Judging a Book by its Cover

In Anne Frances Wysocki’s article titled “The Multiple Media of Text: How Onscreen and paper Texts Incorporate Word, Images, and Other Media” I have a pretty large understanding of how interpreting texts at face value is a trait that everyone already has. Just like almost everyone of my previous blog posts I am going to relate this to my film knowledge. Last semester in my class Film in America we went over genre and the professor spoke of how an audience can recognize a movies genre without actually seeing the whole. In example if you see an arid desert and a man riding a horse in the distance you can logically and make an educated prediction that the movie you are watching is a western movie. And on the other side of the spectrum if you see a spaceships and laser beams you would be able to say the movie Is a science fiction without much doubt in your mind. If continuing on this idea of film and being able to understand its genre it is something that we as the viewers have come to understand because there are certain themes to these films that separate it from others. In writing there are different types of writing and you can also tell by the way it appears. I think it is very interesting and it never stops amazing me that people the human brain is so smart that little things such as hearing the sound of a jazz band and seeing a man in a suit in a movie can let you think that the movie takes place in the twenties from nothing else but that.

I think that people need to understand how to guess what a certain media is without taking the time to fully watch or read it because it helps people have a much heavier grasp on other things that are used in life. Such as recognizing literary devices in your paper will help you understand writing better and can further your own writing as well. People always say that judging a book by its cover is bad but when it comes down to it recognizing similarities that things have can help you understand the world in new ways.

Changes

           Jody Shipka’s article doesn’t feel that new to me but however it goes more in depth on theories of how flawed the public school systems way of showing worth in the classroom. A big flaw I see with how people write papers in the classroom is that it doesn’t really show how knowledgeable you are on your said topic but in fact more on how you can regurgitate what you read without any form of comprehension. During my years in school I have found myself more a part of Jody Shipka’s problem than the average student. For I am the king of regurgitation I feel as though I am being spoken to in this article because I haven’t been actually engaged on subjects in the past and I just mindlessly go through web pages finding what I should pick up and plop into my own paper (in my own words and with citations of course).

            Within the paper Jody talks about a student writing a paper on the movie Mona Lisa’s Smile she first shows the “what” of the student’s paper then fires back with the “why”. Over the past few weeks in class I have found that the thinking of why when writing can change how your paper will be finally composed and structured. But the word “why” hasn't stopped there with its ability to take over my mind I have also been questioning previous papers I have written and why things happened the way they did just as Jody showed the whys of the paper of the student I have been thinking of the whys of my own work. The kid in the video here is like me asking why (Just put your fingers in your ears and pretend he is saying "why" not "what") 

When I really think about everything I think that everything is flawed and we can fix it but nobody wants to change a old system. Because who really likes change?  Doesn't it cause more heartache then its worth? I dont think so, I think we need to grab on tight to new ideas and propel our educational system out of the dark ages.

Technology of Words

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 The world is changing at every moment of time even though some may find a moment minuscule it is full of changes. In the article From Pencils to Pixels by Dennis Baron he speaks on how the changes of technology have changed the landscape of how the modern man becomes literate. For me It is much different from the author for I was born into this new world of technology and computers, so I didn’t see the rapid change that the world went through first hand but I do understand that these changes are happening. As I am typing this paper I am seeing the difference between the past and the present with how people are doing homework nowadays. I am currently writing this blog on a Toshiba laptop which comparing to twenty years ago it would most likely be written on a typewriter or written by hand. Even the way I am turning in this paper differs in a ridiculous way to thirty years ago where  no one would be able to imagine typing a paper on a “magical screen” then turning it in through a wireless transmitting method where anyone in the world can read what you wrote the moment you are finished writing it.

            The big advancement that this article was making was how big the advancement of the pencil was. It said how such a big advancement is cheap “pencil technology has advanced to the point where the ubiquitous no.2 wood-cased pencil can be manufactured for a unit cost of a few pennies”.This reminded me of a video i watched called I, Pencil. Pencils are pretty universal no matter what your economic standing is. But today you need to have money to use the technology that is popular today. I don’t know a single person who writes on a typewriter but there is no way that everyone I know can afford laptops or some sort of personal computer. Also for those people that do have computer but no internet the computer is about as useful as a typewriter except for the fact that you can delete and erase on a laptop and because of  that it has changed the way that people think when writing papers because making a decision isn't ever permanent.

Discourse and Interpretation

In the article Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction the author James Paul Gee discusses the way people speak to each other and how it varies. The way we speak to each other is a very intriguing thing, because it varies from person to person. The way you talk to your friends is usually extremely different from the way you talk to your family. But the way you talk to your family isn’t even the same all across the board, for if you are talking to your grandpa it will be very different then if you are talking to a cousin who is about the same age as yourself. It’s not just because of age it’s because of respect that you have in your elders and you know what would be inappropriate. Respect just like many other things play a role in the discourse of you r points you will make for there are so many variables that change how you convey your message.  Just as in the article the way you talk during a job interview is different from how you would usually speak to someone. The vocabulary you use and the way you speak changes with the audience you are talking too and it is important to understand that the words you use with one person may not work with someone else for they may not know the word in the first place or they may not get the same reaction from the said word.

The way you tell stories in film is just as big of a difference as how important the discourse is in speech and writing. Recognizing your audience in film is as easy as designing a trailer that will speak to certain people. If the movie in question is a romantic comedy you could take two approaches with your trailer. One showing the comedy aspects with funny parts of the film in the trailer this would attract more males to the movie then if you went with the other route. The other route to be taken is highlighting the romanticism behind the movie. This way you capture both sides of the audience getting them to go to the theater and seeing the film. The way you use scenes can be interpreted differently just like the words in a paper the video below shows this perfectly.

The Tale of Two Stories

After reading Margaret Kantz’s article entitled “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively” I made a few observations about the article. One point in the article is about imaginary characters that have different approaches when compiling information for research papers. The thing that I felt was incredibly relatable was the acknowledgment of sources. During my sophomore year in high school one of my teachers retired and he was replaced by this new teacher who forced everyone into citing their papers and would fail anyone who did not cite their sources. This was a very monumental moment for my career as a student and as a writer for I had never cited my sources before and I thought it was a total waste of my own time. If I didn’t understand the difference of accepting fact as I read it and seeing opinions for what they are, I would be just  like how Shirley does her research during the story, because she takes a piece of information at face value and doesn't think about who it is who is telling you the information. I feel this is completely like how the news is today, because if a story happens the slants that each news company will be completely different and sometimes even completely opposites. I have seen it hundreds of times, I will see some news story on MSNBC or Fox then I will change the channel so I can see what the other station is saying and nine times out of ten they will be completely different approaches on the subject (as you can see from the video above). To be better when taking information you must do as Alice does for she has a complete understanding on the biases of articles knowing that using more than one source will make your paper better and will give you a more rounded understanding on the subject. Understanding that when you see a piece of information that it is not always true and that you probably are seeing a biased version of the information given. Recently a group of friends of mine were talking and brought up to me  that they read an article that said the broncos had thrown the super bowl in order to make money. The conversation quickly turned to anger as they realized how unreliable the source they were reading was, because the same website had many other satirical articles presented as true.