Chapter Nine: Taking a Stand

Personal Reaction: Chapter nine was not really any new information for me, rather a reinforcement/expansion on ideas that I have already been taught. We touched on logical fallacies in English 121, but the chart at the end of the chapter is much more in depth and something that I plan to reference when writing my essay. I really liked how the chapter included an example essay with their own annotations to exemplify how the concepts that they are discussing can be applied to real papers.

                      

Professional Reaction: Chapter nine focuses on how to effectively take a stand, whether it is in your academic writing, or everyday life. There are several components to successfully take a stand, starting with generating ideas. During this process, the writer must begin by finding an issue. The issue must not only interest the writer, but should also take into account the target audience. After the topic is decided, create a vague and debatable question that you wish to answer, then answer it with your thesis. Following the completion of your thesis, use both formal reasoning and informal Toulmin reasoning to refine your position. After you have logically reasoned through your position, the next task is to find evidence that supports your position. As you begin to look for evidence, categorize your claim into one of the three following categories: substantiation, evaluation or endorsing policy. Claims that are substantiation answer the question “what happened?”, claims of evaluation answer “what is right?”, while claims of policy answer “what should be done?”; during this categorization make sure that you consider you target audience. After you have identified the purpose of you claim, it is time to find supporting evidence. Supporting evidence can be either facts, expert testimony, or firsthand observations. The next component to successfully take a stand is planning, drafting and developing. During this process, the writer must assess their working thesis and make sure that the evidence that they gathered still supports its original claim. If it does not, the writer must update their thesis to match the evidence that they gathered. After the thesis is complete, the writer organizes their ideas in a way to persuade their audience. Additionally, writers make sure that uncommon terms are defined, they have utilized ethos, pathos and logos and that all sources are credited. The next component of taking a stand is basic revising and editing. The last component of taking a stand is being able to recognize logical fallacies. Logical fallacies can make readers come to false conclusions or distort evidence which is why they should be avoided at all costs.  

- Clayton Peppler

Photo from: http://tamaralexow.com/2015/07/06/taking-a-stand/

Clayton Peppler - Photo Analysis

Photo from: http://cdainc.net/our-turn-under-the-stethoscope/

Line: The lines of the photo really add depth and perspective. I believe that there are leading lines in this photo. The leading line starts from the left upper corner and finishes on the main focus in the bottom right hand corner.

Color: The color of this photo is neutral with a mixture of blues, following the theme of my presentation. I chose to use a lot of blues because blue is often associated with loyalty, trust, integrity, reliability, responsibility and so much more.

Texture: The texture of the photo is shiny and three dimensional, giving the photo a sense of realism and character. This makes the reader feel more engaged because they are imagining what the actual object feels like.

Shape:  The shape of this photo is very prominent because it lies against a contrasting background.

Light/Shadow: The shadow of the picture seems to be consistent with what you would expect from the angle that the photo was taken. The photo is blurred in the background to emphasize the main components of the stethoscope.

Design/Layout: The photo is not busy which allows the reader to focus on what is really important, the stethoscope.

Clayton Peppler

I chose this picture for many reasons for my presentation. This photo illustrates a few of the characteristics for reflecting on a photo. This photo incorporates many colors. The colors that are seen in this photo range, and keeps your eyes from focusing on one area. I feel like this analysis can be connected to my personality due to the fact that I’m all over the place, but I am also put together. Though there are many different parts of me, like the mountains in the photo along with many other subjects, it all makes part of the whole picture. Another concept that is used to keep your eyes from one area is the texture. Throughout the photo you can see many textures, for the most part, the grass shows a very fine texture the larger the photo. I feel as though the texture also helps distract from different other portions, which I hope some of my personality traits helps with. I make this connection because I believe that on the first glance, you may see something totally different than when you look at the whole picture. The aspect of light and shadow can be seen in this picture as well. The photo is illuminated with sunlight but when you get closer to the subject, you can see multiple shadows. On my figure as well as the grass next to me, you can see a shadow from the form blocking the sunlight, which I believe makes the photo look very candid. The design and layout of this photo can be expressed as well. I believe that the photo is very well organized due to the fact that there is one main subject, but still other aspects one can view, such as the mountains, or the ball that is in the left hand corner. I believe that there can be many different styles incorporated in this photo, but I believe one major one is landscape. Even though theres a subject in the photo, they make it possible for one to see the landscape around, letting the viewer know what the individual is doing, telling a story, in a way. All in all, I believe that this photo incorporates many different elements of art, but the ones listed above, are just a few. 

Everyday-Carry Review

I decided to review the blog http://everydaycarry.com. In regards to a scale out of 1-10, I would rate this blog an 8.5. I found it was very easy to navigate the website even though it is very well put together and looks very official. At the top of the page, it offers many topics one could scroll through, but it makes it easy for the reader to navigate through the website. Not only that, but it also provides an area for the individual to subscribe to their posts through an email, or Facebook. 

