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PORTFOLIO

I’M DONE!!!! OHHHHH MYYYYYY GOSSHHHHHH. IT’S SUMMER TIME. BYE BYE WRIT1133 IT HAS BEEN REAL. 

https://chrisfox2781.wixsite.com/writ1133portfolio

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Maps Take 3

Effective writing is when a writer can clearly express an idea in a logical manner that will in some way effect the reader in the way the writer desired. I like to use a metaphor that I call “Lighting up the Dark.” The idea is that someone can take an idea that is in their head and effectively express it to all their ability.

Before I came to college, I hated writing with a passion. I was good at it though. However, it was just writing that was not enjoyable. It was almost always research papers on a boing topic like Gettysburg or an analysis of Lord of the Flies. All I would do was write down a regurgitation of what happen, and sometimes give my own personal anecdote on the subject. It was always for the grade, never for myself or to help myself become better. Even though my writing effectiveness probably improved over the years in high school, it could have improved on a way bigger scale.

After I had my first writing class in college, things changed a little more. I started to care more about my effectiveness and power of my writing. I learned about the “rhetorical situation” which in all honest took me a long time to even realize what it was. As I started writing more in that class I began to more understand what the rhetorical situation really was. I starting caring about how well my writing did what it was supposed to do. However, the quarter ended and that was that. The class was over, no more writing for me…for about a week.

After Spring Break, I got into this class and to be fairly honest, I did not want to stay in it at all. I tried to drop the class because the curriculum was something that I didn’t understand. The format of Tumblr and Twitter threw me for a loop and I chickened out and wanted to say no more. However, I was convinced to stay in and I am more than happy I did. I really learned a lot about myself and the way I write and how to be an effective writer.

I can even look and see this development throughout the quarter by looking at my maps.

As I look back on both of these I giggle a bit because they are a little silly. However, I do still believe these maps are very important. Both include key terms that are very important to me while I am writing. From the first, I would have to say that 2 things are most important: purpose and effectiveness. Purpose is the base of writing. No matter what I am writing, I must have some kind of purpose. That could be writing a research paper, or possibly just writing to get my feelings out. Whatever it may be, there is always a purpose. Lastly comes the effectiveness. After I write, I ask myself, does this piece of writing do what I wanted it to do? Even if it isn’t what I originally wanted when I first started writing, it might still do what I want it to do and that is the most important part. 

With that, next comes revision. Once I have written my paper and I have it all down, I need to go back and revise it to make sure that it does what I wanted it to do. If it doesn’t then I need to correct my work by possibly moving things around, eliminating stuff and even adding stuff. As long as my revision is based on making my paper be effective, then I will keep going.

But, as of now, my theory of writing is slightly different. I explained in the very beginning, but I will elaborate more. In all, writing is about being able to take something that I want to express and do so in a clear and effective way. The physical map that I made shows this in the metaphor “Lighting Up The Dark.” The dark side is meant to represent all the jumbled ideas I have in my head and how sometimes I can’t explain them very clearly. However, through the writing process (the colored tubes), I take those thoughts and ideas and mess with them until they get my desired outcome, which would be those thoughts clearly stated. 

Taking this course has taught me a couple very important lessons. First off, I shouldn’t give up on something if I don’t think I can do it. That is just being a chicken and the only way to get better at something and learn it is to keep pushing. And lastly, I learned metacognition. The ability to not only see myself and how my life is going but the ability to ask myself what are the things that have led me to where I am right now. This is something that has helped me a lot and I plan on using this ability more in the future to better myself and my abilities.

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Research Journal Week 8

As this quarter comes to it’s closing time, even though it still seems like so much left, I am starting to reflect on everything I have learned. First off, the most important thing I have learned that helped me all around and will still help me in the future is the ability to self-monitor myself. Not only checking in on my self of how I am doing, but observing myself on how I got to the position that I am in. For example, when I was having a really hard time with school, I asked myself, what have I been doing as of late that might influence the way things are now. Seeing that I had been lacking on my time management made me realize that is exactly the problem. After being able to fix that, I was really able to dig deeper into looking at myself as a writer and researcher. After producing pieces that I myself was proud of and that my professor was proud of I am able to look back and ask myself, how did I successfully get here. Not only does this help me with these writing abilities but also helps me get help in other classes. By that I mean, I am learning how to learn, which when I really think about it, it’s what college should be about. Learning how to learn in other situations is absolutely key. Of course, I am still learning this skill and the only thing I can do with it is keep practicing to make myself better in all scenarios. Lastly, one thing that really helped me with learning how to do research was ‘coding.’ It was so important to be able to see the connections between different research and articles. This not only helps me with research, but also with the ability to build on what I was saying before. To be able to see the connections between anything can help build even more connections that you didn’t even know about. 

