Eric

Design Accessibility and Accessibility Guidelines for UX Designers really brought to my attention to the importance of designing accessible products. I believe many people who are not handicapped don't realize the struggles that others may face when it comes to interacting with many of the tools we use today in many of our digital cultures. These struggles could be as simple as someone who is colorblind not seeing the text box highlighted with color stating that they may have inputted their password wrong. It can also go as far as those who have motor impairments that have a hard time or are incapable of using a mouse to navigate a site. These problems can easily be solved by taking a more creative approach to the design constraints that these disabilities can impose while generating an online product. These constraints can be solved with several solutions and it all depends on the creativity of the designer. The solutions can also be fairly simple to implement such as adding symbols/text to indicate an error opposed to a slight color change or even making the website more compatible with voice recognition software such as Dragon to allow accessibility with those that have difficulty with a mouse or keyboard. These designs are not just for those that are permanently disabled but also those who may have a temporary disability such as a broken arm. Overall I believe these designs are useful for all users, disabled or not, due to the allowance of easier navigation and use of a product which ultimately can increase a user's experience. (Hausler, 2015; Kaur, 2018)

This topic is extremely important to those in computer science. When designing programs it is extremely important to make it easier to use. This positively affects the user’s experience and will most likely cause them to use the product again. By being accessible it allows the product to reach many people and allows those who have disabilities to use the product as easily as those who are more fortunate.

While reading Sustaining Critical Literacies in the Digital Information Age: The Rhetoric of Sharing, Prosumerism, and Digital Algorithmic Surveillance and watching Dana Boyd on the Spread of Conspiracies and Hate Online I found that the key connection between the two articles is the “do it yourself” attitude that many of us are undeniably familiar too. This “do it yourself” attitude, as Beck says, comes from the third wave of our civilizations development. This third wave is referred to as the information age where a hybrid of the “labor practices of the first and second waves with consumers performing the tasks of specialized laborers” (Beck, n.d.). This mix of labor and consumers performing labor has created what Beck points out to be the development of prosumerism. Prosumerism has cut out the cost of labor in many industries but most notably social media. By sharing our personalized data on social media and using the many search engines such as Google, Bing, and Youtube third-party have been able to collect data through series of algorithms to produce adds, search results, etc. just based on common everyday activities that the majority of society now participate in. These practices allow both the main companies and third party companies to turn heavy profits by allowing the consumer to do the majority of the work. Dana Boyd on the other hand, shows the many repercussions of this “do it yourself” attitude most notably the spread of misinformation. This happens when journalist and other companies try to to find an answer to something and publish works of composition without fully researching the problem. This causes the consumers of these journalists and media companies to independently do research by using Google, or another search engine, so they can draw their own conclusions. These consumers will then see at the top searches are almost all related, due to many news outlets mimicking one another in order to publish a story. This all in turn causes these consumers to believe in what is presented to them even though it might not be reliable or of the highest quality information. Through the manipulation of how information is presented to us as consumers and the domino effect of the spread of misinformation false beliefs such as the anti vaccine movements that have been scientifically proven to be false are able to take hold in the public.  (Beck, n.d.) (Boyd, 2019)

The major argument and main point of What is Rhetorical about Digital Rhetoric is that digital rhetoric is an extremely complex subject and is also one that continues to evolve everyday. I was surprised while reading this article but could also understand where the authors were coming from. Both the authors and those they interviewed in the attached video no one could put a strict definition on digital rhetoric. I feel like those in our class and myself included also have trouble trying to define what digital rhetoric due to its complexity. The authors convey this complexity in the article by bringing in many both long and short essays but also projects on digital rhetoric and not being able to get one clear connection between the pieces to better define what rhetoric is. The authors then close their article stating that rhetoric has been an ever changing subject and the same is to say about digital media, which is why it is important to understand aspects of digital rhetoric for future research and to reflect on past understandings of these subjects. (Hodgson, Barnett, 2016)

The facts that digital rhetoric is ever changing suggest that with the study of digital rhetoric come a lifetime of learning. This is also true for those in computer science and cyber security. As the authors stated above on how digital media is always changing those in computer science and cyber security must also evolve with these changes due to the continuous development of new languages, algorithms, etc.. 

