Chazzzzzz

In 7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility and Accessiblilty guidelines for UX Designers, both authors said just about the same thing that design is important to accessibility. They both mainly focus on people with disabilities or “different abilities”, to show designer the way they design website or interfaces are more than just color and typography. Most people just design to what they think is cool, attractive and will get attention but its also about how well the users can navigate through. A website can look good but if no one knows how to use it correctly, theres no point f the website and/or information will be missed. 

Personally i never looked at things this way, when i designed my website, it was simple interaction and really color based, and while that looks good to me, i never thought how it would look to a colorblind person. I also never thought about little things like drop down menus and external links. As an art major, i mainly focus on layout and visual design, so that part made sense to me but i never thought about touch targets, device independent and keyboard-only users. I didn't know these were issues to look at but now i feel a little more knowledgeable on how to better my website to make it accessible to all. For my website, in selling art, i may have a variety of people checking it out and it i want to get my art sold, i do need to appeal to all customers, not just my needs and this really gave me a better insight. 

In "Understanding Rhetorics", the author talks about the importance of rhetoric in writing. They start by talking about the spaces in writing, such as where you are writing, the audience, and collaborations and how it all plays into how your writing will turn out. When writing its important to understand and keep in mind the purpose and who you are trying to reach. This will help you frame your ideas better, and narrow down the information you need to add to get your point across. I always have an issue with this, I tend to write "too much"  and sometimes it comes off as rambling. Also, space and collaborations make a difference in your writing, when you can have outside input on your writing, it helps you understand if you are communicating the information effectively. I enjoyed how the authors made this into a comic book instead of writing a bland paper bout it. If I had to read a 20-30 page paper on how important rhetoric is, I would be bored and wouldn't retain as much information. However, having this spaced out and in frames and with pictures kept my attention. Having to look back and forth to follow word bubbles and pictures made this reading almost interactive and I took more information from it. Visual representation does help with learning and keeping the reader's interest. Lastly, the author speaks on the beginning of rhetoric, Plato saw it as a way to deceive others, Aristotle saw it as a foundation of education and strengthing writing. I agree with Aristotle because rhetoric is not used to deceive the public, but more to convince them of what is being said matters.

Sharing false information is easy and dangerous on social media. anyone can spread a fabricated statement, conspiracies, or information they want to be put in the public quickly through social media; with the publics' instinct to investigate and have answers, they make the negative information more popular and prevalent. I loved that Danah Boyd bought up the “anti-vax” issue because that is one story I follow closely. One false journal article was published in 1998 and still to this day, this is the “proof” the anti-vac movement uses to back up their beliefs. One single article spread so wide it made people create the blogs of their own “proof” on why they don’t vaccinate their children. Now regardless of scientific proof, this is still a trending topic. News is so easily shared on social media and the internet, people either do one of two things, either they read just one source and believe and continue to spread the information, whether its false or not, or investigate and find their information to fit their needs. She also brings up how the news, outside of social media, report what they see as profitable, they need the views to make money so they essentially give the views what they want to hear. This can be biased, one-sided news to become propaganda for a specific group or it can just be putting “more interesting” news first before the “more important” news.

In Beck’s SUSTAINING CRITICAL LITERACIES IN THE DIGITAL INFORMATION AGE: THE RHETORIC OF SHARING, PROSUMERISM, AND DIGITAL ALGORITHMIC SURVEILLANCE, the author spoke on social media outlets using algorithms to see what you visit and/or look up daily to create content specific for you, whether it be ads or just content you see on an explore page. Social media makes a profit by selling information for ads. I knew this was a thing before reading this article so this wasn’t surprising. But the focus here is how this algorithmic surveillance can be one-sided. This aligns with the video, how the media is trying to sell the consumer what they want to see/hear, not the full story. For example, if you’re a conservative, the media is going to give stories and videos that align with your values and not show you stories that have a liberal standpoint unless its wrong. The author suggests teaching critical literacy in social media spaces as a solution to sharing information digitally. If we are taught to share information correctly and not get caught up in a “market-driven prosumer culture” (Beck, 50) sharing information online wouldn’t be so difficult and would be beneficial to us as it was intended to be.

