That chart I was talking about

http://jamillan.com/geek.gif

Enjoy!

Golbs? What are golbs? …OH! Blogs!

The articles starts with saying that the personal blog genres are the most engaging.

The last article I wrote here, the one that had nothing to do with class, was by far my longest entry so far onto this site. I might agree with that.

Why did I post it? I wanted to share, and I thought it was funny. It was so long because it’s not a simple story set up. Whatever the case masy be, I spent more time on it, methinks, than others.

I was not surprised to see that journal weblogging was the most popular. It’s the one people will do outside of class for fun. Filter blogging does sound like it would be the hardest to get students to use. I’ve rarely made notecards for anything, and if I was told I needed to blog for this reason, surely I’d resist doing it at least to some degree.

This has nothing to do with class

I thought you all might enjoy this.

I got fired from Meijer recently. In our staff computer room, there are five cubicles with computers. I took the last one as my own (It was mainly only used by our – the inventory – department), and refered to it as my desk.

In each cubicle, there were the seven ‘brand promises’ and four core values posted on the wall. In mine, I made my own and posted them over the real ones. (It’s mission/vision statement crap. You know, made by people who couldn’t care more for people who couldn’t care less.) The font and spacing were spot on; you’d not notice they were different unless you read them. They were up for three solid months before they were found by management and taken to the store director. (Side note: my own boss thought they were hilarious.) I was eventually fired by coporate HR; the store director wasn’t actually going to fire me over this.

Here now, is the list. The first list is the real one, the next, the ones I posted. Enjoy!

            7 Brand Promises: 

1. To provide customers with the freshest product selection.
2. To provide customers with differentiated and compelling choices every day.
3. To keep prices as low as possible in every market we serve.
4. Provide solutions that fit our customers in their communities.
5. Provide an easy shopping experience for our customers.
6. Invigorate the Meijer competitive spirit by being sales driven in all things.
7. Be an active part of a great team that takes pride in our company and is passionate about our customers.

        4 Core Values: 

                 Customer Centered

                 Competitive Spirit

     Freshness
 

     Familyness

—————

7 BRAND PROMISES 

WE PROMISE TO…… 

1.    Provide our customers with the most rotten product selection. 

2.    Provide our customers with limited and appalling choices everyday. 

3.    Keep prices as high as possible for our customers in every market we serve. 

4.    Provide bizarre and unhelpful solutions for our customers in every market we serve. 

5.    Provide an aggravating shopping experience for our customers. 

6.    Drain the Meijer competitive spirit by being lazy and incompetent in all things. 

7.    Be an inactive part of a hopeless team that isn’t proud of our company and passionate about our idiotic customers.

4 CORE VALUES 

CUSTOMER AVOIDANT*

DEFEATIST SPIRIT*

PUTREFACTION*

FAMILYNESS 

————

Now, you’ll notice I left Familyness alone. Only one of my friends got the joke. I really hope that, being an english class, you guys will mostly get it. If not:

Familyness is not only not a real word, if it was, it would be spelled Familiness.

So it is a misspelled fake word.

Wikiwiki

Yeah, so I read the articles over the weekend. Now, it’s Wednesday, and I’m writing in the blog. Maybe I should work on not procrastinating so much… tomorrow.

I’ve never been a very avid fan of wikipedia. I enjoy it, to be sure, but I fall into the realm that most ‘experts’ did; I feel it’s probably not as accurate as other, more traditional, sources. Apparently, that’s not really the case, as most of the articles stated.

After reading the… readings… I would probably be more apt to rely on the information it provides. I still would not, however, use it for actual assignments and whatnot. I’d probably give it a look, but I’d feel the need to back it up with some other sources.

One of the big selling points it does have for me is the million links embedded in the writeups. You can learn a lot of related information by clicking through those. You can also lose three hours easy by clicking links of links until your eyes dry up and you pass out.

Was machen wir wann wir bloggen

The big contrast between writing done at school and writing done for the hell of it is how one writes. For example, I wouldn’t have said “for the hell of it” in a paper I was going to turn in. But on a blog, I can say anything I freakin’ want to, and no one’s going to give me an F for it. That, coupled with the overwhelming availability of the medium, I think, attracts a lot of people to blogging. It also gives voice, as was said, to things that otherwise would never be said.

I liked the pickles on that hamburger today. They were much better than normal.

 Who cares? If you couldn’t post that to your myspace in twenty seconds, you wouldn’t bother telling the world about the really good pickles you had.

I read www.penny-arcade.com regularly. It’s a webcomic about gaming. Aside from that, I rarely read comics or any such things. I would, if I got the paper, but I don’t, since I don’t care to read the paper. Some of them are online now, but I don’t bother to go read them.

I’m going to be sick of the word ‘blog’ soon.

Technology as Teacher – Better Late than Never

In my high school German classes, at least the first year, we had ‘lab’ in computer rooms. It was mostly add on tasks that were not very well applied, and the instruction was more or less lackluster. I really, to this day, don’t know why we had these labs. Nothing really ever got done in them, and the computers were not well used. There was minimal instruction on the machines themselves, and the tasks were not very computer oriented; we were just visiting some sites with German content.

