When I think about a knowledge community, I think about major investment banks like JP. Morgan. Having a dad on the executive bored has really taught me a lot and I feel this fits the idea of a knowledge community perfectly. In order for major corporate banks to function, their must be multiple levels of employees that work together to reach a common goal. While thousands of employees work together to ultimately make money it becomes difficult to work together.

JP. Morgan is made up of an executive bored, investors, traders and your basic employees that work regional all around the world in each Chase branch. Similarly, like this article about survivor, everyone must come together in order for decisions to be made. This means that each employee (investor or trader) combines each other’s knowledge to make an executive decision that benefits the company as a whole.

Jamie Diamond, the president of JP. Morgan keeps everyone working together and on task. Without a president, vice president and the rest of his executive bored, regional branches would fall apart. The knowledge of the executive bored is only a piece to the puzzle. All JP. Morgan employees share their knowledge together in order to make the best-educated decision.

Regional Managers In the corporate branches take information from the executive branch in order to keep Chase bank running smoothly worldwide.

Gamma Phi Beta

I recently joined a sorority and to me it is definitely a knowledge community. There are so many things that I have learned from just being in a sorority that I would of never known before. No only have I learned I have met so many girls and became close to people I would of never met before. We became a community in such a short time and we had to learn how to make decisions all together. This can be very difficult since there is about a 100 indecisive girls. But some how we come together and learn how to make it work. This relates to the article, because in survivor a group of people comes together and has to learn how to survive and make decisions. We all needed to learn how to keep our sorority in good standing

President:

The president of my sorority is very important to keeping us together. She goes to all of the meetings and makes sure we fulfill all of the requirements. If she didn’t do all she does there is no way we would be in good standing. She works out all of the knots we get our selves into and she keeps us all behaving. Like in survivor, there is a leader and she would definitely be ours. She has the most responsibility and has to make sure we all follow all of the rules. She is the reason we are a community. Every social event has to go through her and she has to approve them. She makes sure we all know all of the history to be in this sorority. So we are not only making a community but learning as well.

Members:

If we didn’t have all of these members we wouldn’t of gotten to know so many people. We all had friends coming into the sorority but we obviously didn’t know anyone. Not even all the freshman knew each other so you were getting thrown into a community without even knowing half of the people. Of course some people are not going to get a long but we need to learn how to cope with 100 different members. At the beginning many freshman were thinking of dropping because no one was really clicking, so we all had to push through and come together as a community. We all have learned so much about each other and we all are starting to feel the bonding. We all are learning so much about each other and becoming ourselves as we come together.

This is one of the best decisions I have ever made because I have never been in a community this close before. I look forward to all of our events and being with all of my closets friends. I can’t believe dropping came across my mind because I love being apart of this. We all are finding ourselves but still coming to together to make a community. We all have learned so much about ourselves and learned so much about becoming a community with many different personalities.

Knowledge Community

You are creating your own "anatomy of a knowledge community." Jenkins defines knowledge community as the community that comes out of a shared knowledge-base. I want you to create your version of the anatomy of a knowledge community using one of your own knowledge communities (so you choose the subject matter: Jenkins' example was Survivor).

***The purpose of this blog post is to show your awareness and understanding of what and how a knowledge community functions. It also serves as a visual argument. So you begin by picking a knowledge community to work with. Then decide what it is you want to express about this knowledge community. It should be a knowledge community that you are a part of. 

***Your audience is other members of your knowledge community. Think about how you can make your composition so that they want to read it and be more a part of it. 

***You need to create a new post in order to do this, so that you can use images, videos, graphics, etc (again make sure you preview your post BEFORE posting to check on the size of the images, videos, etc).

***This can take any form, but should not look like you merely "threw" something together. Think about why you are choosing the images that you are or the colors that you are. All of them should connect and create a fluid composition. 

***Be creative and think outside the box. It should be more than you fulfilling an assignment--more about who you are as a writer and pushing yourself creatively.

Due: Tuesday, February 28 by class time. 

