Individual Reflection for Multimedia Project

Again, I think things went pretty well with my group. For the most part we all met and did what we were supposed to do. There were a couple of times when group members were not able to make our meetings but they still made sure they did the work they were responsible for. Overall, I would have to say that I am pretty satisfied with my group. I did not feel like I did all of the work, but at the same time I did not feel like I did none of the work. It felt like the work to complete this project was evenly split up between our five members. I think doing all of the prep work like the storyboard and the script really helped to organize our project and get it done in an efficient manner. I think our final project, at least what we have finalized now, turned out pretty well, and for the most part how we were expecting it to turn out.

Multimedia Reflection

So far my group has gotten along pretty well. It has been somewhat difficult for us to meet all the time because we all are leaving at different times for breaks, but Google Docs has been a real lifesaver. We’ve worked on our scripts and storyboards solely through that and it has worked out perfectly. When we were first deciding on our topics we had two main ones we were thinking of: small vs. large class sizes and a possible change in the evaluation of teachers. We thought that the small vs. large class sizes would be a lot more interesting as well as more applicable to us as students that usually can make the decision as to whether we have large or small class sizes, and if we can’t we can sometimes pick a time that is more conducive to having a lecture hall class. I really like the topic we chose, and I think my group will continue to work well together.

Multimedia Proposals

Going Against Stereotypes

My name is Nessa and I'm an 18 year old living in Ireland!














I play on the field hockey team here, and am quite
good. I'm hoping to play at university. Although I enjoy field hockey, my favorite sport to watch is men's football.

Like I said, I'm from Ireland, Dublin to be more exact.

I can speak and understand Gaelic, but I speak English for the most part, especially because I travel around the UK often.

I eat a lot of normal food, but one thing I absolutely love for my mum to make is Nettle soup, absolutely delicious!

My parents are from Galway, and I lived there for a short time, but then moved to Dublin when I grew older. Galway is said to be the cultural capital of Ireland, and I love visiting.

Obviously I LOVE The Script because they were born here in Dublin, I've seen them play a few times. They are amazing! And even though they were founded in Northern Ireland, I still like Snow Patrol.

Over the summer my family and I often times go to England, and spend time in Brighton and London. Both beautiful cities!

Research Paper Outline

Recycling Paper Outline

I. Introduction

1.     Hook: Do you really think about what happens when you throw that water bottle in the recycling bin? What about when you toss away the newspaper from this morning?

2.     Thesis: The cost effectiveness adds to the environmental benefits of recycling, it is not only good for the earth, but it is good for the pockets of the people.

3.     Implications: What was the conventional thought before? Why did people think that recycling was costly? Was it before and now after new improvements in the process is it not? How does it help the environment/economy? (just a few possibilities not go completely into it)

II. The Background Behind Recycling

o   History of recycling, how it all began, who thought of it, why, where it got started

o   The ‘advertisement’/enticement to get people to recycle à what’s the point? Why did people think it would be a good idea to start reusing things

III. Economics/Environmental Implications (split up into multiple paragraphs)

1.     How recycling helps the environment while saving money à landfills can stay open longer, meaning less money spent building new landfills (source 2)

2.     The different factors helping/hurting the effectiveness of recycling à introduce counter argument, in how if these factors don’t line up it’s not effective (source 1)

a.     How some types of recycling are cheaper than others à glass and plastic isn’t economical where as aluminum and paper are money saving (source 4)

b.     Make sure to fully define the counter argument here à how certain times recycling can be highly ineffective/costly

3.     Taxpayer’s money & how the government spends in on recycling à goes with 1, possibly put in together with #1 (source 3)

4.     Give numerical data about the costs of recycling/the routes and what they are picking up in the routes. Bigger bins & how many bins at each house can cut down on costs (source 5)

IV. Conclusion

o   Summarize the main arguments of the paper

o   So what? à recycling does help the environment but also can help the economy of the cities/towns that put in place these programs (qualifying argument?)

