Website

By the way, here is the link to my website if anybody wanted to check it out on their own.

www.wix.com/tlisco1/dream-patterns

Last Blog- Presentation

My goal for this presentation was to sum up all of my research in a reasonable amount of time. I think I pretty much touched on every medium and I did this in an attempt to keep people's attention. I felt that by switching to each different medium it would make the greatest impact, but I could be wrong so any feedback from you guys would be greatly appreciated. I wanted to produce enough information through my presentation so that everyone could leave the room with a little more knowledge about some of the dreams they might be having. I felt that by putting general explanations of some dreams on my website, it would provide the most helpful information to the class. I chose to create a website, handouts, a powerpoint, a youtube video, and a little quiz at the end to mix things up and make the presentation creative and entertaining. My audience was this class and any other college student in general. I addressed the needs of my audience by using different mediums and examples that they could relate to. I think the strongest part of my presentation was the powerpoint because it pretty much explained my research project in a nutshell. The weakest part of my presentation was my handout. I really tried to make it as effective as possible, but I feel as though I might have failed to do so. I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what to put on it so I figured by summing up some of the survey results and what I had expected to find it may having some impact on my audience. I would probably just change the handout if I could because I feel that that could've use some tweaking. I was actually really nervous to do this presentation even though I knew the material, but once I got up there and started talking it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I felt confident in what I was saying and I actually enjoyed doing my presentation.

GOOD LUCK TO THE REST OF THE PRESENTATIONS:) AND HAVE A GOOD SUMMER!

april 14th

I liked how this class went on our own pace. It was helpful that we were able to have input on the research project schedule and give suggestions as to when we would be able to finish our assignments by a reasonable date. I also like how this class was mostly discussion. I learned a lot more through the discussions than I would have if it was just a lecture class. The Martin Luther King site that was shown really opened my eyes to what kind of tricks sites try to play on their viewers. It is really necessary to find sites that are reliable. I also really like blogging. It is a lot more relaxing than writing an essay and I feel that I can better express my feelings and opinions through blogs. Also, it allows me to comment and give suggestions to my fellow classmates through their blogs. The only help I really need for this project to be successful is input. I need to know what is and isn't working in my draft and what suggestions I can get about preparing my presentation.

april 12th

Major Research Question: Is there a pattern between the dreams of college students and what causes this pattern?

Thesis:There is a theme pattern with dreams in which activities that a college student is involved in, relationships that they have with people, and/or situations they have experienced or will experience will appear within his or her dream.

Presentation: I am going to be making a website. On this website, I am going to include the results to my survey, quotes from the works that I've used, a YouTube video relating to my topic, newspaper articles, and other examples of the theme patterns within college students' dreams. The color theme I am going to use is a cool-colored theme included blues and greens and teals in order to set a relaxing feeling to go along with my topic. I would like suggestions on things to put on my website if anyone has any!

Thanks! :)

Packet Assignment

First Activity

There were three speakers: Anna McCarthy, Heather Hendershot, and Mark Greif. Honestly, I didn’t really care for the two women who went first. The seminar was supposed to be about television, but the first two women barely mentioned television, they mainly talked about citizenship and politics. I only enjoyed listening to Mark Greif. I feel like he framed his speech around college students. He realized his target audience was college students and he incorporated things to catch our attention. I feel that the two women didn’t base their speeches around a college student audience.

In Mark Greif’s speech, he discussed how reality television isn’t exactly the best example of television. He talked about how we view the Price is Right as featuring regular citizens while when we watch reality shows, such as The Kardashians’s, we don’t see them as regular citizens. Both shows are containing non-actors, but because they are famous they don’t seem like regular citizens to us. His speech should have just been the main speech for the 2:55 session because I didn’t get anything out of the two other women’s speeches.

-I learned that the way the essay is formatted really effects the way a person perceives the essay. You can use different fonts and styles in order to enforce emphasis on a sentence or phrase. The way an essay is formatted can determine whether or not your audience will understand the message you are trying to send. If there is too many styles used within one essay like this one, it will not be easy on the eyes to read and the reader will most likely not continue on with reading it.

