Blog 7

Blog #7: Do some writing to the points on the worksheet on developing a research question. You do not need to write to every point.  You do need to do sufficient writing to clearly identify a broad focus for your work.  The more you write into your idea - the more feedback I can give you.  

*NEW*
 Research Topic: I want to research storytelling from a women's point of view compared to a man's. How are the stories told differently? 


1. Familiarize yourself with your topic:
-I am having a hard time finding this information on websites, so I may want to look at more professional data bases or books. Men and woman of different ages interpret things differently due to emotions and other characteristics, therefore how they tell a story varies. Storytelling is an everyday thing and no one really goes into much depth about it.

2. Identify a research question:
-How do men tell stories?
-How do women tell stories?
-Does interest play a role in how the story is told? 
-Does the story genre matter in how the story is told and interpreted?
-Does the way we interpret a story play a part in how we tell the story to others?
-Whats the reason behind storytelling? What can we gain from it?
-Why does the original story change so much as it is retold?

3. Decide what you need to know in order to answer your research question:

-The research behind actual storytelling.
-As much about storytelling as I can search.
-The reason behind storytelling and why it changes from person to person.
-How stories are interpreted
-What ages should the adults be? Early twenties or adults in their fifties?
-Do I want each subject to tell the same story?
-Do I want my subjects to tell a story based on a picture?

4.  Formulate a research plan that includes:

Statement: I hope to figure out why women tell stories differently than men do.

-I want to listen to a man tell a story and have a woman tell the same story based on the same topic or picture.

-I can use the websites I listed above as sources as well at online internet data bases.

WHO: One man and one woman either in their early 20's or early 50's.
WHERE: observe/ask questions in a home setting. Have them tell the same story and find similarities and differences.

NUMBER OF SUBJECTS?  2.

METHODS: Interviews, observations, textual analysis.

-I am either going to have my subjects tell a story based on an experience or give them each a picture prompt and have them create a story of their own.
__________________________________________________

*old topic*
Research Topic: How violent video game affect young children as they grow into adolescents. Is it due to how the child is brought up or is it really the idea behind the video games that causes children to become violent?

1. Familiarize yourself with your topic:

- A majority of video games include violence and about half of the violent incidents would result in serious injuries or death in the "real" world. 
-violent video games can increase children's aggression.
-When kids have anxiety, instead of soothing themselves they tend to externalize it. They can attack something. There's an increased frequency of violent responses from children who play these kinds of video games.

-If you shoot someone in a game you don't go to jail, but in real life it's a whole different story.

-Parents should minimize the amount of time is spend playing violent video games.

http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/297

-Violent video games effect each child differently.

-Children who already have violent thoughts or behaviors are more likely to be affected negatively by exposure to video games.
-Emotionally strong children have vibrant amounts of aggression and a strong capacity to experience anger. 

http://www.carolinaparent.com/articlemain.php?Do-Violent-Video-Games-Affect-Children-3272

-Does our brain play a part in emotions?

-Are children influenced by the media?

-Are video games targeting children to become violent?

2. Identify a research question:

-How are emotionally disturbed children affected by violent video games?

-How do violent video games affect younger children compared to teenaged children?

-How do parents play a role in the violence that their children gain from violent video games?

-How do different groups of children view violent video games?

-Does race play a part in the violence in video games?

-Is how a child brought up a reason for violent behaviors due to video games?

-How do violent video games affect young children as they age?

3. Decide what you need to know in order to answer your research question:

-I need to know what age I want to focus on

-I may want to find negative and positive impacts on violent video games and maybe video games that are not violent.

-I may want to figure out connections in the brain

-I need to compare certain types of violent video games and children that come from certain distinct family backgrounds.

-I need to look into the history of a particular video game.

-I need to see what children think about the video games and how parents feel about it.

-It may help to see what kind of hobbies children like to do and compare it to their behavior. Are they violent in school?

4.  Formulate a research plan that includes:

Statement: I hope to figure out what types of violent video games affect what groups of children. I want to know if a child's life at home is a key factor in the violence.

