hw42: final blog post!!!

Hello, this is Kelly, and we are the Beta Pod from Keene State College ITW 101. We are using Baghdad Burning as a reference for this podcast.
Hi, this is Sarah. The passage that left the biggest impression on us from this weeks reading was found on page 262. Riverbend basically says that Bush gives repulsive speeches and is sheepish-however he makes an attempt to sound sincere. The people of Iraq are not big fans of President Bush.
Hi, this is Lori. Student next semester can expect to learn first hand what it was like living in Iraq during the war.
Hey, this is Hayley. The students can also learn from the book that what is shown on Television is not half as bad as it really is.
Hi, this is Emily. Thank you for listening to us, have an enjoyable evening! Peace out.

hw30: podcast number one!

http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&query=&b=play&id=8538&cast=49707&castPage=&autoplay=true

hw35: blog readers

Over the past thirteen weeks, I have been working on my blog for our ITW class. I have learned so much during this period of time about keeping a blog and what it means to blog. Before coming into this class, I only had a small idea about blogging and what it was used for. I always just assumed it was for some type of social networking and a way for people to express their feelings about stupid, meaningless things. However, throughout this course I have learned that blogging can be used for many things, such as getting to know new people, finding out new information and basically just speaking your mind about a certain situation. If someone were to read my blog, I think they would most likely get information about the books we have read and they would get to see my opinion about our readings and how I really didn’t enjoy doing most of them. I really don’t foresee myself continuing on with this blog after the semester is over. I never really got into blogging and I don’t feel as though it really benefitted me or will ever benefit me in the future. Although I did learn a lot about blogging, I do not believe that I will ever use it again after this class, sorry!

hw:34 gold and tea

Gold is important to the families in Iraq because it plays a role in family savings. Riverbend states that "people began converting their money to gold- earrings, bracelets, necklaces- because the value of gold didn’t change" (Riverbend 100). Gold is so important to the families in Iraq that when they know their home is going to be raided, they often try to cover up any jewelry worn by them so it won’t get stolen by the troops. Riverbend also states that when troops invade their homes, they don’t think Iraqi people "like that" can own such nice things. But the thing about the gold is that most families receive it as a gift, like we do here in the United States. As with gold, tea is a very important thing to the Iraqi people. Tea is drank at all meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Riverbend says that the process of tea differs from family to family but regardless of the family she tells us "if you serve teabag tea" to an Iraqi, you risk scorn and disdain- teabag is an insult to tea connoisseurs. It speaks complete lack of appreciation for the valuable beverage" (Riverbend 108). Riverbend goes on to explain that the importance of tea to the Iraqi people, she says that it makes up a vast majority of the rations they have been getting because of the war. I think it is a good thing that even during the war and hard times, the families can sit together and have tea and some sort of normalcy during the day.

hw31: donald rumsfeld

While reading Baghdad Burning, Riverbend constantly mentions Donald Rumsfeld. The constant resentment and anger towards Rumsfeld made me curious about him. Although I have some idea of the things he has done in the past and where he stands in our society, I thought it would be good for my knowledge to look him up and investigate a little more. I found that Rumsfeld is the 21st Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush. While doing research, I also found out that Donald served in the US Navy from 1954 to 1957 as a naval aviator and flight instructor. Rumsfeld worked for the Nixon Administration, Ford Administration, Reagan Administration and finally the Clinton and Bush Administrations. I found it interesting that in March of 2005, a lawsuit was filed against Rumsfeld by eight detainees who said they were subject to abuse and torture by US forces. I found most of my information about Donald Rumsfeld on Wikipedia. By learning these new things about Rumsfeld, it makes the assigned reading a little easier to understand, and it makes it easier to see why Riverbend could have such anger toward him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld

hw30: citizenship symposiums

On Tuesday November 6th and Thursday November 8th, I attended two citizenship symposiums at Keene State College. Tuesday's symposium featured guest speaker Nancy Tobi. Nancy was born in Lexington, Massachusetts. Lexington is known as the birthplace of American liberty. Nancy said that growing up in Lexington made her aware of politics and democracy. Throughout her speech, Nancy spoke of different types of voting techniques and how they are used. The Diebold machine counts each vote by machine, and hand counting is as simple as it sounds, the votes are counted by hand. Tobi mentions that 81% of New Hampshire uses the diebold method, which to me seems more credited and easier to do than hand count massive amounts of votes. Nancy was very adamant on getting her point across about the difficulties when it comes to voting, she hopes that in the future things will get easier for our nation.
On Thursday, I attended another symposium given by a US representative and Holocaust Survivor, Tom Lantos. Tom was introduced by his daughter, Katrina. As with any daughter, Katrina had very positive things to say about her father and their relationship while she was growing up. Once Lantos took the stage, he spoke of his experiences while growing up and how difficult it was for him being an immigrant and not really accustom to the way this country works. I found Tom’s speech very powerful because it shows how much people take our country for granted sometimes, although there are things going on here that can change.

