Peer Review


Peer review isn't something that is new to me but the way we do peer review in this English class is. Professor Wright emphasizes on how in depth our reviews need to be. We need to be clear about what we are asking to change or expand on when we comment on in the paper. Our goal should be to better our peer's writing with our reviews. The peer reviews that I am going to talk about are the Literacy Iquiry papers that we did earlier this semester. This was my first peer review this year so I was pretty nervous on what I should be commenting on and how to do so. After reading an article that was assigned us "Responding-Really Responding-to Other Students' Writing"it gave me an isight of what I needed to do in-order to successfully complete my peer reviews. Some of the stuff she mentioned was to be specific, not to be short and sweet but also not over criticize the paper because even though we are reviewing a paper it is not our own paper in which we tell the writer what to do with it. What writer of the article also did was give us examples of what not to do and how to respond to other students writings. What my steps consisted of when I was reviewing my groups Literacy Inquiry paper was primarily focusing on the context of the paper and making it flowed well with ideas and evidence. If the writer gives an example but doesn't really go in depth of why it relates to the subject or provides evidence then I ask the writer to expand more on his example and provide more evidence in order to have a successful paper. Then I looked for grammar and spelling mistakes. The reason I did that last was because it is the least important part of the review.

Dat Piff

www.datpiff.com is a website is made for music fans to download free mixtapes from their favorite artist. A mixtape is a an album that artist creates for his fans to have for free. Since the mixtape generally are not for sale there are not restrictions or limitations in were an artist could be sued. In my opinion is that mixtapes carry some of the best work of artists. This is a great website, the layout is great and the content as great as well. At the home page they show a list with sections where fans can find and see mixtapes that the website carries. One column says "Spotlight" where it shows the most popular mixtapes at the time, another says "Featured"where fans can see some of the new mixtapes that have been released. Another great feature about this website is it's search engine, it is incredibly easy to find mixtapes from artist. You can type the name of an artist or the name of the mixtape on the search bar and it will take you to incredibly large section of mixtapes from the artist. The order of the mixtapes is by date so that makes it easier to find mixtapes from years ago. The website also includes 5 links to separate pages, it consists of the mixtapes, videos, singles, news, and community. My second favorite thing about this website is the news section. On the new section you can find all the news on your favorite artist and upcoming shows. It is a convenient way to safely download music and find out information on one website. This website is an authorized site that ensures you that you will be downloading music legally without the risk of getting a virus, damaging your computer or anything in that nature

Blogging about Blogging

When I first heard that we were required to blog for this English class I really didn't know what to think. I have heard about blogging before but I never really knew what it was. I just knew it was a web page were people write about stuff. The only problem I had with that is that I hate writing and that it was accessible for anyone to see. I was never really confident with my writing because I always felt that it was never good, so putting it out there for anyone to see was something I wasn't really comfortable with. After my first post I saw that it wasn't all that bad, its just hard to come up with something to write about most of the time. I can see somewhat of growth from my first post till now. It used to almost be impossible for me to meet the word count because I could never figure out what to say. But now it has become a lot easier for me to do so with the practice we have had with all the post. Through out this course in English we have been talking about the many forms of writing. I can see now why we are doing a blog. Blogging allows us to write about what we want without any guidelines. Although this hasn't been my favorite this we have done in class I still see the purpose and benefits that comes with it.

Peer review

The peer review that we have been doing in class is something I have never done before. In high school we were never really required to review someones paper and comment on it except when we helped someone edit their paper. But that pretty much only consisted of grammar correction and finding misspelled words. I never thought it was going to be as hard as it is. The concept seemed simple, just read your group members papers and comment on what you believe needs to be corrected in order for the writer to fix his paper. But it goes deeper that. As a person reviewing someones paper you want to give writer feedback on what they did wrong and what they did right. You don't just want to push the writer to improve their paper but to improve their skills as a writer. Thats something I struggled with. Im not a good writer so it is hard for me to comment on what is good and what is not and to push people to a level of writing that i'm not even at. But I see this as an opportunity to develop a skill that will help me and others down the road. I liked how we have been taking the time during class to review and give feedback on each of our group members papers. Especially when we read our paper out loud, it was really easy to catch the mistakes and hear how our papers sounded. The reviews that I have been getting for my paper are very helpful in ways to improve my paper. Peer review is something I like and want to continue doing during the semester.

