Blog Entry 6: Prompt 2

“Paradigm rhetoric” is essential for understanding the presentation of information in every aspect of communication whether that be in a professional, public, personal, or educational setting. For example, in a professional or educational setting one might present information in a way that is relevant to that particular field (through a scientific research study, for example). Also, one would most likely present information in a public setting different than in a more personal circumstance. A public communication platform may filter out some details due to both the audience and goals of the author. In contrast, a personal setting would include information that reflects more sensitive or hidden aspects of the author. This idea was explored thoroughly by the Screen Self Portrait project. We were encouraged to take a more personal look at how we wanted to convey ourselves through a collage of media. Also, part of the project was recognizing the differences between digital identities and how they can vary depending on the platform of the information presented and what the author chooses to share. These differences are essential in recognizing conventions present in different examples of “paradigm rhetoric” and the implications for the situations and fields they arise in.

Example of typical information layout of field specific scientific research study (scientific paradigm rhetoric): 

Project 3: Part 2- Reflection

This project was interesting and helpful in being both self-reflective and introspective, which is not a lens that I have often explored in my academic writing. It was interesting to think about which aspects of my life I make known to other people publicly and which aspects I choose to keep to myself and it was exciting to see both of those sides of myself come together to form a cohesive self portrait. It is probably one of the more accurate representations of myself that is available online since it includes some of what I would normally include on social media as well as some more introspective elements of myself. Also, some of the examples of personal databases that I chose reflected various networks that I consider myself to be a part of and operate in whereas others were more related to my individual interests. This was interesting because it led me to explore and reveal multiple facets of myself to create the most personal and accurate self-portrait that I could.

This aesthetic approach to my life shows parts of me that would not be seen if I were to explore other genres such as taking a quantitative approach to this self portrait project. A quantitative approach would definitely still give details about my life that could lead to a different kind of self portrait but it would not encapsulate the mood and feelings in quite the same way as this approach. Both styles are useful for describing scenarios and people; however, since this is a more personal project, the subjective-ness of the media chosen helps to create a self-portrait that is more vulnerable and sensitive and encapsulates a deeper meaning to an individual more than just including objective data.

I was unsure of what the idea of electracy really meant before starting this project. It seemed to be too abstract of an idea and it was hard for me to grasp it as a concrete concept, which is what I try to do when learning new things. However; this project helped to assist me in forming an idea of what electracy is and how to use it. In the process of coming up with ideas for my screen self portrait, I had to use many different types of multimedia to showcase myself. In order to do this, I had to be able to understand the digital media in a way that was meaningful to me so that I could use it effectively in my project. This ended up fitting with Gregory Ulmer’s insight into the subject. Ulmer uses the analogy “electracy is to digital media what literacy is to print” to describe the importance of electracy. This concept ended up really solidifying with me and came in very useful in making my project be as cohesive and effectively descriptive as it was.

This idea of electracy that I thoroughly explored in this project works well with some themes that we have continually discussed in this class: “Experience Paradigm” and composing/communicating experience. In order to convey a self-portrait, it was necessary for me to reflect on experiences that I have individually had that reflect my digital identities. This reflection on my experiences laid the groundwork for then using different platforms of multimedia to convey different personal aspects of those experiences.

All of the aspects and new methods of exploration into communicating experience and information via my digital identities were utilized in this project which concluded my work in this semester nicely. I’m sure I will take some of this insight with me into further classes to expand and recognize my knowledge of digital identity.

Project 3: Part 2-Poetics

To begin, I organized my self portrait into four categories: past, present, future, and dreams and included a home page as well. I chose these categories to track and observe the changes in my my self-portrait and digital identity in different stages of my life. The “Home” page has a quote that I feel describes me and connects with me personally. I wanted to start off with something simple that encapsulates my personality overall and concisely.  Clicking this quote links to the “Past” category which contains pictures, gifs, and a song that personally reflects all four personal databases for this project specifically in myself in the past (previous years in college, high school, and elementary school). The next category of my screen self portrait is “Present” and as such reflects and describes my presence in each personal database and moods and feelings as I currently am. The third category is entitled “Future” and reflects my current aspirations and plans as they will fit into each personal database. The last category of my screen self portrait is “Dreams.” This category is less concrete of an idea as the others and is a description of how I wish I would appear in each of the four personal databases but are most likely just dreams and are not actually realistic. Clicking on various images on each of these pages link to other categories of my screen self portrait.

All four of these pages work together to showcase not only each required database of my life, but through the use of various forms of multimedia can show emotions and feelings involved in each stage that I chose to highlight. Some of my images more concretely represent aspects of my life whereas others are less evident to an outside reader but still accurately represent myself in a personal way. This combination reflects many aspects of my life coming together. These various forms of multimedia work together to create electracy that reflects me personally and communicates various emotions and feelings that come together to create a complete self-portrait that is an accurate depiction of my life in various stages.

Project 3: Screen Self Portrait

Here is the link to my Screen Self Portrait!