hw28: an open letter to riverbend

Dear Riverbend,
After reading all of your August posts in Baghdad Burning, it makes me really think about how hard life is for Iraqi people. I never really thought about the changes that were made once the war started. As I continued to read your entries, the more I started to feel bad for you. I could not imagine going along life, not having to worry about anything then the next thing you know, your house is being invaded and you can’t even walk down the street without having to worry about someone attacking you for no reason. The thing that made me most sad while reading about what happened in August is when you said how you and your family have spent the past few nights sleeping in jeans with any type of identification in them, in fear of having that night be your last night in this world. What I have trouble wrapping my head around is why you and your family can’t get out of the country and try to get away from all these problems going on around you. I guess I can’t really sympathize with you or anyone around you, but I still understand how hard that time can be for you and your family.

hw25: baghdad burning

The main focus of the foreword and the introduction in the book "Baghdad Burning" is the war in Iraq and the history behind it. In the foreword we are told about a girl who is known as Riverbend. Throughout the book, the young girl tells her story about what it was like to be living in Iraq during the war. Souief says that Riverbend’s story "makes painful reading", he goes on to say that "it also makes enjoy-able– even fun reading." and that it is "certainly necessary reading" (Souief, ix). The introduction is much different than the foreword. The introduction, written by James Ridgeway, is a basic outline of the war on Iraq. Ridgeway does a good job of writing about the beginning of the war and all of the details that surround it. He goes in depth about the specifics of how many people are effected by the war and the invasion on Iraq by our country. My own interpretations of the war on Iraq are similar to those in the text. I am not personally effected by the war, but I do realize what is happening and how this is an on going battle that is effecting many people’s lives. I am interested to continue reading about the life of Riverbend during the time of the war.

hw24: a room of my own

I have a room of my own, I actually have two rooms of my own. Both of my rooms sum up my life in general pretty well. My room at home is an average sized bedroom with the normal bedroom furniture in it. What makes my bedroom at home different from the one I have at school is that it has more of my character and personal touches to it. By personal touches I mean that there are more pictures of things that I love, like my family and friends, and there are more things in there that sum up my accomplishments in life. There are also little nick-nacks in my bedroom at home that show more of my personality. This isn’t to say that my room at school is boring and has no personal flare, but it just doesn’t have as much. I feel like I can’t bring everything from my room at home to my room at school because there isn’t really as much room here as at home. It’s also more difficult to bring little things from home and put them here because I’m sharing this room with another person and she has to have some room to live too. I do still have pictures of family and friends and things like that all around my room at school, just not as much as I do at home. I feel that Virginia Woolf would be able to appreciate both of my rooms because they are anything but boring and bland and they show a lot about how women’s lives have come a long way. It seems as though that the room she was put in was boring and bland and there wasn’t much to it because women weren’t really allowed to have their say in anything, especially what they wanted their rooms to look like. Woolf writes "if we escape little from the common sitting room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality.." (Woolf, 113). It seems to me that Woolf believes that women and men should not be constrained to one particular way of thinking or living and that they should react toward the opposite sex and anything that happens in their live realistically. Woolf further supports my opinion of wanting to live life realistically by saying "Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen" (Woolf, 82).

hw21: dear ethan

Hey Ethan,
I know reading the first chapter of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is kind of tricky, but I’ll help you get through it. At first, I didn’t really understand what she was talking about either, then I read it over again, slowly, and finally understood it. Basically, in the first chapter of this book, Woolf is talking about women and fiction. She says that a woman should have her own room and money to write fiction. Woolf spends most of the first chapter on a river bank at Oxbridge wondering about women and fiction. She talks about women and college and how the whole idea of it started and wonders why women have always been so poor. The weird thing about this book, is that the narrator isn’t Virginia Woolf herself, she says that it doesn’t really matter who is telling this story.. that’s why it’s still a little confusing to me. Your English teacher might find this book to be important because it’s a different way of showing a person’s opinion and their feelings. She also might find this an important piece of work because it shows a different type of insight into the accomplishment of women over the years. I hope this helped you a little, if you need anything else just let me know!
-Em