-I want to compare a child playing a violent video game compared to a teenager or adult playing a video violent game and how they act during it.

-I can use the websites I listed above as sources as well at online internet data bases.

WHO: I may want to observe an adult's overall behavior who has an interest for violent video games. I can find a friend who plays violent video games and then I may want to watch my cousin in 5th grade play a violent video game.  

WHERE: observe/ask questions at home.

METHODS: Interviews, discourse analysis, observations

       

Blog 6

Blog #6: Set up a question you might use as the focus for a research project on one or several of these literacy narratives.  Identify the features relevant to your question. These features might characterize the people in the stories, the actions and interactions, the surrounding circumstances, the belief systems and assumptions and values of the people in the stories, and the outcomes.  Point out how these features - and the relationships among them create an answer to your question.  The more writing you post - the more feedback your classmates and I will be able to give you on your analytic process.

• I am going to choose literacy narrative #3. Although, I do not relate to author that much, I find her story to be inspiring. I enjoy inspiring stories because it makes me think about my life and the accomplishments and struggles that I have in my own life that I do not take time to recognize. Looking at family influences, independence (pg. 7) and connection are things to look at. 

My question is: 

"How did the negative emotions that this woman have

 help lead her to a path of achieving her educational goals?

People: She seemed like a hard worker who over the many years that she was in school never gave up. She became flustered with work, school and scenarios at home, but she was able to overcome those struggles. I feel like emotionally I could relate to her not so much in terms of situations, but in terms of how she was feeling at times. Our ages and our family situations are different, but I feel like there is a connection.  I am not sure if I can place my finger on but I know that it is there. Her negative thoughts helped her to accomplish her goal of teaching, which is exactly what I hope to accomplish from the negative thoughts that I encounter as well.

How has her family influenced her to make the decisions that she made?

Surrounding Circumstances: She went to many different colleges throughout her life. She struggled with her husband, but made sure to keep her children happy and to give them a reason to be proud of their mother. Complications occurred that influenced her reality of her world  that surrounded her. She knew that being depressed would get her no where and she wanted to be on a successful path. She wanted to be happy and successful and she wanted to shine as bright as she could. She was terrified to go back to school again, mainly for the fact of failing in doing so. She was so afraid of failure that failure made her want to succeed (pg.2). The negative influence she received from her parents, but she did what she believed was the right thing to do and she loved her decision to be a manager at the card shop (pg.3).

Beliefs and Values:  She wasn't lazy and she wanted to go to school and wanted to make something of herself regardless of the struggles that she encountered while in school. She loved her children and felt such hatred for her husband, whom she rushed into marrying. She wanted to feel happy and whole again like she did when she worked at the card shop. Her children wanted better for her and that is why something clicked in her head and that was to be a teacher.

Outcome: She went to school and dropped out several times, each time realizing she had to go back to school to make a better life her not only herself, but for her children (pgs.4-5). Therefore, she was able to finally complete school and get away from her unloving husband. She accomplished her goal of becoming a teacher and she claimed that although so much around her has changed, the person who she was during her struggle was still there. She learned from her past experiences and will keep learning as she gains new experiences. I enjoyed her ending quote, "I have so much to learn, I'm not finished yet. Is any one ever finished?" I find this alone to be inspiring and true. You learn everyday and you learn from yourself, there is no better teacher than yourself. 



I believe that although she was in an abusive relationship (pg. 7), had her children to tend for and struggled with completing school, we are similar. I attended college right out of high school, but I am struggling to become a teacher due to the state requirements. Not being able to pass, brings me negativity, but I know that I am only about six classes or so away from achieving my goal of being a teacher. I always say, "I can't do it, i give up." But, that is not what I want for myself. Overall, I want to be the first one in my family to graduate college and I won't let anyone or anything bring me down. I am learning more and more about myself like the author said about herself. 