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To be completely honest, when I first joined this class, it was hard for me to adapt to the way things were done. Having to maintain the Tumblr and Twitter was a lot for me; I personally don’t like social media platforms so it was difficult for me to adjust. However, after doing all of these readings, I have definitely taken away some good leasons. The first being, and I believe what Linda S. Bergmann and Janet Zapernick were trying to get across, is that the point of first year writing classes, or any first year classes actually, is not necessarily to learn a specific way of writing, however it is to be able to look at myself from almost a third person point of view. It’s learning how to learn, and using that skill to further help myself not only in other writing genres, but general overall knowledge. As I started to think about all these new things, I have pieced together something that I find very important to my theory of writing as well as technequies for helping me learn and excel in other classes. Writers from our “Threshold Concepts Reading #2” specifically called it, “metacognition” and even though this is a nice fancy word, I like to just think of it as “watching myself from a third-person point of view.” I think that constantly trying to do this is very important skill. It helps in social situations, in the work-place, and especially (even though this is something I am still working on and realizing) in the school setting. Of course, through out the years, I have learned techniques that help me study. For example, flashcards with hand drawn pictures that relate to the subject are really good for me. However, I am starting to see the value of really, as Perkins and Soloman put it, “self-monitor and self-direct.” For me, it’s the ability to see a situation, recognize what the problems are, and not right off the bat try to solve the problem. It’s best to look at the situation and try to relate it back to another situation where my techniques helped me get to the solution. However, as Zapernick puts it using a great analogy, “specific skills athletes learn in one sport (such as how to dribble a basketball) may not be directly transferable,” such as the technique that I used to solve my initial problem might not be able to help me solve the problem in front of me now, “but what athletes are able to transfer from one sport to another is what they know about how to learn a new sport.” I know how to prepare myself for a similar situation that I am facing. For example, one big issue that I was always facing, especially with these concept readings, was being so confused in the beginning of the readings and not have any idea what it was talking about and I would struggle by trying to re-read the last sentence or paragraph. This was just wasting time and creating lots of frustrating long nights. However, I figured out something that really helps me read. All I do is the first time I am reading something, I just keep reading and keep pressing through no matter if I understand what is happening or not. By the time I am at the end, I can understand what the main point is and then I go back and read it again. The re-reading helps solidify what I have learned from the reading as well as it saves a bit of time a stress on my time schedule.

The next thing I have been piecing together is, “that any given text is a product of both situation-specific content and genre-based conventions that are both context-sensitive and transferable from one situation to another” (Zapernick). This couldn’t be any more relavent to what I am learning in this class. Right now, I am attempting to write in such a way that appeals to my Tumblr audience. Like I said before, as well as in some other posts, it’s really important to consider your audience and the situation you are in. But in truth, I do agree with the students in Zapernick’s study, that “it’s for the grade” and “even though I might be writing for a broader audience, it’s still for the teacher to see.” However, it’s all for personal growth….or am I just saying that to make my professor happy?:) Of course I procrastinate and of course, just like the students in the study said, I sadly do know how to have really good pieces of writing. And to be completely honest, it’s just the fact that it’s hard to do these things for me. It’s weird though, because once I do start writing, I do enjoy it. I enjoy the challenge of trying to get my thoughts out in a clear way. I’ve talked before in other posts about how important flow is to me, but now I have digressed, and it would be unflowy in my opinion to continue talking about flow. Back to the point, it’s all about writing in such a way that is specific to my situation and my audience. It’s important to consider this in any situation. Whether that situation be Tumblr, Twitter, a lab report, my calculus homework, my physics homework, or mechatronics homework, I need to always be aware of what I am trying to achieve. Which is a good way to wrap this all up.

To be successful in any situation, one must look at the situation from an outside perspective to see how to attack the situation while at the same time, making sure that it is in an appropriate genre-specific manner.

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Transfer of Learning

The whole idea behind school is a good one, however poorly implemented. Actually, maybe the general idea is bad. I remember my senior year of high school thinking to myself, “Why am I learning these things?” I mean I can see how maybe economics might help me understand the world of money a little better. But, as Perkins was talking about how history class is supposed to “provide a lens through which to see contemporary events” I totally got where he is coming from. Never once in my life have I looked at a current event in the news and thought to myself, “well President A tried this way of doing things that is similar to how President X is doing things and it didn’t go over too well, maybe we shouldn’t do that again.” Nothing in school ever really taught me basic important things like maybe: how to buy a car without being in crippling debt, or how to negotiate with people in a business setting. As Perkins said, “the conventions of instruction work against both automatic (low road) and mindful (high road) transfer.”