Blog Entry 5: Personal Database

Autobiography/Family

Caption: My family at a wedding this past summer.

School/Career

Caption: Logo from the University of Colorado Neuroscience club program.

Community/Social

Caption: My roller derby team (who I think of as a great social community).

Entertainment/Culture

Caption: As part of the culture with my family we raise and keep chickens for their eggs.

Exercise 4

Part 1:

Personal Intermediate 5k Training

Training:

• Build up training week by week, start small and work up to faster and longer training (each day of interval training is timed with a watch)
  • Week 1: 15 miles for the week with one day of interval training:
    • 4×400 meter sprints with 30 seconds of walking in between
      • 1:20 for first 400 and faster each successive 400
  • Week 2: 18 miles for the week with a day of interval training:
    • 2×800 meters and 2×400 meter sprints with 30 seconds of walking in between
      • 2:50 for first 800 and second is seconds faster
      • 1:20 for first 400 and second is seconds faster
  • Week 3: 15 miles for the week with a day of interval training:
    • 6×400 meter sprints with 30 seconds of walking in between
      • 1:15 for each 400 and each successive 400 is faster
  • Week 4: 15 miles for the week with a very easy day (2 miles) on Friday, the day before the race with a less intense day of interval training in the middle of the week:
    • 2×400 and 2×200 meter sprints with 30 seconds of walking in between
      • 1:15 for each 400 and second 400 is faster
      • 40 second 200 and second 200 is faster
• This kind of training can be extended to fit longer time periods of training before a race.
• Example training schedule for Intermediate runners

Pace for each race after cycles of training above (timed with watch):

• First 5k: 28:00 minutes
• Second 5k: 26:30 minutes
• Third 5k: 24:30 minutes
• Fourth 5k: 22:00 minutes

Food to eat for proper nutrients the night before race day and the day of:

• Night Before the Race:
  • Chicken and Zucchini Pasta
    •  82.5 grams of protein
    • 18.00 grams of carbohydrates
  • Day of the Race:
    • Oatmeal
      •  56 grams of Carbohydrates

Part 2: 

The Part 1 exercise was useful in providing a methodical, qualitative view on training for a 5k. However, more subjective elements that are also important training elements that can not be measured quantitatively were left out. Some subjective aspects of training that were left out include: my emotions after each day of training, details of my mood, a description of race-day jitters, etc. These are all important factors to consider that would affect race performance just as much as the quantitative times and calories counted leading up to the race. These personal aspects were ignored for the purpose of this exercise. Also, because of the format and style of writing, some creative and descriptive elements were also left out. This exercise focused on ways to quantitatively show information with the use of charts and numbers. As a result, imagery filled-descriptions detailing emotions or setting the scene were left out in order to focus on the qualitative aspect of the experience.
In her writing, Knight discusses an essay written by Jones and Arning that connects well with this assignment. On page 152, she states, “In their edited collection, Jones and Arning claimed that ‘aesthetic practices locate how bodies are interacting with technologies at the present moment, and provide a site for questioning those locations.’” In part 1 of this exercise, bodies interacted with technologies by way of timing workouts with stopwatches and counting nutrition facts and calories. These interactions with technology are useful in providing qualitative proof of experience and progress. However, these interactions also “provide a site for questioning those locations.” The information given by these technologies only explains one aspect of the experience. This information can be questioned as not providing a true description as it does not include subjective aspects of the situation (such as emotional, personal connections).

Example of more qualitative tracking

Blog Entry 4

From Chapter 5: “We use the data to adjust the sto­ries we already tell our­selves about our lives, and we use our sto­ries about our lives to adjust, excuse or under­stand our data.” I keep track of my habits and productivity to feel a sense of accomplishment when I complete the tasks I set out to do. However, sometimes I make excuses for reasons why I did not accomplish some tasks to justify to myself that it is okay that I did not accomplish what I set out to get done.

Media:

This was a list of completed tasks on a to do list I had created a few weeks ago. Some of these items I definitely completed whereas others were only half-completed or I decided I did not actually have time for or need to do but I checked them off anyways. Regardless of actual completion or not, all of these items were checked off in seemingly the same way, the circumstances behind their completion were just different.

From Chapter 6: “In addition to data gathered from your web surfing habits, sites such as Facebook and Google use the demographic information you explicitly give them and information they glean from your status updates, private messages and email to customize your news feed and the ads they show you.” Pages that I have liked or online shopping stores I have visited have shown up in ads on Facebook and other social media sites. This also shows up when I have looked at a clothing item on a website and then later that day I have gotten ads pop up that say “look at what you found!” with an image of the item I had been looking at earlier.

Media:

 

This is an ad that pops up on Facebook all the time because not only do I have CU Boulder listed as my attended school, but I have liked various CU pages and posted about the school as well. I have also purchased CU football tickets online, not through Facebook.

