I thought this article was interesting since you don’t hear about this very often. Schools usually have companies here and there providing them food for students/faculty. Since this school had a great idea to grow there own food, it stopped the outside companies. It’s a much healthier way to provide for the school. With child obesity on the rise, this school has the right idea! It’s time to stop with all these greasy, unhealthy meals. I’m glad this school is trying their best with this project. Nora said, “The most important part of the project is to bring food education and fresh produce into a neighborhood where there is very little of that. Diabetes and other health problems can be avoided by a decent food education. I think it’s important to consider all neighborhoods in NYC when thinking about greening cities and gardens. Often it’s done in places where people can afford to spend time thinking about these things. It’s about getting to all kids early and turning them into life long healthy eaters. If they become healthy eaters as kids, that turns into demand and buying power at the farmers market and for local food products” (Painten, Nora). This quote should go out to the entire country because health is a big problem like I said earlier. It can show the country that growing food can be fun, and healthy too! Students as well as faculty members can learn a lot from this project once it goes through. This article really helped me for my research question because it’s about educating students about food. It gave me a little bit of insight about how schools can stop childhood obesity in and out of the school system.
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What is it? From reading this, I found out that collaborative writing isn’t the easiest form of writing. It requires a lot of dedicated work to accomplish your goal(s). For instance, you should be able to brainstorm, discuss and set goals as you collaborate. In my case, I’m working with a partner to discover how school lunches are healthier than McDonalds. Together, we’re going to draft/edit what we got from our interview as well as other sources to discover the answer. The author states, “And while knowing the topic of the conversation is essential, the latter piece of information is equally critical. For though you are familiar with the events of the story, what details are included, excluded, emphasized, or over shadowed will depend greatly on the context in which the story is told” (3). I thought this quote was great because it’s not just the topic of conversation that matters. There is so much more detail when collaborating.
When it comes to this form of writing, there are so many activities going on during a conversation. "For example, in conversations that are, quite literally ongoing, like the party we have just described or a class discussion, club meeting, or family gathering, collaborative participation in the conversation is marked by routine cognitive activities: listening and responding, collecting and recollecting information, and experiencing immediate adjustments in thinking and, consequently, in comments" (5). When I interview my participant, I'm going to listen, respond, and take in as much information as I can. I also liked how the author mentioned parlors. I totally agree with her because you are involved in the two-way process. The entire conversation starts the moment you walk in and the moment you leave. You never know where the conversation will go. In addition, when you collaborate with others, you find the strength and weaknesses that you might keep or not. My Thoughts: After watching Food Inc, I was shocked at how America produces and distributes food to consumers. We eat these almost everyday and never think about where our food comes from. All we see is a nice packaged item with a price tag. From there I was amazed at how some workers are treated horribly because most of them are minorities. They probably don’t want to work in those conditions, but it’s the only way they can make money. I think that the managers and owners of these companies are disgusting. I don’t understand how they can sleep at night knowing that they’re going to wake up and slaughter animals. I understand it’s their job, but they’re so barbaric about it. As much as I love food, it’s kind of difficult to look at anything the same. Just watching people eat fast food disgusts me more (not that I never do either). But there are some people who eat fast food everyday. That is gross. You look at these fast food giants such as Mcdonalds and wonder why they’re so cheap. From watching this film, I understand now. The main thing I got from this film was that these companies don’t care about their workers, animals, or even consumers. All they care about is profit. Money is what drives them since they don’t care about anything else. They’ll do anything it takes to make a profit even if it’s a dark secret that nobody knows. Overview:
In summary, this film was about how far these food companies will go to make profit. Food Inc. shows viewers how everything they produce isn't always what we think. There is a dark side to food production. It shows you how the food we buy gets to supermarkets and fast food chains. The film explains how regardless of how workers and animals are treated, they'll go to the extreme just to make ends meet. All these companies care about it money. Whether it's a "healthy" way or using growth hormones, these animals are treated terribly. They'll buy the cheapest feeding as well as cheap labor. In addition, Food Inc. also shows how the health and safety concerns of animals, workers and consumers are meaningless. Nothing will ever be healthy and natural since almost everything is made from science now. From this being said, each company wants to make profit faster and faster every year no matter what it takes. 1. Are school lunches healthy for students today?
2. How do students handle their choices for school lunch? 3. Do families choose unhealthy foods due to price? 4. How is diabetes affecting the United States from food? 5. Is grass fed better than corn fed? 6. Are cage-free eggs healthier? 7. How sanitary are food production companies? 8. Why are Americans "addicted" to fast food chains? 9. What does "organic" really mean? 10. How do food production companies treat their workers? After reading through the introduction, I felt like I understood it more than other readings that have been assigned. Within this introduction, reflexive and reflective approaches came about. I’ve heard of these once or twice in school, but I honestly forgot what they mean until this reading. The author states reflexive as discovering and critiquing ones claims or assumptions. My understanding of it is that reflexive means writing and evaluating experiences that have happened in your life. You look back at these experiences and wonder why these things happened. I liked the quote, “Reflexivity involves a commitment to both attending to what we believe and examining how we came to hold those beliefs while we are engaged in trying to make sense of an other” (5). For me it stood out because you should be committed to anything you write. If you don’t, then your paper is just words without meaning on it.
