Entries categorized as ‘Summer Assignment’
Entertainment, what is not to love? It keeps a lot of people entertained, that’s for sure. Even though gossip should not be as important as it is, I just can’t help but know what is going on and what is it that makes us rather read this, than something like politics? At http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/ I was updated on everything from Angelina Jolie’s twins to news about the new batman movie to how some stars are being jailed.
Whenever I read stories about celebraties life, for some reason I feel less stressed and a little more at peace because it seems that in their lives, something is always happening. I know sometimes that’s not a good thing, but it just takes my mind off of the problems in my life or I feel like I can learn from their mistakes.
I defenitely will be checking up on this feed if I was ever in need of something to do and in a lot of these, the writer starts a heading with a name so maybe people are drawn to each topic depending on which name they are more interested in reading about, something I will have to remember.
Categories: Summer Assignment
I have to admit, I am sometimes quite crazed about technology, and at others, i think it kind of dull. I love hearing about new phones, computers, and just little fun inventions that people can come up with. However, in reading this feed, I found that not only was it about new technology, it’s everything on the decisions that people like Bill Gates make and companies such as Nokia and Apple, plan.
At http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html?partner=rssnyt I didn’t feel as interested as I thought I would, but some topics did spark my interest. The mentioning of a Group Suing the Government Over Mobile Phone Tracking and The Facebooker who Friended Obama were a couple that caught my attention. I felt that this writer didn’t exactly put much heart into his/her writing because as I was reading it, I didn’t feel as if I was really understanding it, my thoughts would drift away and I would have to reread it again. I do have to remember though, that maybe this topic wasn’t something I would like to read.
In conclusion, this probably would be one of the feeds that I would not keep reading up on and it was one of those that I only skimmed and scanned the headings and only read in depth the ones that I thought I liked.
Categories: Summer Assignment
As soon as my eyes fell across the word World at TIME.com: Top World Stories, I immediately clicked on it. I don’t know what it is about me that makes me want to know what’s happening all accross the world, instead of what is happening in just the United States. When all the story headlines popped up, I could see words like bomb, earthquakes, arrests, and a lot of other loaded phrases.
What drew me to my first feed that I read was about the threat to the Beijing Olympics. I don’t know if it is because I’m Asian that draws me to these kind of topics or if it is because it sounds a little more interesting than others, but when I clicked on it, I was immediately engulfed on the drama that that country was going through on how to fix the air pollution and the massive amount of Blue-Green algae that was contaminating the waters. Topics like these, made me come back to my reader everyday to check if anything else was happening, making this probably my most read feed so far. I read other topics like the Columbian rescue and how Osama bin Laden will launch another attack, all stories that start out drawing a person’s attention. I also saw topics like Disabled Models and What’s Next for Ingrid Betancourt, topics that are in some words interesting, but not something I felt like reading in depth.
If I were ever to become a journalist, I would love to write topics about the world to better inform people that life does not just exist with one person, it exists in all of us, and that not only do we need to be aware of all issues in the world, we need to be thinking of ways to help contribute to the solution too. It sounds kind of corny, but this is what I truly think and if I had not read these feeds, I would probably not have come to that conclusion.
Categories: Summer Assignment
Blogs, how do we go about evaluating one’s creative use of technology and thoughts in one post? With so many great blogs on the World Wide Web, I have succeeded in finding three that have put words and pictorial tools together to make wonderful posts for everyone (including me) to read and enjoy. In doing so, I began to see that there are some good and bad qualities in all blogs.
For instance on blog number one at http://edubuzz.org/blogs/donsblog/organization, there were so many posts that he (the blogger) had written, and delightful enough, they were all arranged in perfect columns that were listed under certain categories. I found everything I wanted to know just by skimming down the list of topics! A cool tool I found on this writer’s blog was his archives under a drop down menu instead of just listing it like what most other bloggers do. While this writer mostly focused on the topic of education, he also wrote a little about politics and technology, attracting many readers due to variety. Instead of having a very long reference page, he linked the word or phrase to the resource he had found it at, except he had a flaw; he did not cite his pictures. However, he did a great job by having many pictures and videos to help demonstrate the visual perspective in which he was portraying. All this hard work was not for nothing though because he does get many comments on his posts, but in many cases he does not comment back to the poster. Incredible enough, this blog (I soon found out) had been in existence for three years and still gets updated very often! How dedicated is that? The posts are not random and unplanned either, they are very carefully written and put together in an organized format. Looking through this blog inspires me to write more and be more organized with all that I write and do.
http://aquaculturepda.edublogs.org/ was quite different from the first blog. It felt more witty, keeping me focused on the subject very easily. To corroborate this, the headings were eye catching and accompanying that was an original picture that made you want to read the post to see what the picture was about. Like the blog before this, it had side columns of headings and under each heading was a list of categories or topics to read from. Under one of the headings, she listed some of other people’s posts in which she had a series of her comments and the link to that blog, giving us (as the readers) an insight on how she thinks. She mostly writes a lot about tips for doing things like blogging, screen casting, editing, and many other worldly tips. Her posts also gives us glimpses of her life and problems and how she fixes them. For example, she wrote once that she was feeling very cold and the reason was because a major gas company suffered from an explosion. Then, to deal with the gas shortage, everyone in West Australia had to cut back on their electricity use. Her solution to this problem was to wear a lot of gloves and thick clothing to keep her warm because it can actually get pretty cold in Australia. Also like blog number one, any reference to a person or site is hyperlinked to the original site and the videos (mostly from youtube) are like that too. However, she does more by citing at the bottom of every picture with the date, author, and company of who created that picture. With all these elements complimenting her posts, she gets a lot of comments too, and does a great job trying to respond back to her posters. She has kept up with this blog for two whole years and updates at least once every month. From reading her blog posts, I have found occasional grammatical errors and I am not quite sure if it is because she is Australian, or if they are just little grammar mistakes. After reading a few of her posts, I would say that this is one of my all-time favorite blogs with its entertaining articles and humorous stories, therefore inspiring me with the urge to share my practical experiences with the world.
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/, I found that the organization and format was simpler than blog number one and two. He narrowed his sidebars down to as few as possible, making reading and navigating pretty easy. Instead of grouping his posts into categories, he grouped them under his archives from every month. I personally found interesting his feed burner which counted how many readers he had, come visit his blog. I saw that he wrote stuff about his education/teaching experiences, for example not assigning homework, many math tips, and his trial and error experiments with his students, in other words, making math fun. Just like many blogs, he also cites his information to the website it was found at. What is different about this blog is instead of having most of his videos from Youtube, they are of himself demonstrating the point he was trying to prove or show. He also has many pictures that go with each post too. Not only does he get a lot of comments, but he responds to them regularly making sure he clarifies everyone’s viewpoints. His blog has existed for about two years now and he writes every single month with more than two posts per archive. I found this blog to be humorous because of the different ways he figures out how to make things better, like getting his students interested in learning again. In fact, I found this blog to be so inspirational that I told my geometry teacher about it. The message I conveyed out of this blog was to think outside the box whenever I could and as often as I could, but also to not give up on the first try, but to try, try again. The reason I think this is that when he first began to teach, he had a rough time getting his students to focus and understand the concepts. Then after many hours of thinking, he found a solution by making the problems more life related and getting the class to interact with each other to find a common answer.
In conclusion, these three blogs show that time and commitment can make a big difference between a good blog and a bad one.
Categories: Summer Assignment
