Final Portfolio!

http://stemmlerd1.weebly.com/

Final Student Ethnography Examples

When looking at the three examples of final ethnography projects, my final ethnography contains elements from both Kayla's and Grace's. While the content of Grace's is most like mine, mine looks most like Kayla's. Grace wrote her ethnography on the Newman Library, which is like mine because I did mine on a library as well. The approach she took and conclusions she made were of course different from what I found. The way she set her website up was the best of the three, breaking up her ethnography among pages. It was a very creative way of setting everything up and it is visually appealing. The way Kayla presented her ethnography was similar to how I chose to set mine up. I broke up the information I had wrote using different subheadings. Though she does keep everything on one page like me, she breaks it up using subheadings. This is a very effective way of organizing your final ethnography.

Student Example

I found that Chantelle's student example of the lay of the land paper was very good and enjoyable to read. When going on her portfolio website, the document was in a font very difficult to read, which was a big downfall of her website. But the paper itself was very good. Chantelle's site of the daycare is a great one and would be really fun and exciting to go to and observe. She really made her experience going there come to life and you can really picture what is going on throughout her day there. You can picture the kids and you can feel the energy they give off. She overall does a really strong job at painting the image of what the environment is like at this daycare, as she describes what is around her. It makes me think of when i was in pre-school and the energy that was present while at such a young age really shines through in this essay. You get a sense of Miss Ouellette as the teacher and how she creates this friendly and fun learning environment for the kids. Some of the kids she talks about and even the teacher I can picture in my head and I smile because they are really friendly. It makes me think about how important pre-school, kindergarten, and daycare even are to kids and their childhoods. At that age you learn to interact and be social, as well as have fun. Choosing this for her site was a really great choice for Chantelle and I'm sure it is something she enjoys working on and going to observe. Her final paper will probably be very enjoyable to read. I also thought it was a wise idea that she included some pictures of the daycare at the top - the white building she described where she "couldn't be at the right place" and the inside itself. Overall it is really good work!

Her website: http://chantellesportfolio.weebly.com/

Conducting Interviews

From the readings for homework this week, I learned a lot about how to conduct an interview. I personally haven't needed to conduct an interview before, so I am not sure quite what to expect, what to ask, or how to go about it. In general, I am nervous about conducting the interviews but reading the textbook material helped clear up some of my questions. Something I learned more about the 2 different types of interview questions -- closed and open questions. I already knew what they meant, because the definitions are basically common sense, but I learned a lot of tips for conducting the interview surrounding that. I learned not to ask too many of each question and to do some research ahead of time. The second half of the reading talked about the importance of listening, which I just learned about in my communications class. Engaged listening is really important because it shows the person you are talking to you are actually listening, and so you can comprehend what they are saying. For interview purposes, if you don't listen, you will miss important information that is being said. For me, I would say I am a pretty good listener so I will have no problems there. Reading this material overall helped give information and tips on how to conduct an interview, especially if you never have given one before.

Hanover Gems

It is clear to me when reading this paper what the author's main focus is on. By conducting interviews that we will have to do for essay 3, we will be able to learn a lot about the history of the site we chose and the background of the people that represent the site. This will help us understand the bigger picture and make connections. The author begins by giving some history about bowling, of which I found to be very fascinating and did not know before. For this part of the essay, research had to be done on bowling itself. The essay then moves onto the interview portion, which is written excellently in a narrative form. It is very easy to follow and very descriptive. The whole time I can picture it in my head like a scene from a movie. The narrative aspect really shines in this authors writing. We gain a lot of information about what the people who go to the bowling alley are like, as the interview gives off such information. The author seemed to succeed in the interview portion, seemingly getting great material from the people she talked to and a lot about their background and personality. The main purpose of this essay is to get an overall picture of your site, and to make connections. The author has a very clear point in her essay - "The people involved with this alley have a family connection with bowling and a history of their own with it that they are sharing with others. Hank and Carol are both passing on their bowling to their children."

