The Good 'Ole Research Paper

One of the topics this week on our forums was Research Papers - and let me tell you, research papers are no fun. But everything we must do in this world doesn't mean "fun."
We discussed if research papers are becoming obsolete. And if they are, how so? And if not, why not? It has been very interesting to listen to people's thoughts, but everyone pretty much agrees that research papers will not be leaving the classroom for quite some time. Research papers make people dig for information like no other school project. Just this evening, and throughout this past week, I have been working on finding 15 sources for an annotated bibliography of Langston Hughes. I'm not writing a paper on him, but I sure do feel like it! The thing is this: I wouldn't trade this searching and re-searching for anything - I have learned so much about Langston Hughes that I am excited to tell others what I have learned and am excited about sharing all the information I've gathered about him to my classmates this Thursday during World Literature II.
Here are some of the things I have learned:
1. He is one of the most prolific African-American writers for the Modernist movement and during the Harlem Renaissance
2. He created a poem titled the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" that was 72 pages long!!! It also was inspired by the be-bop movement which was an improvisational/modernist approach to Jazz music
3. Hughes wrote dozens of children's books that worked on getting rid of African-American stereotypes and shedding light, instead, on their art, culture and folk-lore.
4. He is best known for his "Simple" stories which are based on James B. Semple - an African-American man who is typical of the Harlem Renaissance. All of the stories were written to immitate different characters one might come across in the Harlem district. This style of writing made him famous because he was real and down-to-earth with his characters.
5. Check out here Denzel Washington quoting Langston Hughes's poem "I, Too" on YouTube in the movie "The Great Debators."

These are just a few of the MANY things one can find while doing research...yes, it is time consuming (has taken me 6-8 hours to compile everything) and hard on the eyes (since most of the research is done on the internet) but it is rewarding, gives the researcher a sense of accomplishment, and helps one understand the richness and beauty of a topic.

Texting

One of the discussions this week was how huge a phenomenon texting has become. It's everywhere! From cell phones, to billboards, to internet lingo and now even to speech! What makes everyone so enamored about texting? Will the future change in regards to the importance of speech and proper spelling? Are you going downhill in our verbal skills because of texting?
These are some great questions and I do think that texting is affecting everyone in some way or another in these days. There are some great internet sites that explain the impact of texting on this world community, Wikipedia has some really neat information on how texting got started and who actually sent the first text messagee. It also explains how different countries have responded to the usage of text messaging in their countries. Webopedia not only has a guide to understanding texting abbreviations, but it also explains what almost every kind of abbreviations means in the texting world. Very helpful and informational, especially for the parent who doesn't know what PIR means (i.e. Parent In Room). One website I came across on the internet wrote a great article about the influence of text messaging/instant messaging in children's school work. It talks of how teachers have seen that many children who frequently use text messaging tend to have bad grammer and reading skills. Other teachers are responding to this new form of lingo with a positive spin, saying it allows children to express their thoughts better and anything allowing children with the ability to write is a good thing. Certainly, texting needs to be recognized by teachers everywhere as something many teens use to communicate but I don't think we should use texting as a way to communicate on a day-to-day basis. It's vague, coded and very informal...not something, I think that, that we should be training our children to communicate in the future. We should want them to understand all forms of writing but know that there must be a differentiation between formal and informal English and make sure everyone is aware of what type of language needs to be used on a daily basis.

E-verything

Everything today has an E- in front of it, so it seems. Whether it's e-music, e-mail, e-malls, or even e-books...most everything we have is now becoming apart of the e-world around us. This past week, in class, we were discussing if hard-cover books will eventually go away and everything go to e-books. Certainly, I don't think hard-cover books will go away for quite a long time - it's hard to even imagine! Books are so essential to all aspects of culture, the idea of throwing away a form of it would be difficult to fathom. Though we did do away with stone writing and eventually scrolls. So perhaps we will, in about 100 more years, be done with hard-cover books down the road. Just because we are keeping hard-cover for awhile, doesn't mean we can't slowly embrace the e-world of books. Amazon has an e-reader titled the Kindle (and Kindle 2 has recently come out) that is quite a genius way of reading books. The idea of having text books in such a small device is neat and extremely handy for college students. This device is about as thin as a magazine (imagine!) and is the weight of a typical paperback book. The benefits with this is how you can enlarge text, highlight items, search word definitions and the option of having the text read out loud is even available! For $359, this is quite an item...it would seem that the price would go down throughout the year, especially if more and more companies invest in researching this piece of technology, then competition would go up. Sony has also come out with an e-reader for only $299, that they call the Reader Digital Book ... it has many of the features of the Kindle from Amazon - and even had an event at one point where around several hundred thousand Reader Digital Books were distributed to schools throughout the U.S.
So that is the scoop on the newest in the e-book world! It's very exciting, but I am really looking forward to what will be offered about 5 years from now...who knows how much technology will have advanced by then!

