blog 23

In today’s English assignment in class Mrs. Crawford assigned us to get with a member of our group and discuss our next essay we are doing. In my opinion the essay will be fairly easy, because what it is about is you have two articles that the teacher Mrs. Crawford gave us and we have to write a summary about them. They have more details that go along with the essay as well. While we were with our partners We were told we had to create a rough draft plan and a thesis for our essay. During this time period of trying to figure out how to start this essay off and figuring out a thesis for it we discovered that if you read both articles first you will be able to create a thesis and rough draft plan much easier than you would if you just skimmed over it and tried to figure it out. I have not yet started on my Rough draft I am still needing to read my second article so I can figure out a Plan to get my essay started. Once I have my rough draft done I can than start on my Final draft and soon be done with the essay.

blog 22

“How Safe is Myspace?” is an article that was written by a young lady named Hillary Hylton. In the article Hillary talks about two different stories pertaining to the title of the article. One of the stories is a young girl who is originally 14 years old pretends to be 18 and date a 19 year old boy. In the end of the story the 19 year old boy ended up getting arrested for having sex with a minor. Another headline in the same article How Safe is Myspace tells a story of a 16 year old honor student from Michigan flew as far as Jordan to marry a boy she had met only online on myspace. As the article says “or parents who have only a passing knowledge of MySpace, let alone the ever multiplying horde ofcompetitors like Xanga, Facebook and Bebo, it may be hard to understand why kids flock to these sites and how they can be more dangerous than old-school chat rooms. The reason: in chat rooms, predators have to engage in conversation to get to know people. But on sites like MySpace, they can access gobs of information by reading users' profiles, which tend to include photos as well as blog entries and bantering with friends. The article “ How Not to Lose Face on Facebook” was not in the articles that we were able to read for some reason but the group that explained the article some what explained it good. The person presenting the article in group four had said that its easy to “lose” your face when all you do is social networking sites. What that means is that you communicate to your friends and family members more so on the computer and through all the social networking sites rather than giving them a call, ringing their door bell saying hello of meeting up somewhere. It is easy to lose contact with people you may know when you get addicted to the computer.

blog 21

In the video Hand Held learning by Danah Boyd She talks mainly about technology. The first minute Danah Boyd talks about how some people in today world think that technology will ruin the education of kids. One the other hand some people also believe that technology will solve all problems and actually help kids in their education in many ways. It will introduce classrooms to all sorts of technology and we can actually connect all sorts of people around the globe. “How do we develop which technology to take into the classroom? And how do we deal wit the possibility of failure of bringing in these technologies? “As Danah Boyd says. Education is first and foremost about teaching young people to think. The video clip goes on and Danah brings up the subject of social networking sites. One of the networking sites she mentions in her story is myspace. She asks “Are you my friend?” Danah goes off of this question by telling the audience there are three clusters of behavior around friending. First there are people who have 30-40 friends and who try to keep it an intimate space of theirs. Then there’s the teens who have a couple hundred friends, everyone they’ve ever met. Then there’s the people who collect. Usually the people who collect are musicians, scammers, and politicians. “There is only one group of teenagers who tend to collect. Those are young boys who try to collect as many hot girls as possible” Danah tells. Teens were interviewed and this is what most of them replied with “Because my parents don’t let them out of the house much the computer is all I can really do.” People are starting to use networking sites more and more for an [Audience.] Because they don’t get out of the house much they don’t have many people to talk to, they don’t have a social life outside so the computer is their only way to have a social life and to interact with others. The video goes on about how kids aren’t safe online because of the people they add on myspace or the people they add on face book that they don’t even know.

blog 20

This class period in Mrs. Crawford’s English 301 class we went over a work sheet that helped us with out compare or contrast essay that we are having to do. The work sheet had things on it like point 1 than underneath that line it had subject 1 and subject 2. The next line had point 2 and under that it had subject 1 and subject 2 and so on all the way to point 3. Than at the very end the last line was the concluding sentence or paragraph. When the points of subjects and the concluding sentence or paragraph have lines next to them we are supposed to fill them in with our own information we have. We did not really work in groups like the syllabus said we were supposed to do yet we popcorn read. In other words we took turns reading and explaining the paper and how we were supposed to go about it. The paper will be very helpful in the long run because it will allow me to separate my essay into different parts and I will be able to go off of the paper and have main points and subjects in my paragraphs like I am originally supposed to have. It will just make things go a lot smoother!

blog 19

Recently I have been thinking about my future a lot! My mother works at Trinity University. There is a program that after my mom works there for two years I can go to any university through out the united states that is also with this program for half tuition and after four years I can go free tuition to any of the colleges. I have looked and looked and thought about which college I would want to transfer to after getting my basics done here at SAC. I never really wanted to go to Trinity University just because I thought it was too close to home and I wanted to just get out of the house and live on my own. Now I have been thinking about staying here and transferring to Trinity and living in the dorms my junior year and maybe living on my own my senior year. Even though that I still a year and a half away I need to know what my future plans are and how I am going to go about them. I have always been one to say “Oh I would never choose a college just because my boyfriend goes there!” Even though my boyfriend does not go to Trinity he goes to UTSA. He is one of my reasons for staying here in town. Silly I know. I just cant wait to see what my future looks like. I want to get out of SAC asap and move on to getting my education degree and graduating college and become a Elementary School Teacher, have kids, and grow up! I want to have my own life out of my parents house. This is crazy, yes, but I cant wait to have to pay my own bills, go grocery shopping for myself buying me my own car that I actually bought myself. I just cant wait to grow up! Adults always say “Your going to miss your childhood, don’t be in a rush to grow up it’ll come faster than you know.” Like I said I want to be a grown up, I want that! I can not wait to have my own house with my husband and little kids running around acting all crazy. I am so excited to have that life style later on in my life.

blog 18

I believe that now a days people or should I say much less girls in this cruel world that we live in try and attempt or wish to be many different things that they are not. In the Dove Revolution you tube video that we were told to watch the people in the video were making over a girl what was meant to look like how girls should appear in today’s world. First they made her over did her hair and make up and made her look all pretty, so we thought, than after taking the photo o the young lady they pulled it up on the computer and started making many of changes. Changes as in making her neck taller making, her eye brows higher and just many more little things like that. When photographers make over your picture after they have already made over you in real life yes the pictures may look pretty but it is giving girls a view of them selves saying that they are not pretty enough to be just made over and snap a picture but also that they have to make the picture over so it looks even better. In an article called Health & Fitness: Snip, Suction, Stress, and Truss they first talk about Cosmetic Surgery. As the article says “A nip here, a tuck there, and the face you have at 40 is no longer the face you deserve but the face you can afford. In the past five years, thanks to new surgical wizardry, media hype and the laws of gravity exerting their inevitable effect on baby boomers, cosmetic surgery has soared in popularity. Last year some half a million Americans were snipped, suctioned, stretched and trussed, compared with 300,000 in 1981. Once the province of aging screen stars and wealthy matrons, cosmetic surgery now attracts middle-class office workers, many in their 30s and 40s, and many of them men. Los Angeles Plastic Surgeon Richard Grossman describes the phenomenon as "another transition" for the restless Me generation: "They protested against the wars, and now they're protesting against the mirrors.” The article is saying that not only girls but guys are now worrying about how they look or how people see them. It is not a safe environment to always be in having a snip here a tuck there. People need to realize that you are who you are. A snip here and a tuck there can be taken care of many other different ways. Exercise more, eat better. Its all up to you on what you choose to do with your body.