Wikipedia

Wikipedia has always been a topic of much debate in classes.  I honestly didn't realize that you could edit Wikipedia until my freshman year of college.  Yeah, just a minor detail that I managed to overlook all through all of high school.  I discovered that Wikipedia wasn't 100% reliable when one of my friends edited an article about his hometown and listed himself as the mayor of the town. 

Now there are a lot more checks in place to make sure that articles remain as accurate as possible.  In order to edit an article you have to register a username, so I would imagine that keeps some people from editing just for fun.  Also, you can view the history of editing on each article by clicking the "View History" tab in the top right corner.  The only problem with this is that each person is listed by their user name, not their actual name, as Andrew Keen mentioned in the Wales-Keen debate.  So you only know as much about a person as they list on their user page.

However, I don't think that Wikipedia should be totally banned when writing papers.  I understand why you wouldn't want to use it as your primary source, but I think that Wikipedia is a great place to start out looking for basic information.  You just have to make sure to double check all of the information that you find if you aren't familiar with the topic that you are looking at. 

Dreaded Group Projects

Okay, so I'll admit it, when I first looked at our syllabus for this class and saw that a group project was a large part of this class I contemplated switching classes. THAT is how much a hate group projects.  Obviously I have had some prior negative experiences with the group projects that I've had to do in school.

However, I am actually optimistic about this group project.  I think that the fact that we are addressing common problems with group work/group dynamics from the beginning is going to be very beneficial.  This puts us all on the same page going into the project.

That being said, my team, Razzle Dazzle, is basically a group of all "Controllers".  So I think that this could get interesting. But at least we aren't all "Gratuitous Slackers", right?  We WILL accomplish something.  Hopefully we don't kill each other in the process...

Constructs and Schemas

The "religious poem" that we talked about in class today really made me start thinking about the way that people think and the constructs that people use to make sense of reality.   In my literature class we are discussing the postmodern period.  The postmodern period in literature is characterized by a break in "normal" human thinking.  Writers began to use their works to question "What is real and what is just fabricated to help us make sense of the world around us?"  

This  made me realize that the way that you interpret and view the world is all based on your prior knowledge, and the connection that you make between these new things and the things that you already know.  If a group 5th graders walked into the room and saw that reading list/"religious poem" on the board they would interpret it completely differently than the religion students did.  The way that something is interpreted by people is based on their prior knowledge and constructs that they decide to use. Everyone uses their own schemas to understand the world around them.

World of Instructions

I never really considered instructions in very much depth.  I just complained and spent hours putting something together if it had bad instructions for assembly or managed to put it together in a (relatively) short amount of time if it had good instructions.  I basically suck at assembling things, so I often blame myself when instructions seem confusing.   But after looking at instructions in more depth in this class.  I have found that there definitely are some GOOD instructions and BAD instructions.

I think that one of the most important things to consider when writing instructions is the audience that will be using the instructions.  The person writing the instructions should know EXACTLY who their target audience is and put themselves in their audience's shoes.  This can become difficult when you begin to looking at products that a variety of people are going to use.  However, products with a varied audience should always have a clear format and voice to their instructions that is readable for all. 

Another element that I think is important for most instructions is illustrations.  If the instructions can be understood better with pictures, then I think that the illustrations become as important, if not more important than than the actual words in the directions, depending on what you are looking at.   I mean who wants to read all of the information below just to put together a model airplane??

However, when using pictures, it's more important that an appropriate number of pictures are used.  Otherwise, the audience might just become MORE confused with the instructions. Some of Ikea's instructions are an example of this problem.  Ikea uses no words in their instructions, so if you get stuck you pretty much just have to interpret the drawings or call Ikea...or do what the guy in the "Ikea instructions" below does...

Okay, so hopefully no one has shot themselves in the face because of confusing instructions, but my point is...it's important to have a happy medium between text and illustrations, and it is also important to have a clear and precise style of writing when designing instructions.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

In high school I never took any AP or advanced English classes that addressed rhetoric, so this class is the first time that I have ever had to sit down and read work by Aristotle.  At first I was very overwhelmed by the vocabulary and writing style in Aristotle's On Rhetoric. However, once I began to pay more attention and break down what I was reading, I realized that it was actually pretty interesting. One concept that we didn't really elaborate much on in class that I thought was really interesting was Aristotle's 3 artistic proofs: ethos, pathos, and logos. 

  

Ethos refers to the trustworthiness or credibility of the writer or speaker, pathos refers to the emotional appeal of the speaker's words on the audience, and logos refers to the consistency and clarity of the message. These proofs are basically just means of persuasion that are created by the speaker. In order to be an effective rhetor, you must be able to utilize all of the artistic proofs in a proper balance.  

Ethos is important because if you don't show yourself to be a credible source of information, who is going to listen to you? If you are reading a book and the author continuously misspells words and uses incorrect grammar, you are probably going to be less likely to believe the point that the author is trying to get across. 

Pathos, in my opinion, is the easiest proof to understand and to use.  A lot of people are very easily influenced by emotional appeals.  When you see the "Feed the Children" and ASPCA commercials, it catches your attention.  It makes you think for at least one second, that something should be done to help those children. Whether or not you actually take action is another story. 

Logos seems to be most often used in scholarly writing.  This proof appeals to the readers' logical side.  Syllogisms, enthymemes, and analogies are all forms of logos. Analogies allow the reader to relate a new idea to an old idea, therefore solidifying the concept in their mind.

These 3 artistic proofs can be seen daily, whether it is in a conversation that you have with your roommate, a commercial on TV, or a presidential address to the nation.  People often use these proofs without even realizing that they are doing it.