Reflection over Main Assignment #1

Please respond to the following questions: 

*think through the process(es) for each project--article, editorial, rhetorical analysis--and examine them side by side; what connections and differences do you see between the different genres and audiences, the different rhetorical situations

*what is important to understand about a rhetorical analysis after completing one

*what can you take from this project to move forward with

Remember reflections should be thought-out and specific--use details, refer back to past assignments and/or readings, etc. Shoot for 300-400 words. 

Work Day: The Persona Poem

Persona poem are poems written from a different perspective other than your own--it could be from the perspective of a person (real or fictional), an animal, an object, etc. The important thing to remember is to play around with language and the point of view.

Shoot for 15-20 lines.

*You don't have to engage with any one for this blog post.

Due: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 by 8:00 pm.

Reflecting on Reflection

As you read, Yancey believes that “reflection” allows students to become agents of their own learning. Other theorists view reflection as a means of looking back so that we can understand how to move forward. After reading Yancey's theory of reflection, I want you to reflect on reflection. Using specific evidence from the reading respond to the following questions:

*What is Yancey's theory of reflection? How does she connect it to composition? 

***Note: she defines reflection in several different ways, so I'm not looking for everyone to use the exact same definition. Use the one that stuck out to you or that you were drawn to. 

*Make your own connections between reflection and writing--where does reflection fit into the writing process? To your writing process?

*Why is reflection "important" to you as a writer, a thinker, and a knowledge-maker?

250-450 words. Engage with your peers. 

Due: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 by class time. 

Rhetorical Analysis: Brainstorming

In this post, I want you to start by writing a quick summary of what you already know about your movie (can be anything). Then in two-three sentences explore why you picked it. Next generate a list of possible themes, threads, or issues that you found in the movie. Which one of these appeals to you to possibly explore? Next generate a list of 5-8 things you might want/need to find out about your movie. And finally think out loud about how you are going to do a rhetorical analysis of this movie, in other words, how might you make sure this project is an analysis and not another kind of writing (like simply a research essay)--think about how Lundsford and Ruszkiewicz define rhetorical analysis, and how you understand how to create one. 

Growing Learning and Adapting

The Beginning
The first adventure I had with writing was at the young age of 5. I was in kindergarten at the Montessori School of Maui, and had been practicing my letters for weeks. Using sandpaper letters, I had mastered the sounds and shapes of the entire alphabet. After that, I learned the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters. The process had been tedious and challenging for my kindergarten self, but I knew I was ready to write. When I finally wrote my first sentence, I couldn’t believe the huge accomplishment I had made. I was proud and excited to show everyone that: “The dog ran.”

The Next Step
As the years went on, my interest in writing decreased little by little. Instead of being a fun new challenge, writing was now an agonizing process. The teachers taught me little about grammar and syntax, and instead expected me to write papers without any help. It wasn’t until 6^th grade when I switched schools that I finally started to receive help.

At that time, I started to go to a college preparatory school. The classes were challenging and the workload was much more than I was used to. The teacher’s were preparing us for the many assignments we would be writing in the future, and introduced us to the five-paragraph essay. They were not difficult intellectual works of rhetoric, but they were more structured than anything I was used to.

This continued throughout high school, and eventually I had the five-paragraph essay stuck in my mind. I learned to P.E.E. in every paragraph (point, example, explanation), and always have a strong thesis statement. We worked in different mediums, however, they instilled in us that the five-paragraph essay would be our key to success.

Since I’ve been at DU, this knowledge that I have learned over the years has adapted into something more flexible.

The Rhetorical Situation
Every paper that I have written has started with an inspiration. It is usually something that I am agreeing or disagreeing with, thus giving an overall theme to the paper. This is key to have a strong piece of writing with a flow to it. It was not until WRIT 1122, however, that I knew the terms that go along with this idea.

I had never learned about the rhetorical situation and the terms that accompany it. It made so much sense to me that every piece of writing has a situation that has sparked its creation. I had always written for the same audience, my teacher, thus I did not have a lot of practice adapting my writing to fit another group of people. My writing aired on the more academic side, and being in this class really helped me learn how to know the correct way to write to a certain audience.

Every situation requires the proper audience in order to be appropriate. You wouldn’t wear a snorkel mask to school would you?

