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Progress Blog #10

I am still writing my final project. It is much more challenging than what I expected it to be. I am having the hardest time getting any responses to my survey-no matter where I post the link. People are not taking my survey and I wonder if I truly have people around me who care at all about me passing this class-this is the informal me talking. The formal me says that this class has been one of the more enjoyable-I have had the experience of mixing social media along with instructional time. I have learned more about how people do mixed with what they say that actually makes a statement. The quote, “A picture is worth ten thousand words (Barnard, 1927)” takes the meaning of literacy a long way for me. I can see meaning in images so much clearer and that is what literacy is all about. I would find images relating to my fandom in the beginning and have to research what it meant to become “literate” with the image. Now, as I have read, I can see images along with minimal words and know what the image refers to based on the text. Also, the context of the words of my fandom is consistent: run, play, fast, down, explosive, trade, sign, contract-all these things are essentially important during this time because of the draft that happens in a few days. The energy surrounding who will be drafted to what team is exponential. As I look at this, I wonder how this all relates to literacy. I think it relates because you have to have some understanding of what you are studying.

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Progress Blog #9

I am in the planning stages of writing my final project. I have printed off all of my essays with the markups (which have not been many, thankfully) and as I read over them, I realize I truly have developed as I read the course material and learn more about literacy in its natural environment. People do not post what they want; they actually post things that are relevant to the timing of the season. It is like there is a flow-right after football season, there is a high flow of chatter, talk and it is all energy. Some people are extremely vocal about how things went during the season. Some are very comical about it, especially if their team was not one in the playoffs or the Super Bowl. Some people are even emotional about it; some post angry videos and some even cry. What I realize is that there are emotionally charged energies that flow through the football season. Most fans start with their hopes high, as in this is their team’s year to come out on top. They put a lot of faith into their new recruits to mesh well with the existing team members, and as the season wears on, interests spikes or plummets depending on a number of factors. Two of the most important factors are whether the fans are die hard fans, and whether the team comes into the season with performances that are constantly disappointing fans. What I have also realized is that, outside of the Dallas Cowboys community or fandom, people are not necessarily accepting. They kind of pick and choose if you are really a fan depending on the depth of a discussion one can carry with them. That varying level of acceptance makes one have to sit back and watch the interactions and study the overall concept of football, then study their favorite team to be completely accepted as a true fan, in my opinion. I am a football fan, but I must interject that as I have opened my eyes and ears to the fandom practices I realize that the way people interact as fans is completely different than what I expected to see even in a subjective point of view. 

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Progress Blog #8: I am approaching the end of the semester and I feel more confident in my ability to identify literacy practices within the Dallas Cowboy’s fandom than what I did before I started this class. Sometimes, people keep themselves engaged with football by developing what they think would be the best routines or draft picks for the upcoming season. Other people take this time to study the football league as a whole during the break: looking into developing players, potential trades to and from other teams and how responsive fans are during the off season. This is a good look at how people keep themselves entertained during the off season. Combined with fan art and cosplay, potential schedule planning takes a fan from “wishing it were football season” to feeling like it’s time winding down. Peoples attitudes toward the football season remain hopeful and encourage drafts from college teams that they feel would best support the existing team. It seems that there is heavy anticipation to get the season started, and looking at this image, you can imagine yourself bundled up on the couch, with a big plate of Thanksgiving food preparing to watch the Seattle Seahawks come out in their navy and lime green. Maybe one can imagine themselves watching that Red Cardinal uniform and thinking about if everything is ready for the midnight Christmas present opening they will have to endure in a few hours. Images such as these invoke the feelings of “what-if” and what the future holds. 

2017 Dallas Cowboys Schedule Prediction via /r/cowboys http://ift.tt/2oKTfEp

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Progress Blog #7: My Photo Essay...