Blog 5

Blog #5: Use the class ranking and our analysis of the funny features of  shaggy dog stories as a basis for predicting how our class will rank the shaggy dog stories. Your analysis should identify features of the stories at the link that are similar to features of stories our work in class suggested as "preferred" by your classmates.  In this analysis, your line of reasoning is at least as important as your conclusion.

#1: Dentist: "Everyone knows that there's no plate like chrome for the hollandaise"
#2: Ghandi: "He became known as a super-calloused fragile mystic plagued with halitosis."
#3: Lawyer: "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the czech was in the mail."

Here is how I think the class will rank these shaggy dog stories:

Funniest-Not Funny:
#3: "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the CHECK was in the MAIL?"
#2: "He became known as SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS."
#1: "Everyone knows that there's no PLACE like HOME for the holidays."

*With all of these stories it took me several times to read the punch-line until I actually understood the meaning. When I understood the story, the whole meaning changed and I actually laughed. When you understand a punch-line the story is enjoyable and thoughts about the story change. Before I understood the Ghandi story I ranked it as #3, but then when I understood the meaning I ranked it higher and everything changed. 

In class, we mentioned that the panda story was the funniest and that the chess story was not funny at all. We said that the panda story was funny because we had a lot of imagery when reading it, whereas with the chess story we gained no interests in the game so it wasn't an enjoyable story. We came to the conclusion, that within each story we read ridiculous punch lines fit among the category element, which works the same for new shaggy stories that we read for this blog. These new stories have the same hypothesis- situations can have truth in stories, although they are funny. For example, the dentist story is not that understandable (which is why I ranked it #3), but what makes it funny is the hollandaise and how the man eats it with everything. This can be a true story as well as being funny. Next, the Ghandi story brings humor and truth as well. I found the story to make no sense at all, until I read it to someone and then it clicked. I wasn't expecting that to be the punch line at all, but it makes me laugh. The facts about Ghandi are true and the punch line makes a person think in depth. Lastly, the lawyer story is my favorite, mainly because after several times of reading it I understood it and it became my enjoyable. Although, i would not agree of this being a true story, I mean I guess in some ways it could be, but the punch line is hilarious! A lawyer would never send their client a check in the mail. The other two punch lines don't seem as realistic as this punch line does. They make you think and observe.

How a person understands or interprets a punch line among a story determines how it is ranked. If a story is boring, hard to understand, or contains no amusement in the beginning it is not liked by many people. That can be true among both sets of shaggy dog stories. I believe that the first sentence in shaggy dog stories explain who the punch line will focus on with the last sentence being the punch line (which can be argued in the lawyer story). Both sets also contain something negative which again is the best way to introduce the conflict that exists. I was pretty certain with this theory but then when I tested it with all the stories I stopped and thought, "does the lawyer story fit with each element?" I am in between with my answer because some situations tell me yes and some tell me no. All the stories contain a beginning, a middle, and an ending- with a punch line, meaning it definitely fits in this category, but I beg to differ maybe with all having truth? I'm confused if this work with the lawyer story.

With all being said, I came to realize that all shaggy dog stories seems to follow the same format, but when you really go deep down into the story there is a lot of things that change when analyzing each and every story into each element. I actually really enjoy these stories and they are fun to analyze! Good examples to explain how to analyze readings.  

Blog 4

Blog #4:  Set up an analysis of some of the oral history data posted for Blog 3.  You can analyze data from one blog or several.  The point of this exercise is for you to practice the analytic process we went through in class.  Name and classify what you see in the interview; look for and describe patterns; put forward a hypothesis and test it = and see if you can come up with a theory (explanation) that accounts for the patterns and relationships you see in the data.

I am going to analyze my blog on 9/11 as well as Josh's blog since he was partner in the activity. I want to see where we listed similar data and where our data was different. Mainly I want to see what we each interpreted from the interviews. We both had the same data but due to the fact that I was the interviewer I had the information set up different than him being that he was the subject. This meant that I was more in depth with my data than Josh since he was the one being asked questions.

