WRIT Launch

WRIT Launch

 This afternoon, I went to a writing activities called in the sturm hall. In this event, both of students and faculty introduce the magazine writing programs and share some experiences with the writing.

Firstly, the directors introduce about their programs is for students, and also for publish the books and issued the magazine. Then, two students hosts told audience that they really excited to be a student editor for the magazine, to see their print work and it is a great experience for then, not only for the resume.

The next part is focus on the authors to share their writing in front of us and every author read their writing for audience.

The first author talks about inclusive excellence of university of Denver.

The second person talks about the urban garden, she mentions that the schools garden teaches all children to take care of nature.

The third person talks about the memory, and the whole writing is talks about her grandmother. She believes that people forget things all the time, but they do not forget how to remember.

The fourth author mentions about black women’s hair, and share some personal stories.

The fifth person mentions about the gender issues from male athletes, and some thing about the unfair situations from homosexual male athletes.

The last author talks about how black boys face the unfair issues in the school and how does he overcome those things.

The most interesting part I think is the homosexual issues of male athlete, and they have a lot of hard times on their teams: no one want to make team with them and they are also bullied by other teenager.

After sharing writing, audience asked some questions for the authors. They talks about choosing topic because of their interests, and some of them writing just for themselves. Also, there is one author mentions about the blog, and she said that even a lot of her classmates did not use blog after writing class, but she still use blog to share her personal experiences.

One professor asked about the course designing: a lot of authors mention doing service learning, go to downtowns to communicate with other community will be better.

At last, a professor of writing 1133 course ended about this activities and she encourage students to join their magazine to become a student editor.

After this writing activity, I think writing is creative, and people can write about their personal experiences or following some special topic, but the more interesting and creative is a better choice for writers. You do not need write your paper for some purpose every time because we need make writing more color. 

Unit One Essay

Breaking Up With the Online Reading and Writing

        Last summer, my best friend and I both applied to an internship at a local newspapers company in our city. It is a work to write opinions on their website about recent news. Working for the newspapers is one of my dreams and I was so excited about that job. However, when we came to the newspapers office, the manager decided to choose my friend as an online writer because she could type 150 words per minute, but my typing is just 70 words. I could not understand that they only focus on the typing speed but the manage told me that “fast typing can help the newspaper always have the first voice than other newspapers, and as for giving opinions, a lot of writers can give great opinions not just you could. As for this job, writers need to be efficient”. At that summer, I was so dispirited because I am always confident about my writing, but the efficiency nearly destroys my dreams about working for the newspapers. Does the Internet really change writers and readers mind?

        Actually, I am a big fan of handwriting and print-books.  I really enjoy using handwriting when I was taking a writing test, but sometimes I need to take times to translate all handwriting works become the Word documents because a lot of test cannot accept paper work. Some teachers suggested me that type is convenient, and it is popular not only because people can read your articles earlier, but also it can spread your article to let more people to read your works on the Internet. Not only my teachers, a lot of people believe that online writing making our lives easier.  People use Facebook to communicate with others, use Twitters to show opinions, and bloggers to write articles or personal experiences. Tons of people enjoy writing or reading under the flashy screen. However, even there are also tons of readings and writings on the websites, but most of them are not really useful or enough academic, and the online reading always includes a lot of advertisements. In my opinion, I think online reading and writing is not useful than we expected and it trains us to become a lazy reader or writer because: there are many false sources exist, goal-oriented writing or advertisements in the writing and online reading habits make people lose their concentrations.

       Firstly, a lot of online sources are not academic and even untrue. It misleads readers’ minds and provides wrong information for readers, especially for the students. Internet includes huge sources, and everyone can type things to show their opinions. Those opinions are not helpful for the study because they are subjective. If you want to find the definition for “business operations”, you can find a lot of information, and plenty of websites can give you the definition of the term of “ business operations”, such as the Business dictionary, Wikipedia and some definitions was given by the unknown author.  In fact, all the definitions are different so that how can we know which one is reliable for the study and which one is just helps you get the main ideas. We cannot decide about that. Actually, we always get the academic information from a print book, not the Internet.  It is no doubt there are also a lot of online resources are academic and they are from the online library or other academic organizations. I just want to point that use the reliable sources for study and do not just rely on the Google search for your study. We could use the search to help us to know the terms better or get the basic understanding, but we have to recognize which sources is useful for the study.  For example, a lot of professor would like to show information or basic knowledge from the Wikipedia on the class, but they really against students use Wikipedia to copy the same definition or research for the study because it is unreliable. The reason of it is anyone can revise any parts of terms on the Wikipedia so that we cannot only believe the information on it.