did not go as planned. I thought I was supposed to describe in detail my photographs for someone who could not view them. I realized that I related the images to my fandom that I used as Artifacts much better on my progress blog than I did in my essay. I did learn that describing fan art is much harder because I am going off of what the image means to me or what I think it conveys without knowing the real intent of the artist. I think for some of the pictures, the image was captured at just the right time to be able to caption it about something else. The picture I am referring to is the one of Tony Romo when he is smiling and sitting back looking relaxed. Someone may have just captured that image at the right time. But this image was captured, then someone captioned it, highlighting that Romo was sitting back thinking about his options of whether he would stay with the Cowboys, be traded off, or become a CBS news analyst. Another image that was not so cut and dry was the fan art image of Bill Belichick’s head on the body of a devil, along with Dan Bailey’s head on the body of what appeared to be Jesus. They were on a hill top where Belichick is offering Bailey something and Bailey seems to be refusing. Understanding this art took some research and it turns out that Belichick is known for not being upstanding at all times. His team was fined $1 million dollars for balls being inflated incorrectly, and then they lost their season picks for the upcoming year. I am not completely clear on what Bailey was offered, but his answer in the art (judging by his body language) was to refuse whatever was offered. I do have the opportunity to recompose my WA4, and what I plan to do is rewrite it and possibly reconstruct my images to include the ones that I listed on my blog. The literacy event that I can identify in at least one of my images is how people will use randomly captured images, use words to connect a thought related to the football happenings at that time and then post the image along with the literature as if that was the intent of the photo. The literacy event that I can see happening as of now is there are a lot of mock drafts being posted by various sources. I think during the season, fans are all eyes and ears for the newly recruited players. However, during the off season, fans are busy seeing who may leave and who may end up being drafted to the team.

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Dallas Cowboys Fans...

I am doing an ethnographic study of the literacy used in the Dallas Cowboys fandom for my English Composition class. I have a brief 4 Question survey that can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6DNTTVS If a few people could fill this survey out, it would greatly help my research and my understanding of the Dallas Cowboy’s fandom literacy practices. All surveys are anonymous, and nothing is going to be published - this is for my class only. Thank you so much for your help!

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Looking back at Romo’s Legacy via /r/cowboys http://ift.tt/2o7Oxlj

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How do fans feel right now? Are they anticipating the draft? Are some teams dreading the draft because of slim pickings? Maybe their pick number is so far down the line and the person they want is going to be gone by the time they get a chance to pick. What about the prospects? Are they feeling the pressure? What are they thinking about right now? How are colleges feeling losing players to the NFL? This image portrays a couple of things. First, the history in this photo started from over 25 years ago. This is Emmit Smith, #22 of the Dallas Cowboys, who started with the NFL in 1990. The appreciation he seems to display in this photo is an elaborate expression of thanks. Usually, when people are looking to the sky with their hands held high and arms opened wide, they are giving thanks for something. There are many things he could be thankful for while holding a football in his hand, and among them is that this could have been a game changing pass or they could have won a game. Next, this illustrates the feelings of lots of fans now. They eagerly wait to see the next move of their favorite football team in the draft. Yet, they know the draft is coming, which also entails that the beginning of the foot ball season is not far away. 

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Wow. A very personable person. He looks like he is very comfortable, greeting people in an informal setting. If you do not know who this is, it just looks like people who are greeting each other. This show a humility that would otherwise be unseen or unnoticed. I wonder what fans would say this photo means to them about the “America’s Team” quarterback?

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Images like this one invoke the thought process, but those thoughts jump from one thing to the next: where were they in the photo where #98 is facing the camera? What call were they waiting on? Perhaps, they had just come off the field. Who did they play that day? Was this shot caught on film during the game or before? In the prayer circle, who leads the prayer? Who is behind the camera? That image of #88 is Dez Bryant. He “throws up the X” after every touchdown. Did he just make a touchdown? Or was he posing for the camera? Who is in the Salvation Army bucket? What made him jump inside? Ezekiel Elliott made this bucket famous for the “after-the-touchdown” celebration. What team were they playing? How did him jumping inside the bucket affect donations to the Salvation Army? What did this mean to Dallas Cowboy fans? This last moving image looks like Dak is preparing his body for something. He looks like he is stretching, but in a faster motion, he almost looks as if he is playing a video game. He looks focused and a little comical. 

COWBOYS 2017 Draft Needs: ~~Defensive End ~~Safety ~~Linebacker ~~Cornerback **2016 record: 13-3** **1st Rd Draft Pos.: 28 **

2016 Stats: (avg per game) Tot. Offense: 376.7 (5th) Rushing: 149.8 (2nd) Passing: 226.9 (23rd) Tot. Defense: 343.9 (14th) Rushing: 83.5 (1st) Passing: 260.4 (26th)

via IG: dallacowboys

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This is a reminder of a great day in football history. Dak Prescott’s signing day signaled for the Cowboys that maybe America’s team could get off to a better start in the season. He played as the QB all through college, had over 19 times as many passing yards in his senior year than in his freshman year and made 70 touchdown passes his entire college career. This image shows promise considering Romo’s 2014 and 2015 seasons, where he played a combined total of 19 games in a league where there are 16 games in a regular season. He had a combined total of 39 touchdown passes, and a little over 4500 yards for the two seasons. What may seem like a lot was hurtful for the Cowboys because of how many times Romo was hurt combined with the trust the team had built in him. Prescott showing up with such great stats energized everyone, and this picture, showing three different images says a lot about how people viewed him coming onto the team. His face shows a new image for the team, his actually signing shows that he is officially part of the team and the helmet solidifies his place on the Dallas Cowboys so anyone looking at these images can tell the player belongs to the team for which the helmet belongs.

