Multimedia Project

            There are many forms of composition and writing is the most common one.  It’s also the one I’ve done the most.  Most teachers throughout high school only required me to write, so I don’t have much experience in multimedia projects.  The only other kind of composition that I’ve done is video/powerpoint.  I did two video projects in middle school.  In eighth grade, I had to do a holiday service project where I did community service around Thanksgiving and Christmas time and I had to create a video presentation to show the class what I did.  Also in eighth grade, my English class had to do a big research paper on the Holocaust.  In addition, we had to get into groups and create a video presentation about a certain event in the Holocaust.  Both projects were hard, because creating videos can be a little bit harder than writing a paper, especially creating a video presentation in a group.

            There are a few things that intimidate me and excite me about the upcoming multimedia project.  First of all, working in a group both intimidates and excites me.  Groups are hard to work in, especially when doing multimedia projects, because everyone usually has their own idea of how they want it to go and it’s hard to put everyone’s ideas together and make a good project.  Also, doing a project with many different personalities can be difficult.  You might have a couple people in the group that like to be leaders and they might clash.  Also, sometimes there’s a person or two that are lazy and don’t really want to commit to meeting times or put any effort toward the project.  However, I’m excited about the project because it will give me a chance to get to know some of the people in our class and multimedia projects are more fun to me than writing a paper by myself.

What I've Learned in English

            I have learned a lot about different topics in this English class so far this year including rhetoric, writing, and research.  Honestly, coming into this class, I had no idea what the word rhetoric even meant, but now I know a lot about it and what it is.  I’ve learned that from birth we are exposed to a lot of it – in magazines, on posters or billboards, on TV or in movies, and even in conversations or in the way people dress.  All of these things affect you and shape your opinions and ideas as you grow older. 

I also learned a lot about writing.  I’ve always been a horrible writer.  I’m still not too good at it, but I’ve improved a lot since I started taking this class.  I’ve learned a lot of different techniques for writing papers in class and by reading the book.  Things like learning how to write an annotated bibliography and an outline for my papers has really helped me.  I normally just sit down and write my paper from beginning to end which has always been difficult for me, but using these planning techniques has really helped me progress in my writing.

Another thing that I’ve learned a lot about in this class is researching and how to research.  When writing papers in high school, I would usually search what I was looking for in Google and just use one of the search results as a source.  In this class, I’ve learned that there are more sources than just books and websites.  I never knew that there were databases where you could search for specific articles and things like that, or that you could use things like interviews as sources.  Also, I’ve learned better ways to keep track of my sources, which I have never been good at.  Now I know various ways to record them so I don’t use the information and forget where I got it from.

             All of the things I’ve learned in this class so far will be very useful when doing other assignments for this class and for other classes.  I will use the new research techniques to help me with my research for other papers and lab reports and hopefully it will make them easier to write and cite sources for.  I will use what I’ve learned about writing in other classes throughout school and even in circumstances after college.  Overall, I have learned a lot of things in English class that I can apply to other classes, assignments, and even situations later in life.

Research Log #2

3-1 - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15160230/ns/health-mens_health/t/guys-
         have-body-issues-too/#.UTRMs1rwK6Q

This article from NBC news talks about how media also affects the body image of males.  An interview with Richard Simmons is included.  He talks about how advertisements that show chiseled men can actually affect guy’s opinions of themselves.  This article states that men are just very private when it comes to talking about their body image.  However, it also says that it’s not as big of a problem as it is for women because there isn’t a “requirement” for the way that men are supposed to look like there is for women.

3-1  http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/08/08/swinson.airbrushing.ads/

        index.html

This article talks not only about how the media affects the body image of women but also what women do to act on it.  Women use wrinkle creams, botox, diet pills, and cosmetic surgery to make themselves look more like the “ideal woman” that society has pressured women to look like.  It discusses a survey where girls were exposed to dolls with various body shapes and that the ones who were exposed to thinner dolls wanted to look thinner compared to those who saw dolls with a healthier body shape.  I can use this in my paper for statistical purposes.