Five Lists

1. Question Catagories
• What kind of education was provided to you?
• What did your family think?
• Were there any other Americans that made the journey with you?
• The people there and their reactions.
• When?
• Where (exactly)?
• How?
• Any lessons learned there?
• What was your goal and was it accomplished?
• How did you get there?
• Do you want to go back?
• How did you communicate?
• What was taught to them?
2. Five things to make them feel comfortable.
• Have them let me know if they don't want to speak more on a specific topic.
• Do it in their home (or somewhere they choose).
• Stay interested.
• Provide questions so they know what I want to know.
• Let them tell me what they want to.
3. Ten Factual Details.
• When did you go?
• Why were you there?
• How did you travel there?
• Were there any international conflicts at the time?
• What was life like there?
• Were there any conflicts in the USA when you left?
• What kind of culture were you in?
• What food did you eat?
4. Three things incase the informant doesnt want to talk.
• Ask other questions.
• Take a five minute break.
• Have other people to interview.
5. Five academic topics
• African culture

Multigenre Project

    I really like the idea of doing my family history. Since I know my moms dad would not want to talk about his time in the war, I think my dads dad would be better. I know he spent some time teaching in Africa but I'm not sure what he taught, I think English. I am not sure how long he spent there or why he chose to go there but I still think it's interesting. I would deffinatly interview him and then go from there.

    I'm having a hard time thinking about what other things I could do with it. I dont know who I would interview about it other then my grandpa. I don't  know if him and my grandma were together when he went or if they had any kids at the time. My grandpa has some things he brought back so I suppose they might be helpful in doing this project.
  
    I think this project will be very hard but I am excited to do it. I am also nervous about interviewing people.

Research Reflection

      A research essay is always hard thing for me to write. I have a hard time keeping myself from throwing my opinion into my essay. Sometimes, I am outspoken and so it's hard not to have an opinion on something. I don't like research essays, but I know I will always have to write them for school.
   Next time I write a research essay, I'll try to pick a topic that isn't so hard to research. I got a lot of websites that werelike tabloids and opinionated blogs and I even got one website that I figured out was completley false. It was a website that was just a mock website of all kinds of things. I realized this after I read  the whole article...
    I thought it was cool when we read eachothers proposals. I liked being able to put my input in on everones paper even though not as many people commented on mine as I commented on theirs. That was frustrating. I tool two whole class periods to comment on everyones blog and I only got about six comments on mine.
    I don't really know if I learned anything from pop culture from this essay. There were things that surprsed me even though they shouldnt have. Such as the VD clause I talked about in my paper. It makes since but it isnt something people really think about. I learned that shows that we think of as harmless, really arent. They affect us all in some way or another. Some of us surround our lives with celebrities and pop culture and we shouldnt. There are more important things in the world and I dont think we always realize that. I think our generation is in for a big reality check one day and I hope it comes soon.

Reading Response Three (Is Google making us dumb?)

      For this weeks response we were told to read an article attached to the blog about how the internet makes us dumb. While I couldn't agree more with the authors arguments, this article made me angry. Nicholas Carr, the author of the article states in his second paragraph,

"Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

    My question is, if You know how hard it is to read a lengthy article, why would you write such a long article? I don't know if he was trying to prove his point even more or if he just gets paid for word, but that was ridiculous. I could not agree more with his arguments about how hard it has become to read a lengthy article and keep focused. Reading really has become a struggle especially something that has some hard words and complicated thoughts. 

     I feel like my generation counts on technology way to much. We not only publish our loves on facebook, but a lot of us would be lost without our smart phones. If there is something we can't figure out, we pull out our phones and google it. I can't really criticize anyone else for doing it because I am just as guilty. 

    I liked the content of the article but they way it was written was very hard to read and at times very repetitive  I had a very hard time reading through it and it took me a few times to do so.