Josh's Blog:
-While being interviewed by Shana we both learned that when the attack actually happened we handled the situation in similar ways. We both were focused on going home, not that we were over looking the events that just took place, but we didnt understand what was going on at the time and how severe it really was. We also both knew stories of people close to us who worked at the World Trade Center and ended up not going in the day of September 11th. Lastly we discussed how any kid younger then the age of 11 has no recollection of what happened that day, therefore the only way they will find out about what happened is through the internet, and oral re-telling of the story. Overall the interview was very free flowing and was more of a conversation then a formal interview.  

1) Coding: 

• I put my data into a question answer format and Josh summed up this data with a paragraph. 
• We shared similar emotions such as fear, but we were more confused of what was happening.

2) Classifying: 

• As I stated before, our emotions were similar. We both spoke about being confused which is pretty much one of the only emotions that we shared with one another. 
• Josh gave a lot of information regarding everything we spoke about, where I told the specifics. 
• Both Josh and I spoke about 9/11 and how we handled the situation. 
• We both mentioned wanting to go home that day, not realizing the severity  of the crash. 
• We both agreed that the interview was more of a conversation than a formal interview itself.
• I did not have my questions following any sort of pattern, such as least important to most important, etc.
• Josh's starts by interpreting the data, meaning how we handed the situation in similar ways.
• I started by explaining the focus of the interview, asking where was he on 9/11? 
• Josh mentions 9/11 towards the end and I mentioned 9/11 in the beginning of my post.
• Josh's evaluation of the data is at the end and he explains his opinion of how the interview went in terms of what kind of interview it was.
• I mentioned my opinion as well as my thoughts at the end of my post as well, but in a paragraph of its own.
• Both information from codings and categories are pretty close to being similar. A lot of data fits between both.

3) Identifying patterns:

• Josh and I are only a couple years apart so we recalled a lot of the same information and feelings.
• We were not really emotionally with any of the questions so we spoke a lot about where we were on 9/11, what we remembered and how other people reacted during the time of the crash.
• We both agreed that we had no order in our interview, we pretty much just had a conversation recalling the facts.
• We both spoke about being confused not being upset or scared.

4) Developing hypotheses:

• We both were involved in the same interview, with the same data but how we represented it was different. This doesn't mean that anyone was wrong but how we decided to explain it was different.
• Most people described where they were on 9/11, how they felt about the situation, and how they were influenced by other's reactions on that day. 
• People tell stories that are factual based on how they felt about a particular event and what they can recall from that particular event. Based on our emotions is how we tell a story. If we are really passionate from the topic our story may be very descriptive in sharing it with others. If we were involved in a particular event, but it did not have much of an impact on us we may well it differently, leaving out certain emotions.

5) Testing the hypotheses:

• I believe my hypothesis was on track because Josh and I had the same feelings of 9/11 and we told similar stories since we weren't affected by the tragedy of 9/11. We were upset about what happened but due to our age and not personally being affected we only remembered where we were on the day and what class we were in more than how we actually felt about 9/11 overall as a young child.

6. Creating a "theoretical story":

• We both agreed that our age played an important role about what we could recall and remember from that day. If we were older we would have had different reactions to the situation. Being in elementary school, effects how a person interprets 9/11. Each anniversary of 9/11 we learn more and more and we are able to really understand the severity of the situation better than when we were in elementary school.

I am hoping that I can get a lot of feedback from my classmates on this blog, because doing the analyzing as a class was A LOT easier than doing it on our own. I felt this was a little bit 
confusing, comments please!

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After looking over my blog, I realized that there was more that I could add to it and revise. 