Group Presentations

For our group presentations, we are doing a powerpoint on including visuals in documents. We were going to talk about the purpose of using visuals, graphs, and charts in documents, and the uses of each type of visual. We were also going to go through and show how to correctly place visuals in your document. We would show the right and wrong way to do this, and all different things you could do to your visuals once they are placed into your document. We have a good topic for our presentation and we easily broke up the information and work among our group members. I was happy with my group and how everyone works well together.

Midterm Portfolio

http://stemmlerd1.weebly.com/index.html

Weebly

For class, we had to make Weebly accounts and in doing so, looked at several example websites from students in the past. My favorite of the websites was made by a girl named Grace Lee, who clearly knew how to make a great website. Her site was very easy to navigate, and she got creative with picture links and layout. I really liked the whole creative set up and layout she designed for her website. We learned in class that a good website does not have too much on it, can be easy to navigate, and have color schemes that work together. For Grace, her website has all of this. I read through some of her writings and papers as well, and she is a good writer too! It was interesting to see that both of us are doing the library for our ethnography projects, and her final paper came out really strong. Overall, her website was perfect and I had a positive time going on it. Below is a picture of how the layout she chose for navigating her website.

For future reference, here is her website: http://glee729.weebly.com/

Slide, Roll, Slam

“The sounds of shoes sliding against smooth wood lanes and bowling balls rolling like thunder then slamming against multiple pins rings in my ears.” Slide, Roll, Slam starts off very strong, keeping a great pace throughout, overall being a great piece of writing. Throughout the paper, the author keeps the reader engrossed and interested. The author shows she did a lot of research and observing, and a put a lot of effort into this piece. She observed and examined everything, focusing on the people and the actual bowling alley. Every little detail she has included in this paper. In order to make you feel like you are there, tons of descriptions are necessary. The paper starts by strongly focusing on the people at the bowling alley. You seem to get to actually know the people just by reading the paper. The writer comes to a lot of strong conclusions about the people at the bowling alley, for example: “It seems to me that the teams comprised mostly of older men are bowling to have fun and are the ones that cheer on their team mates.  I get the feeling from watching the men’s behavior that the middle aged and young men that are serious about the game and play to win.  They don’t waste time with a lot of loud cheering. The men on all the teams are good bowlers and it is evident that they have been bowling for a long time.” Just by observing the people at the bowling alley, paying attention to each detail, she was able to make such strong conclusions and assumptions. Other assumptions and connections were made, pulling in bowlers’ interests in wrestling and country music. The writer uses a lot of specific examples to back up what is said, and incorporates a lot of commentary in her writing. The author then transitions from describing the people bowling, to the alley itself. The author described everything she saw, including the main entrance, the concession stand, the arcade, tables, and benches. The piece further goes into detail, for the author has examined speakers, strobe lights, and every sign in the alley and all they information it had on it. All the observations made at the bowling alley was written with such detail, and it is overall a really strong and successful paper.

The Library

The Library is well-known as a quiet place where people go to get work and research done. Usually people go in and out throughout the day and spend periods of time inside. The types of people that go in the library range greatly as well. The front of the library contains the circulation desk, a place where you can go to ask the librarians for help or check books out. I used to work at the library in my hometown, and I want to see how it compares to the library here. The librarians that worked at the library in my town are among some of the nicest people I have ever met. They were great to work with, as well as very friendly, quiet, and resourceful. I would like to see what both the library and the librarians are like here on campus. I haven't used the library here on campus yet, so I would like to see if the librarians are as helpful to their patrons as the ones from my hometown. I am sure, since this library is accessible to college students, that the librarians working there must be just as helpful, but that I will have to find out.

Friday Night at Iowa 80

Author Rick Zollo's project Friday Night at Iowa 80 is excellent and a very well written piece. Though I thought it was long, and got a bit boring at times, Zollo does a perfect job at putting the reader at Iowa 180 nevertheless. You can really tell he put a lot of effort and time into his research. Throughout his work, he uses great detail and descriptions to describe what he is observing and experiencing. He describes every aspect of what he experiences, and from his research and style of writing, you really learn what it must be like to be there. Through this interesting and descriptive narrative that Zollo crafts, what a friday night at Iowa 80 is like is successfully captured.

New Semester, New Blog Posts

Writing II