Having transfer of learning is hard, especially in a high school setting where the teachers don’t care that much, because it is hard to relate school problems to real world problems. However, one of the best ways to get students to experience transfer of knowledge is to cognitively be aware of asking one’s self if their prior knowledge can help them in the situation they are currently in. Teachers need to “teach their children not just to apply the strategy but to monitor their own thinking processes in simple ways.” This is important because students who had the “fullest and soundest summary” of the first “puzzle” (or problem) were more likely to solve the second problem that was slightly similar. This means that students should constantly be using explicit abstractions and asking themselves, “how did I solve this problem?” or “what methods did I use to get to the solution?” By being able to fully understand how and why one could get to an answer, it further helps them in future situations where that past knowledge could apply. Along with that, mindfulness is key to transfer of knowledge because one tries to “watch one’s self” which better helps the person understand themselves and the way they did something and by doing this they can learn from what they see.

I’m not sure if this knowledge of transfer happened for a lot of others, however I’m sure that it must have happened to some people. My most memorable transfer of knowledge was my Calculus class helping me with my Statistics class. In my calc class, I was trying to design a program that showed how you can change a variable using a slider that would move a vertical line back and forth in the horizontal direction and by doing so, changed the area under the curve. By using this program, I was able to explain and show to other students how 1 standard deviation away from the mean would give you 68.3% of the population, and how changing the slider to 2 standard deviations away would give you 95.4% of the population. It’s a curve just like any other function and you can take the integral of that curve to show the percent of each standard deviation away from the mean. Wish I still had that program☹

One of the biggest things that I have learned that I apply in other contexts, and am currently still working on, is tone. In pieces like this one I am writing now, I feel as though I could stop at any moment and say hello because this is more of a personal tone. The tone in my tumblr and twitter are more reflexive of my speaking voice, so it is almost as if I am talking to my audience. Hello, Audience. Luckily this is not my lab report that is due on Friday so I don’t have to speak in a boring passive informative third person voice. I’m still learning the use of tone and hopefully will get better.

Lastly, I would like to add another thing that I have learned in writing to has been super helpful in other classes, and that is coding. Being able to see connections between sources has helped me tremendously. Whenever I look up something online even as simple as, “How to use Maxterms in Sum of Products form,” I will check at least 2, usually 3 sources, to make sure that the information I am getting is agreed on by multiple people and that it is consistent.  

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Research Journal: Week 7

­­As I am getting back results from my survey as well as seeing what I am getting from my observations is that majority of people see Artificial Intelligence as a good thing for the most part however there will be negative implications. Most of these negative implications revolve around job security. Most everyone fears (or at least thinks about) that AI will be taking over the low-income jobs. We will not be engaging with people anymore when it comes to jobs like: transportation, food industry and other minute jobs. I’m really curious to see what people’s opinions are about their job security. I’ve already seen a huge piece of information that pops up in almost every source, including my own personal research. That is that people are afraid of AI taking too many jobs. They think that there will be no jobs left for the lower class and these people will be out of work. However, lots of others agree that even though there will be job losses, other jobs will be created such as maintenance of the AI machines. Lots of other sources and findings are showing that even though AI has the potential to save a lot of people, only the top 1% will be benefiting from the advancements. I was very surprised to see that a fair amount of people think that artificial intelligence should be used in education. Of course, many fear teachers job loss. However, it seems that a consensus of “AI can be integrated into the education system; teachers and students can benefit from the use of AI.” Really interested to see what my interview results give me, that will be coming up this week.

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Threshold Concept: Looking Forward to Lighting Up the Dark

I’m going to attempt to create a sort of new threshold concept and I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to but it just feels rights, however it incorporates concepts previously learned from our readings.

My threshold concept I would like to introduce is “Looking Forward to Lighting Up the Dark.” This concept was inspired by the combination of this reading and the last threshold concept reading.

Looking forward to lighting up the dark is an important threshold concept because it reminds the writer of two separate, yet very similar ideas. The first being, a writer does not know what the final draft of a piece of writing will look like because they will think of new ideas along the way so stop trying to perfect it from the beginning. The second part to this concept goes hand-in-hand with the first, yet on a broader view of writing. A writer will not be successful if they do not continually accept that writing in an unfamiliar form or genre will be difficult and time consuming and the only way to get better is to accept the difficulty and keep trying while at the same time questioning themselves as to why they made the choices they did and how those choices affected the outcome of their writing.

