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Brainstorming & Multitasking

Today, I am going to use my blog to brainstorm ideas for my writing because I am running very short on time these final days and I need to multitask as many things as I can. Even though I HATE multitasking, I have never had so many projects, tests, and presentations due in one week, so it’s inevitable at this point! So, back to brainstorming… for the concluding section of my unit 3 project, I need to discuss the main things I talked about on my poster and how they all tie into the underlying argument. My main points were represented by charts, discussing how Registered Dieticians should use writing technology, like apps, in their practices. I must use this research. which I did in my results section, to introduce innovative ideas for future research in the last discussion area (because this is what the traditional poster genre calls for). Here, I will talk about how the research supports the increased use of technology, in the dieticians practice, and that all dieticians should be incorporating these technologies or consider starting to incorporate them. Then I will tie in the innovative ideas I talked about above. I still have to go through my Zotero list and find what I want to use for that part, it will be something along the lines of patient- RD communication and how technology makes that task more feasible.

Overall, I am almost done with my unit 3 project, which is a really good feeling. I just need to write up this last section and do some editing and that will be my last writing project of freshman year!  I spent a lot of time on it and I think it is a nice start to the rest of the research and writing I will be doing here for the next 4 years in Nutrition.  

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Research Depth

Through the process of my writing over the past few weeks I have come to realize how much research goes into such a small piece of writing or presentation. I have read probably over 20 articles, journals, webpages etc on my topic and now I am finding it difficult to piece all this information together into such a tight space on my poster. I know I need to pick out the most significant and important things to go with my argument but I hate leaving out so much information in the process. This is all part of the process of doing research and becoming informed on your topic. In the end I won’t be able to present every piece of information I find, but I have the knowledge of all this information which can help me answer people’s questions and also boost my credibility as a presenter.

The more knowledgeable an author is on a topic the more valid and credible I believe their argument is going to be. For example when Ted Talkers explain how much research they’ve done or how long it took them, I believe them more because they show that they are committed to their argument.Their work will also sound stronger to me because their research is deeper than just surface level internet/book scanning.

This applies to our Unit 3 project. I think we are in a really great set up because we have already done so much research over the past semester so there is a ton of sources to work with. Also the use of zotero helped a lot in this aspect because I was able to go back in my history over the semester and read over the sources I have used in previous work. Now the challenge is compacting all this research into one cohesive argument and formatting pieces of it onto my poster :)

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Applying writing technology to research

This week I learned how to use statistical programs for the research I am doing in the psychology department. This has a lot to do with the relationships between research, writing, and technology. The technological system we use helps us record peoples written responses to survey questions and turn that data into numbers, which we can then analyze to find patterns and make predictions. This would not be humanly possible without the development of technology to read the numbers and make statistics from them. With the click of a button we can create charts and run T- tests. These are things that would take humans years to do on their own especially when the data sets are 1000s of variables long. Klines Sociotechnical system is a perfect description of the programs we use to analyze the data and how it helps the productivity of research . He says a sociotechnical system is one in which people and technology work together to enhance human abilities. We use data analysis technology because it does those hard math equations and complex problems in seconds, so we don’t have to. Using this kind of technology in research on campus is a perfect example of bringing this class into real life and incorporating writing technology into research.

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Project Thoughts

I did some thinking today about how I want to approach my final piece in writing 209. I know I want to do a poster presentation because this is the format for research which is used most commonly in my major. Walking down the halls of Falk, there are numerous posters about nutrition research and they are all so unique and interesting. I think that this will be a genre of writing that I will have to become very familiar with in my time here at Syracuse and should start looking into its mechanics now. I also talked to a professor who is doing research on nutrition and technology in Falk right now, so it is a very relevant topic to my interests and the major I am in. It is also a hot topic of discussion since the technology boom.

This kind of poster is specifically used to show a person’s research results.  I will manipulate the format of it a little so that it fits better with what I want to include in my final research project but it’s basically perfect for what I want to do. For my project, I will argue that technology has impacted our nutrition and physical activity negatively. While people use social media, apps, and articles online to promote good health and nutrition, they don’t think about all the time they are encouraging people to sit down and look at a screen. Technology is beneficial to many aspects of life and can be effective in ways such as weight loss apps, and nutrition health apps. But other kinds of technologies have hurt nutrition in many ways. Watching TV, video games, etc. All these technological activities lead to lower exercise and impact what one eats nutritionally. I plan to look at studies with statistics on obesity rates and time spent using technology. I’m not sure how I will relate my research to this topic yet but I will spend this weekend thinking about ways I can tie it in.