Consumerism

This week in our class we looked at lots of different aspects of consumerism and how they affect people today. The questions was kindof phrased as so: 'Is the need for consumerism something that is brought on by the media or is it natural for humans to want?'
My first thought? Great Question!
Basic instinct told me that the answer was completely natural. Sure, media has some influence but it all comes down to the fact that we all have an innate desire to want more than what we already have.
My second though was - sin.
Yes, I said it. S-I-N.
The sin of greed and unthankfulness and covetousness.
These three things remind me, constantly, that I am not perfect.

They remind me that I am a sinner.
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And so I came away from the many forums I had to post on and talk about with a very clear picture of how depraved we as humans are. And how hungry I am, at times, for what the world says is right and good and best. The world says that I need a new car, that I need better clothing, that I need the latest home decorations. What is wrong with this picture? I don't need a new car, I have a great car that runs smoothly...though it isn't pretty. Sure, I don't have designer clothing, but atleast I have something to wear. And yes - having nice things in a home is good but is certainly not essential for better living. None of this is what we really need. Though the world would say quite the contrary. For some reason, we esteem celebrities and wealthy people as our "status" of how to live. But there "status" is merely for instant, immediate and speedy satisfaction for hearts that ache for so much more.
Certainly, I am no wiz in psychology or philosophy or sociology or any other -ology.
But I have found satisfaction.

And that satisfaction is found in nothing of this world.

But is found in a personal relationship Jesus Christ, God's own Son.

It's no joke.

I have no fear of death, no earthly want - because I know that my life is hidden in Christ and only He can satisfy the deepest longings, needs and wants of my heart and soul.

Cars will die. Clothing will wear and tear. Homes will be destroyed.

But Christ still remains and His love will never fade away.

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"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... for I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to seperate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:35,38-39

"But God demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

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And in the end, the end is

Oceans and oceans

Of love and love again

We'll see how the tears that have fallen

Were caught in the palms

Of the Giver of love and the Lover of all

And we'll look back on these tears as old tales'

Cause after the last tear falls

There is love

-Andrew Peterson

Linking

This past week in my Advanced Composition class - I have been introduced to a whole new was of looking at blogs and posting blogs.
Linking.
Have any of you heard what this is?
According to Dictionary.com a link in Computer Science is "a segment of text or a graphical item that serves as a cross-reference between parts of a hypertext document or between files or hypertext documents." Sounds easy enough, right?
From what I have been learning this week - linking is a great way to advertise other websites, connect blog readers to the information being used in the post and builds credibility of the blogger page. I find this all interesting, because I have never used blogging except to portray my opinion. And that is fine. But not everyone wants to see just my opinion, web users want to see if others agree with my point of view and even see if people disagree. From now on I am making a firm decisions to link atleast once in every blog - it will give more visual play to my page and help readers see how my thoughts are played out in other websites across the internet.
A question I have had since I have been introduced to linking is: What is the benefit of linking? What are its pro's and con's? There are two places that gave solid reasoning behind the need to link and the first one gave a Top 10 list of reasons to link. The most interesting reason to me was how it would build search engine trust in your site. I didn't even know that it was possible to build the trust of a universal search engine - there are probably alot of benefits! And I am curious to see what it could do for a website. As for the second one, it goes through different words and describes the benefits of marketing on the Internet and how linking really helps. There webpage goal says "Internet Marketing Search Engine Optimization." That is exactly what it is doing, helping web users optimize the search engine the best for their business and/or blog.
Hope this is helpful and am looking forward to utilizing my new "linking skills" throughout both of my blogs.