From the last threshold reading, Doug Downs said, “when a writer is writing they usually find something to say that they didn’t have to say before writing. This phenomenon creates an effect analogous to driving with headlights. The headlights reach only a fraction of the way to the destination; a writer can only begin writing what they “see” at the beginning.” This quote gave rise to the first meaning of “looking forward to lighting up the dark,” because it reminds me and other writers that it’s not possible to have a perfect first draft that you just simply think of before writing it. Before I write a paper or any piece of writing, I have an idea of how it is going to go in my head, but when I try to get it all out on the first go, I’m never satisfied with it. A writer must keep “driving” to see how they want their piece to be. This requires time and effort, which leads me into the second part of “looking forward to lighting up the dark.”

Although I wish I had ultrabright, large-radius focusing, LED headlights on my car to see my destination, this just isn’t possible. By that I mean I wish I could simply be a great writer right off the bat. But even if my high-tech headlights could theoretically light up something as far away as my destination is, long perfectly straight paths just aren’t really a thing. There are going to be twists and turns, there are going to be pot holes along the way, there are going to be hills, and there are going to be valleys. But I don’t know they are there or what they are so there is no way I can learn anything about them without passing by them and facing them. A writer cannot just stay back and wonder what is down the path and then zoom through at the speed of light and be a good writer. It takes time to drive through the road. It’s important for all writers to remember not only that “driving” into a new genre will be scary and tough, and that taking on this “unfamiliar task load can reduce performance in other, usually high-competency, areas … and even influence our nervous system” as well as “influence other mental processes (recall, goal setting, attention span, knowledge acquisition, processing time, ect.) as well as psychosocial and even physiological phenomena (stress and anxiety levels, recovery from trauma, immunological response, pain sensitivity, postoperative recovery, ect.)” (Dryer), they can not quit. The writer must remember that the one and only way to get over these terrible things (these hills, valleys and turns) is to just keep driving and pay attention to these hills, valleys, and turns; as in they must know what they are doing in that particular moment. This is cognition which is an important part of writing; being aware of what you are writing. However, there is a more important concept to grasp, and that is the ‘driver’ questioning why each turn they took got them to the specific destination; the writer must ask themselves why they made the rhetorical choices they did. Kara Taczak explains the importance of this concept, “this awareness is especially important when the writer is facing a new genre because it helps the writer relocate the knowledge and practices acquired from one writing site to another.” If a writer is conscious of why they are making the choices they did, then they can learn from every process and everything that comes from their process of writing. There is no way to reach the destination without accepting that right now, the writer doesn’t know the path, and the only way to figure it out it to keep driving to light up the path and learn something new every step of the way. If the writer does not put in the effort, the task will be harder than it would be by just doing the work, so the writer must always “look forward to lighting up the dark” as in look forward to learning the writing process and keep driving at the right pace.

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Peer Review

After doing peer-review in class, I was able to have a different view about my literary review. While going through everyone’s paper the best thing that worked out was being able to read parts of everyone else’s paper. I liked this because I could get feed back on the parts that I thought were hazy but we also went over parts that I personally thought were strong. It helped me see that these parts were not as good as I thought they were. Not only from the feed back directly from my partners, but also simply hearing it out loud. What doesn’t work personally for me is just the amount of time. I’m a slow reader so it takes me a while to get through someone’s paper and then have a response for it. The most useful advice I received was that I need to make sure that I don’t make it seem like I am creating an argument. Even though I was trying to be self-conscious about this the whole time and I thought I did a good job but after talking with my group, they showed me that I need to be careful of making sure to only talk about the discussion between sources. The next step for my paper is to go back and make sure that the ‘discussion’ has a logical flow and does the best job at making sure that readers understand the subject so that when I write my actual essay, the background information will be useful. After doing peer-review in class, I was able to have a different view about my literary review. While going through everyone’s paper the best thing that worked out was being able to read parts of everyone else’s paper. I liked this because I could get feed back on the parts that I thought were hazy but we also went over parts that I personally thought were strong. It helped me see that these parts were not as good as I thought they were. Not only from the feed back directly from my partners, but also simply hearing it out loud. What doesn’t work personally for me is just the amount of time. I’m a slow reader so it takes me a while to get through someone’s paper and then have a response for it. The most useful advice I received was that I need to make sure that I don’t make it seem like I am creating an argument. Even though I was trying to be self-conscious about this the whole time and I thought I did a good job but after talking with my group, they showed me that I need to be careful of making sure to only talk about the discussion between sources. The next step for my paper is to go back and make sure that the ‘discussion’ has a logical flow and does the best job at making sure that readers understand the subject so that when I write my actual essay, the background information will be useful. 