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Genre Analysis : Poster Presentation

A genre of writing that is particularly important to my major and minor is the academic poster. This is a visible display of the research someone has done and compiled together into a very specifically summarized and formatted piece.  I am giving a poster presentation like this in May and think it would be a helpful idea to do some genre analysis on posters, so I have more of an understanding of the purpose of a poster, the goals, and what type of audience I should be writing for.

The purpose of a poster presentation is to give your viewers a synopsis of your research project, by presenting only a small chunk of the data you collected. This is because at a poster presentation there are numerous posters and the audience doesn’t have the time to listen to the full thesis of each one, so you only show them a little part. A poster, because of a limited space, single page format and word count restrictions, only highlights a few important parts of the research project. These can be areas of the study you were really interested in or got important results from. Because of this tricky purpose, the author of the poster must really take time thinking about what data they want to include to get the most information across to their viewer.  

A poster presentation is multimodal. It includes dialogue, visuals, statistics & graphs, colors, writing, etc. Because of all these various parts, the way a poster is laid out is very important to the viewer experience. The basic poster follows a very specific structure (Introduction, background, objectives, measures, data analysis, results, and discussion). Placing the sections in order like this allows for the reader to follow the flow of the research from start to finish and get a cohesive idea about the researches main points and measures. It is mostly done in neat/visually appealing sections (sometimes with added color) to make the poster easier to follow and to attract the audience to the poster. This is also the reason behind why the results sections of academic posters include a lot of charts, graphs, and other visuals. When people see visuals, it attracts their attention because it is appealing to them that they don’t have to read so many words. A results section with visuals is a common trend among all the posters I’ve looked at.

The audience of a poster presentation is academic and are most likely other people interested in the area of study that your research is in/ people that already have the basic knowledge to understand your poster but will also be learning new information from it. Because of this kind of audience, the word choice of a poster is academic and can be challenging. When I was analyzing posters, I noticed that the graduate students posters I had a difficult time understanding because their scientific vocabulary is so much more than I know right now. So, a poster is not written to be an easy read even though its structured to be easy to follow.

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An Authors Audiences

How can an authors message be more or less effective? What I've realized in my research with different authors and media types is, the source you get information from will be effective in different ways depending on factors like the kind of person you are or your age or education level. Authors know who they are aiming their writing towards and write mostly towards those certain people specifically.

For my unit two project I want to analyze a Ted Talk video Julianna Hever did about plant based diets and also a more technical/scientific piece on plant based diets also. While I was watching the ted talk I noticed that I was really engaged in what she had to say and I felt like her emotions really played into the audiences feelings. I am really interested in plant based diets and nutrition, so what she had to say was really important to me and kept me watching the whole time. Whereas, when I read over some of the technical articles on plant based diets they were really fact and statistic driven which made it a more dry experience for me to read even though they were on the same topic. The beginnings were ok but as they got deeper and deeper into the bulk of the information I would get lost. It could be easy to just conclude that ted talks do it better and technical pieces are boring for everyone because thats the way it seems. But this isn't true. I think a technical piece is directed at an older audience who will understand all the terms and knowledge involved in the writing. Its for an audience that has time to sit down and read 27 pages of statistics and data collection or maybe they need that much data for a research project. (The piece I picked is addressed towards Physicians ) For me, a college student, the ted talk was a lot more beneficial and I understood the information from it way better than any of the technical pieces. For the final technical piece I choose to analyze in my paper I will definitely have to sit down for a few hours and read through it thoroughly.

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Airport Thoughts

This week I was in Florida for spring break but even though I was away from school physically, I still felt connected to all my friends at Syracuse. The internet is a crazy thing when you really think about it. I can log on to Instagram any time of the day and automatically know what half my friends did that day just from their posts and comments. Social media and writing technology online make it really easy for us to stay connected with people we know even when it isn’t possible to see them in person.

