Dear Professor Mangini,

     I believe that I deserve an A in this course. I showed up to every single class and worked my hardest on the projects. I really enjoyed the "This I Believe" project. I think I portrayed how passionate I was about my belief to my audience and showed personal pictures in my photo slideshow. I also made an additional tab on my blog that is labeled "Reasons To Smile." In this tab, I labeled different pictures that relate to my life stating what it is important to me and things that make me smile on a day to day basis. 
     For the advocacy project, Molly and I worked very well together to put together a great site advocating for for social media depression. We did a good job putting together our annotated bibliography and our project assessment essay. Although we didn't get an A for our actual presentation, I feel that we got a lot our of our research and proved that social media depression is a growing topic of concern. 
     For the social media investigation I worked on how a majority of people on Twitter post tweets about or relating to food. Through my argumentative essay I believe i showed the different ways that people tweet about food and how many people do this for different reasons. I think I incorporated my primary sources in my essay as supportive evidence, and they also added a touch of humor. 
     Overall, I got a lot out of this class. I enjoyed the projects thoroughly and put forth my best effort in everything that I did. I believe that deserve an A in this course. Thank you for being such a great professor! I hope you have a great summer and a healthy pregnancy! 

P.S. I can babysit if you ever need me! =)


Sincerely,

Ali Salkowski

Over the course of this semester I have learned a majority of things in Writing, Research and Technology. From creating our own Weebly site, to creating our "This I Believe" page, to doing research for our advocacy project and our social media investigation, I have learned a majority of new things. I feel like my writing has grown as a whole and I really enjoy using Weebly for my own personal blog use. 

Blogs

Throughout this semester we have had readings and assignments in which we had to post a blog response. Looking back on my blogs I think that this was a really good way to organize our thoughts on important subject matters. I like the fact that all of our thoughts are visible in one tab and we don't have to go back through our word documents to find them. I also think it's a good way to remember different articles that we read because we can easily link the site to our blogs. I also really liked how we could easily access other blogs and voice our opinions through the comments section. 

This I Believe

The "This I Believe" project was probably my favorite one of the semester. We had to really think of what we were passionate about and what we wanted to share with our classmates. My belief was to "just keep smiling." I wrote about my relationship with my Mom-Mom who had Alzheimers and a specific story when she told me those very specific words. I showed my belief through an additional tab on my Weebly account that showed pictures of reasons why I smile. I challenged others to think about all of the things that they can smile about and how you can turn even the most negative situation into a positive one. Along with this project I learned how to use Soundcloud and how to make a photo slideshow on Weebly. When I presented I felt a sense of relief because I was sharing something so personal about my life but also that I believed in strongly. 

Advocacy Project

For the advocacy project I worked with Molly on how social media sites can be linked to depression. We worked together to create a separate Weebly page that portrayed how sites like Facebook can cause sadness and low self-esteem. People look at other people's pictures and can start to believe that other people's lives are so much better than theirs and that they are happier. By doing research we found that this is a growing topic that is getting the attention of many news stations and news journals online. 

Molly and I worked together to complete our annotated bibliography for this project. Although I have made annotated bibliographies before, I forgot what the specifics were and had to re-learn how to put it together. I learned how to make a design plan and all that goes into planning for that. I learned about pathos, logos, and ethos and how it related to my social media depression advocacy. When we presented our project we showed a video from Fox News that reported about this upcoming issue. I think that a lot of people in the classroom could relate to our advocacy because most of our audience, if not all, had a Facebook. 

Social Media Investigation

The social media investigation was the most challenging project for me. I compiled a group of tweets that were about food. Before this project, I never really realized how many other people tweet about food. I know I tweet about food a lot and used a lot of my previous tweets as support. I found out that people tweet about food for different reasons. It could be about cravings, something they are eating and like or dislike, a recipe, something they want to try, or different food places that they are at. I also found out that many people tweet while they eat and it is almost a habit now for people to post pictures of their meals on Twitter and Instagram. I had a hard time finding another source that would support my argument, but I think my primary sources can prove a big point to my readers. Overall, I enjoyed collecting data for this project. I learned a lot about collecting research to use it in an argumentative paper. 


Overall, I learned so many different things in this class. Without this class I would have never gotten to learn about Weebly, how to incorporate research further into papers, and how to advocate for something we believe in. I will definitely take what I have learned in this class and use it in the future. 

