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Overall I felt English 103 was a pretty good course. You made the class much more interesting than I could have been through in class activities. I enjoyed the group activities that allowed students to interact with their fellow classmates. I also enjoyed how these activities usually related to the reading in the text book which then students a chance to revisit and apply the reading to a real life scenario. This helped me really learn the material as opposed to just reading the material and forgetting it. I would have liked more clarity on what was should have been changed on our papers or what was expected from our papers to earn grades. I felt I put a lot of time into my papers and the results were not what I hoped for. I feel that more instruction would have let me better use my time by fixing the specific problems with the paper. Lastly on a more positive note I real enjoyed the rest of the class and I really enjoyed having you as a teacher and being in your favorite class. I hope you enjoyed the class as much as I feel your students did. I also liked how you did your best to make the required assignments more as interesting as possible and gave us free range on our topics for all of our papers and projects. I also loved how you brought us food, you were my only class that did anything like this. It was actions like these that made the class grow together and really close nit community.  I will miss your class next semester and wish we had yearlong classes like in high school. I hope you have a great life and that we run into each other on some time in the future.

Progress on Media Project

So far during this week gold team has made good progress towards completing our project. We have meet a few times out of class at the library and gotten a good amount of work done.  The group went to the library and checked out a flip cam. Part of the group filmed students on the bridge, started creating the video. I created a title screen, with the name of this project and our group names. This entailed first arranging the intro to our video, which is a statement on how the media and the world’s culture have changed since the 1950’s. Next I arranged the photo essay which starts off our video. The photo essay is composed of pictures of modern day celebrities who are engaged in the types of relationships we will be talking about in the video. I added titles to each section of the essay and did my best to creatively display all the photos. As I was in the middle of this the part of our group that had been filming returned. I finished up the photo essay and then uploaded their videos to my computer. Next I imported the video clips into the movie.  Then our group meeting was basically over. At the next meeting we had we planned the rest of the week and worked on the video, created a survey to collect data, along with working on the accompanying paper. Both of these meeting were very productive and put us in a good position to complete this project well.  My group had another meeting, which I missed where they worked on the paper amongst other things. The next day, another group member sent out an email out with more video interviews she had done. I then added the videos to our group’s video.  During class today we planned our next meeting and I continued to edit the video.  The plan is for each of us to write our quarter of the paper and me to work more on editing the video by Sunday.

Multimedia Project

So far our multimedia project is coming along pretty well. We have chosen to make a project on the types of relationships which modern tv shows portray. We are focusing on comedies, and the various types of comedies showing interracial relationships, homosexual relationships, and large age gaps in relationships. We are currently looking at TV shows such as Glee, Sex in the City, Modern Family, although this list is currently expanding. One problem I have with this topic is my limited to no knowledge on the majority of these TV Shows, although I do not for see it to be a big problem as there is plenty of resources that summarize the events in these shows. Also my group mates’ expansive knowledge on the subject should make up for my own lack of knowledge. On the first brainstorming day we took most of the time to pick a reasonable topic. We went through a couple of ideas before settling on the topic of types of relationships that modern TV shows are integrating into everyday life. Next we started our outline. We ran out of time having the intro to the outline done and a little of the next section, drawn out on paper. We started this class period with more brainstorming and discussion on the exact topic we wanted to focus on and the argument we wanted to make about the topic.  This was when we narrowed our topic to how modern comedies show these types of relationships. We are considering even going to so far as to say that modern comedies do a better job of integrating these types of relationships than any other American TV shows. We are also considering showing or talking about how the showing of these types of relationships has changed from the past to now. We also thought it might be a good idea to interview students and professors of different genders, ages, and backgrounds to get others views on the issue. We may take a poll of people to see what they think about something related to our topic. The video may include stats which we could find that say how often these types of relationships are found in comedies. Our group is planning to meet on Sunday to finalize the storyboard which we started creating today. Overall I feel like we have a good start and will finish the project on time.

A Picture

This is a picture my father took in Hawaii. The church was a small church  along a road which circled the island of Maui if my memory serves me correctly. There had been a light drizzle, occurring sporadically throughout the long and winding drive. The road which had many one lane bridges was literally cut into the side of a mountain. Therefore most of the drive was winding along the coast line. The drive was very scenic and we took frequent stops to take pictures and look around. There were periodic stands selling food to the locals and tourists along the road, along with a botanical garden and many waterfalls. One of the many stops we made was at a local fruit stand which had great tasting fruits. We stopped at many large waterfalls and even went on a short 3 mile hike to the top of one waterfall and the bottom of another. After this we were getting tired as we had gotten up early to complete the whole drive in one day. As the car continued to bounce and wind around the cliff road, the road started to slowly drift away from the coast only ever so slightly. Soon after we came upon this church, which was the church of many of those who lived on this more isolated side of the island. I had seen the double rainbow out the back window of the car, but my parents didn’t want to stop to look at this church or get a picture of the double rainbow. After a little convincing we stopped and got out in a light drizzle. We got a picture of the rainbow and then decided to move walk over and get the picture of the double rainbow with the church in it. We took several shots and I think this one came out the best, although the second rainbow is not a visible in the picture as it had been in real life.  We got back in the car and finished the drive. It was a long but spectacular day, which I will always cherish as a great memory with my parents. Later we even got a small canvas of the picture printed and it is a really cool sight to see.  The trip overall was great, we had great weather, great food, and great fun.  I hope to go back sometime soon, and maybe even finish the trail along the napali coastline on the island of kuaiwi.

Writing Center Trip

I went to the writing center and saw Chelsie Messenger. I brought her a three fourths completed version of my rough draft of my research paper and my outline. We first went over my thesis statement and then the point that I was trying to make with my paper. I explained to her the issue of Facebook tracking users through the Internet using Internet cookies. I also explained to her generally how the tracking worked.  She commented on my introduction and then we moved on to my outline. We talked through the outline and she said that it seemed like I would have enough to write about. She told me what she thought would be the strongest points in my paper, and what sections I should write the most about. The three main sections she thought would be great for my paper were similar cases in the courts, the lessons learned from Facebook’s tracking and my talking points for the conclusion which would tie everything together. We talked through the conclusion of the paper. I asked her about the best way to put technical information that I needed in my paper into my own words. She recommended reading the information and then putting it down before typing the information. Overall I felt that the sessions at the writing center was pretty helpful, although I would have liked her to have read through or listened to me read more of my paper. This would have resulted in more revision actually taking place while I was there, which I had expected to be one of the most useful things I would get out of my meeting at the writing center. We took about 26 minutes and then the meeting was over. She was very kind and helpful. I would have like the writing center to have more individual booths rather than the table I sat at which was in the middle of the room but the table was not that bothersome. I also took a few notes during the meeting and they were useful when it came time to revise my rough draft. I think I should have taken more notes as they would most likely be useful as well. I think it would be helpful if they encouraged note taking or promoted it in some fashion. They could even provide a preformatted sheet with specific sections for different types of corrections that they generally make. All in all it was a pleasant and helpful experience.