With that said, I rely on writing technology daily to entertain myself especially on long plane rides like I had this week. I can read posts on social media, and download books/magazines in seconds without having to go to the store or carry extra weight. It’s crazy to think of all the new technologies I take for granted that my mom and dad didn’t have when they were my age. One thing I’ve realized on my trip, especially in the airports, is that most people use tablets and iPads to read, type, browse etc. I only saw a small handful of people with an actual book in their hands. This is good because it shows the progression of our society towards a more technological lifestyle but it also raises some new problems that traditional writing technologies like books and papers never did. Some questions that come to mind as I sit and wait for my flight are, how reliant are we on our devices when it comes to writing, communication , and even reading? And how would this affect us if we were to no longer have communications or electricity if there was a disaster someday? And relating this to nutrition and health, how does staring at these screens all day affect our physical eyesight and even our eating habits? There are studies going on now about both of these issues and they could be big topics for discussion in the future.

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My 5 Paragraph Mishap

After reading the article assigned this week I now better understand what it means to break away from the five paragraph essay and write with meaning. In the beginning of this year those five paragraphs were all I knew. In highschool that was the way we were taught to write no matter what the subject was or the topic. For SAT and ACT testing this was the way the college essay graders were looking for so thats how I did it. (I now know my words probably just went thrue a machine to be read by an algorithm, hence why the 5 paragraph format was so important) In result of these years of 5 paragraph instruction, when I got to college this was the first time I was told I could stray from the five paragraphs and try something new. I had no idea how to do this effectively or what it meant to not write in 5 paragraphs. The idea of it actually kind of scared me a lot.

Until I read this article tonight criticizing 5 paragraph essays, I thought I had successfully made improvements to bring my writing away from this format. I have been writing more paragraphs in college instead of only sticking to the traditional five and I have been trying to write in a more advanced way with multiple drafts and edits. I now realize I was wrong about how much my writing has changed. Yes, I am writing more paragraphs and in a more efficient way but I am still following the same basic format of the five paragraph essay ( intro, body items, conclustion). I did not switch up anything at all or get creative, I only split up the format a little differently to create more paragraphs. For example in the synthesis essay I just wrote I followed the exact structure described in the article...

Section 1: Introduce the argument

Section 2: Summarise the relevant literature

Section 3: Spell out your research method

Section 4: Present your findings and analyse them

Section 5: Draw conclusions

This is the format I followed and I didnt even realize I was doing it. I was shocked reading this and now realise that just because I write with more than five paragraphs does not mean I am doing anything different than this same structure . This is something I would definitely like to work on and make improvements with in the future. I want to write with more meaning, not just to fill in a structure and get a grade. I believe that my writing has a lot of meaning already and I have a lot to say but this format can be restrictive to my words and take me away from deeper writing.

Writing Routine I liked

http://www.well-storied.com/blog/11-tips-for-creating-writing-routine

Optimal college workflow

https://lifehacker.com/5334886/getting-things-done-explained-for-students

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Blog 4 Essay Ideas on Social Medias impact on Nutrition

A writing technology that has many positive impacts on nutrition is social media. This technology broadens the range of people that nutrition information can reach, allows people from all backgrounds to write about their nutritional experiences, and provides inspiration for many people to start healthy ways. Nutrition lovers have adapted Social media to be a less regimented and more laid-back platform to expose the mass population to healthy habits rather than having to pay for fitness classes or professional help in this area. This includes Tumblr blogs, Pinterest posts, and many Instagram feeds which are dedicated to calorie counting, meal planning, workout routines, and specialty diets like vegan and paleo.

This is revolutionary to our health as a world because it really gets people talking and connected to a support system and an intertwining web of health. (Here is somewhere I could expand in my essay and talk about how fitness and nutrition are clustered, if you click on one blog it will bring up more and fill your “bubble” with healthy inspiration, this is an advantage to social media and an area where I disagree with the statement that filter bubbles are bad, if I click on one nutritional account It means I’m interested and would like to see more. This way of surrounding ourselves with a bubble of nutrition online provides daily inspiration to be healthy and eat the right ways because your constantly being surrounded by it. I think filter bubbles are ok because they show you what you like and filter out the things you don’t need so for someone like me who loves nutrition the filter bubbles are perfect because most of the posts I see are nutrition related).