        Secondly, Internet makes us become a lazy readers or writers, and make people lose concentrations because of they spend too much times on the online readings or writing. In the article of “Is Google Make Us Stupid”, Nicholas Carr mentions that people read no more than one or two pages of an article or book, and even if they save a long article, they never went back to read it (par.7). When people spend long times on the online readings, they prefer to find the main ideas and skip some parts of the article. People just focus on the thesis statements, first sentences and last sentences. After a long time, people lose the ability to read a long article, and also they cannot focus on things for a long times. Carr states that “ the more they use the web, the more they have to fight to stay focus on long piece of writing (Carr 2). ”Losing concentrations is also because of multi-tasking; a lot of people do homework, check Facebook, and shop online stores and text at the same times. Their brains separate into different parts to take short tasks so that they cannot develop their concentrations. This is also show of some online writers. A lot of bloggers prefer to share things with their readers, but when we read the blogs, we can find that many writers prefer post more pictures and less words in the blog.  This phenomenon makes people become more visual, and people receive knowledge or memory things more rely on the images, not the words. If they seat and read a print book for a long time, they will feel frustrated and will not willing to pay too much attentions on the books. Additionally, if we always read articles at the short time, we cannot actually have the critical thinking of it. In the article of “Is Google make us Stupid”, the author emphasize that the immediacy and efficiency may weaker our capacity of deep reading (Carr 3). We really need to develop our critical thinking, to read writing deeper so that we can make the knowledge more strong in our brain.

        Thirdly, there are a lot of advertisements to distract readers’ attentions, and a lot of articles are goal-oriented because some writers just want to achieve their goals through the Internet. People can do anything on the Internet, and they sell things, spread gossips, make profits, express political opinions and even make lies to achieve their goal through the typing. In the article of “The Perils of Setting Goals”, published on New York Times newspapers, the expert mentions that do not overdo the goals-orientated, a lot of people want to make profits through the Internet and they do not care other things.  I had ever met a deceptive trade on web. I search for “Harry Potter ” in the Google, when I read a short introduction in that page, there was a flashy advertisements and showed nice price to attract me, when I entered this website is really wonderful. They make everything clear and beautiful to show all works about “Harry Potter”, including pictures, short videos, magic cards and also cut some short reading of the book. They provide a great discount of the whole set of the books: the whole set of books just needs 20 dollars, and the price was so great so that I paid for it. However, they never ship the books and I even did not know if they have “Harry Potter” books. Through the reading, the advertisements attract me, and the fake online store also lied to me, and I even forgot my original purpose is just read the introductions. Additionally, there are a lot of people show political bias, sell goods and even sometime show bad things. We cannot really get the great and correct information from the websites.

        In conclusion, I think through the online sources, both of readers and writers become more lazy than before, and the online sources only can provide limited information for us because there are tons of false sources exist, goal-oriented writing or advertisements in the writing and online reading habits making people to lose their concentrations. Although I think there are some negative aspects that Internet provides of reading and writing, there are still a lot of academic, useful and really great sources for us to use. I think people should have their own judgments to choose the reliable sources on the Internet, to find the most useful information from the online library or other academic organizations, not just search or only read the online sources. Also, choosing some bloggers who use words a lot more than pictures, share opinions with them. I hope people take more time to read print books to find more useful information rather than waste time to read unreliable sources.

Blog Posting Reflection

From post writing in the blog, I found it is really interest for me. At the beginning of the blog posting, I hope myself could write some interesting things and make it fun. I posted some pictures to try to make it fun at the very beginning. Maybe there is no any commit about my writing, but I still found that posting is really fun for me. I think I write more flexible on the blog than I just type for the writing tasks. I used to type my writing so boring. I showed opinions less and they are really limited in some areas. However, I found that I write more about opinion or summary through the readings or even my reflection about blog. It helps me a lot about the writings because writer cannot restrict ideas in one area. If we want to write great things, we have to read more and give response more so that we could learn and improve. The most interesting thing is I can view my classmates ideas about the readings, and a lot of times I found that we really have different thoughts or opinions about the same reading, it is really interesting to look that how other people think about the readings.  The challenge is that I really want to give a useful or fun commits for my classmates. A lot of times, I read what my classmates posted, but I did not give any commits to them.  I think that I need to be brave to say something on their blog to express my opinions; even sometimes I disagree with them. 

