The semester has finally come to an end, and I can honestly say I have learned so much from my Writing With Technologies class. To read more about how my blog came about and my experiences throughout the semester, check out my storify I wrote by clicking on the picture below!
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Part 1:
For my niche blog I have decided to go with the topic of healthy eating for people who hate healthy eating. As someone who wants to try to eat better but hates healthy foods, I thought that this blog would be a great way for both me and other people to be able jump start their way into figuring out how to eat healthy. Eating healthy is hard, especially for picky eaters who hate all things healthy. Since I am an extremely picky eater myself, I have a pretty good understanding of the struggles people go through to find foods that are both healthy and taste good. I am hoping that throughout creating this blog I learn new tips for eating healthy and discover some on my own that I can share with other people. I know that there are many blogs out there for people who want to eat healthy, but this one is going to be different. I have noticed that many blogs tend to focus on just one aspect of becoming a healthier eater. I plan to cover all different aspects in one place. Additionally, I am going to make this blog my own, and make it unique by actually trying things myself such as making foods that I will talk about in the blog on my own, and give my feedback about how I feel about them. Also, unlike many other bloggers who give you one straightforward way for how to get yourself to become a healthy eater, and I am going to provide multiple ways and options for everything I suggest. For example, I am going to talk about how to still be able to eat pizza but make it healthier. I will talk about substituting dough for cauliflower, but if that still doesn’t satisfy your craving, I will also give other alternatives such as a healthy brand of pizza like SmartOnes. The type of audience that my blog will mainly be targeting are picky eaters of any age, gender, and background, who are trying to eat healthier. Whether they are looking to eat healthy to lose weight or just be a healthier version of themselves, this blog can be useful for pretty much anyone. I will also be targeting people from all economic classes. I will talk about name brand products that might be more expensive than others, but also talk about alternatives to the expensive stuff if you simply cannot afford it. What is nice about this blog is that it will target a very wide range of individuals. Part 2: The Picky Eater Blog really stuck out to me. Anjali, the creator of this site, started her blog after marrying her husband who's eating habits were the complete opposite of hers. She grew up eating healthy and watching what she put into her body while her husband grew up eating all junk food. This blog talks about how to find a compromise when cooking for two completely different types of eaters. The nice thing about this blog is that it is geared towards many different people including picky eaters, health freaks, children, and adults. One aspect of this blog that I really enjoyed was the weekly meal plan guide. Anjali provides 7 full week meal plans that makes it easy for someone who is not used to eating healhty figures out to eat for the next couple weeks. I also really like how this blog is designed and set up. It is pleasing to the eye and is very easy to navigate. Overall, this is a very well done blog that I myself have already started to check daily. One of my go to blogs for everything is The Huffington Post. This blog that I found called "10 Healthy Food Blogs That Makes Eating Well Extremely Easy" is very unique. This blogger found 10 other blogs about healthy eating and made them very accessable by putting them all into one blog and giving a little explaination about each. This is a great blog for people who don't normally eat healthy and don't really know where to begin. This blog has a very simple set up so everything is all right there. All the blogs are hyper linked making it fast and easy to find them. The great thing about blogs on the Huffington Post is that when your done reading one blog, at the bottom of the page it gives you suggestions for other blogs that are similar to the one you just read! Here is another blog I found on The Huffington Post that I found to be very well done. This blog is an easy read, not too long, not too short. "Want To Eat Healthy But Hate Eating Healthy Food?" points out many of the reasons people don't like eating healthy and then gives compromises to those reasons. The one thing I don't like about this particular blog post is that while it gives solutions to the problems it presents, the solutions aren't very specific, but more general. This may be fine for people that have a basic understanding of healthy eating, but for someone who is just starting, I feel as though this blog wouldn't give them much help, although I do believe it's a good start and has some great tips! A Sweet Pea Chef was one of my favorite blogs that I stumbled upon. This blog is very similar to what I'm going for in my blog. It talks about healthy food replacements, gives recipes, and gives tips for easing into a diet change. I liked how each recipe was accompanied by a picture of the dish so you knew what it should look like if you were trying to make it on your own. One thing that is very different and cool about this blog is that it has a tab called "blogging tips." In addtion to learning about healthy eating, you can also learn how to make your own blog. I like this because it can encourage people to start their own blogs and track their own journey and write about their own experiences I really enjoyed reading this Vegetable Haters blog on NerdFitness. I related to this blog on a "whole nother level," and I think many other people can relate to it as well. This blogger talked about his journey to liking vegetables. His whole life he never ate vegetables because he hated them, even though