One Concept

This may sound cheesy or irrelevant but I felt the one concept that even the text did not mention specifically that much on was advertisements on the internet or even in magazines and how the techniques they use can really be deceiving. This pertains to that ad blog we did earlier in this class. I really enjoyed that assignment because it was an eye opener however I felt the text briefly discussed it because maybe the author felt it was a common knowledge topic and most of our critical thinking skills(all the terms and topics we learned) can be applied to advertisements and all the media out there. I just wished the text had more information specifically how the media reflects on individuals when they advertise something and use celebrities to endorse that product. Just because that "famous" person is advertising a shoe or acne wash and on tv say its a great product does not mean in reality they use that product and want everyone else to. They are being paid for that commercial and they are just given a script and to look pretty.

Overall, I felt all the topics covered throughout this class were all discussed in detail, some more than others but it is like that in pretty much every class taught out there.

Thank you all for making my first blogging experience a smooth and good one.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!

-little miss daisy

The Overall Picture plus Likes vs Dislikes

Overall, what I have learned throughout this class is a few things. One, I realized blogging is kind of like a journal-it does not really matter if it has a thesis, or completely flows together. What matters most in a blog is that it makes sense and is cohesive enough for someone else to read it and that they get the message across from what the author of that blog was trying to show and reflect on.
I also learned which is one of my favorite things from this class, how to be able to analyze messages each different individual or groups are stating or representing. Before I took this class, I did not realize how important or the relevance it was when an organization such as the NRA or the ASPCA used "appeal to emotion, pity,"etc to hook the audience in and get them to buy their product.
I really liked how each of our blog posts had to be 12 hours apart because it gave us time to think what we were going to say. I thought the requirement of commenting on 3 of our classmates blogs each week was a great idea as well because it gave us a chance to see what another individual thought of that topic and that definitely helped when someone explained something, that I had not thought of.
There were no dislikes for this course because I really enjoyed this course and every individual in it and our instructor as well. Anyone who has not taken this GE area yet, I will be sure to tell them or suggest this course.

What I've learned In This Class

I have to say, I am really glad that I chose to take this course over this summer and online. It was my second online class that I took over the summer and my third total in online classes. This was my first time creating a blog however, and I felt having to do 3 blog posts and leaving 3 comments on blogs was a great learning experience.

What I have learned in this class over the summer was "netiquette" besides the handout given in the beginning of this course and I learned how to work with different people in a way I have not been used to during my school days; online interaction in an educational setting. I have learned how to properly analyze and critique different organizations using different reasoning(inductive, deductive). I am also now more aware that there are terms used when someone makes an accusation or an argument and can tell if it is a valid or weak argument. Overall, what I have learned from this class over the summer is how to be a critical thinker and what "critical thinking" really means.

Group Activity

I had my family look at the second assignment. They all agreed that our main flaw in our reasoning and arguments was that it seemed we were looking at our chosen organization in a negative perspective, such as our tone of voice shown in our writing. It looked like we were trying too hard to find anything to use against them that was stated on their website. One of my family members mentioned, if we were lawyers and we were arguing against this group, we could of won our case or a debate because of how informative we were and all the facts we found and mentioned. Basically, for a good cause, we were a little harsh on them in our reasoning.

I showed them our assignment sheet and the criteria we were supposed to meet and they said overall we met all the requirements and everything else in our paper was good, informative, and specific. So our only flaw was the negative connotation and tone used. Other than that, they agreed with our reasoning for appeal to emotion and pity being used and the celebrity endorsement/advertisement mentioned in the paper and the other sections as well.

Mission Critical website

For starters, I have to say I found the Table of Contents of the website to be helpful and interesting because it tells you everything that will be on the site. I have not come across that on mostly any website actually. So I thought that was a pretty useful too.
However, what I found really helpful and resourceful about and on this website was the break down and in depth reasoning and explanations and exercises given on the "analysis of arguments." It shows and introduces the principles of deductive and inductive reasoning and gets into casual arguments, and explains conditional arguments and a more in depth analysis on example for those type of arguments and syllogisms are also a part of that section. We have learned this from our text however this I felt explained it in a condensed form one way and in another way, the exercises helped and showed how the reasoning takes place. Overall, I found this website in general to be extremely helpful especially when it comes to critical thinking. It is a valuable tool to have and be aware of.

Cause and Effect website

Being able to distinguish from what a cause and a effect is not only imperative in reading however in reality as well. What caused that to happen was because of (the effect).

What I found helpful through the cause and effect website reading and exercises was the discussion on the strengths of a casual argument and the exercises. For example on the three strengths mentioned, I found the most appealing to me was that, "how likely the case for causation seems to be." The example they came up with was "do we think that a bicycle swerving into an car's lane can cause an accident?" This is something that doesn't really cross our mind unless it has happened to us but is good to keep in mind.

I found the exercises to be helpful and useful because they helped show how the cause and effect of something are two different things but when they are in sync with each other, they put help piece two things together to equal the main event.
So the examples were based off of people at a company picnic and how the people who ate the potato salad and became sick from it andit looked at different cases if what could have caused it and how the difference in the individuals could have made a difference or not. I found that helful and interesting.

Averages: Mean, Median, and Mode

Being able to utilize and be aware of averages can come in handy especially in heated topics such as tests, quizzes scores, etc that we may deal with on a daily basis. According to Epstein’s text, “the average is not the maximum or most likely depth. The average or mean of a collection of numbers is obtained by adding the numbers and then dividing by the number of items” (273).

For example,to retrieve the average or mean of a collection of numbers,
the average of 3,7,10,15,33 is calculated:
Add 3 + 7 + 10 + 15 + 33 = 68
Divide 68 by 5 = 13.6, the average

The median according to our text "is the midway mark: the same number of items above as below" (274). The median is the number in the middle.

For example, a graph could be helpful to show this, however let's just say
there are the numbers 5,10,15,20,25,30,35,40 that are in a line, when I took Algebra, one method we learned was by counting and crossing out the numbers until we got to the center. We would start w the far left and far right at the same time and cross them out. Then work our way until we got to the center. If there were two numbers left next to each other, we would add them and divide them by two.
However, based off our text, it states that "the distribution of marks should be a bell-shape, clustered around the median" (274).

The mode is "the number most often obtained" (274). So the mode is the number that appears the most.

For example,
5, 5, 10, 10, 10, 15, 20,30
The mode in this case would be 10 because it is shown 3 times when the other numbers were shown twice or once.