hw17: cox and zuniga

I enjoyed reading the second article with Ana Marie Cox. I felt as though Cox had some funny things to say. Although I have never gotten the chance to actually see Ana Marie Cox or read any of her work, I think that they would be interesting to read and watch. It seems like regardless of how many different jobs and different experience Cox has had, she still manages to make light of the subject and to have a good time doing it- and I think that is the best way to approach things. I found the other interview with Zuniga a little boring and not all that exciting. Politics and things of that nature do not really appeal to me unless they have a direct impact, so I can not really understand where he is coming from and why things like that are so important to him. I do however, enjoy reading the interviews in this book- I feel like they are a good way to show how blogging is used by different people doing different types of things with their lives.

hw18: least favorite blog post

I personally did not enjoy any of the bloglines that I am watching this week. None of the blogs seemed to interest me at all for some reason this week. I feel like on every blog post I read, they all were talking about the same things- whether it be about Hillary Clinton, or sex scandals in a men’s bathroom. To me, none of this was interesting or worth reading. I do not really like how on some of the blog posts, they are only a short paragraph, I feel like sometimes that is not enough for me to get a good opinion or judgement about the post to decide whether or not I liked it. I hope that next week there are more interesting and exiting blogs worth reading and posting about, I am anything but thrilled about this weeks bloglines posts.

hw16: what a laugh

One of the blogs I chose to watch was the Wonkette: DC gossip. I found an interesting post about Hillary Clinton’s laugh and how much it apparently bothers some people. I find it slightly amusing that people are more concerned with a person’s laugh than with what they have to say. Sure, I agree that sometimes the laugh can be a little annoying and not something I would necessarily choose to listen to, however I will listen to her opinions and beliefs on running our country and I will give her the benefit of the doubt. In this blog post, the writer is assuming that she laughs when she lies. Something about this post makes me a little concerned with how the voting may turn out in the upcoming election. If people are voting primarily based on looks, or laughs in this case, then I’m not too sure how things will end up next November.

hw16: five pillars

On page 130 of Kline and Bernstein’s "Blog!", there is an interview with Robert Scoble. One of the questions he is asked is about "RSS" and why it seems to be so important and how it will help the evolution of blogging. Robert goes on talking about the five things that have made blogging hot. He says that there are basically five pillars of conversational software. They include ease of publishing, discoverability, cross-site conversations, permalinking and finally syndication. It is to my understanding that the ease of publishing and discoverability most likely would mean how simple it is to start a blog about whatever you would like, and how easy it is for someone to discover your blog. Cross-site conversations most likely means that throughout the blog site, it is easy for people to talk about the different blogs they have read and start up new conversations and ideas for other blogs. Permalinking is simply just being able to place a link in a blog that will link the reader to that specific topic. And finally, syndication is to make multiple copies of that blog post or blog response. These five pillars help to describe the blogging world at its best.

hw13: blogs will change your business

I feel as though the impact of blogging on communication that is not business or non-profit related is very important. To me, the feedback from the consumer and random individuals is more important than what the business itself has to say. Clearly, the business is going to talk up everything that is good about themselves and try to get the readers on their side to prove that their business is the best. Ultimately, what is at stake is the business’ reputation and to me, the best way to get the true feelings on the business and what they stand for is by hearing what different individuals have to say about it. For instance, Baker and Green state that blogs "represent power" and that "instead of going through us, they can blog" (Kline, 224). I feel that it may be easier for bloggers to talk about businesses freely without knowing or caring who is reading what they have to say, rather than going straight to the source and talking to the business itself.

ohmy

The blog I chose to view was the online type of newspaper, OhmyNews (english.ohmynews.com). The website basically looks like an online source of news, there are different columns where you can choose what kind of news you want to read about and where in the world it is going on. I chose to view this blog because I thought it would be interesting to see what this pseudo blog, which was set up before blogs existed, would look like. MacKinnon’s statements were correct when she said that this website is not necessarily a blog, rather it is a good example of an online source where alternative media can show their impact on politics and how this information will spread faster online. This "blog" does in fact correspond to my understanding of what reading"Making Global Voices Hear" lead me to expect from the blog. I figured that from the title of this chapter, it would have something to do with how people communicate their feelings through blogs to people all around the world and the blog that I chose to view is a great example of that. I feel like it is a good example of it because it has different places where you can choose what type of news you want to read about and where the news is coming from. Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that this blog can be helpful to society because after all, the sources may not be as reliable as a source such as CNN or MSNBC, but they in fact can be a good source of information.

