Blog 7: Website Evaluation

http://www.usm.edu/

This education site provides an interesting homepage that is pleasing to the eye, initially capturing the attention of its viewers.  The aesthetics of any website is important when attracting people to your side.  The Southern Miss website and its effectiveness are particularly important because perspective students and parents get their very first taste of USM by viewing the website.  The website includes an interesting slideshow and updates these pictures regularly.  Therefore, students and parents do not stare at the same images every time they visit this site, maintaining their interest.  This site also provide useful tabs to organize the information available to viewers.  One can select a tab on academics, about, admissions, arts, athletics, community, news, research and student life.  These tabs are organized in alphabetical order, providing a clear and neat presentation.  These tabs also provide useful information and links within the main pages.  In addressing the webmaster I would congratulate him or her on her end product and provide useful suggestions.

Dear USM webmaster,

First I would like to congratulate you on the success of your website.  Countless students, faculty and staff have enjoyed and benefited from your site.  Technology is of vital importance today and you have successfully placed important information at the fingertips of many.  I enjoy the pleasing slideshow and inspiring phrases that correspond to these images.  Moreover, the organization of your site makes it easy to navigate and helps viewers immediately target their desired information.  The criticism I offer to you is to make a calendar of events more accessible to viewers.  Moreover, the mission statement of the university should receive greater attention.  Also, although I find the home page tabs easy to use and navigate, I find the links within these headings can be confusing and disorganized.  Recreating the organization of the pages within the main headings will reduce the stress and confusion of anxious perspective and current students.  Thank you for all your hard work and committment to the University of Southern Mississippi.  We appreciate all your time and effort.

Sincerely,
Grateful Student 

Blog 9: Outline of Group Project

Zombie Apocalypse PowerPoint

First, in the introduction of our PowerPoint, we will provide useful information on the nature of the zombie apocalypse.  Here we will outline the characteristics of a zombie and how to recognize one.  We will include the following introduction in our PowerPoint:

  The first precaution one must make in the case of a zombie apocalypse is familiarity with the zombie specimen. Therefore we have outlined some traits inherent to zombies…

We will outline their speed, intelligence, operating hours, feeding, senses, communication and strength.  We will then provide a set of rules for approaching an outbreak such as a Zombie Apocalypse.  These rules may be gathered from our movie knowledge and research from internet sites.  These rules will provide comic relief and clearly get our point across.  Lastly, we will include a conclusion in our PowerPoint summarizing our objectives.  

All in all, once a human is bitten, that’s it; there is no cure.

There is no use in crawling in a hole to cry, worry and waste

time, the victim must then do his or her job to keep the rest of the

humans busy by making them terrified and productive by running

away. If you do not want to become a dumb brain eating zombie,

just be sure to remember the rules and the characteristics of the

zombies. Oh and enjoy the little things in life! 

  

Blog 6: Progress Report

The following group progress report provides the strength and weaknesses of the progress of our Zombie Apocalypse PowerPoint project.  

Facts and Discussion
The organization of our project has helped us remain informed of our duties as individual members of the group and evenly distribute the workload.  We have decided the best way we achieve our goals is to assign smaller tasks to each individual and then collectively assess the combined assignments.  Indeed, our method has proven effective.  However, we must closely consider our project's costs.  Our time is valuable and we must be careful to manage it wisely.  

Recommendations
We must commit more time to continue to use the internet and books as resources for our PowerPoint.  In doing so, we can gather more research and ideas to provide a better outcome.  More scheduled group meetings will help us remain on task to finish our project on time.  We must continue to research and allow more time for gathering more useful information.  Moreover, a rough draft of our PowerPoint will be completed with the useful images and information we have gathered.  Modifying this draft will help us achieve our desired end result.

Blog 5: Writing in Your Profession

http://jobview.monster.com/Anticipating-Georgia-Teacher-Positions-K-10-2011-12-School-Year-Job-Atlanta-GA-98884156.aspx

http://jobview.monster.com/Anticipating-Louisiana-Teacher-Positions-K-10-SPED-2011-12-School-Year-Job-New-Orleans-LA-98884157.aspx

http://jobview.monster.com/teacher-Job-Randolph-VT-99207276.aspx

http://jobview.monster.com/Teacher-Openings-Job-Topsfield-01983-99203233.aspx



The above teaching job opportunities require a variety of qualifications.  These qualifications include teacher certification, experience, intellect, reasoning, leadership, organization, patience, creativity and maturity.  A good teacher will take the time to care about the students' individual needs.  Moreover, he or she should encourage positive and creative thinking in the classroom. 

Some personal skills that would match the ideals of the posted job offers include my patience, positive and friendly attitude, responsibility, and concern for others.  I care about the future of students and have a genuine desire to see others improve and excel.  I am willing to take the time to give guidance to those in need.  I look to the future with a positive attitude and desire to create excitig and stimulating lesson plans for my students.