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Research Journal: Week 5

Interview:

·        When I just say the words ‘artificial intelligence’ what is the first thing that you begin to think of?

o   Do you think there is any reason that you have this opinion?

·        What do you already know about AI?

o   In other words, have you heard any news about AI? Is this something you already know about AI?

·        Do you think there are any risks of AI? How about benefits?

·        What do you think about AI will affect job security?

o   How about your specific job?

·        Who do you think will benefit most from AI?

·        What do you think about AI around children or in the customer service industry?

·        Do you think that at AI might eventually gain ‘rights’?

Survey:

·        What are your feelings towards Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

o   “I have a positive attitude towards AI”

o   “I have a negative attitude towards AI”

o   “I have mixed feelings towards AI”

o   “I have no opinion on the subject”

·        Do you think there are any benefits of AI?

o   Comments

·        Any negative things about AI?

o   Comments

·        How would you define AI? Check all that apply.

o   Technology that thinks and acts like humans

o   Technology that can learn to do things better over time

o   Technology that can understand language

o   Technology that can answer questions for me

o   Anything that passes the Turning Test

o   Other. Please specify.

·        Have you seen any real examples of AI in your life?

o   If so, please specify

·        Do you think AI could ever “out preform” a human?

o   In what area is this most likely?

·        What do you think about artificial intelligence and job security?

·        Do you personally think that one day AI might deserve rights?

o   Why or why not?

·        Do you think that there will be a time when it’s impossible to tell the difference between AI and a human?

·        Have you ever watched a movie that was about artificial intelligence? If so, what movies?

o   How do these movies impact your opinions on the subject?

o   Which of these movies do you think could become reality?

·        Are there places/things you would like to see taken over by AI?

·        Which of the following examples of AI do you trust?

o   Entertainment recommendations

o   Automated production of goods

o   Automated sales processes

o   Medical diagnostics

o   Self-driving cars

o   Automated financial planning

o   Automated hiring processes

o   Customer service

o   Facial recognition

o   None of the above

·        Advancing the field of artificial intelligence….

o   Is important

o   Is unnecessary

o   Is dangerous

o   Other

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For our primary research, we chose the topic of freshman year roommates here at DU. We were curious about whether or not the roommate selection process was in any way connected to the dynamic of roommate relationships.

Methods

Our first step involved creating a survey on survey monkey with a variety of questions asking about the roommate selection process/experience at DU. The questions consisted of both multiple choice and short answer. We posted the survey on Facebook pages and group messages to get more of a wide range of results, and ended up with a total of 67 responses. For the second part of our research, we each conducted an observation of two roommates interacting with each other in a normal setting. We each observed and took notes about the dynamic between the both roommates, as well as how we interpreted their relationships based on their interactions. For the final step of our research, we chose to interview Rachel, an RA from Halls. We asked her general questions about roommates, as well as questions about how roommate problems are dealt with. Through all steps with of our research, we were able to obtain some interesting results.

Results

The conclusion we came to, was that there is not a clear connection between the roommate selection process and roommate relationships at the University of Denver. While some methods of roommate selection appear to be more favored than others, none of them proved to be better than the rest. While in theory this answered our initial question, we still ended our primary research with some surprising results.

From our survey, we found that 50 people out of the 67 who responded said that they would use the same roommate selection process again, and in every method of roommate selection, between 70-80% of people would choose the same method again. Therefore, this further adds to the idea that there is not one single roommate selection method that will assure the best overall relationship and experience.

While we did not find one specific method to be better than others, the majority of those who responded saying that their relationship with their freshman year roommate was good, chose a roommate that was already their friend. We found this interesting, as during our interview with Rachel the RA, she had shared with us how she usually sees the most roommate problems occur from those who had started off as best friends.

What showed the lack of connection between selection process and roommate relationship even more, was that the majority of those who said they had a great freshman roommate experience said that they would not continue their relationship with their roommate in the future.

What we did find through our observations and interview, was that roommate pairs that worked tended have similarities in interest and living styles, as well as good communication skills. All of the relationships between the roommate pairs we observed appeared to be positive. All 3 pairs of roommates seemed comfortable communicating and seemed to share similar living styles. When we talked to Rachel the RA, she described how the best roommate relationships stemmed from openness, communication, and similar habits-connecting directly to what we saw in our observations.