Social media also allows people to post about their real experiences trying a fitness routine or diet plan, so others can follow their progress, supporting them and getting helpful tips from them. This is revolutionary to fitness and diet plans because a lot of the time people stray from their goals, but when people post about their diet journey online or see other people’s diet journeys it can be helpful and inspire one to keep living on a healthy path. Before social media and blogs there was no such thing as this connected support system through the internet. People had to obtain nutritional patterns on their own which was most likely affected just by the way they were raised. There really wasn’t a platform where anyone could go and ask questions or see what kinds of diets other people were trying. Now everyone has social media where not only words can be written but pictures and videos can be posted to go along with it.

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Nutrition and Writing Technology

I want to link my unit one essay on “writing as a technology” to my major Nutrition. Some topics I was looking at are how people use social media blogs and posts to informally get nutrition information out there (these are mostly organic intellectuals). I will also talk about how Traditional Intellectuals like actual registered dieticians and nutrition experts use regulated websites to put proven nutritional information out on the internet. So you must be really careful in telling the difference between the 2 sources of information (organic or traditional) depending on how important the nutrition advice is that you’re looking for. The internet enhances the breadth of information we have access to, but it doesn’t mean its all valid info.

So, for the first part of my essay I want to talk about how organic intellectuals can write about nutrition from their first-hand experiences and how writing technology like Instagram, YouTube, and blogs allow them to do this. A lot of these nutrition bloggers are regular people who have tested different diets like vegan and Paleo and are blogging about what they think is best.  For this section of my essay I will relate back to the idea of organic intellectuals from the article “Reading Strategies and Intellectual Communities”. Pulling some quotes from there to establish my claim that people can learn from how they grow up and the nutritional habits of the community they live in. Social media and blogs are the perfect forum for these kinds of people because they are very informal, and opinion based and the population that’s viewing them knows that what their reading is likely not coming from a professional but from a normal person who is talking from experience. I am also going to tie in a unique point that Danah made in her article “Did Media Literacy Backfire”. She says, “Why should we be surprised that most people are getting medical information from their personal social network and the Internet? It’s a lot cheaper than seeing a doctor, and both friends and strangers on the Internet are willing to listen, empathize, and compare notes. Why trust experts when you have at your fingertips a crowd of knowledgeable people who may have had the same experience as you and can help you out? (did media literacy backfire)”. So, I will incorporate this idea to discuss how writing technology like nutrition blogs and Instagram’s have helped people who maybe can’t afford to hire a dietician or medical doctor to help them. This is the organic intellectual’s use of technology for nutrition information.

I will also talk about the Traditional Intellectuals usage of writing technology. I have to do more research on what I want to say about this part and figure out what direction I’m going to take it. I need to find some established nutrition websites to use as sources. I also will do research on how to tell the difference between good nutrition advice online and bad advice because this is a topic I definitely want to touch upon and relate it back to Danahs article.

 This is very rough idea of my essay but some feedback on if this is a good idea or not would be helpful 😊 also if anyone has any ideas I can add or other topics I can discuss let me know!

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How the Internet aids Organic Intellectuals

As much as I could come up with endless ways to describe how technology has “hurt society” in some way, I could probably come up with the same amount or even more ways that technology has helped us too. More specifically how technology has enhanced the accessibility of peoples written words and ideas. When I think of writing technology, the first major thing I think of is the internet. We use the internet’s information for literally everything and anything. When I’m writing a research paper, my sources are coming from online articles and databases, not from an actual book itself. When I have a question on my statistics homework, I read online solutions that other people have posted online. And when I’m sitting in bed bored at night, I read headlines and news stories that pop up on my phones safari. The internets technology has extended written word to capacities that were never imaginable before it was created. It is so easy today to type what your looking for into the search bar and read a detailed article with the first link you click on. I’m not saying that this means everything you read on the internet is true or that everything should be trusted. I am only saying that the internet has made it a lot easier for people to get their words and knowledge in the open for everyone to read. Creating an open forum so that anyone who wants to write can do so.