The reflection of Scribner and Lunsford’s article on the new literacy

The reflection of Scribner and Lunsford’s article on the new literacy

In the article of  “literacy of three metaphors”, the author mentions that literacy is defined by adaptation, power and a state of grace. The ideas the author talks about literacy are: fundamental needs improvements and accumulations.

 At the beginning of this article, Scribner emphasis that the definition of literacy is not easy to find because it relates a lot of things, such as the relationship between individuals and society: the author said that individuals in society without writing systems do no become literacy.

In the first part, Scribner mentions that literacy is adaptation for people about their daily use. People can use written symbols to adapt their fundamental, social and personal needs. In my opinion, I agree with the author’ s opinion, I think literacy has a near relationship with our daily needs. If we cannot recognize the basic information, we cannot use literacy to improve ourselves.

The second part the author talks about literacy is power. There are two parts that also relate with literacy. Both of economy and educations need literacy to make a strong power for human development. I think the author want to point out that we could get experience or facts through books, and these useful information help the society become strong.

In the third metaphor, the author talks about that literacy is a state of grace. The literacy based on accumulating knowledge. People can accumulate their efforts through reading books, and people can know assumption about the society. Making improvements on the cultures and getting important experiences.

In my opinion, I think literacy is really helpful about self-enhancing and society improvements. We learn from literacy about basic knowledge to adopt lives and we improve ourselves by learning more knowledge through literacy.

The second article is “ Our Semi-Literate Youth? Not So Fast ”, Andrea A. Lunsford talks about the writing through students. A lot of students can text, email and chat by using slang, but they also can use formal language to write academic essay for their studies. There are some different errors than before, but students still learn through daily life and they could recognize to use the suitable words about everything.

The connections between those two articles are that literacy based on our lives and also improve us a lot. I believe that we will use literacy more widely in the future to make a great improvement. 

Does people become less intelligent than before?

Does people become less intelligent than before?

According to “Is Google Making Us Stupid? ”, Nicholas Carr mentions that Internet reprograms our minds to become too “searched ”, people are tend to find everything on the Google because it provides us the “efficiencies”. Through using the Internet for finding the results in the long term, people lose the capacity to read long piece writing or concentrations than before because the convenient web tools let us become lazy. 

As a medium, web search train our minds to learn how to catch the main ideas and skip other parts of readings. Carr shows that “People typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it”, and sometimes we even never think about the online research habits has already change our minds. When we focus on the Internet search for a long times, it really hard for us to pay the whole attention on a long and deep readings because we had already adopt what searching help us deal with the programs so quickly.

About the artificial intelligence, I think that even there are successful artificial brains exist; we still need to develop our minds and intelligences to become stronger. The artificial intelligence cannot replace our own. After this reading, I think people really need to leave their electronic device for some times, and open a book to read to make your mind have a forward moving.

The second article focus more about the literacy. In the article of “American the illiterate”, Chris Hedge alerts that American needs to improve their literate levels because the level of literate of the whole nation is in degradation. He mentions that there is a large population of illiterate American, and they have to face so many problems when they need to read or recognize things.

I think there is a confusion when I was reading this article, the author mentions that the political readers’ literate’s level is stay on a ten-grade level. As for me, I think the political readers have their own situations: the most things they said in the debates are aim at their votes or something they need to make it so clear or exact for all people. Actually, they do not need the high level words to support ides because people will think it not necessary, and the high level literates are also not necessary for themselves.

About the connection, I think both of the two authors concern about the degradation. Carr are mentions that “online search habits” has bad influence on people’s intelligences. Hedge talks about the large population of illiterate people to make the whole society become more illiterate.  In my opinion, I think people will become less smart if they pay the whole attention on the internet, and I also think study is just for the good life, not everyone need to have a really high illiterate level.

Definition of reading and writing

Reading:  Reading is people using visual methods to find out the knowledge from writings.  It is based on the writing and related writing a lot. From reading, people can get experiences even they did not do the exact things. Reading helps people improve their knowledge, and it exist on everywhere in this world. People can read through books, magazines and newspapers.

Writing: writing is based on sentences and words. Writers create articles to establish a stage for readers to read their thoughts and opinions about things. Writers use different writing methods to show their opinions about things or their learning. Writing can help people develop logic and clear mind.