o   Many people pass judgment on recycling before knowing the actual facts, not exactly a bad thing but can hurt the overall image of recycling

Research Summary

So far most of my sources have helped support my claim one way or another. I have a lot of information from both primary and secondary sources about how some recycling programs (like those of aluminum, glass, and newspaper) are cost effective and how others are not (like those of steel and plastic). A couple of my sources also give statistics and numbers on the cost effectiveness of certain programs, which helps to solidify my argument. Some of my sources also have given me possible counterarguments to include in my essay. While I still should research a bit more about these counterarguments I have most of what I should say about them in order to make my opinion stronger and more valid. I still need to create an outline and to find a few more academic sources that completely back my claim, but many of the sources I have already found have been really helpful. While I still think my thesis needs some work, here is what I have so far: The cost effectiveness of recycling sometimes outweighs the environmental benefits it provides.

Annotated Bibliography Pt. 2

"Exploring the Cost of Recycling." Environmental Nutrition 1 Aug. 2011, 34th ed., sec. 8: 3. Academic OneFile. Web. 2 Oct. 2011.

• This source gives me information about both sides of my argument. It goes into a lot of the factors that can determine the effectiveness of recycling, like if towns or cities have multiple bins, if there is high or low participation, and the type of processing system they use for recyclables. I can use some of the information, like how when all of the factors presented are aligned make recycling both cost and environmentally effective, and research it further to get numerical data and cold, hard facts to add to my argument. I can also talk about how each factor they talk about really affects the overall process of recycling and which costs the most, etc, etc.

"Recycling Economics: Higher Costs Are An Illusion - DNR." Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Web. 02 Oct. 2011.

• This source summarizes a lot of the main points as to why recycling is economical, as well as environmental. It also gives some more information debunking a lot of the claims made by those against recycling. It also explains a little bit more about the energy savings and monetary savings that go along with recycling. For instance, recycling allows landfills to be open longer, which in turn saves tax payers money because it is more expensive to open a new landfill than it is to recycle and help keep old ones functioning.

Schulze, Peter C. "LexisNexis® Academic & Library Solutions." Business Solutions & Software for Legal, Education and Government | LexisNexis. The Globe and Mail, 2 May 1992. Web. 8 Oct. 2011.

• Although short, this source did give me some valuable information about certain costs of recycling and how it can save people money. It also gave me some information as to where the taxpayer's money goes/how they are saving when the government puts in place a recycling program. Not only that but it did give a glimpse into environmental savings that come along with recycling.

Earth Talk. "Do the Benefits of Recycling Outweigh the Costs?" Environmental Issues - News and Information about the Environment. About.com. Web. 9 Oct. 2011.

• This source could be considered unreliable (even though About.com is a part of the New York Times Company), however it did offer me some valuable information/pointed me in the right direction to expand on what it gave me. This source helped me outline possible counter arguments as well as ways to debunk them. It talks about how some forms of recycling, like glass and plastic, often times cost more than paper and aluminium which is why those specific programs are the first to go.

Jablonowski, Ed. "Cutting the cost of recycling." American City & County Apr. 1995: 46.Academic OneFile. Web. 9 Oct. 2011.

• This article gives a lot of quantitative data/facts about the costs of recycling. It goes into how much it costs for each route that is driven for what they are picking up (is it glass? or newspaper? if so those are the cheapest. Steel and plastic appear to be the most expensive) and compares it to the cost to hire the crew to do this job. This source also talks about how if there are bigger bins for recycling that would cut down on the number of trips the crew would have to make at each house when collecting (from 2 to one), which would in turn cut down on costs because by spending less time picking up bins at one house, the crew would spend more time making stops. This would in turn increase their productivity for the day.

Annotated Bibliography

After deciding on my final topic (the effectiveness of recycling on both the economy and earth) I've found a few sources to base my information/argument on. Here are a couple:

"Exploring the Cost of Recycling." Environmental Nutrition 1 Aug. 2011, 34th ed., sec. 8: 3. Academic OneFile. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DA-SORT&inPS=true&prodId=AONE&userGroupName=clemson_itweb&tabID=T003&searchId=R2&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm¤tPosition=2&contentSet=GALE|A263040958&&docId=GALE|A263040958&docType=GALE&role=>.

