Twitter and What I Found There

     The world has steadily become more social media based, and while some of older generations laud this as the end of intelligence and human interaction, truly this is the era of accessibility to information. On the very popular site of Twitter, although it is mostly used for following celebrities and documenting day to day life, you can in fact find information and links to nearly every subject one may be interested in. Even the most scientific fields, like neuroscience, my major, have Twitters documenting the events happening in the field for all to see and read more about.

How Do Brains Talk About Themselves?

     Mostly brains seem to be sharing, through the bodies they control, news articles and updates on new information about the brain. A lot of the tweets are links to articles about important discoveries about certain medicines or research studies going down in neuroscience news.One specific PhD neuroscience student's twitter, @_Anthropoid, not only has links to articles but also speaks live about any seemingly random brain question one might have through sources like podcasts.

LeBlanc, Reigh. "Reigh's Brain rlwat1" 04/05/2005 via Flickr.
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Something Absolutely Twitterpating

      On the official neuroscience news twitter, @NeuroscienceNew, which links to the Neuroscience News official site, the post I found most interesting dealt with blood pressure medicine potentially helping effect Alzheimer's; the pills showed that they prevented some damage usually would occur in cells in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. This post was of an importance to me because I hope to go into the research of Alzheimer's but honestly I would be more happy if a cure was found even before I got into working on it.
     In the twitter of Neuroscience PhD student Ian McLaughlin, the post that intrigued me the most dealt with split brain patients. While I was unable to hear the podcast that the student participated in, the video was very interesting; it is fascinating to see how the brain is connected to control the body and the smallest alteration of that connection changes the extent of how one organ controls what it is supposed to.

Are They As Nerdy As Expected?
     When I went searching for twitter pages within my field I found exactly what I expected: a bunch of nerds. In all seriousness it's exciting to see how the conversations in my field surround new discoveries al the time about possible brain cures or different facts discovered about the brain. It's terrifyingly amazing that the organ we know least about in it's workings controls our entire body and life.

Evaluation of New York Times Stories

     As the New York Times is one of the more well known newspaper, now in digital form, it makes sense that it would be the best source to start with for research and understanding of how to analyze stories for research purposes.
      The two sections I decided to look through for the making of this post were Science and the Arts, the two things I'm most interested in. The story I decided to focus on from the Art section is: David Bowie Dies at 69; Star Transcended Music, Art and Fashion, and from the Science section: Ninth Planet May Exist Beyond Pluto, Scientists Report.

Frazier, Ron. "David Bowie, R.I.P." 01/11/2016 via Flickr.
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But Who is this Really About
      David Bowie- If the title wasn't enough indication this articles main protagonist is David Bowie, or rather the recently deceased star David Bowie. The departed famous man is the central point of this story, practically a eulogy to the man's life and many achievement's and skills, his role throughout the piece is to be lauded one final time.
     Ninth Planet- The real star of this piece isn't a star at all but a planet, and actually the protagonist of this story is an astronomer; Dr. Michael Brown a professor of planetary astronomy who has had multiple colleagues along the way but was the main lead role. Hi roles in the story of discovering a ninth farther planet in our solar system is that he co-wrote the paper arguing for its classification as a planet, after observing the proposed planet years ago.

Just Give Me a Time and Place 
      David Bowie- There is no specific time and place for this article; the time that could be said to truly affect this article is that it is indeed directly after Bowie's passing and so emotions caused by that event are still prevalent and the article can have high impact.
      Ninth Planet- The most specific place for this article is Caltech, the timeline is more recent for the actual declaration that there could be a ninth planet, on January 20th in fact. The time and setting facilitated this discovery in a way; the capabilities of professors at a university with more extensive research materials than just a kid looking in a telescope up at the night sky.
      A tidbit about how the timing of these two things coincide in a happy way. David Bowie passes and a planet finding is announced, many on the internet, in a happy sort of mourning, declare that the planet that has been found is merely David Bowie's true home and he just had to leave Earth. Kind-humored references to some of David Bowie's first works "Space Oddity" and the movie "The Man Who Fell to Earth".

Paree. "*Planet*"02/01/2009 via Flickr.
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The Discourse(tm)
David Bowie- No debates within this article, merely facts and references to things already happened.
Ninth Planet- There is some argument throughout this work, disagreements not raised by the author of the work but raised by other astronomer's concerns that there isn't a planet truly out there. However the article does not go into depth about such things, merely giving the facts about the proposal of the planets and the found facts that point to its very possible existence.

Course Projects

As English courses are at least in part structured to improve writing skills it would make sense that there would be multiple projects to ensure this; or in this classes case, four projects: The Controversy Postmortem, The Rhetorical Analysis, A Public Argument, and The Reflective Self-Assessment.  

Four Major Projects= Four Major Breakdowns
     Most of the nerves I feel about these projects mostly come from fear of the possible extreme difficulties of the projects. Not only must we begin to dissect the controversies within our fields of study but we have to choose how to present these in a form engaging and that will get a point across effectively and without confusion. Not impossible tasks but daunting ones nevertheless. I know that within my own procrastinating way of doing things that I may set myself up to have a bad time if I don't properly prepare.

Excited Yet?
     I am quite excited to have the opportunity to research more into the discourses within my field of study. And it is also intriguing to be trying different genres of "writing" to form arguments and to prove points. While the traditional essay can be effective, it's a more fun way to try to be more in the modern media way of making points so that we can not be stuck in the past way of doing things. Learning to adapt to what is used most can hemp ensure our arguments are heard where they need to be.