I do believe that the majority of people on Twitter center their tweets around themselves. A tweet allows you 140 characters to share what is on your mind, and most people are thinking about their feelings and emotions. I think that people use Twitter to complain a lot or say what they are eating or doing. A small majority of the time my Twitter followers are posting about other important news, but that is a small majority of the time. I think that people on Facebook are just as narcissistic. Their pages are filled with tagged pictures of themselves. I do think, however, that people are starting to post more about important causes and stray away from every little thing on their mind. I think most people rely on Twitter to do that now. I believe that most of the time people are complaining or reflecting on their lives or others they know. 

The article that stuck out to me the most was "Is not joining Facebook a sign you're a psychopath?" Right from the start the title caught my attention. I immediately thought no before I started reading any of the article. I wondered why not being on Facebook is a bad thing? I personally wish I had the strength to get off of Facebook. I feel that it mostly makes me sad when I'm looking at other people's pictures an status' and they all look like they are having a better time than me. On Facebook, I find myself comparing my life to others. If a person is off Facebook that tells me that they do not need the social media to have a life. They can reach out to their friends on their own and not worry about what their pictures look like. I don't think it is a sign that you are a psychopath. I think you can certainly look back at people who are psychopaths with Facebook and catch signs there though. I didn't feel like the article I read had enough research behind it to try and pose this question. They used one example of the murderer in the Colorado movie theatre shooting. That is only one example of a psychopath not being on Facebook. I think the article could have tried to find more evidence to prove their claim. 

So far my experience with this project has been going smoothly. We have split up the work and have been on track thus far. I'm glad that I get to work on this project with a partner. It is a lot less stressful being able to split up the work. We have different ideas that we can bounce off of each other. I would want this to 

So far Molly and I have worked a lot on the overall design of our advocacy page so far. I think that the page and pictures look pretty good. We have gathered a few online sources that we are going to use for our annotated bibliography. I created a design for our advocacy that might get edited a little bit. Molly wrote up

Based on Chisholm's reading I found that when it comes to collaborative projects there can be four major problems that arise. There is resistance, inexperience, friction, and fairness. I think that I define collaboration as working together with peers in a group to bring together other ideas and create one final project as an outcome. I think that Chisholm was right on when he talked about the major problems that usually occur in group projects. Most people hear group project and they hate it, especially if they can't pick their group members. Some people don't think group projects are a priority and resist to do the work until the end. There are usually some problems that occur, and it is hard to get together with people all at the same time. Dividing up the work is also another major problem. Who gets to decide what is fair and what everyone should be doing? Then if they do the work and the other group members don't think it's very good they are usually stuck with the consequences when they get their grade back. 

I think that co-authoring is when two authors work together from two different locations to put together a piece of writing. They are not necessarily sitting in the same room and working together. In the past I have had my fair share at group projects. I kind of hate them because it makes me think that I have to spend more time outside the class itself to get together and work on a project. Most of the time I'd rather do the work alone or work with one partner. Working together can be messy sometimes because people work at their own pace and everyone has different schedules. As a future teacher, however, I do think that group projects are an important part of education and help students deal with social situations and collaborate their ideas together to come up with some work they could not have done on their own. 

      To me, advocacy means how you communicate your beliefs to others. You can be an advocate of your beliefs without stating them directly. If you ask a friend to go to a specific community service event your friend will see that you are interested in that affiliation and they will understand your belief. I collected a few items from around campus and from Atlantic City.

            One handout was advertising the event, “Light it up Blue.” It is advertised on a light blue paper with the save the date, contact information, and a statement that says, “Walk to raise awareness about Autism.” I believe they are successful because they keep it simple, they linked the title to the color of the paper, and they put in bold what the event is.

            A brochure I got from the Tropicana was advocating for a bunch of different events and restaurants. It was in color and listed all of the places you could dine, party, relax, shop, or go for entertainment. It also advertised beer week, daily specials at specific restaurants, and what special events are coming up soon. I think this brochure was very good at advocating. It had a lot of information, but was designed well and clean. 

I think everyone today did a good job. I think my favorites for today would be the presentations on Tao, play, and how a dog can be a best friend. I think the people with presentations that had pictures, music, and their essay was really cool. Overall, I think this project was pretty cool. I enjoyed hearing about what everyone believed in

I think that everyone did awesome today! All of the topics were very varied and personal. I like that everyone was so open and made you feel a connection between the audience. I'm excited to hear the rest of the classes, and I'm relieved that my presentation was over.

For my presentation, I think it could have gone better, but I think I just wanted to speak from the heart and that's what I think I did. I didn't have my pictures connected with my speech, but that was because I didn't know how many personal touches I was going to add to my essay to make it seem like I wasn't just reading straight from my essay.

Good job everyone!