Journal 7- Evaluation

I chose to evaluate The Jersey Shore because it is a show I scratch my head at day after day and I wonder how it became successful. I find the characters behavior to be inappropriate for the MTV viewers watching but that is not as pressing as the lack of meaningful and intellectual content. These cast members deserve no sort of worship or praise, and they exemplify everything that Americans are hated for in the world. Yet parties are emulated after the show, nicknames and catchphrases are part of pop culture and the show continues to earn more ratings! The criteria I will be judging The Jersey Shore on will be a show that is watched by and as an influence on the youth, because this is where I see Jersey Shore failing the worst. I will show how next to other shows on MTV such as Real World or Gossip Girl, where even some characters have some moral boundaries and decent characters for kids to look up to, unlike any JS characters. The next piece will be how actions are handled and the consequences to poor decisions. Normal people, or even people on other reality shows, cannot avoid the consequences of bad decision making like the Jersey Shore cast does. The cast itself needs to be compared to other reality shows because they are not the sort of characters that your children should be modeling themselves after. Similar to the consequence piece, this final piece judges the general behavior of the cast; the lifestyle on the Jersey Shore revolves around drunken and lustful mischief and barely any work or strain (one bad night is followed by a night of more drinking and completely forgetting what happened the night prior). I am going to avoid the racial issues that have made the show hotly debated how it portrays Italian Americans.

Journal 6- Investigative Report Outline

1. I am going to mirror the ANGEL screen to Facebook's homepage with similar blue headings white background, action buttons on the side, how students post opinions, and how every student visits it daily and how older teachers aren't pleased with how either operates.
2. I could o used one of the teacher quotes to identify where I was going with it, which was most likely a Stuart quote, but I didn't want to rely on him for my entire paper.
3. I am writing about whether the difficulties that ANGEL is claimed to have are actually happening. Teachers complain about Penn State's primary course management system which basically controls all online academic functions, which should be concerning, but I don't have any of the alleged problems.
4. I was introduced to ANGEL this year and it has been used since the 2002 school year. It is used at several other college campuses, but every year, ANGEL wants to get with the times and update, so a new year breeds new problems with the new program, which sends shocks through the grading system. That is where we are at. ANGELS has it's strong points and good uses, but it seems to be difficult to use and not user-friendly.
5. I used my own personal experience with ANGEL and how I had no problems with it, but teachers were feeding me to be cautious with the program.
6. Then used the ANGEL message board to reveal more of the disorganized and problematic problems of ANGEL on a big scale. Two bloggers have good quote material, one is a teacher venting and another is an instructor trying to put on extra credit questions.
7. I then use two students from different colleges and different grade levels to diversify student response, and for the most part, get a positive review of the program, just minor annoyances.
8.I then use you as a non-ANGEL user who has her reasons for avoiding the program, and then I alo use another teacher who really tries to integrate it and his very frustrated with all the update bugs.
9. My last supporting paragraph is Stuart who I think had the most well-balanced and plentiful knowledge about the program. Technological diversity and incompatibility is my biggest topic and I got it from him.
10. Closed with how ANGEL will actually be gone soon, but can a course management system actually integrate itself and be as diverse as the population here at PSU.

Final Paper Topics

This is a really tough decision because it is sort of vague and broad so it is tough to choose what interests me and what is appropriate/what will work. But I think I have two decent topics, both have very interesting content.

Aliens: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/life-beyond-earth.html
 I have always had a sort of weird infatuation with extraterrestrial life. The idea doesn't haunt me and I am not one to preach about it. As matter of fact, I don't care for the alien sighting shows, yet on occasions I find myself oddly stuck on the channel watching UFO freaks tell there stories. And as society bashes these psychos, it is very hard to debate the potential of life beyond humans in such a massive universe. It is a fascinating topic that is hard to even conceive and it will be difficult to find proof and hard evidence to hammer home my point.

Existence of God: http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html
Now this one I sort of pulled out of my first idea, with one, the other theory dies. This topic is a lot more controversial and it will be difficult to win over audiences, but it is also good persuasion material. It will also be hard to give actual proof just like the alien topic, so I might have to opt for a third, simpler idea, which I am open to, but I thought I would start big and figure out ideas from there.

