heyy!

HASTA LA VISTA BAYBAY!

Guys the semester is done and we have made it through the class!!! This class was something else, i went from thinking this was your average english boring class to actually enjoying and looking forward to this class. Hope it was like this for everyone else and if it wasn’t then you probably didn’t go to class as much as i. 😂😂 I hope everyone does good in this and all their other courses. As to for me i believe i have pushed myself beyond the line of what I’m usually used to which was quite challenging but isn’t that the point of college? to challenge oneself and prosper from it? So if you ask me i believe I’ve improved not only as a writer but as a college student as well. I will more than likely apply a lot of the group project parts to any group work that i have in other classes because holy moly did it make it easy and fun to have a group project. Anyways GOOD LUCK to all and thank you tekla for the awesome class.

And I agree we are here for a reason and we need to keep going until we reach our goal. Honestly I can’t see the day of my graduation. It will be a long journey but it will be worth it. 

I also enjoyed the class, it was fun and made me think a lot but I learned and that is the point of school. 

The term is finally coming to a close and everywhere you look its like the world is on fire, with everyone running in all directions.  Nobody seems to have the time for idle chit chat, only time to focus on what needs to be done. The last fews weeks have been spent in a similar manner with the group project dealing with the things we learned and did such as the proposal, peer review and usability testing. The next week or two will be focus on the term learning record which will need to be revised many times over by our peers and our selfs. If we used activity theory we can easily observers the masses of college students during finals and conclude that most or all students become frantic during this time.  

This is the last blog post, or is it? I found this video on YouTube and I couldn’t get the “awwws” coming out of my mouth. It is just adorable! Aside from all the cuteness it can also be related towards the project that we are doing. It shows audience for all the cat lovers, or maybe just for cats. Getting people to love their cats and maybe find a cat that will later replace their previous cat, which can also be a little sad. Teaching the audience what real cat food is and how it can change the cat’s life by promoting Friskies as the product. Adding a set of instructions that is teaching the little kitten to be familiar with his new surroundings.

I liked this video in many ways and how it’s a good example we can use to communicate our proposals for the project. Videos are always fun to watch, so why not. I loved the way the cat was always referring to the little kitten as “Dear kitten.” How the older cat was teaching the little kitten what to do around the house when he is gone. What to expect and how he should be aware with “vacuum.” How he shouldn’t eat the hard food but the wet food, Friskies. How Friskies are made and kept save especially for them. What got a little irritating was the voice, but maybe it was because I replayed the video.

Blog Post #10

           In today’s class we discussed about usability testing. We watched two videos according to usability testing and ways to explain what it means. During the first video I felt lost as I did not know what the video was talking about. I grasp a few concepts by the end, how usability testing is not about visual design but the design behind that. I learned that it is a process between the audience and the businesses. The video also mentioned how it is probably something that we are doing already and it is not rocket science. In the second video the explanation is more straightforward, it demonstrates the purpose of usability testing which is to find out what your audience loves, and or struggles with during the trial of the product.

Last class we went over the pitch envy website. We saw two different kinds of pitch decks where one was done correctly and where the other one was not so good. The first one that we saw was a little bit confusing for me because I wasn’t familiar with all the images and some wording that it had. It didn’t catch my attention. The second pitch desk was easier for me to read because I was able to relate with it. I love pets, dogs and cats, especially when we’re dealing with their safety, you can sign me up for that. What was quite funny was the way they changed the topic. They went from tracking your pet to their health, which was irrelevant to the first slides.

Today our group decided to meet up at the library at the same time as the class in order to take advantage of the time given by the teacher, also because the deadline for the project proposal’s plan is on Friday. We discussed and took some notes about what are the benefits for the students with our proposal, another point that we got to talk was about how we were going to persuade the students to help us achieve this project. So to persuade them we got to the point that we needed to use some Pathos, appeal to emotion, because this project is related to animals, and when talking about animals the majority of the people will most likely to react in favor.

While we talked about the project plan a group member decided to do the “Minutes” work and started to type out the main ideas that were being discussed by the other group members. In my opinion I believe that we are working very fluently and nice, everyone is doing something, which was the main reason to have a group, for us to help each other, work, have more ideas, but not forget about respecting everyone’s opinion.

At the end we decided to meet up again next Thursday and finish our project plan, our project plan structure will be a slide show to make it more catchy and interesting for the students to get the attention sooner and to accomplish this project.

I am very excited for our project, I know that with what we have seen in class we will ace this project. I remember that at the beginning of the semester the “final project” was a little bit scary lol, now with every step that we made it is going fluently and it doesn’t seem super hard.