parental control

It is my opinion that parents should not monitor everything their middle school children write online. I personally believe that children, regardless of what grade they are in, should have some type of freedom in what they say and where they say it. I think that it is a good thing that children in the middle school age level are opening up and letting their peers and other individuals in their lives and what is happening to them. According to Emily Nussbaum, in her article, she states the "the solution is not to fight this technological loss of privacy, but to give in and embrace it: to stop worrying and love the Web" (Kline, 351). I could not agree more with her in this statement. I feel as though it’s a good thing for children to get their feelings and emotions out for people to read. Although most of the time the children are not necessarily writing to please people and get their feedback, it is nice to know children are expressing how they feel. Therefore, parents should not be worried about what is going on in their children’s online lives unless there is cause for some suspicion. Most sites have privacy settings, and it is my belief that children are smart enough to make the decision to set them if they are not comfortable with everyone reading what they have to say. I feel as though parents should back off and let their children live their lives and let them make decisions on their own.. with a little guidance every once and a while

the death of newspapers

In the chapter I blog, therefore I am Klein and Bernstein’s Blog! there is a particular paragraph that I do not fully agree with. They are speaking about the decline in the amount of young people that read newspaper articles daily. It has been said that only 28 percent of young people read the newspaper, which is less than the 33 percent who have claimed to have read a book (Gallup poll of teenagers) (Kline, 239). I will not deny the fact that I do not read a newspaper daily, nor do most of my friends. However, there are other ways of obtaining information about what is going on in the world. Since the internet is becoming evermore popular, it makes it that much easier to go to an informational website and gain the same knowledge that a person would by reading the newspaper. I feel as though it is quite ridiculous to renounce our generation just because we do not read a newspaper on a daily basis.

(hw5b)

customer voices should be heard

In the reading entitled The Voice of the Customer, in the book Blog! by David Kline and Dan Bernstein, it has been said that blogging is breaking down barriers between customers and the makers of the products society will buy. I think that having blogs about different products is a good way to help the consumer decide whether or not to buy that certain product. I have always believed that opinions of a person will influence another person’s decision. Steve Hayden said it best when he said "You’re fighting with very powerful forces because it’s real people’s opinions" (Kline, 105). I have noticed that people that blog are very passionate about their values and opinions. It is often said that smart companies will create their own blogs for the marketing benefits. I believe that it is in the companies best interest to create a blog to check up and see what the customer thinks of their product, it will help the companies to fix issues with the product and to keep with the things they were doing right.

blogs contribute to a participatory democracy

In discussion of whether or not blogs contribute to a more particpatory democracy, some will argue that "The media is owned by the right wing and is being used to control and manipulate the masses" (Fick, 3). It has also been argued that there are no youth around to read the blogs in order to sway their opinions and determine their voting status. I will have to agree with this because I do not know of many people my age that go to a blogging website to read opinions and views about politics for fun. However, it has been said that "political bloggers can mobilize and unite large groups" (Kline, Burnstein, 14). My own view is that blogging can and will be helpful to reach out to new people and share political opinions with the world. However, I feel as though it could be hard to reach and make everyone aware of these political blogs in order to gain a more participatory democracy. It has been said that political bloggers have opened up new opportunities to get a more particpatory country and help to shape the political future for the better and so long as it can be done the right way, I feel as though it is a definite possibility.

blogging is particularly interesting?

Many people assume that blogs are particularly interesting because they marry so much personality and attitude with this complex mix of software technologies At the same time that I believe this to be true, I also believe that blogs can be over-telling and too much like a diary. To me, blogs are hard to understand because in some cases, the way a person writes how they are feeling may not be read the way they want it to sound. For instance, if a person is trying to be sarcastic, it can be hard to read if it is not obvious sarcasm. I have always believed in freedom of speech and saying what is on your mind, therefore my feelings toward posting blogs is very unclear. Blogging can be a good way to voice a person’s emotions, opinions and feelings on a certain subject because some people are better at writing down how they feel, rather than expressing that emotion in person. I agree that blogging is a great way to keep in touch and communicate with people all across the world, however when do you know when you’ve written too much or offended a person in your blog because you are opening yourself up for the whole world to understand your feelings.