Discussion

Like previously stated, we did not find a connection between the way roommates are selected and the relationships that form. A clear connection cannot be found simply because people and their personalities tend to vary, so it is almost impossible to find one specific roommate selection method that guarantees a perfect roommate relationship. This is why specifically here at DU, there are a variety of ways to select a roommate.

A study conducted by the University of Georgia comparing roommate relationships and the selection process produced strikingly similar results, as  60-70% of people were satisfied with their roommate experience for each method of roommate selection.

While there is no clear connection between roommate experience and the selection process here at DU, we did find a connection between roommate relationships, specific personality traits, and living styles. We concluded that good roommate relationships do not necessarily form due to the selection process, but rather from the compatibility of the roommates themselves. The ability to live within the same space comfortably, and address issues up-front have created the best roommate dynamics, which we saw through both the interview and observations. Overall, while roommate selection processes are designed to match up pairs the best possible way, one’s personality can only truly be measured in person.

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Week 4: Research Journal

As I get farther and farther into this project, I am starting to as myself, “What defines something being AI?” When thinking about this, I think this is a good way to introduce my question. Even though my main question right now is, “What are the benefits of AI and what are people’s attitudes towards it?” Even though I have not conducted any primary research, I think that a lot of people’s opinions on the subject is that AI can be scary. And I think this is the case because of some media that is part of our culture. Movies and TV shows like West World, Transcendence, RoboCop, I,Robot, and Interstellar could be to blame for this view.

One of my sources, “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine,” gives a good way to start of defining AI. Even though this paper is specifically about UltraIntelligence, it helps out to have one. The definition is, “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever.” From Irving Good’s “Defense of the Rights of Artificial Intelligences,” I found, “AI requires both intellectual and emotional similarity to human beings, that is, both human-like general theoretical and practical reasoning and a human -like capacity for joy and suffering.”

As I try to analyze my sources more in-depth, I come up with thinking about how AI will affect humans directly. One of the first ways if by directly intertwining with humans as we use technology to make ourselves better. Of course, this is a loose argument because, technologies are basically always made to help out humans. However, I am directly talking about physical or mental boosting. Things such as suits designed to make someone stronger or even a phone can possibly be classified as a machine that is boosting human intellect because of its ability to help us learn, navigate and many other things. Good talks about a “symbiotic” relationship between man and machine. However, he prefers to call it “biomechanical” because of the fact he defines it as a machine that helps out a human with any tasks. Things even as simple to us as computers that do calculations for us.

As we practice conducting primary research, I have starting thinking about what questions I will be asking for my surveys and interviews.  Some of the questions I plan on asking are, “Do you think AI has made a positive impact on the world so far?” “Are there any benefits that you can think of that AI will contribute to?” “Any disadvantages of AI?” “Is there a specific thing that might contribute to your view on AI? Books? Movies? TV shows? Conversations?”

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Practice Run Update

We are going to be researching how Du students chose their roommates freshman year and what their relationship is like now. The goal is to see if there is any sort of correlation between the two.

Observation:

So that we don’t change the environment at all, we are each going to separately observe a roommate pair for 20 minutes which will equal our 60 minute requirement. Some things that we’re going to look for in these observation times are the dynamics between the two and how close they are. We’ll look at what activities they do together, how much time they spend together, and the things they talk about.

Survey:

We are making a survey on survey monkey to post on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and sending it out on group messages that only include DU students. The questions will be:

1- How did you pick your freshman year roommate?

2- How would you describe your relationship with that roommate?

3- Do you still maintain or plan to maintain a relationship with your roommate?

4- If you had to pick your freshman roommate again, how would you do it?

Interview:

We are going to interview an RA and ask these questions: How do you deal with roommate problems? What are common roommate problems? How often do you deal with roommate problems? Do you think the way that they chose to be roommates affects how they get along? What do you think the best way to select a roommate is?

[christophox1-blog]

The first concept I would like to choose would be the fact that All Writers Have More to Learn and what I mainly got from it was that writing is not natural. As Shirley Rose says, “this a writer never becomes a perfect writer who already knows how to write anything and everything. This difficulty and imperfectability of writing, and the fact that it is not a “natural” phenomenon.” Whenever we read things, such as this reading, it looks like the author nailed it well. After reading this excerpt, I was impressed with how well they did at explaining exactly what they were trying to. So, to a amateur reader, it seems like they just wrote it down the first try and got a perfect draft. But the fact of the matter is, the writer probably re-wrote this piece multiple times over to make sure that the piece really conveyed what they wanted to say.