I  believe the main take away from chapter 9 of Writing in Knowledge Societies is that rhetoric is commonly used in fields of science but not all of science is rhetoric. The statement that rhetoric is a key part of science is that many times scientist will use personal experiences that other can relate to to portray a fact. I feel like the author of this book does a great example of explaining this using several different examples. My favorite example that Graves (2011) uses in this chapter is the idea of the quantum well. She gives a summary, from a physicist, of what a quantum well is and later goes into detail of how rhetoric was used to convey this scientific fact. She does this by explaining that the physicist uses metonymy to describe the well by having the reader use their personal knowledge of a three dimensional well and so they can get a better understanding of the complexity of a one dimensional well (Graves, 2011). Graves (2011) then explains the concept of idealized cognitive models that are made up of three dimensions which are reality, conceptualization, and language. By using all three of these dimensions Graves states that using this metonymy of using personal knowledge, conceptualizing the idea using that preexisting knowledge, and putting it into words allows these scientists to create arguments and to explain if results are valid or vice versa (Graves, 2011). By doing this scientist are using rhetoric to reinforce their research and to persuade their audience to believe it as a scientific fact.

While reading this chapter I was very much blown away by the concepts that were very well explained by Graves. I have always loved the sciences and I have never actually thought that rhetoric would have anything to do with it. This chapter has completely changed my opinion of that. Through all of the sciences I have taken through my schooling, many if not all the educators have done what was described in this chapter which was connecting a personal experience or preexisting knowledge of a subject and applying it to a concept to get a better understanding of what we were discussing that day in class. A great example of this was comparing a capacitor to a bucket of water where once the bucket is filled up it can then be emptied, just like a bucket of water once a capacitor is fully charged it will then release all of its energy.

I feel like the main point brought up by both On Multimodal Composing and Women, Rhetoric, and Politics on Pinterest is that composing is a collaborative process. Both articles bring up great examples such as the culture and social interactions of Pinterest (Women, Rhetoric, and Politics on Pinterest) and the example of Sara’s video where you can hear several voices composing and contributing to conversation (On Multimodal Composing). Both of these social interactions are multimodal. Those on Pinterest are capable of posting visual arguments where others can then comment on them to create a discussion and Sara’s video includes verbal communication as someone writes down their ideas. These conversations allow, like the author of  Women, Rhetoric, and Politics on Pinterest states, society to “actively and rhetorically engage with civic issues. These conversations can happen both online and offline thanks to multimodal composition which allows verbal communication with other but also the communication found like those on Pinterest. By participating in these conversations members of society can then challenge the social norms we face everyday and to improve society as a whole.

Being able to communicate and collaborate with others is a very important part of computer science. By collaborating with others it allows programmers to find the most optimal way to code a program to get the most out the CPU while managing to be less complicated so others can expand on it.

Selber (2004), in the book Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, continuously calls to action for teachers and educators to create a a program to teach others how to communicate better in the terms of computer literacy. He does this by revealing the three categories needed to make someone technologically literate. These three categories are to be literate functionally, critically, and rhetorically. To be functionally literate is to have the ability to effectively be capable of using and understanding how the computer works so you can use it to its full potential. This means having a deep understanding of the capabilities and the limiting factors of a computer and understanding that they are not equipped to complete any task imaginable (Selber, 2004). 

The research presented by Opel and Hart-Davidson, in The Primary Care Clinic as Writing Space, really shocked me. I always thought that healthcare professionals were experts at communication and at getting their work done efficiently. On the other hand Opel and Hart-Davidson (2019) presented that many of these professionals were often behind in their work and communicated poorly, for example MAs were often found incapable of finishing their tasks due to providers work load. The main problem presented by Opel and Hart-Davidson (2019) was that the writing inside the clinic was unevenly distributed due to the use of EMRs, or electronic medical records, which caused an unevenly divided workload. 

The solution to this would be to equally distribute the writings in the clinic ,so the providers are not overwhelmed with paper work, this would allow members of the clinic to work more as a team and to better communicate with each other allowing their work to be completed more efficiently ( Opel, Hart-Davidson, 2019).

In my major of Cyber Security and Computer Science effective communication and teamwork is key. For example many computer scientist work together on a project to finish it efficiently. They do this because often some projects have a heavy work load and need a team of people to complete them as fast as possible so not just one person is getting behind in their work.

The main ideas presented by both the Multimodal Guide (University of Mississippi, 2019) and the authors of Understanding Rhetoric (Losh, Alexander, Cannon, Cannon, 2017) is that composition can take many forms,or modes. Multimodal composition allows the writer to get there argument across to the audience by many other forms then just written text. These forms can include pictures, videos, aural arguments, etc.. Losh et al (2017) also present the three rhetorical appeals to their audience which include ethos, logos, and pathos. These rhetorical appeals allow the writer to better communicate their ideas to their respective audience by appealing to their emotions (pathos), logic (logos), and or establishing credibility (ethos). 

Howdy,

I’m Eric Toth and I am dual majoring in Cyber Security and Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics.

I am currently a sophomore and am expected to graduate with the class of 2022.

I am currently watching the IT Crowd on Netflix, which I 10/10 recommend to all of my fellow nerds. 🤓