The blog provides information that is not appealing to me, but I can see how others would enjoy it. I decided to review this blog due to the idea that I would probably rate a blog better if I was interested in the material, but with no idea of what the blog is posting, I can actually review the content without a bias. 

I really enjoy how they organize the posts. The first post I scrolled to I accidentally put my cursor over the image and found that it was interactive and gave each item numbers regarding the post below. I believe that it’s really cool how tech-savvy it is, but I can see how others could be confused without this knowledge. 

Each post is either a personal post regarding what one blogger may carry on them, on the first page, to reviews on items. I really believe that this website could be very helpful to an individual that is interested in the products they’re posting. I don’t have many complaints on what I would change regarding their blog. 

Out of 10, I would rate this blog an 8.5 regarding on the following criteria:

Recurring Themes: I would give this section a 10 because all the posts are similar in topic, but they’re very different regarding which individual is posting to it. 

Author Voice: I would give this section a 7 because one has to press into a read more section in order to see the whole article and the individuals summary. These summaries are also very short from what I glanced at. 

Multimedia: I would give this section a 10 because it’s very tech savvy and has tons of pictures in the articles. 

“Good” Writing: This blog would get a 9 for the good writing because it’s very professional and I did not find many errors, let alone, any. 

Frequency: This blog posts quite a bit everyday so I would say an 8 as a rating. Some people may enjoy frequent posts but some may not, so I believe that it matters on the person. 

Credibility: The posts would definitely get a 10 because they all are linked to the item’s the discuss instead of making the reader search into it. 

Organization: The blog is very well organized even though there may be a lot on it. Because of this, I would rate it a 9.

Use of Advertisements: This blog has quite a bit of ads so I would say a 9. Even though there are a lot, they’re on the side, so they’re not too distracting. 

Emily LeMasters

Blog review Life Hacker

I liked this blog for the information that it provides and how to apply it to your everyday life.  Lots of interesting tips on how to keep your motivation to reach your goals, whether it be finances and how to be frugal, learning to eat healthy and meal planning, exercise and how to keep your mind set no matter what obstacles get in your way.


- Blogs that relate to everyday life.
  Recurring Themes 8
- Good amount of resources to do more research
  Multi-media 7
- Very informational and easy to understand. Not many visuals.
  Good writing 6
- Post are a few times a day, so doesn't take to much time to read through.
  Frequency 8
- Different authors to look through to get a variety of opinions.
  Author voice 7
- I would like to see more visuals and more creativity but not to busy.
  Creativity 6
Elizabeth Victorio

Photo from http://jabiljoules.com google images



Blog Review (Group) and Personal (Clayton Peppler)

We chose to review the blog mentalfloss.com. With a scale of 1-10, we would rate this blog an 8. We really enjoyed how easy it was to navigate the website, the content of the blog, the presentation and the wide array of interactive material.

The navigation of the blog was not only simplistic but intuitive. We really liked how it had a site map with all the main categories listed. We also liked that if you could not find what you were looking on the site map, there was a search box.

The content of the blog was very interesting and applicable to everyday life. The content varies from movies to money to interesting new technology. The presentation was “calendar” style and was executed extremely well. Each square had a short synopsis of the topic and if you like what you read you could click the square and it would link you to the full article. This style created an organized and clutter free blog. Each post had at least one image and each image was relevant to the topic.

Our favorite part of the blog was probably that it was more than just written posts. The blog incorporated things such as videos, quizzes and an “amazing fact generator”. We felt that these added extras made the blog more desirable than the others and more likely to keep us returning for more.

One thing that we would change about the blog to give it that 10/10 rating would be to reduce the amount of advertisements. We also think that the frequency of the posts could be reduced as it seems that they were posting four or more times a day. We feel that posting this many times a day makes the blog too busy.

Mentalfloss.com (Clayton Peppler)

Out of 10, I would rate this blog an 8 based on the following criteria:

Recurring Themes: 10

-       The blog has different categories that they post to each week, creating reoccurring themes.

Author Voice: 8

-       Because there are many different authors, you get a sense of different voices and perspectives which really livens up the blog. Some authors work is more enjoyable to read than others.

Multimedia: 10

-       There is always an image or a video in the blog post and that image/video always pertains to the content of the post itself.

“Good” Writing: 9

-       When looking through a couple of the posts, the errors seemed to be nonexistent.

Frequency: 7

-       This blogs posts four or more times a day. I find this to be excessive and creates too busy of a blog.

Credibility: 10

-       All of the work that is taken from other sources is cited.

Organization: 10

-       I really like the calendar style that this blog follows. I found that this style creates a flowing, organized and clutter free blog.

Use of Advertisements: 5

-       I really do not like how many advertisements are on the blog. On a couple of the posts an ad would pop up right in the middle of the reading.

-Clayton Peppler, Emily LeMasters and Elizabeth Victorio

Photo From: http://www.otoons.com/eso/floss.htm#sthash.z8RBBRFV.dpbs