Blog Entry 3

In the belief/story paradigm of unit 1, we, as authors were focused on nonfiction narrative and conveying a belief through storytelling. This project allowed us to be personal and evoke emotion to connect with the audience and convey a meaningful belief. This harnessed our creative thinking skills and encouraged us to utilize strategies that convey ethos to form a connection with the audience. This project harnassed our abilities to thoughtfully and creatively convey a story. However, this project did not include exercises in how to analyze or convey fact-based information. This project relied heavily on the abstract rather than concrete ideas and evidence.

Whereas unit 1 focused on more abstract concepts, unit 2 focused on strategically analyzing and synthesizing information from outside, fact-based articles. Unit 2 focused on academic writings and how they can be analyzed to show how professionals in a given field communicate information to one another. This unit utilized writing skills that focused on reading scholarly articles critically, analyzing articles for effectiveness and subject, and synthesizing those ideas into a complete webtext that communicated ideas about a professional field. In contrast to project 1, project 2 did not focus on creative abstract thinking to showcase an idea but rather using concrete evidence to present a point.

Project 1 media:

Project 2 media:

Webtext: Reflection

During this webtext project I discovered how people in the neuroscience field communicate information with one another and that there is a worldview specific to neuroscience and the scientific community. I learned that neuroscience articles are formatted in a straightforward and methodical way that clearly labels and states the introduction, methods and procedures, and discussion of the results of a given research study. This methodical way of writing is one specific to scientific discourse and presents information in a style that heavily utilizes logos. Scientific writing tends to discourage pathos-heavy writing because personal, anecdotal support is seen as unprofessional and invalid in the scientific community. Personal, support does not have testable data and is deemed not experimentally valid within the neuroscience community. This makes neuroscience writing unique from other genres like humanities that sometimes rely on pathos-heavy techniques to communicate ideas. These types of fields do not rely on testable data to support their ideas, so using personal anecdotes is often appropriate.

This logical and data-heavy information is used by scientists who have conducted research to prove a hypothesis or new method of research. Once a hypothesis has been proven, written, and published by a credible source or journal, it can be used as background knowledge for other scientists to use in their own studies and research. This cycle leads to a universal growth in knowledge and progression forward in discovery for the entire scientific community, which ultimately benefits the entire world population. The information discovered and written is circulated through published articles and journals available online for a wide audience to anyone across the world with internet access. This accessibility of information is important for the field of neuroscience to grow. With more access to information, experts, as well as non-experts, have an easier time building background knowledge for their own research and future studies. Even though many of the articles and research studies are available online to anyone searching for neuroscience information, the publicity and accessibility of information does not diminish the credibility of the studies. The information is simply made available to a wide audience as to increase the learning prospects of anyone, professional or not, looking to expand their knowledge on the field of neuroscience.

I was very familiar with the analytical writing style required for the assignment. I have experienced analytic writing in other writing classes I have taken as well as in preparation for some writing assignments in other courses I have taken at CU.  However, the web writing platform for this project was a little new to me. Although I was able to organize my initial writing effectively, it took a little while to get used to sorting my analytical writing into separate pages on my WordPress blog. This was not too hard to understand once I read the tips posted on the class website but nonetheless it was a relatively new experience. Using embedded links to allow the reader access to new information on other pages was something I had also never done before but I can see how it would be useful for the reader looking for additional information.

Webtext: Summary

My webtext design consists of seven pages of information that collectively compose a complete analysis of communication in the neuroscience field. I began with my main page titled “Webtext: Introduction” that introduces and briefly explains the neuroscience field and then provides links to each of the other pages and topics in the rest of my webtext. Under the “Expertise” link I grouped together the topics of “Expertise” and “Discourse Communities” because they both discuss the importance of the experts involved in studying neuroscience and how the community interacts with each other. I discussed “Research” on it’s own page because it is the backbone of neuroscience and it stands as its own important category. On another page I grouped “Knowledge” and “Information” together because in the field of neuroscience, obtaining and analyzing information leads to knowledge. Lastly, I discussed “Communication Conventions.” Communication is a thorough way to tie everything together because without quality communication between members of the field, there would be no use for research and other neuroscientific information. Additionally, poor communication is an issue in the neuroscience field and I seemed necessary to include a category that brought all of the other categories together into a passage that related everything to a bigger cause. I also included a page of works cited to allow the reader access to more information on various aspects of neuroscience. On every page I included embedded links to each of the other pages so the reader could choose to go from page to page without having to use the pull-down menu from the top of the blog. The audience, considered to be people knowledgeable on the subject but wishing to gain new insight into some aspects of neuroscience communication, was acknowledged by not overly explaining basic principles of neuroscience but rather expanding on new ideas regarding the sharing of information in the neuroscience field (especially on the “Communication Conventions” page). Because my webtext was published on the blogging site WordPress, it is available to anyone with access to the internet, thus increasing the potential audience. However, because I did not instead write and publish a research article on a neuroscience database, my audience is expected to be somewhat less knowledgeable than experts and likely looking for more understandable, less intense information. Thus, the purpose of my webtext was to provide information regarding scientific communication and new insight to people with some knowledge of neuroscience.