I had another moment in which I went “Ah-hah!” when we discussed the ideas of genre. I had never thought of a piece of writing, other than books, to have a genre. In my mind, an essay was an essay, and it was difficult for me to see it as anything else. The idea of writing an article for school that was not academic at its core was baffling to me. At first, I had no idea how I would address this, but after writing the 2^nd mini assignment, I realized that it made complete sense. Writing an academic paper on Miley Cyrus seems outrageous, but writing an article about her felt fun and natural.

Before this class, I had never heard of egos, pathos, and logos. I soon found, however, that their impact on rhetoric is tremendous. Through employing the three terms, authors are able to make their writing more successful. They can make their writing appeal emotionally to the audience or use facts in order to sway the audience’s opinion. With the terms, a piece of writing can become stronger than ever before. I learned this first hand, by using pathos in my piece on Miley Cyrus. I addressed the emotional impact her music video will have on its viewers and how it could potentially be bad. Without this emotional appeal, I feel as though my article would’ve been more flat and uninteresting.

Making Writing Interesting
Being in this class has made writing fun again, for it employs different methods than just the normal five-paragraph essay. Although I am a big fan of the five-paragraph essay, I believe that it is important to understand how to take the techniques you use for it and apply it to other genres.

Through using sources in the media, and writing blog posts about various readings, I have learned how to apply my knowledge in new and interesting ways.

I have come a long way since my early days of writing three word sentences, and I believe that through what I have learned in this class I am a much more diverse writer.

I have had many “Ah-hah!” moments, and foresee that there will be many more to come. Sometimes I miss being able to write in the format that I have used so many times before, but I know that the new knowledge I am gaining is only going to make me a better writer. I will try to take the new skills I have gained and use them in order to write in new and interesting ways. I can honestly say that although writing still proves to be a challenge for me, I am gaining more confidence and interest than I have ever had before.

Writing always was the thing I do not like to do until I take the 1122 writing class. In junior middle school, teacher was told me to write a diary every single day (in Chinese). Writing a diary was similar to post a blog post in this class, but the difference is writing a diary do not consider the elements of rhetorical situation and do not think about how to make the writing more persuasive or creditable. Writing a diary maybe just considered about making sense to the audiences. For example, I just wrote about what things I did in the day, and what benefits these things brought to me.

In high school, teacher told us the methods to decorate a piece of writing. When we write an essay, we can divide writing into narrative writing, argumentative writing, expository writing and practical writing. Narrative writing can be divided into poetry, prose, journal and fiction. In each certain writing genre, we can use different writing methods to make the writing more beautiful or persuasive. For example, we can use some parallel construction to make the paragraph more persuasive and creditable. We can use personification to describe an abstract thing more clearly and visually. We can use metaphor to make a sentence more tactful and understandable. The knowledge I learn from high school is related to rhetorical situation. However, the ideas of the knowledge were so vague that I cannot apply this knowledge into my writing. I still do not have my own writing process.

After I take the 1122 writing class, I know what I should do before writing, during writing and after writing. Understanding the rhetorical situation gives me general idea of writing. At first, we should confirm our audiences in order to use a certain genre. Then we should know the purpose of the writing. The purpose of the writing is very crucial to a piece of writing, because if you have an equivocal argument and many contradictions, audiences would not understand the meaning of the writing. Moreover, in order to make the writing persuasive and creditable, the tone of voice is significant in every piece of writing.

An appropriate genre can arise consensus of the audiences. Different genre should have different ethos, pathos and logos. When I wrote a piece of writing for New York Times, I considered explain my opinion more clear and more professional by using big words and sophisticated sentences, because the audiences of New York Times usually are the professionals and knowledgeable people. However, when I wrote a piece of writing for Entertainment weekly, I use less formal words and talked about the causal topic with an “Entertain Mood.” If I used more big word and complicated sentences, many people would not read the magazine, because they want to relax by reading the magazine instead of reading an academic paper.

At last the peer review is the most helpful way to improve our writing quality, because we could know where we have logic errors and how we amend the logic errors. The grammar problems and logic problems can hardly solves by ourselves and software, so the grammar mistakes and logic errors are the biggest problems in our writing and are hardly evitable for us. Thus, we surely want anyone to review our writing in order to identify anything that does not make sense or anything that confused the readers in our writings.