Working in groups is very helpful, yet difficult. As a group we can get things done quicker because we can divide the work. If the group is larger, things can get done faster compared to a small group. The bad thing about a group is that some group members may leave one or two persons doing all the work. I am saying this because I have already dealt with these kinds of people. The thing is that I am fine with it as long as I get an A letter grade. I will have to learn to let others take part on the project and just wish for the best, but I don’t think this will be a problem this semester because my team seems like they know the stuff. And seem enthusiasm for an A letter grade.

During the weekend my group and I focused on coming up with behavior norms. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that the group’s behavior expectations was called behavior norms. I know what kind of teachers/professors did I have? I think that setting behavior norms is important because we can see what is expected from each team member. It helps us become aware of the issues that our team members don’t want to deal with. It’s like setting goals that as a team we must follow for the sake of our group project.

Blog Post #8

             In this past week after the break we have come to talk about our last project. Since our last project involves working in a group. We have discussed in class about the distinct types of people in group projects. We talked about how there is people who depend on others to do all the work, others like to leave all the work until the end. In various groups there is different types of people, there is also people who get the job done, and other who like to be overachievers and take over all the work because they want to get most of the credit.

           We established some norms in class as to what we expect from each and every one in our group. For example in my group we talked about how we expect from every one to be on time in our meetings. This is important as nobody’s time is wasted and we all get to hear each other’s ideas on time. We also discussed to keep on task, respect each other, and encourage each other’s ideas. By establishing these behavioral norms we are all in the same page and we understand the importance of this project. We wouldn’t like to waste our time and effort on someone who is not going to willingly try their best like everyone else is doing.

Last class before Spring Break was discussed how necessary is to choose an audience correctly and to picture the reader very specifically. It needs to be a specific audience because a particular subject that an author choose to write is not meant to be read by everyone, if you want to be very specific and detailed about a subject, by doing this as a writer you already divert from the generalize theme, so just the ones that are really interested in such kind of work will be that audience that you choose.  The class created a specific person using as a start a millennial, so from there as a class we started complementing and adding more traits to this person, which would be someone who will be interested and read the work that as a writer you prepared specially for those specific people.

Blog Post #7

         The last class before spring break we got together and talked about audiences. How to target audiences and how to “sell them a thing.” We covered how many businesses make a perspective out of their audiences to be able to sell them things. We created a person, who was going to be our target audience. This person was a millennial guy, who lived in his parent’s basement. He did not have any cable, he was only dependent on Netflix or the internet. He also was not interested in dating, and his best friends were two cats. Not only did we concluded this part we also discussed more specifically his job was YouTube, uploading videos and his income must had been from his sponsors or ads on YouTube.

           The reason for creating this person in class was for us to have an idea what kind of person he was and how we could convince this certain type of guy to buy from us. By narrowing down and creating specific types of audiences we have to think of how this audiences can be persuaded. In this case for example, we would have to come with an idea that would interest him. We would not be able to persuade him to buying anything if he is not interested nor does it benefit him in any way.

In today’s class we were able to revise two classmate’s Midterm Learning Records. I find it very helpful for others other than me to check how I was doing in this assignment. I also could compare how different it was my work from my classmate’s, by doing this I got better ideas on how I needed to add more evidence and my classmates provided very helpful comments to improve my argument. The guideline that the teacher gave it was very specific, this was very useful for the authors to look in what part their work is boring, what others will change and add, also if they are doing well, and to point out what part others like the most in the author’s argument. For me my classmates told me to provide more evidence and to change some part because it was still unfinished.

Today in class we got the chance to peer review our midterm drafts. I think that peer reviewing is important because we can make our writing better and we can successfully claim for a grade letter A. I found this time in class very useful and helpful.

The peer review questions that we had to answer, I believe, will help us write appropriate. When I was revising my peer’s draft, I was revising my own as well (in my mind) because the mistakes were now obvious to me. Like why did I even write that, type of questions came to me. Once questions are available, we can notice how we really performed in our writing and what changes we should make. The answer to the questions are important, especially, if the person that revised the paper thought that it was boring. Then we should automatically act and make the draft more entertaining. Perhaps by adding images and by providing interesting examples that students can relate to. Also, not only do we learn from our mistakes, but we also learn from the mistakes of others. Which is beneficial both ways.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t know, but it can help us write a paper well. Such as, if we are using the right words for a specific audience. Who is the audience and how can we create an argument that the audience can accept. These type of questions can be answered in a peer review and are helpful to become better writers.