In "What is rhetorical about digital rhetoric? Perspectives and Definitions of Digital Rhetoric" I found out that no one knows what digital rhetoric truly is. They can only explain it in pieces, meaning they connect it to one idea and show how digital rhetoric applies to that category. Such as the delivery of digital rhetoric in the classroom, someone can explain what this means and how to use it effectively but this concept alone does not define digital rhetoric. Overall there isn't one clear definition and that is mainly because of digital rhetoric being a changing concept. Everything digital is constantly changing throughout the years. I found it interesting that professors and graduate students couldn't even give a clear answer and were stumped before being able to define digital rhetoric. It makes me feel better for not fully understanding rhetoric.

Lastly, the author touches on how digital rhetorics is applied to technology today, such as digital media. We often use social media but we never realize how much we use rhetorical strategies, it is just something that comes naturally to us in this world of social media. We are always trying to convince the masses of something when we are online, whether it be taking a stand on something and trying to bring attention to a cause or simply trying to persuade someone you are living your best life on Instagram. These were not ways digital rhetorics were used 20 years ago but now it is all around us. This also shows how much the meaning and perspective of digital rhetorics is at a constant change. 

"Writing in Knowledge Societies" was all about rhetorics concerning scientific writing and a concept called metonymy, which is replacing a word with another name that is associated with the original. The text explains a person uses metonymy when they are attempting to explain complex ideas to their audience. Using metonymy will turn a complex idea into simpler forms,  kind of like using layman's terms. I believe this is the single most important thing when you are writing for a wide audience because you want everyone to be able to understand your writing. If you use too many complex words or ideas, people who don't understand will immediately become uninterested and you just lost a whole section of the audience.

Also, I found it funny how MacDonald used metonymy and rhetoric in his research paper to convince the referee that two weak pieces of evidence to make one strong case and in the conclusion it ended with "Recent research in the rhetoric of science shows that rhetoric does play a central role in the creation of knowledge in science, and it can also make possible the perception of the entities that may become what we think of as the “brute facts of nature.” (Starke-Meyerring, 191). This showed that sometimes it's not about the data but how it is present that will make or break a case. Here I am thinking science is all about accurate data only, but rhetorics plays a part in it too because they are trying to convince the audience that what they are saying holds some kind of value.

“On multimodal composition” was basically about how everyone’s method/process to writing. I liked this reading because I felt it was most relatable; I have a process that plays into my composition and I never noticed until I read some of the trends. The biggest trends to me were using different mediums/interfaces, composing requiring others and revolving around influences and collaborations. Jotting down my main ideas and key points physically on paper usually helps me map out my ideas to get a better composition or else I tend to jump back and forth between ideas and I won’t have a clear flow throughout my writing. Sometimes I can’t quite get my idea out into writing that will make sense to the viewer, but when I'm in a group and I say my idea out loud, their feedback helps me figure out the best way to compose my sentences. Also, because I am getting that immediate feedback from other people, I know whether my ideas were on the right track or if I should switch up what imp trying to say to better fit the audience. Also writing space and and process also plays a big role, i write better when I'm alone because I have that time to read my paper out loud to myself and hear my words as if someone else was reading it rather than in my head, where I can skip over how illiterate a sentence may sound when spoken out loud.

In “Women, Rhetoric, and Politics on Pinterest”, although I like the idea of “gendered rhetorical spaces” I can’t associate Pinterest to being that social media outlet for it. Pinterest is mostly used by women and it does provide a space where if you pose an issue you will mostly get women feedback, which I think is important for women, sometimes you want to express emotions/ideas with strictly other women and it provides a space where we can uplift and help build one another, referring to cyberfeminism. However, as an outlet for political discussions, it's not the best platform. I agree with the users who said the site was for recipes and pretty things; I have never seen Pinterest used any other way and I think every social media serves a specific purpose and not everything NEEDS to be interconnected. I like that the conversation starts in Pinterest, women aren’t typically into politics and I like that because the site is used mostly by women, if a political picture is posted, women will be forced to see it and engage with it in some way; whether they chose to respond or not is on them but at least the conversation is open to them. I just don’t think Pinterest is a place where women want to go to have political conversations. However I think it's a stepping stone for women to begin getting involved and voicing their opinions, it's just better off done on another social media sites. With Pinterest being mostly occupied by women what kind of change/noise are we making to society if only women read it.

