Welcome to Our Blog Conversations Beyond the Classroom!

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study? As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…). Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The Persuaders

Advertisers today turn on any product into a product of devotion. They manipulate to figure out a way to make their merchandise special and Indispensable in our life. Having their ads and promotions just anywhere around our existence makes it difficult to ignore them, and that’s exactly what they aim for. In the film, “The Persuaders” created by Douglas Rushcoff, Rachel Dretzin, and Barak Goodman the way the advertising industry operates and manages is shown. It briefly gives evidence of how it’s affecting our lives and the world around us. Advertisers have become prospects for new space, targeting any open space they see. They are not satisfied with having commercials or radio ads, and even through media entertainment; but surrounding us with them at every viewpoint. A great example the video contributes is when it shows that even a subway tunnel becomes an important target for promotion. They visualize the moment they stop to persuade us we will forget about their manufactured article. Many with the pressure against them created by their competition, is a plus for trying to catch our attention no matter the circumstances. This is clearly reflected when in the documentary a question such as “do you feel afraid when you’re eating white bread” is done to a consumer. Advertisers ask these types of questions in order to have a different perspective of their product and see how they can increase its value and make it more desirable.
Advertising is every instant around us, no matter the circumstances we are the only ones who decide what is useful for us and when we need it.

No comments:

Post a Comment