Journal 10- Overpopulation Article

I found an excellent journal entry from JSTOR about the topic I am researching and arguing, overpopulation. It was an article written in Population and Environment (a science journal dealing with the environment) by J. Anthony Cassils in January 2004 entitled "Overpopulation, Sustainable Development, and Security: Developing an Integrated Strategy." Cassils did a fantastic job of introducing the issue and how as wonderful as medical advances have been to mankind, they have put the globe in a major crisis of exceeding sustainable restrictions the planet has. He argues strongly that all around the world, short sighted political agenda's have clouded the dire necessity to address the ever increasing population. In fact, he blames the countless groups entangled in politics for fostering population growth for altruistic gains and not seeing the consequences of exploding our population, ultimately leading to the implosion of the species. He showed how already the population is showing signs of instability, with depleting resources, massive famine, and malnutrition. He contends all governments must take control of their people and set up a division to responsibly harbor population growth in their boarders (including stricter immigrant limits). With all nations working on this, it will benefit the globe immensely. He feels the biggest problems will come form underdeveloped countries lacking government and where populations grow fastest and starvation kills most. So developed nations are suppose to set an example and lead the world in this curbing of a population explosion, yet special interest groups seem to deter overpopulation-fighters' goals. As great as he illustrates the need for response to help overpopulation, he also provides what he thinks what is the correct route to control the problem. He feels the surer path is similar to the Chinese governments implication of one child per couple legislation. He feels governments must remove incentives for families to have more children. I loved the article, I hope mine is as informational and powerful, but I do hope to provide more helpful and insightful solutions rather than this writing which is more used to highlight exigence. I will however definitely use his statistics to portray the global dilemma to audiences and I also plan to use the solutions he credited and I will also take his account of the inhibitors on overpopulation legislation and likely re-blame them in my paper as well.

Cassils, Anthony J. "Overpopulation, Sustainable Development, and Security: Developing an Integrated Strategy." Population and Enviornment 25.3 (2004): 171-94. JSTOR. Springer. Web. 5 Nov. 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27503878?&Search=yes&term=Overpopulation&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DOverpopulation%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26wc%3Don%26acc%3Don&item=13&ttl=10475&returnArticleService=showFullText>.

Architectual Comparison

Left: Original NFL logo- This is the face of the expansive retro era of football. The wide shield brands a overpowering presence that glows dominance over other inferior past times. It is still loose and curvey giving the impression that the league is smooth but still garners new and unique ways of succeeding. The top portion is loaded with American pride and the balls tilt does not fully illustrate upright power, but still a playful touch.

Right: 2008 Revamped Logo- This is a rigid replica. The light illuminates the narrower shield as it is in the spot light of American public. It's darker tone shows a aging of sorts, a maturing from it's juvenile caccoon. It represents a stricter and harsher league. The letters are blocked and tight, and the ball is now tilted farther upright, arching over the compressed letters.

My B

sorry bout the color change, dunno what happened. If its too hard to read, try highlighting the grey section.

Investigative Reporting Post

ANGEL's layout is very plain and standard. It is headed by a Penn State Crest and a title, "ANGEL Course Management System" in the upper left. In the top center are several links that branch to the other various Penn State online services including: Library, Registrar, Webmail, Portal, and Search Penn State. On the let is a panel with several buttons with symbols: A home symbol, a question symbol for support and a logout symbol. Before signing in, the main ANGEL page has in the middle body section Public Announcements and Top Stories, neither very occupied nor interesting. On the left is where a guest would select logging in and below that is a warning telling me that my server is not supported by ANGEL, but that doesn't stop me from logging in. A new window pops up with the main page still open and I enter my Penn State info and it leads to a new but similar screen. Curved Blue rectangles still manage the organized content, but now the content is student specific, with all my classes in blue writing, on the left is more student-specific announcements and a Teacher Effectiveness Report (whatever that is). I click on one of my class names and it presents a new screen where all the class info, such as lecture notes, quizzes and other activities are placed in different folders. When I click the content I want, sometimes I am brought to a new screen within ANGEL, sometimes I get a pop-up, sometimes it downloads a PDF, and sometimes my browser crashes. For being so organized ANGEL sure can be a handful. And my least favorite part is when I log in but have other Internet windows up, it will deny ANGEL access!

"The specificity of the answers ANGEL wants suck."
&
"I feel like it doesn't help you learn as much as written assignments where you see teachers' remarks."
Zach Prediger-Freshman-Engineering

"Am I blanking? I just can't think how you could add an extra credit question into an ANGEL assessment - not in the gradebook - A faculty member wants to have an extra-credit question at the end of the quiz.... is there a way to get it to calculate automatically as extra credit?"
-Suzanne Shaffer- A PSU Teacher -Got it off a ANGEL community blog


Right on ANGEL's homepage it tells me my browser, common Safari, is not supported by ANGEL, it recommends Internet Explorer 7 or 8 (which also have their share of problems) or FireFox. More exploring of the website also led me to find a wealth of information about the entire university. From Penn State's fact book in ANGEL, I found the operational budget of the entire university is $4,016, 433,000! There was a ton more information to search, and ANGEL acted like a more refined and organized psu.edu. ON the ANGEL help page it further outlined the problems with Safari and Chrome saying mail, discussion forums, and gradebooks do not work right on these. I found this funny cause I use Safari with none of these problems.


During my initial research, I've gotten a better understanding of what I am am to write, this was like an pre-outline. I realize teachers are having much bigger problems with it than students, so they will be my audience when I criticize it. But it is a good program for students, so when I praise its features, they will be my more intended audience. I would rather please the readers than have them second guess themselves for this report. I also forgot about how annoying Internet use got following ANGEL being used, so that will be another critique I forgot about with the program.

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