The quote that stuck with me through this reading was “This situation becomes all the more disturbing when one realizes that computers often exacerbate the very inequities that technology is so frequently supposed to ameliorate” (Selber 81). I felt like this was very important because as a generation we think computers are the best thing ever; we can do the simplest task with the tap a finger, it almost too easy. Although this is amazing and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world, it can also be a problem. We are so used to everything being technology-based and that being the easier route to take, but sometimes it can also the reason you pass or fail a class. For example, this Tumblr post. When we first got the assignment it seemed too easy, who doesn’t know what Tumblr or a blog is, who doesn’t know how to find the reading then write about and post it? The assignment seemed like it’s a good idea; however, look at how many problems most of us had the first and second blog post. We all struggled in some way to either figure out how to properly do and turn in the assignment.  Until Dr. Villa spent a whole class on setting up a Tumblr, and how to write and post, teaching that critical literacy of using the website, as a class we couldn’t all get it together. The point is we thought the incorporation of technology was supposed to make this course easier but that first simple task made it harder. I feel like that carries out through our whole college experience, in some classes the excessive use of technology can hinder some student's ability to learn. For example, if class notes were all online, but a student didn’t have a personal laptop to access those notes during class; which is also mentioned in the “power moves associated with technological regularization” as a form of segregation, in my opinion. 

Also, the idea of critical literacy with technology is always thrown to the side. I remember my freshman year every teacher talked about using D2L and how everything you need is there but in all the orientation classes I was forced to sit through, not one person taught us what D2L was and how to navigate it. That set me back the whole first week of assignments because most of my time was trying to figure out how to use it. We are the generation of technology, we figured out how to use everything on our own that is why we are so tech-savvy, but that often makes everybody think we will just “figure it out” instead of teaching us how. Sure we all know how to write a paper but how many of us know how to retrieve a file if its accidentally deleted before it was saved. Yes we know computers but do we understand how to work it?

Overall, the text was about how technology is a big part of our life and it's only going to continue to take over in the education system so we have to prep students now. However, because technology is constantly changing it's not enough to have a computer technology class in high school and expect students to take that knowledge and apply it correctly in college to become successful. As far as the “systematic requirements for change” in Ch.5, I feel like we are going through those stages right now in this class with these Tumblr post. We are learning about critical and rhetorical literacy and using Tumblr to demonstrate our understandings is incorporating technology into our learning.

This article basically explained the importance of writing skills in the medical field. Basically the health care system would run much smoother if the people working in it had proper writing skills. They ultimately make the biggest claim that if medical staff would communicate effectively through writing this would lead to better patient care and treatment. I personally agree with his statement completely. It all stems down to the basic level, if you aren't documenting information, evaluations and treatments correctly, how do you expect the next provider to jump in and just pick up where you left off. These small errors in communication can lead to big issues such as misdiagnosis, which ultimately lead to improper treatment. Big issues like these are why our health care system is so messed up.

I connect with this piece both professionally and personally. Professionally, in my field of work, we deal with SOAP notes, much like the providers in the articles and sometimes things happen so fast we end up verbalizing everything and it almost seems like actually writing the soap note isn't as important if the patient got the proper treatment, so we end up just letting a crappy soap not fly by. But it cases where we aren't able to verbalize our charts with the provider, we end up getting so stuck in our crappy ways and write really bad soap notes that we then have to hand off to someone else, because they aren't able to read it they end up having to do their own chart which can sometimes be different than when the patient first arrived, some of the same questions aren't asked or the same question is given a different answer. We get so caught up in actual treatment of the patient we forget that documentation is such a huge step. However, much like the article suggested we worked as a team to get the proper SOP for our soap notes, so they are uniform and easily understand across all our medics, this way it would allow better handoff treatments and ultimately better care for the patient. 

Personally, writing is not my strongest skill and because i don't do it often in my everyday life and career. Usually, if its not an english class, Im not writing anything too professional. So I never feel like I am in a writing work space, and that has caused my communication skills through writing to suffer. I don't know how to communicate effectively for my audience to comprehend what im saying. Its more like “i know what im saying so its good enough”; and my writing ends up just looking like one run on paragraph rant. This kind of was an eye open to me because although i knew writing and communication were big parts in the medical field, I was one to always think why do i need elaborate writing skills to learn medicine; and therefore have always brushed by writing as not as important as other subjects. After reading I realized that ideology is what is hurting our health care system and i am not the only one who does it. 

I believe this beat describes my personality, so take listen while you read and get to know me.

Hi, I’m Chazzity (pronounced Chastity, like the belt) 

I am a senior and my major is art and design: studio art. I aspire to be a medical illustrator. So basically that mean I like to study anatomy and biology

and then draw it, Bob Ross style

to help people understand what’s going on in their body’s, create new technology such as prothesis and maybe even help discover new treatments for diseases.  

Check out some of my artwork --> https://chazzityrivera.wixsite.com/chaz