In contrast, the other word that gets confused a lot is reflective. When writing a reflective essay, one must simply look at it as “a mirror.” You’re simply reflecting off of what you see and experience. This is different from reflexive because you’re not evaluating anything. For instance, people write a reflective essay about their past summer vacation. They’re not going to analyze it like a reflexive essay would do. It seems like they’re more personal than something you have to research. When it comes to writing either reflexive or reflective, you always have to be committed to who your audience is. From what I gathered, oral history is getting historical (past) information through the use of videos, audio or direct interviews. I think that it’s important to get the information through people who have worked or observed in the topic that you’re researching. It shouldn’t just be a random person. I feel like it’s better to interview more than one person, depending on the topic of course. Even though these questions might be “historical,” they can help with future concerns or events. I think that this is how and why historians use oral history. Historians might focus on the past, but the present and future are a concern as well. For instance, if I was to interview someone about school lunches, I would ask someone who has been in the business for at least 5-10 years. I would think that they’d be concerned about the future of school lunches and the concerns about them. Just because someone "was there" doesn't mean they fully understand "what happened." I thought this was an interesting quote because it’s true. When you interview someone about a topic, you should make sure they know what they’re talking about. If they don’t know, then they’re “useless.” no matter who you interview, they need to be a reliable source. In the end, we all have different opinions on topics, but it’s good to know that they aren’t all the same.
Within research comes various ways of finding the answers to questions. From this reading, there was multiple ways of finding answers through qualitative vs quantitative research. I’ve learned briefly about them both before in a public relations class which helped me in understanding the two. From what I’ve gathered, qualitative is much more to the point such as interviews. This includes things like words or pictures. There is no counting involved. However, quantitative is much more numerical. It’s simply an analysis of numerical data. In this article, the author states, "The insistence on numbers for use in positivistic human science research allows researchers to make justifiable claims about the reality they are studying. Numbers, scientists sometimes assert, are less ambiguous than language, and thus their interpretation ismore straightforward" (Clandinin, 19). I enjoyed how all four "turns" come together to make a great narrative inquiry. It seems like you need all four because if you don't, things might fall apart while doing the research. The most important part I liked was validity. I think that it is crucial to have a valid arguments and research to prove any point. If it's not valid, then what is it? Overall, if I was to choose one of these research methods, it would lean more towards quantitative because I like using surveys and questionnaires.
Since I've already presented my Twitterive, I've learned a lot about it. This isn't just from me having an epiphany, but from watching more Twitterives. Each Twitterive has been presented with an amazing story behind it, while giving me motivation to revise mine. When I presented my Twitterive last week, I just knew I had a story, but never showed it. Ever since then, I've made multiple corrections to show my story, and not just tell it. The list below shows my corrections, but my main 3 revision goals are highlighted in green.
1. To have more dialogue within the story itself. I want to add more dialogue between Carmen and I so that I can show the reader our connection during Christmas morning. 2. Make more of a flashback with Christmas Eve (since she always helped me put out the gifts under the tree for my family). I'll definitely add more showing this scene since I forgot to add this. 3. Enhance the popcorn photo, but make a short scene out of it explaining the significance it has on me connecting to Carmen. 4. I'm going to try and find a Christmas song for the beginning of the story to get the reader in the "Christmas spirit." 5. I want to mix in some happiness as well. 6. I'll most likely take out the quote at the end since it's not really needed for the story, but I might leave it. 7. I'm going to keep my ending but switch it up a bit by adding more dialogue between Carmen and I saying goodbye to one another (like a last conversation). 8. I'll try to end it with the song, "Silent Night" to close everything out. Before this class, I was introduced to Weebly by another professor. I thought the entire idea of making a website was awesome! Weebly has helped me with this assignment and others as well. Throughout this assignment, Weebly was very easy to use when it came time to making my Twitterive for class. I think Weebly is a great resource to have not just in this course, but in all courses. For instance, you can make your own website instead of a mundane powerpoint presentation. Weebly gets the user (myself in this case) to be more creative (using images and videos). Weebly has made me a more creative online writer because of how it gets me to be more interactive with the people that view my website.
Another helpful piece was Youtube. Youtube helped me in my Twitterive by getting a few of my main points across. Right from the start, my Twitterive has a Youtube video of "Jingle Bell Rock." It even helped my upload a video about Carmen to show my audience how important she was to me. Whether it's uploading music, lyrics or just a funny video, Youtube is a very useful tool to show more and tell less. Lastly, I wanted to mention Twitter. I don't have much to say about Twitter because I dislike it very much (view my Twitter blog). I thought it helped a little by giving me room to express my feelings about anything such as school, family, etc. The downside was being limited to 140 words. I can't stand being limited to things like this because I usually have a lot more to say than 140 words. Overall, for me personally, Twitter was just OK. The main thing I took away from presenting my Twitterive was "show, don't tell." This was my biggest fault, but I now understand this concept better. I went with my presentation as a draft since I knew it wasn't 100%. As a guy, I'm not the most creative person like others in class, but I will do my best to revise my story about Carmen.
My revisions will be as followed (for now at least): 1. To have more dialogue within the story itself. I want to add more dialogue between Carmen and I so that I can show the reader our connection during Christmas morning. 2. Make more of a flashback with Christmas Eve (since she always helped me put out the gifts under the tree for my family). I'll definitely add more showing this scene since I forgot to add this. 3. Enhance the popcorn photo, but make a short scene out of it explaining the significance it has on me connecting to Carmen. 4. I'm going to try and find a Christmas song for the beginning of the story to get the reader in the "Christmas spirit." 5. I want to mix in some happiness as well. 6. I'll most likely take out the quote at the end since it's not really needed for the story, but I might leave it. 7. I'm going to keep my ending but switch it up a bit by adding more dialogue between Carmen and I saying goodbye to one another (like a last conversation). 8. I'll try to end it with the song, "Silent Night" to close everything out. I appreciate all the feedback because I want to continue revising the story the best I can. It's not the easiest assignment, but every little bit helps. I'm going to try to "show, not tell" the connections between Carmen, Christmas, and myself. |
AuthorI'm a student at Rowan University studying Writing Arts and Communication Studies. Archives
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