#rws17

This week I chose to do my response on the article on blackboard “It wasn’t me, was it?” Plagiarism and the Web by Danielle DeVoss & Annette C. Rosati. I mainly chose this article because I personally have been accused of plagiarizing, falsely accused but still a scary process. The main idea of this article was to inform people about plagiarism and how some people have no clue if they did in fact plagiarize as they are scared if they did something wrong or forgot to cite a part of their work. 

This gif is perfect to my standard because it is showing “homer” as scared showcasing that’s how most students feel when they plagiarize. The content from the article ties back to my major as I currently attend a University. Most universities take plagiarism very serious and can be a daunting thing to hurt your academic record.  I have been on the other end of the dishonesty policy and while I was falsely accused, it’s still a very scary thing to go through. Plagiarism is no joke and everyone should be careful to not commit such foul especially in college like UTEP. The article gave me a better understanding on how people think plagiarism works and how people are not sure if they indeed plagiarized. I feel like professors should take the time to inform kids of what exactly plagiarism is and what does not fall under that category. The major assignment we are currently working on should be taken with caution as we are dealing with lots of writing, from scholarly, open and multimodal sources. We want to make we provide the correct citations and not forget to cite valuable things as that can land us in potential trouble. Even though Ms. Cisneros is the best I have no doubt she won’t hesitate to assign a zero as plagiarism is a very serious offense. 

Where to start... Honestly I thought this class was going to be just like the first part of RWS, in the first post that we had to do for this class i said that i was thinking that this class would be a little harder than the first one and sure it was harder because we only meet once a week and i think that makes every class harder. i think that since we had to use mixed media for our tumblr posts (gifs, pictures) helped us to better explain ourselves and what we were thinking at that point, before this class i knew that for example in presentations you could use pictures or videos but in this class i learned that they really really help the author to express a message and it also helps the audience.

the posts that i think are the best ones

https://aguilarga.tumblr.com/post/156232721814/intro

this is the very first one that we had to do and i choose this one because honestly I dont look really shy but I really am, i think that after doing intros for a class everyone is more open and more calm.

https://aguilarga.tumblr.com/post/157878914944/rr-week-7

the second one comes from week 7, I really liked this one because since i was a kid i liked to summarize, i always liked to get a highlighter and to get the most important stuff about a reading, the chapters that we read also helped us with the lit review. 

https://aguilarga.tumblr.com/post/159506742214/week-12-reading-response 

this is the 3 post that i think is one of the bests i had this semester and is about week 12, it talks about multi modalities and how authors use the different types of graphs and videos and pictures to get a message across

My experience using tumblr, Im going to be honest, at the beginning i thought it was going to be super hard to understand it but we had like a mini class and i felt like i learned a lot about it and it really helped me to understand how to use it. I would prefer using tumblr for reading responses because we can use gifs or pictures and in blackboard you cant, thats why i think tumblr is more beneficial than blackboard. I dont know if you can do it on blackboard but i like how in tumblr you can see what your classmates think and you can respond to what they are saying and thats what i like about tumblr too. 

This semester flew right by and after all the assignments, projects, papers, and Tumblr posts that we all wrote I just want to do a happy dance. Walking into this class I thought we would have to do boring readings, long essays, and hard projects. I am not saying it was easy but I am saying that it was helpful, I walked out of that class knowing I did not just learn something I will never use again, I learned A LOT of strategies that I will continue to use for other classes, my future business, and even just for fun. The assigned readings throughout the semester were not hard or boring they were helpful and contributed to my writing process for each different assignment. 

Some of the main ideas we read about are Formats and Modalities, Summary, Forming arguments, posing meaningful questions. For the most part I really do remember what I learned and was able to take away from those readings. I learned that summaries are more than just 4 to 5 sentence paragraphs and without realizing it we summarize our days when we talk to people and summarize other things but in writing there is more to it. I learned that in writing an argumentative essay you do not always need to win but sometimes you need to leave room for people to argue back and also be open minded toward others point of view. These things are meaningful to me and I will take that with me to other classes I will take in my university career. 

In having different types of assignments most of them all had to do with developing an argument and supporting that argument with good evidence. Each reading was able to answer any questions I might have had before starting the assignments and after those readings were always good to look back at just to make things better. My least favorite readings were those types that I had to read over and over to understand. One was an article by Yancey and the only reason I did not like it is because it was intended for a different audience. That made it harder for me to follow what she was explaining but in the end once I understood I did realize that her article helped elaborate on chapter 10 and afterwards I was able to better comprehend the importance of arguments and the components used to structure an argument. I think just because I did struggle with the Lit Review I feel that more should be given to help students better understand what is wanted out of the assignment. I don't think that there needs to be revisions on the readings but maybe just providing more examples and other readings to support the chapters will maybe help a student who might struggle like I did. 

