Evaluating the Internet

Part One

Impressions-

Information: 

   This website has a lot of helpful information starting with some general facts and list of disabilities to get an emotional support dog recommendation from a medical practitioner. The website includes two important sections titled Living With Your Emotional Support Dog, and Flying With Your Emotional Support Dog. These two sections give very important information as to how those processes would change with an emotional support dog. The site is good for letting people know if they should have an emotional support dog, and how it would change their situation if their dog was registered.
Credibility (based on URL, advertising, links): This website appears to be very credible. Its URL has not only US in the title, but is finished with a .org, both of these things make it appear to be a professional website. There are absolutely no advertisements, which- in my opinion- is a good sign for a website's credibility. It doesn't appear as if it is just trying to bring an audience or make money, it just wants to be informative. There are only a few links on this page, all to pages that are a part of the same website. They have an FAQ page, a contact page, a home page, an information page, and a register page.

Gather Information- 

General Criteria Guidelines:
   1. The site clearly states which association it is giving you information about. The information on the site appears to be extremely appropriate for the purpose of the site.
   2. The purpose of the site is to inform people who are considering registering their dog as an emotional support dog. It informs them about whether they are qualified and how it would change things. The information is very factual, it does not feel biased or opinionated in any way.
   3. The site has no ads on it. It appears to be funded in other ways, or a part of an organization with a lot of money. The lack of advertising does influence the site, it makes it feel very professional and informative, almost like reading a pamphlet.
   4. The site does not claim to provide or describe the results of an academic study.
   5. The information on the site can be verified on other websites, however I don't know why you would since that is the official site and you can sign up for the registry on that website.
   6. The material is not covered in super depth, but it gives you all the information you need so it does not feel like anything is left out.
   7. The material feels incredibly appropriate for print publication, as I said it feels like it could be a pamphlet.

Select/Embed-

Emotional Support Dogs have given people hope and support for many years now. They are not like other support dogs and are not trained for specific tasks or behaviors. According to US Dog Registry "They are meant solely for emotional stability and unconditional love."(Information on Emotional Support Dogs) This means that any dog can be an emotional support dog, as long as their human has the necessary disability. Unlike most support dogs, emotional support dogs are based around their humans qualifications, not their own. 

MLA Citation: 

United States Dog Registry. Information on Emotional Support Dogs. United States Dog Registry.                           2013. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. 

*wouldn't let me do a hanging indent*

Part Two

Evaluate-

The authors appear to have an education and general background in dogs. I don't see any specific qualifications that would make me think they know a whole lot about this specific topic, but it's pretty straight forward so I believe that they have done their research based on the field they are in. 

Compare-

While the site was pretty basic and just told about the qualifications and the changes that happen, the journal spoke more about how it is happening and affecting various things throughout the country. It talks about the different types of assistance dogs, besides just emotional. This journal is more about the registration process. This site also goes into the specifics of what each assistant dog is meant to do. 

Record-

The journal has a resource called "The Early Evolution of Domestic Dog" in American Science, by Morey DF. 

Write-

Yamamoto, Mariko. "Registrations of Assistance Dogs in California for Identification Tags: 1999-2012". PLoS One. 19 Aug. 2015. 5. EBSCO Host. Web. 13 Oct. 2015. 

*wouldn't let me do a hanging indent*

-Kristen Skuba

photo: www.dogtime.com

Evaluating the Internet

                http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201252981756447470.html




Part one

I, as of now, have not decided on the topic for my research paper though I have come across information and articles that are of interest to me. The website I chose to evaluate is https://vice.news.com. This site provides a myriad of information covering many different topics from all over the world. Vice news reports on topics seldom seen in the average news cast.

Evaluation of the Website

• The purpose of this site is to inform people about what is going on around the world
• Authors names are clearly cited 
• The site is updated frequently 
• The site contains both printed work and video

Part two

I found a very interesting article on this site called "Lines In the Sand: Tracing Cocaine's Path Through Africa to Europe." In this article Vice News reports on DEA stings of corrupt African officials and the smuggling of cocaine from Latin America to the West Coast of Africa and up in to Europe. 

Work cited

Alex Chitty and Jana Kozlowski. "Lines In the Sand: Tracing Cocaine's Path Through Africa to Europe."Vice.news.com. 27 Mach, 2015. Web. 13 Oct. 2015.