Dak at his signing today.

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This is an exciting time for all football fans, it seems. The 2017 football draft has many people on the edge of their seat, but not only with the draft. People are excited about watching college football right now because that is where the prospects will come from. This is a popular sight among fans: creating mock drafts, highlighting who will leave, who will stay and who will be traded off. The mock draft highlights the thought process when it comes to how people think the teams will pick going in order according to need and performance from the previous year. This mock draft doesn’t seem very promising for the Cowboy’s but it is still impressive to see someone dedicate so much time to studying football for them to write an entire first round draft and write the explanations for each. Foot ball is broken down into divisions, so a person would have to know something about each team in each division in order to write an entire mock draft. That is pretty dedicated and impressive. 

Complete 2017 1st-Round Mock Draft: Cowboys Get Defensive Help

Complete 2017 1st-Round Mock Draft: Cowboys Get Defensive Help

The event that we have all been waiting for is almost upon us! The 2017 NFL Draft is now just a few weeks away and because of that, I decided it was time for me to put together my first complete first-round mock draft of the year.

I personally like to wait until approximately a month away from the NFL draft to do this. It gives me more time to collect all the information I need, which gives me a…

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Progress Blog #6: I have finally written...

the writing assignment #3 for Ethical Research. I know what it can be like to have a dumb question sitting in front of me and I do not know how to answer it except for “N/A”. I also know what it is like to have a question that I don’t quite have an answer to but I want to put something so I just put what I think the research question means. Being put in the position to have to conduct research and be on the asking end of the questions makes a big difference. Not only in the questions should make sense aspect, but I also have to ask question that lead to getting answers that will be able to be used for actual data. And I realize that questions should not be leading, but should attempt to get results and make the participants as comfortable as possible. 

I was late this week on my work. I just received the email of how the consent form is supposed to look. To my demise, the consent form that my professor is asking for looks nothing like the one I created. I used bullet points, bold printed font, and the whole nine. When I finally got a copy of the consent form, it was one paragraph with about six questions after the paragraph. I am stunned and frustrated. At this point, I feel like I have absolutely NO idea what I am supposed to be doing and I feel like I might just fail this assignment. 

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Progress Blog#5: Still in the process of...

writing my 3rd assignment. While it is a daunting task, what I take away from it is that I can learn how to conduct ethical research, learn how to ask questions that are meaningful and get true opinions for my research in a short amount of time. I did not know what it took to create an informed consent and the thought process it took to consider other people and their feelings when conducting research. I have been considering my research questions and now I am at a loss as to what I should ask to get the results for the final project. However, as I look at the documentation required for this survey, I realize that people are serious about their security and their privacy. I have had to really consider what precautions I will take going into this survey, and also place myself in the position of the participant instead of the surveyor. What kind of questions would I want someone to ask me? What kind of questions are going to get results for the survey? Are these questions really asking about my opinion? Is this a sensitive question? How do the questions play into getting results for the survey and for the end result which is the final project? When I finish this assignment I will come back and update with any new ideas I have. 

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I like how this takes the famous name of “The Roman Empire” and changes it into “The Romo Empire”. The image is over the AT&T Stadium, and he has a group of players with him who are excellent at running the ball and protecting him on offense. In order to understand this image, one would have to know that the Cowboys have not been doing well in the past few years, and now many people believe that the Cowboys have a strong enough lineup to make a good comeback.

by PBJpeg

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Here is an interesting one: Dallas Cowboys former head quarterback Tony Romo, who is now the back up quarterback to Dak Prescott, is sitting with a smile on his face with the caption, “CBS interested in Romo”. While most know that once Prescott hit the scene as the active QB when Romo was injured, he kind of fell back and allowed Prescott to take that lead role as QB. While Romo is not going to retire, this is an interesting prospect and would make most people excited to know that it is a possibility, even in the future, that he could be commentating on the games. However, in this image he looks like he is happy about the opportunity, however real or unreal it may be, to be considered for live coverage commentating. Taken into context, knowing what we know about literacy and hat taking an image in is not the image itself, but the knowledge one has surrounding the image including the text, Romo has options and it looks like he may be considering those options.

CBS interested in Romo via /r/cowboys http://ift.tt/2ng3lMN

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10 posts!

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PSYCHOLOGY FACT #476

It’s impossible to remain angry at someone you truly love. Anger lasting for more than 3 days indicates that you’re not in love.

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