Thoeny, Peter. "Waah, Santa Clause!!" 12/8/2013 via Flickr.
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Always Plan Ahead
     The main thing for these projects will be the planning one has to conduct even before starting to plan the argument that's going to be made. For these projects a large part of the planning ahead needs to be deciding which genre should go for which project, which medium will work best and which one you can manipulate best. Then specifically for each project genre there may be necessary tools you need to collects; recorders, video cameras, making sure that you have the programs to edit and make what you need. 
      There is also within each project a large amount of research that needs to be done and done thoroughly to make sure you can formulate arguments or ideas about whatever topics. Especially within the Rhetorical Analysis you need to plan ahead to interview people.

Under or Over Prepared?
      I think my high school English course has substantially prepared me for this course. Had to do many rhetorical analysis within the class and dissecting of readings. As well as a video project that helped foster my video editing and creating skills. Besides previous school learned skills, outside of class I have learned how to make a podcast, using the proper recording equipment and editing sound to make it sound more professional, which should hopefully help within this course.

Any Questions?
      At the moment most of the project makes sense to me, except for one part; I'm a little confused on how peer reviews will work, but I'm sure a closer review of the syllabus would actually clear that up.


Reflections

Ben Barnett on the Course Projects: Ben's descriptions of the course projects and his own concerns have made me realize I'm going to need to change the way I usually go about doing projects. There is substantially more pre-production than I am used to.
Neeraj Vij on the Course Projects: Raj made many good points within his post about the importance of scheduling the research of the project and also the concerns over having ongoing discourses to be able to analyze and discuss the sides of within a field of study.

Investigating Genres

     For the main four projects of English 109H not only are there different subject matter to each project, but there are different genres that must be chosen between. Within the genres presented as forms to use for the projects the one that stood out to me the most was the Quick Reference Guide; a genre form I did not recognize from previous experience, and I decided to research it for better understanding and to share what I found for the better understanding of all.
   
Purpose of the Genre
     The purpose of this genre is to explain to people in better depth or more detail; in a concise, easy to read manner, about news they may have heard elsewhere. The genre of the Quick Reference Guide was created so that the audience would be able to reference the information quickly and efficiently, making it a more effective news source than a newspaper or a news broadcast.

Context of the Genre
     This genre is very much an online specific genre. The most common places it can be found is online newspaper sites and other online news sources. It is akin to being the new pamphlet, just electronic and all on one page.

Audience for the Genre
     The typical audience could potentially be anyone on the internet, but probably more specifically people of a more median age range who are interested in discourses about the news in simple easy "quick references", the people not reading newspapers still and those that would have seen something through other media they wanted to learn more about.

Grabowska, Karolina. "Man using stylus for touching the digital tablet screen"
01/10/2015  via Pexels. CC0 License,

Key Features of the Genre
     A key feature of this genre is the use of section titles and shorter paragraphs than a traditional essay; it's traditionally online form and target audience makes the language simpler so as to not estrange anyone wishing to learn about a subject or news story. Also longer quotes can be used more frequently than in traditional essay format; the quotes are separated from the main paragraph in a specific section more centered than the rest of the guide.

Defining the Genre
     The best way to define the Quick Reference Guide is an easy to read and understand information source that is successful in educating its audience on the ins-and-outs of a situation or happening in a short amount of time.



Reflections

Payton Leahy on Video Essays: Payton's post on the genre of video essays made me consider how important visuals are to arguments. Even besides the more modern use of videos as the main form of describing a topic, as through a video essay, throughout the genre of  the quick reference guide there is much use of pictures to help show the audience what is being explained.There are sometimes even entire quick reference guides for a video, our taking in of information depends more and more upon what we can see.
Erin McCabe on Podcasts: Erin's post on the genre of podcasts has me considering how most of the genres we are presented with using lend themselves to a more convenient form then a traditional essay. Podcasts can be listened to out and about, quick reference guides are shorter and easier than an essay to read.  In wanting to change how information has been spread we've turned to convenience and things that feel like they won't take up our time to use to learn.

Me (cast in the role of): A Writer

     As a blog is nearly entirely composed of personal writing it's important for those reading this to understand who I am as a writer. To accomplish  this goal of explaining me as a writer I've decided to base my explanation off some questions:

What type(s) of writer do you consider yourself?
     I consider myself a mixture of the Procrastinator; delaying writing until it's essentially the final draft, and the Heavy Reviser; writing out my ideas as they come to me in spurts and with little planning and then just revise the paper until it's fit to be turned in. Seemingly opposite techniques but what I consider best to describe my writing processes.

Does your writing process include several of the above approaches? If so, which ones?
     My writing process includes both of the above approaches in part. I fit the procrastinator role, not to the most extreme "night before" deadline but most often I wait later than I should to begin writing important works. Then, like the Heavy Reviser approach, I begin my writing with very little planning, preferring instead to write as I think of ideas or formulate my arguments to later revise.

Coffman, Drew. "Writer's Block I" 07/19/2010 via Flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic

Does your writing process seem to be successful? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your approach?
     Personally, I find my writing to be as successful as I need it to be. I most usually get my point across and if it's an assignment I receive good scores.
     The strengths of my approach to writing include a flexibility as I write, without a strict outline or plan I can change arguments if something more compelling could be presented. A weakness to my approach is that if I procrastinate for too long the writing or ideas within the writing can seem disconnected or not fully formulated .

Do you think it might be beneficial for you to try a different approach? Why or why not?
     I think it could be beneficial to try a different approach in my writing, mostly because I recognize my writing could stand to have some improvements made to it. While I'm wary of changing how I go about writing, at this point, it would be beneficial to put more time and effort into more planning. Increasing the amount of before hand planing and decreasing the amount of spur of the moment writing may give my writing a more linear and understandable form.


     Hopefully this has explained in enough detail for you to understand both me as a writer and my writing technique. Enjoy the reading experience!