Before the internet, for someone to get their personal knowledge out to the public they had to publish a book or get a spot in a magazine or newspaper article. To do these things, you probably had to be a well-established writer or have a lot of money to advertise your work. This is not the case anymore. Now that we have the internet at our fingertips, anyone can write about what they have knowledge on or are passionate about even if they don’t have a literary degree or background. This goes back to the discussion we had about organic and traditional intellectuals, you don’t need a traditional degree or a fancy university to compose on the internet. It is a place where everyone, including organic intellectuals, can take their life experiences and knowledge and put it out there for the entire world to learn from. For example, I love to cook, and I find new recipes online all the time. Most of the time these recipes aren’t coming from top chefs or big-name restaurants websites. I find them in blogs of normal people who share unique recipes from their families and culture. They are organic intellectuals who have just as many important things to say about their expertise, as traditional intellectuals do. But they don’t always have the same resources and connections necessary.  So, technology like the internet has definitely helped open up this writerly option to these kinds of people.  

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The Writing Technology of Braille

Although advances in writing technologies have changed overtime to serve the purpose of making writing and editing easier for the average person, writing technologies have also developed to allow people with disabilities to write and communicate just as efficiently as a person with no disability. For example, braille.

Braille is a unique writing technology that is not frequently advertised in stores or seen on expensive tv commercials. It is a technology that has been placed behind the glam and hype of shiny Mac Books, iPads, and numerous kinds of styluses and writing tools. But braille is a massive advancement to writing technology and is very important to a huge community of people today. It’s unique because it is a form of writing that is not blocked by language or cultural borders. All languages can be translated into braille. So, it really is a universal form of technology that positively transforms lives and increases the quality of living for visually impaired people all over the world.

Braille is a set of raised bumps which are positioned in different patterns to indicate letters and words. The Blind use this technology to write, read, and communicate with one another and with normal sighted people. This opens so many doors to the visually impaired, allowing them to get an education, be literate, have jobs and a career, and communicate effectively with other people. Communication and written language are daily things a normal sighted person doesn’t think twice about. The average person, like myself, takes for granted the fact that we can easily grab a pen and and make a grocery list write notes,or sign a signature . I can send an email or write a paper without hesitation. A blind person cannot do this in the same way, but with the technology of braille, it makes it possible for them to do it in their own unique way. Other writing and communications technology like computers and telephones have even incorporated the invention of braille into their own advancements . Both devices have raised buttons which indicate for a blind person where they should place their hands so that they can type the right words. So Braille has not only improved writing as a technology but has spread its lengths to improve technology as a whole.

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Blog Post #1

As a student who has gone through all the ranks of school with many teachers to lead me and advisors to guide my path, I would consider myself a pretty traditional intellectual . My goal has always been to get multiple degrees and to strive for academic excellence. With these degrees I want to become a RD (Registered Dietician) which takes a lot of academic knowledge and background. It is a position that you have to be accredited for and cannot learn organically. That being said I cannot credit all of my knowledge and insights to just formal education and traditional values but I do think that this is where most of my academic ideas and goals have come from. However, as I have been here , living at college for a full semester, I now realise how many things in my daily life that I actually did not learn traditionaly, like how to eat well or how to be responsible on my own and follow a schedule. These are things I learned from my moms example or from my older sisters. So yes, I do consider myself a traditional intellectual in the academic sense but there are definitely organic elements I have learned mixed in also. Its not black and white.

My parents are perfect examples of traditional and organic intellectuals. My mom is a controller for her company. She recieved a degree in accounting and buisness from Boston University, so she is a very traditional intellectual. She learned her skills from professors and from an established university. My dad on the other hand only graduated high school and then went straight into the workforce. He is an engineer for an architectural firm in Boston. He always tells me how he learned his skills from the people around him when he was my age. He started off, right out of highschool, by just interning for the company he works for today, and now he is one of the company's senior associates. So he learned his job in a very organic way, however, he says today, the situation is very different now. His company now requires a college degree to hire.

( I think this fact really highlights how society has changed to put such a strong emphasis on traditional education over organic. This is not an ideal situation for everyone. People like my dad, who are better at a more "hands on" and observational learning style, are now being forced to go to college or to take a lower paying job. Its a sad situation because without a degree today these people cant really get the high level jobs that at one time they could have successfully done through organic learning. )