-I could go further into my theory to come up with more specific features.
-My theory and my hypothesis are somewhat opposite of one another. I would focus more on how emotions tell a story rather than age plays an issue in what we remember when telling an important story. 
-For codes, I tried to count how many times emotion appeared such as confusion or fear. It wasn't stated much in Josh's data as in mine. In my data confusion or fear appeared in I almost ever answer within the interview.
-I would probably go more into depth with my hypothesis. "How does this fit?" I stated:  
"People tell stories that are factual based on how they felt about a particular event and what they can recall from that particular event. Based on our emotions is how we tell a story. If we are really passionate from the topic our story may be very descriptive in sharing it with others. If we were involved in a particular event, but it did not have much of an impact on us we may well it differently, leaving out certain emotions."
-I think that this hypothesis is strong, although I am not 100% sure if it connects well.
-The "proof" for my hypothesis is that each set of data written by each person varies on their experience. People who had a family member involved in 9/11 told a story using more emotion and more person references. Where as people like myself, told a story with less 
emotion and less connections, but just general facts.
-I could probably change and add more to my blog, but these are just a few things that came to mind at this time.

Blog 3

Blog #3: September 11th, 2001 Interview:

You were instructed to note what was said by both, the timing and sequence of the unfolding information, how the speakers interacted, and descriptions of "what happened" as the interview progressed. You were instructed to write down as much as you could as you were talking, and you were given several spaces of time during and after the interview to add your "head notes" (what you remembered) to your notes. All of these notes taken together should be posted on your blog. IN ADDITION - Blog 3 should include (at the end, or added to the main post in a different color font) and other stories, observations, "quotes" conversations that you remembered as you thought back on the interview. 

Interviewer: Shana Giannotto

Subject:  Josh Howard

·      Where you on 9/11? 

·      What were your thoughts regarding the attack?

·      How were the people around you reacting?

·      What were you doing?

·      What can you remember from that day?

·      How did it affect you?

·      How has it changed your life today?

As I re-read my notes I noticed that a lot of my questions as well as answers fit into each question that I generated. I don’t think that I asked all of these questions, but here are the responses that I received when asking Josh about his 9/11 experience:

·      Where you on 9/11?

“I was in my 4^th grade spelling class in South Plainfield. I heard it over the intercom.” He mentioned that he remembered hearing that the twin tower had been hit and then hearing the world trade center had been hit at the time not realized that they were the same buildings. I mentioned that I was in my 6^th grade library class when I heard names being called over the intercom for dismissal.

·      What were your thoughts regarding the attack?

“I was hoping we were getting out of school early. I didn’t realized the severity of the issue at the time.” I mentioned that I was confused on what was going on and I just noticed that my classmates were leaving early.

·      How were the people around you reacting?

“Some kids had a better understanding. I knew it was a big deal when the teachers looked worried and fearful because when we had a prayer service it meant that there was a problem.” I didn’t know what was actually happening, the teachers didn’t speak too much about it. I heard more about it when I got home.

·      What can you remember from that day?

“After school I remember sitting on my mom’s bed watching the news. It aired on every channel—the planes crashing into the twin towers over and over again, the same video. I mentioned that I remember watching the videos of the crash over and over again, but not so much when I got home that day, but a couple days or years after.

·      Any other stories you would like to add?

“My neighbor had broken his ankle so he was aggravated that he had to stay home from work. It was a good thing that he did because he was one of the many window washers for the twin towers. His ankle saved his life.” I remembered having a spaghetti dinner at school a couple weeks later to raise money. I also made patriotic beads that people could hang up in their cars to represent our country, which I raised over $1000 in doing so.

As I thought back from this interview Josh and I realized that we had many similarities. We didn’t remember much from when we were in 4^th and 6^th grade but we did remember what class we were in, the reactions of our peers and teachers and the videos that aired on the news over and over again. We shared our experiences from that horrible day and we gained experience with this interview.  We classified this interview as an open interview, meaning open for discussion. It seemed as if we went back and forth responding to the questions rather than a more formal interview process. We pretty much branched our responses to questions from the question before it. We paused a couple of times to discuss some things about the interview itself, what we were expected to take notes on, what we noticed between our stories, etc. As the interview progressed we got comfortable with one another so we added more and more information about whatever we could remember. I don’t think we had too much of an order going on but we still answered a majority of the questions in the interview.