I’d have to say, from this experience, computers are not a good addition unless well used, which is a big point the article is making. I’ve since had a few classes that were taught in a computer lab, but again, none really focused on the machines themselves. They were just kinda there, and sometimes we looked up stuff on them. In my business writing vlass at IUPUI, they were mainly used so that handouts didn’t have to be printed. We went to oncourse and looked up the day’s assignments there. The research paper component of the class was different; we were taken to the library computer lab and shown, step by step, how to use the computers to perform a search for a lit review. That has been one of my only experiences with hands on training.

I think an introductory course to ‘computing’ might be helpful for many students. We’ve talked a lot about how teachers take for granted our (students’) knowledge and proficiencies on computers. In part, this might be an acceptable practice, but not everyone knows everything they’re assumed to know.

On the other hand, a course like this might soon end up as one of those damnble requirements that everyone has to take and no one likes (Speech). I could very much see that happening now, let alone when people like my small cousins hit college age. I can only assume by then trinary will be used and surfing the web will be done by sophisticated holograph navigating.

I was surprised to find out once my Grandma grew up in a world largely (if not completely) devoid of plastic. Glass and metal all the way. I wonder if my grandkids will be surprised that I was born into (if only slightly) a world without the internet.

From Pencils to Pixels

I’ve often wondered what things will be like when I have grandchildren. Sure by then everything will be done online, and they’ll take that for granted. Hell, I pretty much do right now anyway. By then computers will be running everything and a world without them will seem barbaric and incomprehensible.

Grandma once told me that for Christmas one year she got a pencil, and was thrilled to have it. I’ll tell my grandchildren I got a computer for Christmas, and I was thrilled to have it. By that time you’ll surely be able to run down to the gas station and pick up computer parts/whole computers.

I write stories in my free time, and of course I do it on a computer. The thought of writing a whole story, even a short one, in its entirity, by hand, is unthinkable. My hand starts to cramp up after a page or so.

Something I’m not completely at ease with doing, however, is paying all my bills online. I’m not too worried about theft or fraud really; I just happen to like seeing a paper bill in my hand, even if writing a check for it is a monumental pain. All three minutes of it. I assume that, at some point, there won’t be the option; it’ll be pay the bill online, or have my water or – horror of horrors indeed – my internet shut off.

The Effects of Computers on Traditional Writing

While the article talked at length about how computer-based communication brings many of the oral components back into speaking with someone else/writing to someone else, they neglected to mention (as far as I noticed) the lack of observable visual queues present in oral communications.

While IMing brings a lot of the writing we do closer to the way we talk, as opposed to the way we word a paper, it still leaves out a lot of the body language and other queues like inflection that make up a big part of speech. For example (this was used in a language class I was in years ago), imagine a friend of yours saying “hi.” Now imagine someone trying to seduce you saying “hi” with a come-hither tone to it. They’re the same word, but with wildly different connotations. However, they only show up as “hi” in text.

Aside from all that, the article did have a good point. I recall when I started emailing my Mom, she would always comment that I wrote emails like I would talk. This wasn’t a big deal to me, but she had just started in such communication and wasn’t familiar with the rather personal tone emails take as opposed to how people used to (and still do) write letters on paper. Dear such and such, comma, line break, body, Sincerely, Me. As opposed to emails: Mom, send money, end. Maybe without the Mom at the start.

Literacy in Three Metaphors

Before reading these papers, literacy, in my head, meant that you knew how to read and write. That was pretty much it.

Apparently, it’s quite a bit more than that. Not only is it reading and writing, but it’s the ability to function in a world dominated by written symbols.

Although, I wouldn’t call people who can’t really do that, but can still technically read and write, illiterate.

The question of how to define it, having now so broad a definition, is a pretty big problem. As far as the power/grace issues go, I’m not too concerned. However, the first metaphor deals with how to structure the educational system. Thatkind of issue is normally reserved for my “I’m not touching that with a ten foot pole” category, but I’ll go into it a little here. (It’s mainly that way as I see the whole situation as more or less hopeless.)  The school systems of America, aside from college level and above, are (I’ve heard) the worst in the world among first world nations. This does not surprise me one bit. Having a high school education in this day and age means relatively nothing to me. (This post will touch on the fact that I’m an intellectual elitist and not sorry about it.) I know many people from my small town high school that graduated and still probably couldn’t read a book from begining to end and make any semblance of sense from it.

Some of my friends don’t read books, and while that in and of itself is no big deal, I know that some don’t because it’s a very large undertaking.

That was a pretty wild tangent I guess, but there it is.

All in all, the paper really made me realize that literacy is  life skill, not just an ability to read and write.

Accumulating Literacy

I enjoyed the contrast in this paper dealing with how two people from rather differing generations learned how to… well, become literate. As I’ll say in my other post, literacy isn’t just reading/writing anymore.

The handing up and down of old tools is something I never really personally experienced, but can see how it would happen. Especially the handing up. The problem there is that many older people don’t see any need to learn how to use a computer. I’d pretty much wither and die without a computer and the internet, but Dad has said he’s glad he’s part of the generation that doesn’t really need to learn how to use them. I keep telling my Grandma that if she got a computer, she could talk to me all the time, but she’s never given in and gotten one.

I don’t usually think about people like our grandparents actually going to school in one room buildings, but that’s what happened. I’ve seen quite a few of them sitting out in the middle of cornfields around my hometown.

It seems like such a distant time, but there are still people that remember doing that. I’ve often wondered what things will be like when I have grandchildren. They’ll probably be amazed that I didn’t have virtual reality holograms teaching me when I was young, back in the ancient days of books and no computers.