From the beginning of the semester to now, my understanding or Writing and Rhetoric has definitely had a change from my point of view. Personally, when i first heard the two words “writing” and “rhetoric” together, they sound like they had the same meaning to me. It turns out they both have the similar meaning in some ways, however they have a different meaning in other ways to. The way i was able to figure this out was because all semester Professor Villa would tell us to analyze things in a very deep, specific way, and to not just be general about what is being analyzed. I have to admit, before this semester, i definitely would analyze things very blandly and general, but now i feel i am able to really find the understanding of things in a very specific way. i feel like both my rhetoric and writing skills have both improved drastically because of this class. 

During this semester we were required to maintain our Tumblr blogs with reading responses due every week or so. In these reading responses we were required to use multimodality/mixed media to reflect our rhetorical choices we made within the reading responses. We would use “gifs” mostly to represent what we were writing about in our responses. I personally found this part of the responses to be my favorite, because it allowed us to express what we felt in a somewhat funny way. I am also a visual learner and i felt that it helped me vision my response much more easily and it made me actually have to think about what was appropriate to write down because i had to find a picture corralating to what i was writing about. 

This method did indeed influence my perception of rhetoric because it made me see how rhetoric is not just about essays, writing, and words on a page. It helped me see that visuals can be incorporated into rhetoric to give the reader/writer a much more clear understanding of the topic because of the visual it puts in their head. 

Next, i have chosen the top three tumblr posts in which i feel are my “top” work this semester: 

https://angelarose25.tumblr.com/post/157293164358/week-5-reading-response

This first post is from week 5. It talks about why it is important to have an effective research question. I feel this post was very well detailed and is something very important when writing a research paper. Without a strong, effective research paper, you will more than likely have a weak paper because you do not have a strong question to focus on.

https://angelarose25.tumblr.com/post/158170387428/week-8-reading-response

The second post is from week 8 which focuses on “evidence.” I believe that this response helped me realize that you cannot just throw in a random piece of evidence/quote into a paper. Your evidence must be relevant and meaning full, and with that, you will have a great paper because there is strong, relevant evidence to back up your topic.

https://angelarose25.tumblr.com/post/159244256638/week-11-reading-response

The third post is from week 11 which focused on framing and constructing arguments. I feel like i answered this post as well as i could because it was a difficult reading for me, in the sense that there was a lot to be analyzed and looked at when viewing “framing” and “constructing” the arguments. It taught me that there are different types of arguments that can be constructed.

My tumblr experience went from not very fond of the website, to actually enjoying it. When i first heard we would be using a Tumblr blog to upload our reading responses i wasn't too sure of the idea because i had never really used tumblr before and i wasn't too familiar with it. I remember when i did my first post i had trouble because i had no idea how to upload a gif until i figured i just had to press the “enter” button. Haha. As we continued uploading posts weekly, i actually started enjoying it because i was able to incorporate the multimodal into my responses which helped me gain a better understanding of the chapter we read, or whatever we had to post about. As far as using blackboard to complete the reading responses, i feel like that would not have been as beneficial as the Tumblr posts because we would not have been able to incorporate a gifs and fun pictures. The Tumblr posts in my opinion were more beneficial. Most of us are young teenagers to early 20s and social media is slowly overpowering our lives, so what better way to incorporate reading responses with a social media network.

When the semester began my perception of rhetoric was to be able to write and deliver a message, while my perception of writing was just being able to write an adequate essay, paper, etc. Now that the semester is coming to an end, my perception of rhetoric has changed in that rhetoric is not about just writing and delivering a message, rather it takes a lot more work because you have to think of ways to make your message more effective. You have to look at who the audience is going to be, and think of the best way to communicate with that audience, for example using multimodality to deliver your message in the form of a poster, PowerPoint, essay, etc. In addition, I learned that multimodality and using mixed media within the Tumblr posts helped reinforce the topic that I was writing about, by giving a visual reference/example to the audience. I really liked using Tumblr to submit our reading responses. I enjoyed being able to use mixed media to further express my writing, as well as, being able to see how my peers expressed themselves. If we were to have used Blackboard, then most likely the writing process would not have been as enjoyable due to the fact that maybe we would have not been able to use mixed media, which to me became an important part of our reading responses. I would not change anything about my Tumblr experience because to me it was enjoyable the way it is. As I mentioned before, I could show my peers my perception of the reading topics through my writing and visuals, as well as see their perceptions through their own writing and visuals, which I believe helps us deliver our messages more effectively and helps us become better academic writers.

The three posts that I believe are my top works are:

W3 Reading Response: https://knsuarez.tumblr.com/post/156685382279/w3-reading-response

In this post, the reading had to do with analysis and I believe that I was able to relate the reading to my major pretty well. This in turn really helped me in writing the response and choosing the visuals that I would use in the post.

W12 Reading Response: https://knsuarez.tumblr.com/post/159506075314/w12-reading-response

I think that this post is one of the top works because I was able to understand the reading/article really well due to the fact that we had been using Tumblr and multimodalities for our reading responses in weeks past, which in turn helped me write about the reading more effectively.

W13 Reading Response: https://knsuarez.tumblr.com/post/159765142734/w13-reading-response

The reading for this post was really interesting to me and therefore I understood the material better, in turn helping me express myself more effectively. Also, I believe that as the semester progressed, my writing skills got better, and this being one of the last reading responses, I feel my writing in this post was one of the best.  