 The next concept that I really liked was Revision is Central to Developing Writing. I liked it because of the analogy used about how as a writer writes, they “usually find something to say that they didn’t have to say before writing. This phenomenon creates an effect analogous to driving with headlights. The headlights reach only a fraction of the way to the destination; a writer can only begin writing what they “see” at the beginning.” This really resonated with me because it seems like every time before I write, I have an idea of how my paper will be, then I start my paper and while a part of the way through, I think of a way to make it better and the underlying idea slightly changes. Therefore revision is so important. The first draft will not be the way you want it to be once it has been written because my ideas change as I write. If I want to make my paper the way I want it, I need to write it repeatedly until those ideas that kept popping up are in a way that I want them. Of course, this will not always be the “perfect” draft, but it will be much closer to the way I want to convey my ideas.

[christophox1-blog]

Week 3: Research Journal

As I do increasingly research on my topic, it starts to change what exactly I want my final research topic to be. As of right now, my main question centers around, “What are humans attitudes towards technology becoming more advanced? Especially the rise of artificial intelligence.”

As artificial intelligence is becoming more complex, there have been arguments that AI should have rights like humans. There have been blind tests where humans have not been able to tell the difference between other humans and artificial intelligence.

I found some good research and arguments in an article from one of DU’s databases.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/misp.12032/full

This article talks about whether or not AI should have rights basing off of these premises

“Premise 1. If Entity A deserves some particular degree of moral consideration and Entity B does not deserve that same degree of moral consideration, there must be some relevant difference between the two entities that grounds this difference in moral status.

Premise 2. There are possible AIs who do not differ in any such relevant respects from human beings.

Conclusion. Therefore, there are possible AIs who deserve a degree of moral consideration similar to that of human beings.”

This next research article that I found is about the relationship between humans and AI. There are many virtual reality programs that have immersed people to the point where they have very strong emotional connections between these programs and this article dissects how this relationship will build on giving rights to AI.

Also diving into tests between humans and AI to see how well AI can match or even be better at tasks than humans such as:

“Driving: handling, speed control, navigation, parallel parking, and collision avoidance.

Child nursing: playing, lulling, watching, feeding, bathing, and disciplining.

Elder care: excretion, bathing, feeding, transferring, and companioning.

Life event decision-making: concerning entering schools, applying and changing occupations, marriage and divorce, pregnancy and childbirth, and inheritance.

Healthcare: dieting, physical exercise, sleeping, smoking, and drinking alcohol.

Creative activities: music, painting, writing, and game creation.

Disaster prevention: rescuing, searching, clearing rubble, distribution assistance, and damage prediction.

Military activities: reconnaissance, guarding, combat, spying, defending, rescuing, and distribution assistance.”

Seeing that some of these AI are actually better at humans at some of these tasks is actually quite scary and something that can scare or excite humans and I am quite interested in what exactly their reactions are towards these things.

The next article that I found was http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=9cf7f6c9-0b3d-4343-83e3-b8d43eac1fff%40sessionmgr4010&hid=4208 which is about how artificial intelligence is being used to detect human emotion just by scanning faces. This links into even more development of AI being almost identical to humans. With this kind of technology, AI will now be able to fully show emotion (by using a simulation of a face of course….for now). This gets really weird because of the fact that computers will be able to have conversations with people and have those people actually become emotionally attached to them.

This technology is also being used by companies that are trying to create a new product and want people’s opinion on the product. A lot of the time, people give false opinions about the product because they are “just excited to be trying something new” but developers are working on trying to cut straight to the truth.

“This means Affectiva is constantly measuring and analyzing what is known about human expression, categorizing everything into specific human emotions (sadness, happiness, anxiety, joy, and so on) to track not what we say but how we really feel about something—the limbic brain knee-jerk reaction as opposed to the conditioned, socially moderated neural network output.”

I next found a non-academic article “Artificial Intelligence will cause a revolution of awareness, not the rise of distrust” which is about the discussion of how people might at first be scared of artificial intelligence until it starts becoming part of their every day life. Which it already has.

“Enter the digital assistant. Though this technology is a long way off doing mouth to mouth or hoovering my living room, it does provide many benefits. It’s now possible to automate process using digital assistants such as Google Home or Amazon Echo. For example, you can use voice commands to control smart devices like lights, thermostats and switches from home automation systems, manage everyday tasks like shopping lists and even play music. Furthermore, these digital assistants aren't just automating processes but also make use of machine learning, meaning that they process vast amounts of data to enable them to recognize patterns and get better at what they do.”