BLOG REVIEW #2


Image Source: roguedenver.com

The blog I have decided to follow is https://thefirst2rows.wordpress.com/


Constructive criticism.
The first thing that I like about this post was the picture chosen for the top of the page. I find it suited to our class, also the humorist note that explain their title gives a fun edge  to the page.
The lack of color for the background allows for the text to pop to the eyes of the reader, and the pictures selected, makes the overall blog a very pleasant visual experience

Blog Quality Criteria
I think the blog meets some of the qualities listed on the criteria list, but unfortunately misses some others. The first thing I noticed missing is the blog description. The reader will not understand what is the purpose or central theme for this blog. That is a shame because the very appealing picture, the title and humorist touch in the sentence "the greatest rows of all time" will fall flat for the reader who doesn't know that the writers are students in an English class. The quality of the writing could also be improved. It is to expect that different bloggers have different styles, but after reading the entire blog, I felt a lack of cohesiveness. A way to correct this could be group joined editing sessions, after the blog entries are posted.

Overall the pleasant and easy to look at visuals and organisation as well as the variety of the content makes this blog my favorite.

Blog review

                http://extraterrestrials.wikia.com/wiki/The_Greys_(Escape_from_Planet_Earth)





Discuss: I decided to fallow "Aliens Three". I enjoyed the layout of the page especially the ease of navigation with in the blog itself. The blog was simple yet elegant and aesthetically pleasing. I liked the use of color specifically the use of more then one color. I think that the name they chose is great. Some of the writing I found to be somewhat unengaging but well done.


Plan: I believe that we could improve our blog would be to change the the color scheme to include multiple colors. I will have to speak with the other members of my group to see if they feel likewise and would be up for the change.I don't know how to do this so I would also have to ask one of the other members to help me with this task.

My review: I liked the blog for it simplicity of use and it's beauty. The only thing I think might improve the blog is a little communication between blog mates so that they don't put the same pictures up on different blogs.

Lucas Calderon

Blog Review #2 - Clayton Peppler

Plan: I think that we could improve our blog by making the navigation bar for individual authors a little easier to use. I liked how easy it was on naju-ng.tumblr.com, so maybe this is something that we could implement on our website. In order to execute this task, I would have to talk with my other blog mates that way it is done in a manner that we can all agree on. Also, I am not very techy, so we would need to put all five brains together to fulfill this task.

Discuss: I chose to review the blog naju-ng.tumblr.com. The authors of this blog chose to use the website tumblr, which I thought was an interesting but effective choice. I really liked how easy it was to navigate through their blog. The layout and format of the website is clean and concise. I did not, however, enjoy how bland the website was. The entire blog is white upon white. I think that it would be more effective if the authors added some kind of theme or color scheme to brighten up the blog. I think that if the blog had some more color, it would be a lot more inviting and attractive to the reader.  I also like that the authors used pictures that they took themselves, rather than a page filled with stock photos. I think that these photos make the blog much more personable to the reader. As I was scrolling through the posts, I found that some of them did not have proper grammar or formatting, which really distracted me from what they had to say. This is something that can be fixed simply by putting their posts into a word document before hand and using spell check to catch some of these silly mistakes. Besides the grammar mistakes of the posts, the content was interesting and intriguing. Two things that I could not find on the blog were their “mission statement” and a blogroll. 

Overall, my biggest praise for the blog is its ease of use. I think that it is executed nicely but could use some tweaks here and there; but what blog doesn’t need something tweaked. I think that if they added some color, the blog could be very nice. 

Profile Picture of Naju

Photo from: http://naju-ng.tumblr.com

Chapter 14

Personal Reaction:
This chapter was an interesting read, and it was very informative on argumentative writing. It includes a lot of details on how to structure an argumentative essay. I found the segment about transitions to be very helpful, because I typically struggle with flawless transitions. I found this chapter to be incredibly long and repetitive. However it was useful to have so many example essays.

Professional Reaction:
This chapter goes above and beyond at explaining argumentation. The segments were broken up nicely to make it an easy read. There were many example writing pieces which were all great examples of argumentation. I think almost anybody could read this chapter and understand argumentation. The segment on deductive and inductive arguments was very informative and well written.

google from google images

Chapter 14

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/how-to-win-arguments-dos-donts-and-sneaky-tactics.html


Personal Reaction:
I felt like this chapter was informative but was basically a reiteration of previous chapters. the chapter had some useful information such as the different types and ways to use arguments. The chapter is a good reference and guide for writing and argumentation essay.

Professional Reaction:
Chapter 14 conveys to the student a well illustrated guide to the creation and editing of an argumentation essay. Important tools such as the development of an argumentative thesis, gathering and documenting evidence and the different types of arguments are concise and well explained.


Lucas Calderon