he had never tried most of them. Once he turned 22 he decided it was time to grow up and finally learn to like vegetables. This blog post gives great tips on how to make vegetables taste better and how to wean your way into eating them. In addition, you can sign up for fitness courses and training through the site, and the site also provides dozens of success stories for a little extra motivation. The Dr. Lauretta Ihonor blog is a very different blog from most of the blogs that I have found. Dr. Lauretta blogs not only about how to eat healthy, what to eat, etc., but she blogs about her own experiences, as a qualifed medical doctor and nutrition expert, helping others. She is based out of the London area, and meets up with people who are looking to start eating better. She comes with them to their local grocery store and helps them shop for the right foods. Another really cool part about this blog is that you can also read about peoples experiences with their new diet, as their is a part of the blog where people write about their experiences. This is a neat idea becuase people can talk to eachother about their journey and create a kind of support system. This blog post on LifeHacker was a pretty interesting read. It talks about different ways to mix different foods together and different ways to prepare many different dishes. Personally, I did not think this blog was the most interesting thing to read, but it got it's point across. In addition, for the purposes that I would be using this blog for, I do not think it is very helpful, in the fact that this blog doesn't really have much to offer. It focuses on that one aspect and no where else on this blog does it talk about anything else. One positive although about this blog is that there are numerous hyperlinks to different food and fitness websites. Millie Lifestyle & Wellness blog took a much different approach to become a healthy eater than most of the other blogs did. Unlike most blogs which suggest not completely taking all "bad" foods out of your life, this blogger encourages you to do so. She talks about how all those processed foods have such a strong and unique taste that when you try something healthy your taste buds don't like it making you hate healthy foods. This blogger talks about detoxing your body of all the bad stuff and starting fresh in a sense. She also gives a list of "coping mechanisms" for people struggling with this detox. Overall, I like the way this blog is set up, and I also like that you can buy different cleanses directly from the site. The Picky Eater: A Healthy Food Blog is run by the same blogger of The Picky Eater Blog. This blog is slightly different from her other blog in that indtead of strictly being a healthy eating blog, it's more of a lifestyle/food journal blog with a focus on health. I like that this blog has a blogroll on the left hand side making it easy to find other blogs similar to this one. A fun fact about this blog is that out of 256 blogs nominated, this blog made the top 10! The Super Healthy Kids blog is a little different from the rest of the blogs I found. This blog is geared more towards parents of children who are picky eaters. It gives a lot of tips on how to get kids to try new foods and provides a lot of ways to make healthy foods more kid friendly and how to find kid friendly foods. It also provides courses that parents can take in oder to become more knowledgable and gain new ideas and insights. I really like this blog and I think it is a great place for parents to go to. For my digital literacy narrative, I have come up with 3 potential topics to write about:
1. My first cellphone- I can talk about all the pros and cons of finally getting a cellphone. I would talk about how it helped me communicate with friends and family, and all the other ways it made my life easier. Having a cellphone also came with some disadvantages. It was a distraction and caused me to get in trouble in school. 2. My first social media expereince- I can write about the first time I ever used social media. I made a Facebook my freshman year of high school while everyone had already had one for so long. I was so confussed by it that I didnt use it for the longest time. Once I got the hang of it I felt like I new everything about everyone. 3. My first laptop- I always had access to laptops either at school or at home, but I never had my OWN laptop. Right before I went off to college my parents bought me a laptop and it has made life soo much easier. I was able to have all my documents and pictures in one place and I was finally able to bring a laptop to class to take notes...which inevitably turned into a distraction. New developments in information and communication technologies (ICTs) during this first decade of the 21st century enabled many of them to keep in touch with family, colleagues, and friends from around the globe, as well as acquaintances they had met only online, with an ease and speed that had been impossible prior to this time. Isn't it kind of mind blowing to think about how far technology has come? The fact that we are able to communicate with people all across the world without ever seeing them in person is almost unimaginable, but it happens on a daily basis, sometimes with just a touch of a botton. Berry, Hawisher, and Selfe focus on 13 individuals who live all around the world, and the role that digital literacy has had on their lives and the effects of globalization. This quote from Page 2 of the article refers the 13 individuals from the study, whom despite being in all different parts of the world, were still able to have easy and open communication with their family and friends, thanks to new developments in ICTs. This quote stuck out to me a lot because this summer I will be traveling all over Europe. I downloaded an app on my phone called WhatsApp which will allow me to keep in contact with my family and friends back in the United States free of charges. Before this, I never really put much thought into the concept. I never thought about how lucky we are to have such advancements in