Second Activity

This is my magazine article

http://www.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1838100,00.html

I like the way this article is set up because it starts with a big, colorful picture of the main Las Vegas strip and it is taken in a way that is appealing to the eye. Once an audience sees this picture they will be enticed to visit Las Vegas and will read on in the article in order to find out what Las Vegas has to offer. The different things about Las Vegas are listed in a numeric order with a bolder font for each topic. The article starts off with an introduction of Las Vegas and then leads into the lists of attractions. Each topic offers a picture like explained before. There are links within the article that are in a different color and are underlined and italicized so that they stand out to the human eye. This article is easy to follow along and the subtopics are short enough that they hold my attention.

Summary of Mark Bittman article

In Mark Bitttman's article, he discusses the difference between the way domestic animals are treated and how other animals are treated. He talks about how we tend to favor and only treat domestic animals with love and care. When there is an animal that we generally end up eating, we don't necessary care how it was treated before hand as long as it tastes good in the end. Also, when it comes to these kind of animals, farmers may abuse the animal and treat it as though it does not have the same emotions as a household pet may have. He uses an example of the punishment received for killing a pet hamster, when everyday an animal is treated poorly and killed in order for us to eat.

March 15 Exercise 1

Mine was on page 26-27 but I looked at Emma's post to see which one it actually was.

a) I believe that there are dangerous levels of Chemical X in the Ohio groundwater, on the other hand, there are other people that believe that Chemical X might actually be helping the surrounding land.

b)I think that this novel have certain flaws, but there are some people that would say that it is actually flawless and influential.

c) I feel that football is so boring, but there are people that thoroughly enjoy watching and/or playing it.

d)I think that male students often dominate class discussions, but there are some girls who always volunteer in class discussions.

e)I feel that the film is really about the problems of romantic relationships, but there is other people who feel it is about the problems in our society.

f) I'm afraid that templates like the ones in this book will stifle my creativity, but there are people in my class that would say that this book is very resourceful.

I hope I did this write...the instructions kind of confused me :/

March 15th's Assignment

I find that scholarly articles are really helping me. This weekend I am planning on really settling down and organizing all my research.As of Friday, my surveys will have been officially up for 2 weeks and I think I might end it then. I will collect that data and I am going to be searching the library for anything that I haven't come across dealing with my topic. This weekend is going to be very beneficial for me for this project. Any other suggestions?

Homework 3/10/11

So I hope I am going about this right....

This is a political article from The Independent and I found it to use some of the phrases from Exercise 1.

"The truth is rather different. Yes, NPR's relentless search for donors and sponsors is not pretty. But it maintains – as far as I can judge – an impermeable wall between its business and editorial sides. Its coverage of the Tea Party has been scrupulously fair. And far from seeking to hide its embarrassment, public radio led its bulletins with news of the O'Keefe/Schiller mess."

"But the more NPR does this, in effect by-passing its member stations, the more reluctant those stations will be to support it. However, if they pull out, then access across the country to NPR's traditional radio output will be reduced – just when listeners seem to want quality programming more than ever. For the moment, federal funding is vital for squaring that circle, but now that funding itself is in question."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-a-shouting-shop-needs-the-quiet-voices-of-truth-2240489.html

Today's Class

I liked how we were put into groups in order to peer review each other's research proposal drafts. I like being able to get feedback and give suggestions to my fellow classmates. I feel that being able to review with people our own age allows us to sometimes see where each other was coming from. I'm glad that I was able to get questions asked to me about my topic. I am excited to further my research in this topic.

SURVEY

Please answer my survey :)

https://hofstra.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_bduhuTvx0nfHhm4

Feb 28th

Research topic: Dream Analysis of College Students

Research Question:I have a few..

-Do college students' daily activities affect the way they dream?

-Do college students' dreams differ from adult's dreams?

-Can we control what we dream about?

- Is there a trend of dreams within college students?

Response to Mindmaps and EAA

Mindmaps:

I really enjoyed our classes where we went over each student's mindmaps. I feel like being able to view other people's, gave me about how I could go about adjusting mine. Also, when seeing students' mindmaps that had similar topics as me, it gave me some suggestions about how I could go about mine. I liked being able to hear suggestions from the professor and the students about what topics I could join together or what route I should go about when conducting my research. Those classes were extremely helpful to me and I think that it would be helpful to future students if you continued to have those days.

EAA:

I really like the approach of this packet. I feel that even though there was a lot of useful information in the packet, it was worded in a way that helped me to understand how to go about research. I liked that it didn't have advanced words that I would have needed to look up in order to see how to conduct my research. It that was the case, I could pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't even go back into the packet because it would be to complicated. I think that this will help other professors explain the research process to their students. Also, I liked how in some sections it said to refer to a chapter. I would find that very useful because I for one am the type of student that needs to review things a few times in order to understand them. I would see that insert and then refer to that chapter and then I would be fully educated on that part of the research process.