How companies brainwash us

After reading and article called Products R Us: Are We 'Brandwashed'? by the NPR staff I got a better understanding on how companies use marketing and advertisement in order to get us to consume their products. The article was about a guy named Martin Lindstrom who works in marketing and has even advised major corporations such as Disney and Proctor and Gamble. He wrote a book called Brandwashed, in the book he talks about how companies make products look more attractive and would use certain techniques in order to lure us in to their product. He says that companies start working to lure people at very young age. He said that and average American 3-year-old can recognize 100 brands, which to me is crazy. I can see what he is talking about, I remember as kid I would ask my teachers for a "Kleenex" when I would need to blow my nose and they would always tell me that was a brand not the actual name for a tissue. Lindstrom also talks about how Whole Foods Marketing is almost kind of a scam. He describes how the company arranges the store a certain way in order to make the produce seem a lot more attractive. They use specific display techniques such as employees cutting fresh flowers when you enter the store. He also focuses on how many of the boxes that hold produce say "Patty's Farm" but it actually isn't a farm. Patty's Farm is just a logo that was designed by a company in New York y in order to make us feel that it was actually grown in Patty's Farm. To me this stuff is mind blowing because it is so true. Its crazy how companies draw you in to their products and make you feel like you need them just because of some advertisement.

My Dialect


Through out my life I have been exposed to many kinds of dialects from around the nation. I was born in Mexico then my father's job moved us to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when I was five. I learned how to speak english there and spent most of my elementary school years their till I moved to Asheville, North Carolina. Now that I think about it I never really heard anyone say anything about the way I speak. People would assume since I moved from the North to the South I would hear a lot about a northern accent. Asheville is a very unusual place, it is a mix of hippies, mountaineers and rednecks but it is full of culture. Asheville is unlike another place I have ever been too in my whole entire life. I think since there are so many different type of people in Asheville everyone has their own kind of accent or dialect. It wasn't till I moved to Dallas, Texas my senior year that I really started hearing about the way I talk. Everyone assumed that people from North Carolina were a little like northerners with a northern accent or something. But when people heard me talk, they always told me it sounded like I had a mix of both. They said that I would say and pronounce some words with some sort of a norther accent and some others with a southern. It never really bothered me at all, I actually thought it was kinda cool. It made proud of where I had been and grew up. I feel like everyone should feel the same way. Watching those videos made me realize how interesting it is to see where people are from and how the use their language there. There are many stereotypes about how language is used in certain regions but when you actually talk to someone from that part you actually may hear something completely different.