• This source gives me information about both sides of my argument. It goes into a lot of the factors that can determine the effectiveness of recycling, like if towns or cities have multiple bins, if there is high or low participation, and the type of processing system they use for recyclables. I can use some of the information, like how when all of the factors presented are aligned make recycling both cost and environmentally effective, and research it further to get numerical data and cold, hard facts to add to my argument. I can also talk about how each factor they talk about really affects the overall process of recycling and which costs the most, etc, etc.

"Recycling Economics: Higher Costs Are An Illusion - DNR." Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Web. 02 Oct. 2011. <http://dnr.mo.gov/env/swmp/pubs-reports/rececon.htm>.

• This source summarizes a lot of the main points as to why recycling is economical, as well as environmental. It also gives some more information debunking a lot of the claims made by those against recycling. It also explains a little bit more about the energy savings and monetary savings that go along with recycling. For instance, recycling allows landfills to be open longer, which in turn saves tax payers money because it is more expensive to open a new landfill than it is to recycle and help keep old ones functioning.

Research Log

When I first started thinking about what I wanted to do my research paper on I thought something to do with the environment and being "green" would be interesting and relevant. From there I bounced between topics like carbon footprints, nuclear waste, oil spills, and finally landed on recycling. Here are a few sources I found for the other topics:

Carbon Footprints
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2009/dec/07/copenhagen-climate-change-summit-carbon-emissions-data-country-world

• A lot of the other articles I was looking at about carbon footprints either were just merely defining   them or giving you a calculator to find out what your individual footprint was. I also couldn't really think of an argument that would be sufficient enough for an entire paper (or one that I found really interesting).

Nuclear Waste
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/radwaste/
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/wast.htm

• This topic is probably my second choice just because there is a lot about it that you can research and at least a couple of different angles you could come at this issue with. Not only that but I feel like this is something that a lot of people hear about but don't really spend a lot of time thinking about.

Oil Spills
http://www.epa.gov/oilspill/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/20/bp-oil-spill-study_n_972219.html

• One of the main reasons I didn't really think this would be a good topic (at least for me) is because of the recent events with BP and the oil spill in the Gulf. I figured while is was probably more than enough research, but that a lot of the arguments are probably over done, so I more or less passed.

Recycling
When I finally decided I wanted to research something about recycling I began brainstorming the many different facets of it. I thought about the typical pros and cons list, availability/presence, and the effectiveness vs cost of recycling as a whole. I decided I'd like to research the last topic (effectiveness of recycling) because it seemed the most interesting to me, and there is a lot there that I feel like people don't necessarily know.

Here are a few sources that helped shape my decision/I found might help me support my stance:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0921344993900062
http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/reduce/crbdrop.pdf
http://www.ilsr.org/recycling/recyclingmeansbusiness.html

Styling Speaks Louder than Words

Many people, girls especially, tend to have a distinct style in how they dress.

There's Preppy:              

Goth:

Sporty:

Hipster:

                                 

And a vast array of other styles. There are a lot of people that I know that generally adhere to one style of dress no matter what the occasion. So even though it's Prom, you can still tell their style is preppy by the kind of dress they get and how they accessorize. I however, don't really see myself as a one style kind of girl. I buy my clothes from a lot of different places, and not just one. Some of my friends refuse to shop anywhere else besides Forever 21 or Urban Outfitters, while I find something I like and get it. I think this shows that I'm a go with the flow type of person. I wear shorts and a t-shirt to class the majority of the time, but when I go out to a nice dinner with my family or just out with my friends I wear nicer clothes. I'm a pretty flexible person and I think that shows through what I wear. Not that I'm saying that only dressing one way means a person is uptight and rigid, but sometimes people are less willing to branch out with their clothing, and if they're less willing to branch out with that what else might they be less willing to do? I think that you can tell a lot about a person by the way that they dress, but at the same time I don't think a person can base their judgement of another person just by what they are wearing. Not all people who dress preppy are uptight snobs, just like not all people who dress goth are mean and scary.

