Statement of Purpose

    I want to design advertising materials for my uncle’s business, Halonen Lawn & Landscaping, using digital media mediums as well as a digital media production itself

   The audience for my project starts with first-marrieds who own their first home, all the way up to senior citizens who still care for their own lawns. I want to be able to catch anyone who has a lawn to tend, trees to plant, or landscaping they want to spruce up their land.

   The context of some projects is simply to inform, which I would like to include in mine as well, but his business has been around for about 10 years now, so at this point I am going to focus mostly on informing customers of specific landscaping projects HL&L can do for them.

   I plan on creating a Prezi presentation, just to tie everything together in one place. I’m going to use photoshop and other accessible programs to create a small handout that Ben would like to slip in specific mailboxes as he is out on jobs in subdivisions, towns, etc around here. Many people way over estimate the cost of some basic landscaping duties so we figured this would be a good way to get the bug in their ear that it is a very doable feat. Overall, I just want to make a few different advertising materials that he can have around to inform potential customers anywhere he is. Sort of like an quick and easy quote on-the-go! 

Rhetorical Research

2. Should We Have a Pond on Campus?

An engineering senior design group would like the campus community's opinion on whether or not to put a pond on campus. The project is handling the rainwater that falls on campus in a more natural way. The design team thinks that this could be a possible solution but would like input from members of the community. To give your input, see this short survey. - - - - -First argument about the parking issues. Need to figure out some solution for commuters before building a pond on campus

Wysocki-Lynch; Chapter 3

   In chapters 1 & 2,  we learned the basic steps for a rhetorical process, while in chapter 3 here we are looking farther into the details. As stated in the reading, "we consider the possibility of having conflicting purposes for communicating, or layers of purpose." They also encourage you to think through all the details that affect the communication choices we make.
   This reading comes at a good time, while we are in the middle of our major assignment, and thinking of a statement of purpose. They offer a few suggestions including collecting examples of literature to influence the age group and follow up by testing the effectiveness. Develop a statement of purpose and a design plan which could be a print out, video or game. Finally, choose a topic that you are passionate about. This will automatically increase the output of the project.
   One of my personal favorite topics of this paper is the second major point of of chapter three. They point out how arguing is a social activity. The point of arguing, they claim is to affect people somehow, through shaping their experience, influencing their attitudes, or inviting them to consider an issue with you. My friends and I, as i believe I have previously stated somewhere in this blog, grew up arguing. We argue about everything under the sun, no matter if it has anything to do with our own lives or not. Of all the people I know, no one gets as much as a kick out of arguing as we do. I don't know what it is, but there really is some kind of social tie. No matter what you are trying to convince the other side to change their opinion.
   Another interesting point is how communication is composed. When people are thinking rhetorically  is when posters, photographs, essays...all kinds of things are made. Each item is composed when the person is thinking about their work, in context for a certain audience, and a certain type of communication explicitly aimed at a particular audience.

Wysocki-Lynch

   This reading proved not to be too bad, compared to my judgement at first glance. It talks about variations of arguments. It can be two or more people going head to head with raised voices, or it could be a formal debate over a designated topic. There are two different types; formal & informal. Every one of us has used these throughout our years, formal mostly in school settings, and informal in social or home settings.
   I find the following information interesting. They chose 7 things that are important aspects of an argument:
       1. Need a specific purpose: carefully think what you are doing and why
       2. The audience: how are you going to direct your points to influence your specific audience
       3. Larger context: think about when and where you are holding the meeting
       4. Communication strategies: come after specific purpose, audience, and context. Key in making a difference
       5. Medium of communication: use best possible medium to get the point accross
       6. Arrange & combine communication strategies to build the most persuasive presentation
       7. Test your communication. Try presentation out beforehand to see the response

"Copying is a crime of ethics"

   I found the article written by Megan J. Forness, a Rochester, IL high school student quite interesting. In her piece, she clears up a lot of unanswered questions, or even parts of the whole copyright issue that we never fully understood, or realized we were missing in the past. As my post title says, copying truly is a crime of ethics. We could very easily take an entire paragraph or two off some internet source, and switch up 3 words throughout the whole thing, but is that really gratifying to so bluntly use another's work?
   The Copyright Act of 1976 is a legitimate federal law that, "promotes the Progress of Science and sueful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive rights to their respective Writings and Discoveries." With the massive growth of so many different types of media, copyright infringement issues are plentiful and happen often.
   As Forness so beneficially educates us, copyright is in any of the following types of media;
1. literary works
2. music
3. drama works, including music
4. choreography
5. pictoral and graphics
6. motion pictures
7. sound recordings
8. architecture

   You can, and are recommended to obtain a copyright notice, but after March 1, 1989, works published are all automatically protected under copyright.
   
   It really is an interesting issue, with so many ports of information, and soooo many users of all 8 versions, policing copyright infringement would be an extremely daunting task. I think one of the largest influences, as I experienced myself was elementary teachers pressing the issue the most. We grew up "cite, cite, citing" our papers, or any work we did that required using outside information. We were threatened with consequences I'm not so sure are really in effect, but nonetheless it became habit, and is now second nature.

Bitzer's Rhetorical Situation

     I've made my way through the majority of Bitzer's piece and I will admit I am struggling to departmentalize the different angles of rhetoric he is talking about.

     According to Bitzer, every rhetorical situation is made up of three parts;
            1. exigence: a defect, obstacle, something waiting to be done. In almost any sort of context, there will        be numerous exigences but not all are elements of a rhetorical situation are rhetorical exigences (natural disaster, death...)
            2. audience: to be constrained in decision and action
            3. constraints: influence the rhetoric and can be brought to bear upon the audience
      I sort of but don't really understand this article at all.
      I found one part particularly interesting because of how true it is. He states, "Each reader probably can recall a specific time and place when there was opportunity to speak on some urgent matter, and after the opportunity was gone he created in private thought the speech he should have uttered earlier in the situation."
      If that isn't true I don't know what is. From my own experience, no matter how much I prepared for a speech or presentation of any kind, I have left every single one feeling disappointed that I left out one of my "killer" points.

Post-William's Thoughts

   Following Tuesday's discussion about the William's reading I had a lot of thoughts, which usually happens after a long discussion or reading about modern technology. I don't know if I would blame it on my deep-rooted love of tradition or my inner hoarder, but some technological advances completely trip me up. Case in point; voting centers switching from paper ballots to electronic voting systems. First off, I hate the lack of a paper trail. Not only does it allow for the possibility that voting precincts will be tempted to commit fraud, but the whole reliance on technology alone makes me nervous. Systems go down, information gets lost, and machines get hacked on a regular basis. I understand this is more efficient, no need for recount, yada, yada, but I still believe we should have a backup in some version or another just to make sure. It may not be a feasible thought just because it would take so much time, with around 230,782,870 voters. (2008 presidential election). 

http://www.tcag.com/connect/consider-this/governance/electronic-voting

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php