Thursday, March 31, 2016

My Research Question

1.     I decided to do my topic of climate change denial because I want to understand why people still refuse to believe in climate change yet the evidence is very real and the consequences are dire if nothing is done about it. Is it a lack of information, or do they simply refuse to believe that the climate won’t take care of itself?
2.     I want to be able to answer why people refuse to believe in climate change or are against the idea of changing our ways so that we are more in line with protecting the environment and attempting to advert climate change.
3.     I already know that climate change is bad and that there is real evidence of its existence. What I do not understand is how someone can claim ignorance in face of the data that is presented to him or her. How do they benefit from still being a disbeliever? What do they need to hear to be able to take action or at least acknowledge this issue as being real. A person driver for me doing this is that I had an agriculture teacher that was adamant about climate change being fake even though agriculture is supremely dependent on the climate as well as weather. My teacher was always forcing his ideology down the student’s throats, and if you were not aligned to his ideals then you were ridiculed. I want to understand why someone would hold such an adamant opinion on a topic like this and how to deal with someone who is educating kids to believe in something without first questioning it or seeing the other side of the argument.
4.     I need to hear from people who do not agree with climate change and hear their arguments our and make an information judgement on what is the root cause of their sentiments. Is it economically motivated, such as big business not acknowledging  climate change  as an issue, or is it the idea that nothing happened before so why should it happen now? Or is it because people are scared to face the reality and potential impending doom if we do nothing about it.

5.     I need to read up about those who promote climate change and hear about what kind of counter arguments they hear, as well as see what climate change deniers have to say for themselves on the issue. If I can hear both sides of the argument and get an idea about what logical argument both sides have going for them. Then I might be able to ascertain why someone might disagree with the existence of severity of climate change.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Peer Review Reflection Process, How effective is it?

By using Peer Review I have found that there is a degree of collaboration that allows a paper to better come into itself. By using Peer Review, the paper gets exposed to the essence of what it will be sooner, before publishing it. That is a piece of writing that is exposed to the public and is read and digested by an audience. From my point of view as a peer reviewer I like the process as it allows me to see what my other classmates are doing and gauge how well someone else is doing on the paper and allows me to better figure how much effort needs to be exerted on the paper. More than that though however it allows me to learn more on a specific topic that the author decides to write about. Also it allows ones to notice how someone else writes and you can compare your writing style to someone else and see what is good writing and what is bad. You also learn that because it is written by someone else, with it being not your writing does not necessarily mean that it is bad writing. By learning that there are different writing styles out there, it helps to see that there are different methods of approaching the same assignment.

By having someone peer review my own paper I get the chance to hear some feedback and get the feeling of what the audience will think of the paper when it eventually becomes published. I really like to hear what someone thinks about a paper and ultimately it makes the paper stronger as it allows the paper to adapt the paper so that it is better received when it is inevitably sent out into the public domain for everyone to read.

All in all I like the peer review process, it allows me to read what other people are doing and expand my knowledge base as well as see what my classmates are working on. It also strengths everyone's paper as having someone else read and digest it and give feedback, the author can adapt the paper and make it stronger when it is published.

Explainer Reflection- Compared to Design Plan

When looking back and comparing my final product to the design plan I see how much the paper really deviated from it. Rather I should say I see how much the paper grew around this design "trellis" and grew into its own organic piece of work. As it was a created product its not going to fully fit into the form as it grows into its own, however it is possible to see where the product comes from looking past the leaves and looking and seeing the bark knurled around this design trellis one can see what beginning the paper originally had. For my particular paper I used the design plan as simply a way to get my idea started. Its not so much as a plan as it is a way for me to put my ideas down in a general mind map, where I can go in and make it something that has a more guided finish. As I consider my work style spontaneous, I like to go in, empty my mind and simply write on a topic. Whatever form the paper takes that is what the general form the paper will be. It is then my job to try and cut back the growth into the plan of what it ought to be. Perhaps this is why I do not like writing papers that have a very narrowed and specified focus. By using intuition and random association while writing the paper, it will inevitably trail off into its own path depending on what is around me or what enters my mind at the time of writing. This is my preferred style of writing as it allows for creativity to flow. I think its rather hard to really plan a good piece of creative writing, even though this isn't necessary a creative piece, there is an element of wordsmithing that I think requires a greater degree of freedom for it to be fully realized.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Study Methods

It occurs to me that its not whether a person actually works on an assignment or not, that determines whether they the assignment will be done. Rather is has more to do with what the person is doing when they are not working on the assignment. Its insane how much time can pass needlessly when we do necessary activities during our day, due to us not effectively performing the task. An examples of this could be getting up in the morning to get out of bed, into the shower, and out again to get dressed. For me this call could be accomplished in under 20 minutes if I were fully focused on doing this, however laying in bed not wanting to get up, or checking the phone in the morning prevents this from being happened. In all this whole process that could of taken 20 minutes when fully engage in the activity, takes 30 or 40 minutes. Time that could of been used studying or getting to the AS building to start the day. Although the difference between being fully focused and half assing it is maybe 10 or 20 minutes, this does inevitably add up over the course of the day. At the end of the day a person could of lost 1 or 2 hours to not being fully focused in the task at hand. I've come to the realization then that becoming efficient in accomplishing our daily tasks comes down to controlling our attention. Makes sense why someone might advocate meditation for increasing productivity.