A Picture to Define a Generation

Picking this picture to define our generation may and will come across as cliché and way over done, however I think it really does speak about our age group. A lot of the time, whether we like to admit it or not, the first thing many of us do when we get on our computer after class (and even in class) is log on and check our Facebook page. It isn't just that we as a whole spend a generous amount of time on this site randomly going through pages and liking things, but we also learn a lot of things about the world around us just by scrolling down our newsfeed. I know I hear a lot about what is going on, at least most of the major news worthy events, via twitter or people's facebook statuses. While that may not be the most reliable source, I know I'm not the only one who finds things out that way. We as a generation are starting to rely less and less on watching the news and reading the paper when we get usually get the gist just by scrolling down a twitter feed. Which leads me to my next point about this picture, it isn't just meant to represent solely facebook, but the many ways people now a days use to network with others. People use blogs (such as these or tumblr) to communicate with each other about their days or to comment on happenings in society. Others use photo sharing sites like Picasa or Snapfish to update others on their lives via pictures. Take the Facebook page for this class for example, not only are we using Facebook to connect and communicate with other people, but we are using it as a forum to get help with something in class. Anyway you look at it, our generation has changed and molded to incorporate social networking sites into the many facets of our lives. 

Visual Rhetoric, Pt. 2

This past week we spent some more time in class discussing visual rhetoric. This is obviously very fitting considering the fact that our first paper is on visual rhetoric, more specifically the rhetorical devices companies use in advertisements to persuade their targeted audience to buy or support their products. We discussed articles that we had read in our books in groups and then presented our thoughts to the class. This type of discussion/presentation oftentimes helps me to understand a certain work a lot better because I tend to not think about a lot of things other people catch on to. It is the whole looking at things with a different perspective that sometimes can get me, and when I listen to what others think about what we are discussing it helps me learn a lot more about whatever we are talking about. Not only that but peer editing (like we did for our thesis statements) helps me too because I usually do not like going over my writing right after I've written it, so when we do things like that in class it makes it so much easier to get help with my papers and things like that.

Visual Rhetoric

This week we spent a lot of time reading and discussing visual rhetoric. Visual rhetoric can come in a plethora of ways: TV commercials, print advertisements, pictures, movie posters, etc. Any way they come, they still aim to persuade you in some way, whether you realize it or not. The easiest to analyze are print ads and TV commercials, because the companies are always aiming to persuade the audience that their product is better than someone else's. This means that their use of ethos, pathos, and logos can become quite obvious if you take the time to actually pay attention to how the ad or commercial is affecting you. Pictures are a lot harder to analyze, because while you may be able to pick out things that appeal to your emotions or things that make the photographer credible, it is a lot harder to explain exactly why they made the picture like they did. To me it is a lot like analyzing poetry or a short story because you are not given a lot to go off of when trying to analyze the purpose behind their actions. It could go many different ways when deciding why a person made a picture darker or lighter, why they made it black and white instead of color, or why they took it at a specific angle. The only person who could tell you the exact answer is the author of the picture.

Review and Déjà vu

Walking into a college level English class on the first day was some what nerve racking. I've never been that confident in the subject, and although I know in the long run taking 103 will help, I was dreading it. I had taken AP Language and Composition in high school, so I wasn't completely new to the expectations of a college level class. However, the first thing we talked about was "rhetoric" and although I couldn't remember the meaning off the top of my head, this was a topic we had spent many a classes on in AP Lang. After doing the reading assignment, I came to the conclusion that this was a review of what I had been taught in AP. Even though it wasn't the exact same, I still had some confidence (which is new for me in an English class). Not only that, but the part in our text book that refers to body image and self-esteem was almost some of the exact same things my teacher had taught my class about right before I graduated. I really enjoyed my AP Lang class so I'm excited to see what this semester will bring.