paycheck does not make you successful because if you are just going for the money then you are not happy with what you are doing.

                       iii. OLD SENTENCE. If someone were to own a gym and not be content with great satisfaction of their customers, they might as well choose another career path that suits their needs.

                       iv. NEW SENTENCE: If you as an owner put your needs before a customers, then this career field is not for you because owning a gym is about other people and not yourself.

3.     Now, go through your body paragraphs and make sure that in the evidence sections of them, you are “developing” the criterion you are discussing, which means: explaining/defining each criterion for your definition.  By the end of your paper, we should be able to tell a) your definitions, b) the criteria for those definitions, and c) the definitions of those criteria. (Look at page 5, description of BP1).

a.     Find your shortest body paragraph. OLD PARAGRAPH:  This is a quick way to determine which one needs more development. Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

c.     Then paste in a revision of it that contains more details and explanations of the criterion under discussion. Revision:       Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation.To please the customer means to make sure there food is cooked well and done, make sure they have everything they need, and make sure they have help whenever needed. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. For example, many of the fast food restaurants horror stories that people have heard throughout the years have not killed the business.Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

4.     Look over one of your rebuttal areas.  If you have one (and you should; “considering the opposition” or “other viewpoints” is on the rubric) look for a way to revise it to be more developed, if you don’t have one, make one now to add into your next draft.  Review page 6 and the ways that you 1) acknowledge opposition to your argument, 2) but prove how the opposition is not strong enough to invalidate your argument.

a.     Paste in the old and new rebuttal sections:

OLD: Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them.

New: Some would think that if you, being a gym owner, were not satisfied, you are not considered to be successful. However, success rates of any business goes up when customers give positive feedback. The way to get positive feedback from customers is making sure they are completely content with your service no matter how unhappy, tired, or miserable you are. Some owners of gyms would consider their employees to be right with arguments between their customers. This may be, but in the long run, owners who please their customers are the ones who will successfully be content with themselves along with a better business and reputation.To please the customer means to make sure there food is cooked well and done, make sure they have everything they need, and make sure they have help whenever needed. Those who own a gym franchise will successfully have customers due to their name advertised nationally no matter how happy or unhappy the customer is. For example, many of the fast food restaurants horror stories that people have heard throughout the years have not killed the business.Therefore you can satisfy your own needs over your customers and not worry about losing them. 

b.     Or say that you hadn’t gotten around to that yet in your first draft and make one up now to include in your next draft.

prompt 10

Claim: Being satisfied with your job can help you be happy along the journey of your career.
Reason: Success means much more and allows you to be humble with yourself rather than gloating about your salaries received.
Warrant: Being experienced with your job can require street smart or book smart which will determine if you like your job because it is easier. You have to have experience with your job to have a better understanding which will result with enjoyment of your career.

prompt #7

        Robert D. King, author of "Should English Be the Law," has a purpose to his audience to compare our official language of the United States to other national countries debating on their language to unify oneself. Robert's attitude is strict and concerned with the agreement of unifying a nation by a language. His background involves writing many articles based on languages.  He is a professor at University of Texas at Austin and also has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. His purpose to his audience in academic journals is to persuade the reader that the language does not unify a nation because of their "unique otherness." His text is smaller than 12 font. Readers of the article should have an attitude to focus on his article to comprehend a better understanding of language unity. The audience's feedback will help his article and main points get across to society to comprehend his idea. His tools to make the text was a computer to print out the text. "Should English be the Law," was published in April 1997 in the "Atlantic Monthly.

"Self Respect"

1. In "On Self Respect," Joan Didion uses allusions to literature such as: Gone with the Wind, The Great Gatsby, and Wuthering Heights, to portray an image of self respect. The reason she does this is to give a better understanding to the reader of "self respect." Each allusion has an issue with self respect. She added these allusions to make the audience understand different examples of her opinion of self respect in a more complex way. The allusions are only helpful if you have had read the different works she had listed. If not, they are great sources of proof explaining that her work is legit and not just information she made up herself.

2. She lists that self respect has nothing to do with the approval of others. Most people would generally have arguments about this statement. She uses the quote, "Committing adultery without asking forgiveness to illustrate "courage of their mistakes" and "character". I think she uses this quote to demonstrate her own personal experience for people to think of it as a lesson learned of her own self respect. Maybe it could mean something else. Generally people could use many interpretations to determine what this means.

3. I believe self respect can be used in people's personal experience when writing. It would be a more complex understanding though deeper meaning to portray to the audience. Using self respect from your personal experience can be used however you want it as long as you have experience to tie with it your complex meaning of self respect.