Avatars

Many people create avatars in the virtual online world to show how they want to be are sides of their personality that they may not show in public. These people spend much of their life playing as these virtual characters and leave the real world behind. In a way this is beneficial, especially for people like Jason Rowe who, unlike an average person, cannot walk or even use his hands. This allows Jason to live as normal of a life as he possibly can. He is able to express his personality though means of his avatar and people will get to know who he really is and not judging him by his appearance. Avatars can be used in the classroom of today, especially with today's technology, as a way for students to express themselves. Students will be able to express their beliefs or ideas to a whole array of people without actually getting judged because the avatars would be online. With the avatars being on the internet there is no way of actually knowing who goes with what avatar. This can stir up ideas that may have never been brought up without the students having their own virtual character. Everyone has played video games once in their lifetime and has been able to play as their very own virtual avatar. Many people have played the game Sims, which is a game where you can actually create a whole virtual family. Almost every game made nowadays allows the player to create or customize their very own player. So everyone has had their taste of an avatar.
                                               -Cody

Facebook vs. Myspace

Whenever I think about the differences between MySpace and Facebook, I think about the age differences in the people that use the two different social network sites. To me MySpace would be for the younger crowd of teenagers because of the fact that you can add "bling" to your page. Myspace is just a place to go to make a webpage solely directed to you and your interest. While Facebook is for people who just want to socialize with their peers or maybe state an opinion that they want the rest of the world to know. There is less customization on a Facebook page, which i happen to like better. In this essay the author is right in their analyses of how MySpace is greatly influenced by the Hip-Hop genre of music. The younger generation of teenagers are influenced by the pop culture that's around them more than anything else. This is why MySpace attracts the younger crowd more so than adults or even an older generation of teenagers. Facebook is a cleaner more refined social network that is solely in place for people to get their ideas and opinions out there in the world. The only way to actually express yourself on Facebook is through the pictures that you post or actually stating what you have to think. To me that is why Facebook is a better social networking site and is why I have one.

College Writing

Whenever i thought about school work in college I always knew there were going to be some kind of papers or research papers I would have to write along the way. When i found out that i was going to have to take English 103 I figured there was going to be some writing involved, i hoped there wasn't going to be any, but pretty much knew there was going to be some. So for this assignment i wasn't shocked or anything i just didn't really want to do it. It turned out to be pretty interesting because it showed me how much information you can really get from just one political cartoon. I had always noticed the cartoons in newspapers and had analyzed them in some classes, but not to much extent. Therefore this assignment wasn't too bad after I got started.
                                        -Cody

Dove Real Beauty Campaign

To me I think that Orbach's view on how women stress on how the way they loo because of beauty ads is right. Most of the ads that we see today and are trying to sell something to women try to make the consumer or audience think that if they don't have this certain product then they won't be beautiful like everyone else. These ads display overly skinny models posing in suggestive ways that are intended to catch peoples' eyes. The Dove Real Beauty Campaign shows women and girls that they don't have to be like these models to be beautiful. To actually be pretty or beautiful means being true to yourself and not caring what other people around you think. This campaign targets the ads that are lowering the self-esteems of many young girls and even aging women and tries to show these girls other ways to be beautiful. I believe that Orbach did the right thing by teaming up with dove and leading the campaign. She brought to the table many skills that greatly helped this program get started and rollin towards the success that it is today. It has made many other companies join in and promote the same type of real beauty that Dove was after when they got started.
                                   - Cody

Photos

I come from a family that loves there photographs, especially that act of catching that "Kodak Moment," as Lenore Skenazy describes. With that said I can agree when the writers in the book say people only display the pictures that they want other people to see. Everyone has that photo album of pictures from when they were younger, and they don't want anyone to see. If we show these pictures to a friend we nine times out of ten pick the picture of us hoisting the trophy in the air rather than the picture of you after a messy spaghetti dinner. Those pictures that may be the most embarrassing ones are the true "Kodak Moments" that show real accounts of what has happened in your life or little imperfections that only make us human. For some reason my family just loves to capture these moments when you are least expecting it or maybe an embarrassing moment when you are trying to shovel that last chip in your mouth, especially with the invention of digital cameras.  With the digital camera you are able to take as many pictures as you want and then pick and choose the best of all the photos. These digital cameras may be great in the way we can easily manage and delete the one-thousend pictures you have from last months trip to Italy, but it takes away from the surprise and risk of a conventional camera. Nowadays we want to view our lives as perfect, with the use of photography.

9/2/11

For this reading assignment we had to read about how to write a good paper and how to go about doing your research in order to create an affective argument. First and foremost when writing a paper is creating a strong introduction that will intrigue the reader to continue reading. Maybe start off with a question to get the reader thinking about the subject at hand or an interesting fact that the typical person may not know. Once you have revealed the topic and compelled the reader to keep on reading you have to bring you topic into focus. The reading assignment showed some interesting ways to organize your research, making it easier when introducing and narrowing your topic down, rather than having to write about a very vague subject where it would be difficult to make an affective argument. I was also introduced a new way of planning my research paper out, which was to actually planning it out by the use of a freewrite that can help create a hypothesis and show me what the meat of my paper will be about. By writing a hypothesis I am able to show the reader my argument that I am attempting to prove. Finally the last step in developing my paper is to write a research proposal, which is like a detailed agenda on how to complete that paper and make an affective argument. To me what i read was interesting and should help me when i'm trying to create my research paper.
                                 - Cody