Reflection of “Rewriting” on Introduction and “Coming to terms”

Reflection of “Rewriting” on Introduction and “Coming to terms”

The author use “rewriting” to teach reader how to understand the text and connect with readers’ own thoughts. Rewriting the book is does not mean just translate to the original book. It is more tend to know the text and use your own word to explain it. In this book, the author uses five chapters to teach readers to make the rewriting as a tool to understand texts.

In the Chapter of “Coming to terms”, the author emphasizes three aspects about rewriting: Defining the project of a writer, nothing keywords and passages and assessing uses and limits. The ideas from this chapter are more about improvement, analysis and response.

About the Defining the project of a writer, the author mentions that rewriting is more like “push the text”, and it is not just summarize what the writer said, but also need to know what things the writers want to achieve or accomplish. In this part, the author give some methods to defining the project of writer: finding the achievement that the writer want to say, making the connection between your ideas and the writer’s, and finding experiences or evidences.

In the second part, the author talks about the quote about rewriting. He mentions that quote does not just copy or mark from the original text, and it should be rewrite it clear and connected with your own work. It is a “flashpoint” for the text because it should be give the key points of the text.

In the third part, the author talks about the positive opposing terms. There are some examples: stories and theories, and atoms and bits. Each of them has the strongest and weakest part, and it just because the different vision. Negroponte states that “thinking more about their relationships and deciding that they can also be seen similar”, we should not just follow or copy the quote, but also need to analyze it and give our own response.

The last part also talks about the quotations, and it shows that when we describe the writing, we also need to make it forwarding and improving. If we rewrite the texts, make it further and moving to rewrite the texts better.

My Response of Why I Blog

               It is blog 's age for writing

    According to Sullivan's article, he mentions that blog is more convenient, free, useful and powerful than the traditional newspapers or magazines. At the beginning, he writes about where does the “blog” comes and the log’s using in the past. Then he describes the reasons why he uses blog: blog is a free from for writers, and it is convenient for both writers and readers to read, and it is published for readers through all over the world. In my opinion, I agree with Sullivan’s ideas, and I think blog make people communicates well and give more opportunities t writers to write what they want.

Firstly, the author mentions that blog is convenient and make people communicates well. As for traditional reading, people buy newspapers or magazines, and waiting for writers write, editors edit, and then published. It through a lot time to get the reading, but people have to wait. However, when writers use blog, readers will not wait for a long process and times, and readers do not need to go out to buy readings. In my opinion, I think blog is really convenient than the traditional ones. When I have spare times, I seat in the couch, drink coffee, and read my favorites blog. Additionally, if I want to read last year’s article, I just find the date and read it. The blog is helpful for both writers and readers.

Secondly, blog use a free form for writers so that writers can type without some restrictions, such as the due dates. From the article, Sullivan states that there are not too much requirements for writers, and writers can revise the mistakes at any times.

I agree with this point, because too much pressure or restrictions will limit writers’ original ideas. Writers will focus more on the publishing or social pressure rather than their writing. However, blog can give writers more freedoms to write what they like to write.

In conclusion, I think blog is a great tool for both writers and readers because it helps us save more times and read earlier. 

It is a new beginning.

                         There is a new way for my writing
     I saw a lot of people using blog, and I really enjoy people showing their foods, traveling experiences and their opinions about movies or books.
    It is my first time to create a blog, and the creating process seems like easy because our professor show the whole thing in the class. The most interesting thing is that I will show my essays or writing on blog for peers to read.  I used to show writings only for professors or teachers. Now, I will show my writing on blog, and it may includes a lot of grammar mistakes or some stupid mistakes, but I am not so afraid to show them to my classmates. I think it is good for us to learn the good things from peers. in my opinion,  blog is very different from Facebook.  Blog focus more on writing your opinions, and the most important thing is typing what are you thinking. Facebook focus more on making friends or knowing what my friends did. It seems like fake, but I think blog maybe a helpful tool for writing than Facebook.
       Although the purpose for creating a blog is because of my writing class, I will not make it looks  like a task blog. I will try my best to write things, show opinions or pictures not so boring because I do not want to my classmates fall in sleep when they read my blog. Additionally, I hope it helps me to improve my writing. I hope this blog can make some interesting things for my life.
  By the way, this is a new semester, a new year, I want to force my self to become more hardworking.
 Here are some photos I took in Denver, and the last one shows the snow last year.