BRAIN INJURIES IN SPORTS

Tonight at 8:00 pm the CNN network will be premiering a show called "Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Big Hits, Broken Dreams". Dr Sanjay has been following the 2011 season of a North Carolina high school football team and will take a closer look at the health and safety issues on the playing field. I just read an article about a 17 year old high school student. His is name is Nathan Stiles he is a straight-A senior who is the star running back at his high school. It just turned out that his final game of his senior year would be  the last one he plays in his life. He took at hard hit to the head during the game that killed him. He died of second-impact syndrome, when a player is hit again before the brain has had a chance to heal for an initial concussion. Earlier he was complaining of head aches that lead him to go to the doctor. He had a CT scan and was told to sit out for 3 weeks. When they returned to the doctors office for the final check up Connie (Nathan's mom) remembers her sun asking "Now,Mom, are you OK with this?" She didn't want him to get back on the field but it was harder for her to say no. Many organizations are working hard to prevent tragedies like this happen. They are working to make rules on injuries in sports more strict and making it harder for doctors to clear athletes to play who had been injured. Rules of games have changed such as in football and lacrosse, hits above the neck are illegal. Many doctors are looking into the brain injuries and are looking for ways to find warnings to save lives before it is too late.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed of 2001 was signed into law on January 8th 2002. It was proposed by the George W. Bush administration immediately after he took office. NCLB supports a standard-based education reform that pretty just means that by setting high standards and reachable goals they can improve individual outcomes in education. The act requires states that receive federal funding to develop assessments in basic skills for all students. Funding for this act has increased from $286 million to $1.2 billion. Though the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) says in a survey done in July of 2005 that students have significantly improved their test scores in reading and math in the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined. Many argue that the statistics are misleading. They compare 2000 to 2005, when NCLB didn’t take effect till 2003. If you compare 2000 to 2003 and 2003 to 2005 the increase is about the same. Each year the schools are required to make a certain amount of progress in test scores so by 2014 there will be no achievement gap. Not everyone learns at the same rate the problem with NCLB’s standardized test is that they are putting pressure on teachers to pretty cramming all the information that they are told to be on the test in order for the children to pass. That’s not right because the children who do understand the material when it presented to them will be left behind because the teacher has to continue so he/she makes sure she covers all the material before the test. From experience it was at times hard to learn and understand what was being taught to us because our teacher didn’t have enough time to deeply cover the topic so many of us students were left with many unanswered questions. I don’t think a test should determine the future of any student and school. NCLB requires most schools to turn in an Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) it’s broken down into 37 categories. If any one of those categories does not make improvement then the school is labeled a failure, I don't think this is the right approach to fix a problem that is caused by the system.

STOP SOPA AND PIPA


Members of the Congress are trying to put an end to counterfeiters and pirates. In order to do that they are voting on bills called SOPA and PIPA. The problem with these bills are that they could order the blocking of sites that would censor the internet. Search engines could be forced to delete entire websites from their search results. 41 human rights organizations and 110 prominent law professors have petitioned against the bills. Internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of litigation. Internet companies such as AOL, EBay, Facebook, Google, Linkedln, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga wrote a letter to Congress saying these bills "pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job-creation". 55 of America's most successful venture capitalists spoke out stating that PIPA "would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would "hurt economic growth and chill innovation". I agree that PIPA and SOPA isn't the right way to stop the counterfeiters and pirates, the censorship regulations wont shut down pirate sites. All they have to do is change their addresses while other companies that obey the law will suffer high penalties for breaches they can't control. Censoring will only take the freedom from the internet. The internet is an important driver of American economic growth and job creation, limiting it will only hurt economic growth. Wikipedia shut its website down for 24 hours in order to protest against SOPA and PIPA. The blackout started at midnight on Wednesday and wont be available till midnight on Thursday. Google is offering a petition against PIPA and SOPA, over 4 million people have signed it including me. I encourage everyone to sign it. The vote on these bills will start January 24th.

Music's Healing Powers

     Music is a really big part of my life. As a child I would fall asleep listening to music or just listen to sooth my mood. Even now I wake up listening to music and go to bed listening to music, its almost like a medicine to me. I just read an article in the Los Angeles Times called The hope of music's healing powers by Melissa Healy about how music is starting to play a roll in modern medicine. Music is said to be healing by music therapist but now neuroscientist are looking to uncover the scientific basis for music's healing powers. They are looking to understand how music can help rewire the brain affected by illness or injury. Pitch, harmony, melody, rhythm and emotion all components of music engage different regions of the brain. Most of those regions are important with speech and social interaction. "Music might provide an alternative entry point" to the brain, because it can unlock so many different doors into an injured or ill brain, said Dr. Gottfried Schlaugh, a Harvard University neurologist. If disease or trauma has disabled a brain region music can be used as a remedy. For about 1 in 5 patients who suffer a stroke, asphasia which is difficulty with speech is an effect. Schlaug and other researchers have found that practicing to express themselves with a simple form of singing significantly improved the fluency of their speech compared with patients whose speech therapy did not include singing. I found this article to be interesting because it amazes me how far medicine and technology have come. Hopefully within next few years we will start seeing music become more popular within the medical field to cure patients.