Eportfolio

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-GtPqJAfPhOWmNLTnBmN2ZYbTg&usp=sharing

My Course Goals

The goals I created at the beginning of this semester were to:
1. Get  a 90% or better  in the class
2. Learn to be a better writer and create papers that flow better and sound more official.
3. Use these writing  skills that I will learn  in this  class  in other  classes  to  achieve higher grades.

Group Presentations

The first group that presented had the topic of marijuana.  I think they did an excellent job at preparing an interesting Google presentations that had great pictures to keep us entertained while  they went  through all their  information.  Something I believe they could work on is knowing  what slide and information  each person was going to talk  about I  noticed when the  slide changed they would briefly look at each other waiting for one to speak.  A question I had for the group was since marijuana would now be legal wouldn't  the amount of supply increase greatly and in turn the amount of profit drop due to the supply rise?


The second group presentation was about  how collegiate athletes should  be paid for playing since it takes as much time as a full time job and it brings in so much revenue.  This group did excellent at adding personal experience to the presentation  to provide good evidence especially  since  two  of  the presenters are on  the football team.  Something i would improve would be  the  same  as the  first presentation, which was they would pause  looking at each  other because they didn't know who was covering what information.  The question i had  about this presentation was already answered  but it  was would all the players on the team be payed the same even if they didnt play as much?

Reflection Paper

Throughout this project as I researched and made a PowerPoint with my group, I experienced several struggles and successes.  My role in the group was to find two academic journal article sources to use as evidence in my group project as well as organize the presentation so that it would flow nicely.  While trying to organize the  presentation I began to find problems that had me stumped.  I wanted to have around twelve or thirteen  slides at the most since our project was twelve to thirteen minutes and we could allocate a minute to each slide.  I arrived at my first problem when I started counting  how  many slides I needed to fit all my information and I had eighteen slides which was way too many slides for our presentation.  I decided to not count the title page, question, and problem since those slides  would take minimal  time to go  over but this still  left me at about sixteen slides.  I talked it over  with my group  and we  decided that we could just use one  slide for the study and that way we would eliminate three slides from our presentation  leaving us with thirteen  slides.  Another issue we came across with this project was deciding  what information  to put in out presentation  since we had so much from all of our articles and sources.  A success we had with our project was finding plenty of good information and also finding a study that we could do with  the class.

 I believe both my group and I deserve an A on this assignment.  Not only did we complete all seven steps  of  this  project, but we did so with quality sources that provided evidence for  all our  information.  I also found an  interactive study  that we could use during  our  presentation to  inform the class of  our problem.  My group spent countless hours  working  in  the library at school  as well as individually over the weekend to provide a great presentation.  

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1baqOYlWeFX03wvjObKVHBO5LXo1ebPIrWTX7IETvgLo/edit?usp=sharing
Matthew Haulot
Jose Ramirez

Response Paper #3

Lin, Carolyn A, Yi Mou, and Carolyn Lagoe. "Communicating Nutrition Information: Usability and Usefulness of the Interactive Menus of National Fast Food Chain Restaurants." Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 4.3 (2011): 187-199.

            The author of this article is an associate dean and also the founder of the Communications Technology Division at the Association of Education and Journalism.  Carolyn also has obtained a Distinguished Research Faculty award and conducts research on health communications and also social marketing.  The author brings up the fact that unhealthy dietary habits have had huge effects on the increased number of obese people in our society.  The main argument that the author talks about is that the nutritional facts provided for consumers are not fully utilized and can sometimes be confusing to people trying to comprehend it. College students are this articles intended audience.  Students were selected to put together a breakfast lunch and dinner for one day from three different fast food chains that they would normally choose to eat if they had gone on a normal day.  They then had the students conduct new meal plans for a day without exceeding the normal calorie intake and sugar intake.  The conclusion of this study showed that most nutritional menus are usable but not necessarily useful because people had a hard time putting those menu items into a recommended daily food intake.  This text is very reliable since it comes from a dean from a graduate school and because the author has several awards and publications to back up her research.  Graphs of the sugar and calorie intakes of the meals planned from each task were helpful to see some actual numbers from the study.  Some strengths of this article are that it applies to a huge audience of people and that the information from the article is very useful.

            This text connects to my research because it talks about how fast food nutrition can be hard to understand for most therefore leading to consumption of more calories or sugar than most people need.  I found this research stunning considering that most fast food places put the calorie count right on the menu items and still people don’t understand the choices that they are making.

Castonguay, Jessica, Christopher McKinley, and Dale Kunkel. "Health Cues: A Content Analysis Of Health-Related Messages In Food Advertisements Targeting Children." Conference Papers -- International Communication Association (2011): 1-29. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.          

Jessica Castonguay is a graduate teacher associate at the University of Arizona and she is a communications major.   Most food advertisements viewed by children presently have food that contains high calorie and sugar intakes most commonly known by us as junk food.   The main argument of this article is that fast food advertisements contribute greatly to childhood obesity.  The intended audience of this article is to parents of children and anyone to try and put a stop to the increasing rates of childhood obesity.  The research method that they used was taking all advertisements shown during kid’s television shows during the hours of 7am to 10pm and then counting all the advertisements for fast food and seeing what the other advertisements were about.  Of the advertisements viewed about 56% of the food advertisements contained bad food choices while a third of the ads contained some type of fruit choice.  Lastly only about 6.6% of these advertisements included children showing some sort of physical activity. The strengths of this article is that most people watch  television so this applies to many people although this article does bring up that other advertisements appear on television that include good choices such as eating fruits and vegetables and participating in physical activity.

            This article will be useful for my research since it brings up the rising health problems  with  fast food companies advertising greatly during kids programming to get them to make unhealthy choices.  I think that fast food restaurants shouldn’t have so many commercials during kids programming so that kids can have a better chance of being healthier and fit.   

"Research" SWA Summary

In "The Everyday Writer" the author discusses the proper ways to conduct research for any type of project or study.  Scoping for how long the project is supposed to be and how long you have to do it to make a schedule for when you should have certain parts done for the project is one thing she suggests is a good method.  The author then goes into detail about  how to to find the research information, from finding books at  your local library to searching catalogs online for articles and  websites.  Wikipedia is explained to be an unreliable source to use for research since anyone can post  on the website and so there is a possibility of information being false.  She explains how to properly conduct an interview with another to gain research information by making sure to make an appointment with the person ahead of time, and to have preset questions ready so that you can get as much information  as possible.  The author explains that when researching you  must  always have an open mind and look for research on both sides of your topic so that you can cover the big picture and possibly change your own views.  If you take a side there is a possibility of ruining your credibility and suggesting you didn't do complete research.  When gathering research the author says to always note the title of the document as well as  the author, summary of  information, and  a quote if possible as  evidence.  Summarizing and paraphrasing  is a great way to include research as long as it is done properly.  Overall the author discusses great ideas on researching can help students create great projects and papers.

3-D Object