technology which allows us to communicate with people all over the world. These innovations make communication more convinient, and are also very beneficial in so many aspects of life. ![]() When thinking back to my own digital literacy experiences, the first thing that comes to mind is my first cell phone, the Rumor LG. It was this blue and black cellphone that had a sliding keyboard so I didn't have to text using the numbers on the front. I was one of the last kids in my grade to finally get a cellphone, and all I can remember is just how much easier my life became, or so I thought. Don't get me wrong, having a cellphone comes with a lot of advantages. I was finally able to communicate with my friends whether it was though a call or through text if I was somewhere where I could speak on the phone. I could take pictures to capture amazing memories, and I had games right at my finger tips for when I was bored. Thennn there were disadvantages. Now that I finally had this new phone it started to consume my life. I was texting 24/7 to the point where I would never get any work done and it became a distraction in class as well. Over the years I have had many more cellphones, and have learned that while cellphones can be cool and fun, the main purpose of a cellphone should be for communication when needed. The whole reason cellphones were created in the first place was for fast and easy communication, but I think people have lost sight of that. Of couse, now a days cellphones have so many other useful purposes which I make use of everyday such as GPS, apps you can download to do school work, FaceTime, etc. I've grown up in a generation where this type of technology has always been around, and I'm not going to lie, I'd be lost without my phone. ![]() Rhinegold's Introduction: Why You Need Digital Know-How - Why We All Need It talks about the importance of digital literacy and how technology has changed over the years. Now a days, people depend on it, but Rhinegold discusses how people need to learn how to use it more effectively. Digital culture has had a huge impact on society in both positive and negative ways. As Rhinehold discusses, society needs to learn how to be more mindful and aware when it comes to cyberculture. Spam is a big problem that Rhinehold brings up. The interent can actually be a very benefitial place, but we need to learn what to when those random links pop up or we recieve that so dreaded spam email. AKA DON'T CLICK ON IT!! Rhinegold also disscusses how tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Google are and have the potential to be so useful but most of society doesn't know how to use them correctly. People get so tied up in all the wrong aspects of these sites, that they begin to become more of a distraction than anything. The mindful use of digital media doesn't happen automatically. Thinking about what you are doing and why you are doing it instead of going through the motions is fundamental to the definition of mindful, whether you are deciding to follow somone on Twitter, shutting the lid of your laptop in class, looking up from your BlackBerry in a meeting, or consciously deciding which links not to click. This quote from Rhinehold's introdction really stuck out to me. I feel like this quote really sums up what Rhinehold was trying to say throughout this chapter which is to not let youself get lost in the mindlessness that can be the internet. Pay attention to what you are doing and why. I can deeply relate to this quote because I know I let myself get lost in social media and the internet. Whether I'm supposed to be researching for an assignment yet I find myself on Facebook, or I'm in class and not even paying any attention because I'm too busy scrolling through Instagram or Twitter to see what everyone is up to, I am constantly letting digital media control me. I need to start becoming more mindful of how often I'm on these sites and when. I need to learn how to find more self control and become more concious of how I use digital literacy and how I should be using it in order to have a more positive effect on my life.
In this chapter, Barton & Hamilton discuss an overview of a social theory of literacy. According to Barton and Hamilton, there are many ways to practice literacy. Here are "a set of six propositions about the nature of literacys:"
So, what this is trying to say is that literacy is a set of social practices. You might ask yourself, "BUT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??" Pretty much, literacy is a way of communication, it is always changing, and there are many different ways it can be used. What are dicourse communities?? Discourse communities are a group of people who talk alike, act alike, use the same language, and share the same set of values. And how do they shape literacy practices? Through communication. Different groups of people can come together and analyze and interpret literacy in all different ways. ![]() At Rowan University I am a member of Theta Phi Alpha which is a social fraternity on campus. Being a part of this organization, I use many forms of literacy practices in order to communicate and collaborate. For example, any time we have a fundraiser coming up we use a mix of print and digital literacy practice. We recently had an event called Smooch A Pooch where we raised money to help benefit the Gloucester County Animal Shelter. In order to get the word out to the Rowan community we made flyers and put them up all around the school, posted on all forms of social media such as Instagram and Facebook, and wrote in group chats on the GroupMe app that we have with other organizations. We go about these literacy practices for bake sales and many other events as well. Theta Phi Alpha is a perfect example of the type of social nature that Barton and Hamilton discuss in the reading. We create a discourse community by sharing the same values and collaborating in using mixed forms of print and digital literacy practices in order to put on events and fundraisers. |
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