Brainstorm

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show/80905482

I have made a branched out brainstorm of my main topic, which is dreams. I think I am going to be focusing in on dream analysis, but in my brainstorm I just threw some similar topics out there for me to consider. I am hoping that when we view our brainstorms in class some people can give me some input.

Creswell Exercise

I’m not sure if I’m doing this exercise correctly, but I’m going to try my best….

TOPIC: Dream Analysis

For this topic, I would use the social constructivist worldview. I chose this worldview because it involves individuals trying to understand the world they live in. This would pair nicely with trying to analyze what people’s dreams really mean. People want to understand why they are having the dreams they are having and if they really do have meaning to them. I would use the mixed method strategy of inquiry. I feel that this is the most useful type of inquiry because using quantitative and qualitative methods helps to provide the most information to back up your research. I would use the concurrent mixed method procedure because it merges both methods in order to provide the most support. The text research would help to explain the analysis of dreams while the statistics would help to give real life examples.

TOPIC: Jewelry Design

For this topic, I would take a bit of a different approach. I would use the postpositivist worldview. This uses a deterministic philosophy which is what is needed when discussing jewelry design. This topic takes a lot of effort and it needs to be explained very thoroughly so that it can be learned. I would use the qualitative method because this topic involves more text than anything else. I would use the grounded theory so that the action of completing jewelry design can be thoroughly understood. The research method I would use would be the qualitative method. This would allow me to use observation data to show others how to complete this task.

Classes so far....

I found today's class the most insightful so far because of the interaction between the students. I think that the way the class room has been set up, with us facing each other, really allows students to give input to each other and learn from each other. This has been true in my case. I came into today's class really struggling because I had absolutely no idea what topic I would do my research project on. I was most worried about this class because of all the things I would be doing on this one topic. I kept thinking to myself, "What topic could I choose that wouldn't bore me to death and I would actually enjoy doing all these projects on?" I came to the decision when Emma brought up the topic of sleep. I really enjoy dream analysis and I love learning about it. It sounds pretty dumb but I love reading the articles in Cosmo magazine about dream analysis. I mean, I understand they probably don't have the most educated in the subject reporting for them about dream analysis, especially when the only dreams they analyze are about guys or things related to that, but still. I read those articles and I can really see where they are coming from and I thought to myself today how much I would love to really understand the topic in depth. My minor is psychology so I feel like I might be studying this topic down the road anyway so I might as well get a head start to understanding how people think, right?

I also learned while reading Creswell all of the different types of research that there are. I won't go over my perspectives on those kinds again, since I did for a little in my last post, but I think that I am going to find this textbook very resourceful.

Preface and Chapter One.

I found the Preface to be really helpful. It was very different compared to what I usually find within the Preface. I really liked how it laid out each chapter and a little summary of what would be included in each and also in the format section how it tells you what the book contains. After reading over those sections, it gave me a good idea of what to expect out of the book. Also, that section would be very helpful if later in the course if I couldn't remember which chapter contained the information I needed. I could just refer to the Preface to see what chapter I should skim through.

In the section dealing with postpostivists, I really disagree with one of their points. One point states that the absolute truth can never be found in research. I can understand this point because for some cases, this may indeed be the case, but I disagree with it as a general statement. I feel that to just state that there is no definite truth in knowledge, is a little on the naive side. I would definitely say that I can relate a lot more to the social constructivists points of view. I do believe that people are always trying to understand what is going on around them and I feel that this is what makes the world as interesting as a place as it is. I say this because I feel like there will always be more out there and a person will never have the answers to everything and this is what makes life so exciting yet dangerous at the same time. The advocacy and participatory worldview is not exactly up my alley. It deals with politics and I pretty much completely live in a hole when it comes to politics. I'm not too caught up on the news dealing with them.The last worldview, the pragmatic worldview, really catches my eye. One of the statements that really intrigued me was, "Truth is what works at the time"(Creswell). I find this statement very interesting because I feel that in some cases it can be true. For an example, when researching one may think they understand the topic they are researching until one site comes along and tells them a completly different view. Now you need to decide which is more credible. You thought you knew the truth and now it could completely change.