Lots of people are scared of AI taking over but they haven’t even realized the benefits that it has and the fact that it is already being widely used. Also, this article talks about how we will start to trust AI more as it starts doing things that will further help us like “early warning systems” “medical uses” and the fact that “they are always listening.” The last one might seem scary but this article points out how because AI is doing this, they are learning patterns in what humans are doing and able to learn and build on themselves to better understand and make us happier by doing things that please us.

[christophox1-blog]

Before taking writing classes in college, I thought that writing was simple and boring. It seemed to be only research projects where we would take information and condense it down so that our reader could understand what we learned. It was boring because it felt like simple regurgitation. This is why I really did not want to take any writing courses at all and it was hard for me to get in the zone to write a paper that I enjoyed. However, now writing is different to me.

Writing is like shopping for the perfect shoe. The rhetorical situation is when my old pair of shoes don’t work anymore. There is a call to action that I need to get new shoes. But it’s not as simple as just walking in and finding the first pair of shoes that I see. That would be the same as researching information and regurgitating it almost word for word. It most likely will not be effective. I must next figure out my purpose; what kind of shoes do I need? Running shoes, dress shoes, or casual shoes? This is the analogy to figuring out what exactly I want to happen when I am done writing. Is the piece only for myself? Is it for other people to simply enjoy? Or am I trying to persuade my audience? Next comes the quality of the shoes which is the analogy for knowledge. What do I know about these brand of shoes? Are they a trusted brand? I need to know how well they will hold up in order to know if I should invest in the shoes. Just like how I need to know what my reader already knows so I can use phrases or prior knowledge while writing my paper. Next comes finding a couple of shoes that are the right size. If I don’t have the right size, the shoes won’t be effective. Just like the next step in writing, if I don’t choose an appropriate genre for my audience, then the whole paper isn’t effective. Once I have made sure that all of these conditions are met, the next important part is finding a pretty pair. I don’t want an ugly pair of shoes of course just like how I don’t want to have a pair of paper that has good ideas behind it, but it has no logical flow.

Without a fine-looking pair of shoes that actually fit and will last a long time, what’s the point in buying them. If I can’t write a write in a way that is effective and efficient, why write at all?

[christophox1-blog]

Theory of Writing

              When I start writing, my number one key term is flow. Because I have ADD this is extremely hard for me. My mind bounces around from thought to thought so trying to have a clear and concise flow to my paper is a difficult process. I must consciously remind myself to keep the reader with me, sentence for sentence. My next key term would be clarity. This goes hand-in-hand with flow. No one enjoys reading a paper that makes no sense. Whether it be a blog, a proposal, or a journal, it is important to have a good flow and to be clear. After considering flow and clarity, the next key terms to be conscious of is audience and tone. If I were to be writing a paper about my results from a physics lab, the tone that I am currently using would not be appropriate. For posts such as this one, I can have a personal tone because I am speaking to an audience. This leads me into my identity as a writer.

              As a writer, I like to think that I am a personal writer. I imagine that as you read this, you imagine me standing in front of you reading word for word. I believe that it creates a better connection between the reader and the writer. Without a strong connection, the purpose to the entire piece can be lost. Of course, like I was saying before, if I was writing a lab report for my physics class, this connection is not necessary. However, when it comes to explaining my own theory of writing, the connection is certainly important. Because not everyone has the same writing style as I do, researching is different. Like I was talking about before, my ADD is a huge obstacle when I am researching. I get board of things quickly and bounce around from source to source quite frequently. To battle this, I have come up with a system. To start, I just research my topic and as things come up that look interesting, I save them to a folder. After finding about four or five sources I go back to my folder and I print them out and then do my best going through them one by one. One strategy to help me is highlighting things that I can use in my research while also making notes of anything I think of on the physical pages. These research strategies I have used for the past couple of years, but how I am as a writer is completely different.

              In high school, I was not a big fan of writing. I think it was mainly because of the fact we were not allowed to use a personal tone while writing. This made things very difficult for me. Looking back on my writing from above, it would be hard to make this paper into a post that was third person…I actually think it would be nearly impossible considering I am talking about my own experiences and writing. Also, I really enjoy tweeting. It’s a challenge to be clear while only using 140 characters…actually 129 because of the obligatory #writ1133du.

              Another thing that I have found extremely useful is knowledge communities. While thinking about my research project, I would talk to classmates, friends from my hall and even fraternity brothers. I would bring up my subject that I was thinking about doing and see where the conversation went. After seeing that the conversation ended up in the same place a lot of the time, it helped laser in my research proposal.

              Writing is a way to fluidly articulate something that is jumbled up in one’s mind.