The job that I would be most interested in pursuing is an opening for a K-12 teacher in Atlanta, Georgia.  I want this position most because I really identify with the mission statement of this school.  To appeal to this organization, I should mention my connection with the mission statement in my cover letter.  Since the mission of this school is mainly to inspire students, I will reiterate my intention to inspire my future students.

Blog 4: Improving Professional Correspondence

To: T. Leoni, Manager, Personnel Department
From: Donald Pryzblo, Manager, Data Processing Department
Subject: INCORRECT PAYROLL CHECKS

Dear T. Leon,

I have been carefully reviewing the “errors” in the computer files and have reached a conclusion.  Unfortunately, the majority of these errors were made by your clerks.  I cannot allow my people to take this blame.  I know that they are correctly copying the faulty time tickets that your clerks are preparing.You and I discussed requiring my computer operators to perform the very time-consuming task of comparing their entries against the time sheets from which your clerks are miscopying.   However, this will be a very time-consuming task and cause you further set back.  Moreover, the additional help needed will also cost the company money to hire more people.  To help prevent these errors, I suggest your clerks receive innstruction how to carefully review their work to provide computer operators with an appropriate template.  In doing so, we can create a better end product in the least painful way possible.  Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to discussing this further with you.

Sincerely,
Donald Pryzblo


The above revised email provides a more respectful and persuasive tone of voice.  This tone of voice is important when considering audience.  One cannot persuade an individual in an arrogant tone.  Therefore, in this email Donald speaks more calmly and politely to the manager and addresses his suggestions for improvement in a more appropriate way.

Blog 3: Defining Brochure Objectives

http://bealonghorn.utexas.edu/whyut

The University of Texas at Austin recruits students to its university by providing statements from current students saying why they chose this university over any other.  The strength of this method of recruitment exists because the accounts are personal and relevant.  Incoming students can relate to current students and discover what they need to know about what the university has to offer.  These accounts are honest and real, further contributing to the success of this method of recruitment.


http://www.lsu.edu/prospective_students/

Louisiana State University provides a side tab for prospective students on their website.  This tab provides a list of links to colleges, classes and scheduling, and applications.  This approach to recruitment is less personal and more factual.  This method causes recruitment to be less successful.  This website does not make me choose LSU over another university.  In this way, the university is not set apart and recruitment is not as successful.



When creating my brochure, it is important I provide all the useful and necessary information prospective students require but I should also provide statements that would persuade students to consider my department and set Southern Miss apart from other universities.

My reader is my instructor as well as students considering a major in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education.  I should assume my reader is completely unaware of the subject and give a detailed account of the department's objectives.  I will provide a mission statement, classes offered, job outlook, and contact information.  I will draw people in by creating an organized and interesting final product.

Blog 2: Analyzing a Rhetorical Situation

"Apart the lovers could neither live nor die; for it was life and death together; and Tristan fled his sorrow through seas and islands and many lands."


     The above quotation is an excerpt from the The Romance of Tristan and Iseult as retold by Joseph Bedier.  I read this text last year in my ENG 203H class with Dr. Joseph Navitsky.  The theme for the class focused on the history of romance in literature.  I now include The Romance of Tristan and Iseult in my list of favorite books.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this text which led me to create my final project of the class around this book.  In my final project, I had to compare two texts and analyze the romance tradition in each.  I decided to compare The Romance of Tristan and Iseult and Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.  Although these texts may seem to starkly contrast, I argued that these two texts demonstrated how the romance tradition preserved certain ideals from medieval to modern times.
     The purpose of my paper was to show how the romance tradition includes an obstacle to love.  Although authors alter the plot of a romance, I argued they have preserved the obstacle to love over time.  I wrote this paper because I wanted to demonstrate to my teacher the knowledge I acquired throughout the semester.  I hoped to prove I learned a lot about the romance tradition and practiced text analysis.  Moreover, this final project was important for my grade and I wanted to ensure an A.  I wrote for my teacher and therefore I assumed my audience was more educated on the topic than I.  Due to this assumption, I included less background information and more analysis.  I wanted to gain the respect of my professor by providing new insight into themes in the romance tradition. 
     Consequently, I used formal language and researched carefully.  I used descriptive words to examine textual implications.  Although I included excerpts from the texts, I could have included more analysis and offered a stronger conclusion.  I stated the importance of comparing The Romance of Tristan and Iseult with Interview with the Vampire was to note that obstacles to love are innate to the romance tradition.  However, I failed to point out to my reader why this is important.  Therefore, many improvements could be made to this paper and after considering rhetorical analysis, I have a better understanding of how to improve.