My thoughts on rhetoric from the first week compared to now has definitely changed. In week 1, i saw rhetoric as just a means of persuading someone and providing information through the use of ethical appeals. And by week 14, I see that rhetoric is such a wide topic that includes many more aspects such as audience, multi modalities, visuals, technology, etc. In the beginning of the class, I thought that using tumblr as a way of submitting assignments would be somewhat difficult, because I had never used this platform before. But now, I see that it is a great social media platform that allows a student to express there views and thoughts through multiple means. Through multi modalities, one is able to accentuate an idea by a different way other than text. I learned that using visuals/ pictures can make your argument more effective and persuasive. The use of these multi modalities did influence my perception on rhetoric because it helped me understand that rhetoric is much more broad than just text or oral. There are several small aspects of rhetoric that can really make a difference in a presentation. Some of my top posts in this class include the following.

https://danielrey5.tumblr.com/post/156336547341/reading-response

I liked this response because I feel the message as well as the visuals are very cohesive in their delivery.

https://danielrey5.tumblr.com/post/157288594221/week-5

I also found this post to be one of my top posts because of the content. The topic of posing questions that mean something to you and your purpose is something that affected me. Also this post is when I decided to do my literature review on technology and how it affects the youth. 

https://danielrey5.tumblr.com/post/156243545146/intro-to-me

Lastly the last post in my top three is the introduction post. This post shows a brief summary of who I am and I think it is important to reflect on what your thoughts used to be and how you have grown and learned. My tumblr experience in general was a very positive one. Not only did I learn how to use tumblr, but I learned that you are able to use social media in a classroom setting. I think that using tumblr in the class was very effective and i would much rather prefer this over blackboard. Where blackboard lacks interaction, and visual attention grabbers, tumblr has entertaining features that helps the student pay attention. My favorite part of using tumblr would be that there is such a variety of multi modalities available to integrate into your post. Along with the use of hashtags which makes it easier to interact with a large community, using pictures and visuals is what makes a post more interesting and entertaining. Some things I did not like about tumblr is that there is a bit of a learning curve, and I continue to learn new things about the platform every time I use it. But along with everything else, there will always be a learning curve and tumblr is not a difficult social media outlet to use at all. I think my tumblr experience has been nothing but a positive one. I actually really enjoyed using this platform over something like blackboard where it gets boring and I lose my focus quickly. Tumblr is interactive and entertaining and that is why I would’nt change anything about my experience using it.

As the semester comes to an end, yayyy finally here is my tumblr reflection for this class:

I feel like for this course since I had taken RWS1301 the semester before I had a pretty good idea of what rhetoric was but with all the new information that we learned, I can say that at the beginning of the course I had no idea that it could be applied in so many different ways. Specially multimodality how in our generation and for the future it is super important to learn how to apply it effectively and strategically. I find it super interesting that how playing with words, animations and pictures you can express yourself way much better and can captivate a greater audience.

For my top three posts from the semester are:

https://greecehinojos.tumblr.com/post/158169037091/week-8-rr

I really like this one because they way I gave a brief summary and was able to incorporate it really well with cosmetology and specially the GIFs I used in this post I really like, plus it was women’s day.

https://greecehinojos.tumblr.com/post/159765616166/week-13

I feel this post is pretty strong it has a good summary and some clear points.

https://greecehinojos.tumblr.com/post/156132206721/introduction-and-topic

My introduction post is one that I really like I like how I worded the post.

I actually really like tumblr I prefer it a hundred times more than BB its very easy and much more casual which makes the assignment less tedious. Although I do find it to be a bit frustrating sometimes because it crashes a lot and sometimes I can’t distinguish between my own post or something that I rebloged but other than that it’s great. So wouldn’t necessarily change anything about the tumblr posts I think the only issue is more of a technical problem. Tumblr is pretty cool!

Chapter 10 Designing Arguments: Formats and Modalities talked about the different categories of argument and the way people transmit those arguments. Some examples of these arguments are written, verbal, and visual all with the purpose of persuading the audience to promote awareness to an issue and present a possible solution for that particular issue. Let’s take the visual for instance. In a visual argument sometimes might include visual/verbal collaboration where images and text work hand in hand to clarify, contradict, or challenge common understanding or they might stand alone only showing visuals such as images. No matter what modality you use, at the end the purpose is the same to present your particular stand in a issue and present a possible solution to it, it all just depends which one you believe will be more effective on your audience. This reading helped me understand our last major assignment in a sense that we will be presenting an argument and taking a stand to it but it’s more so of connecting with the audience and effectively giving and presenting the argument in a way that suits the audience and obviously getting their attention because you don’t want to loose your audience during your presentation and bore them. 

This relates to my major in a very significant way since marketing is about visuals and texts and convincing your audience to sell or purchase your product. Let’s use the T.V. show Shark Tank as an example, the entrepreneurs are selling/marketing their product or service to the sharks (judges rich mean people) and their goal is to convince at least on of the sharks that their product or service is worth investing their money so it can be used by consumers, while using evidence visuals or text such as graphs statistics to prove it.