Further Discussion Topic

A topic I would have like to cover more is chapter 9, Ethics and Moral Decision Making. We did not get to have a discussion on this chapter, and I feel this is one of the more important topics we should address. "Effective moral decision making depends on good critical-thinking skills, familiarity with basic moral values, and the motivating force of moral sentiments." I think moral decision making is a very important part of life. We make decisions everyday and we use our morals to help us make decisions. Many things affect our moral decisions such as friends, family, culture, and much more. Being able to not only make morally correct choices, but to reflect and critically analyze them it also important and promotes healthy growth. I feel this would have been a great topic for discussion because we all deal with this and it would have been nice to see what other people had on their mind.

Favorite, Least Favorite, Improvements

My favorite thing about this class is the fact that is online, and I am able to do my blog posts on my own time. This is good for me because I am a busy person and if it would have been very stressful for me to have an exact time everyday that I would have to do these blog posts. I feel like three blog posts a week is a very fair amount to do. It was not too overwhelming but also challenging enough because I would have to read each chapter earlier in the week and reflect on them through the blog posts. I also commenting on other people's posts because it promotes a healthy and critically analyzing community. The least favorite things about this class is meeting up with my group. It was very difficult to gather everyone's information and schedule so we could all make time in our day to meet up. We all have different times we are available, some have classes, some have work, others commute so it was a challenge to meet up to discuss projects. One thing that could be improved is on the Comm41 site, if there was a way to not have the "Older Posts." This way it was all on one page, and I would be able to Ctrl+F to find a specific key term or date, instead of looking through the archives. This would make things easier for the students as well as the teacher.

Learning over the semester

I have learned a lot of things over this semester, it is hard to talk about a specific few. I have learned about inductive and deductive arguments, analyzing, fallacies, language and communications and many more. One of my favorite things that I learned this semester is about marketing and advertising. I am a business major, and all businesses' main goal is to sell their product. This is done through effective marketing and advertising. I learned that many companies do marketing research, which is defined as "the process of identifying a target market for product or service..." In other words, companies research who will and will not buy their product and how to appeal to people so they will be influenced to purchase their product or service. Companies use surveys, observation, and experimentation to conduct their market research. Also, the use of symbols and images to represent a company. For example, Nike's swoosh, McDonald's golden arches, or Apple's apple logo. These are all associated with their respective company and when we see these images we are reminded about the company. After reading about this, I began to notice it more often and realized how much we are exposed to these images everyday.

Mission Critical

I found the Mission Critical website and Casual Argument section very useful. I found the bullet-point style simple and easy to use. It was clear what I was clicking on, and going to read. As much as I liked the simplicity of the website I found it to be lacking luster. The website looked as if a High School student designed it during their free time. I think it would be better if there was a navigation bar on the left hand side which was available at all times with all the same links on them, this would help greatly because it would allow people to navigate the whole website without having to click through a lot of other links to get to a certain page. I also think that it would help if there was a little description below the link or something like an annotation. This would help me know (and remind) me what that link was about.

Horoscopes

Capricorn horoscope: A colleague's motives could seem rather sinister today, Capricorn. This person has a definite agenda of his or her own that may not take into account the needs or feelings of anyone who could conceivably stand in the way. This person isn't to be trusted. Don't excuse his or her behavior. The best course of action now is to stay out of the way and protect yourself on all levels.

 

In my opinion, this prediction is too vague to say if it could be right or wrong. It is nearly impossible to be completely sure of another person's intentions, even if they swear they are being honest with you. Also, I interact with a lot of different people everyday and I do not have the time to sit there and assess everyone's true intentions. It is very unreasonable to have to "protect yourself on all levels" while trying to go through the course of a normal day. The statements from the horoscope are hard to define as falsifiable because they are so vague. I feel it is also common sense, if a colleague's motives seem sinister then of course you would avoid them and protect yourself. Also, if they seem sinister you obviously would not trust them fully, and be cautious of them.

Social Networking

Social networking has blown up in the recent years especially with Facebook and Twitter. I believe that social networking sites are amazing because it allows people to connect with each other from around the world. People can share photos, videos, and chat with each other as long as there is an internet connection. It makes the world a very small place. But there can also be a consequence to having such a connection with someone over a social network. Of course, with a new way of communication means a there is a new way to bully and harass. People have faked who they are on social networking sites just to creep on other people's lives. People should realize that what they post on the internet is for everyone to see, not just for their circle of friends. Even if they set their privacy setting so that only their friends can see it, an acquaintance of the friend can log into their account and see everything.

Plagiarism

I believe Sadler's argument is the better of the two. She argues that "plagiarism violates the trust upon which higher education is established," which aims at the moral issue of plagiarizing. As much as teachers and staff can (and try) to prevent students from plagiarizing it is impossible to stop it, so why should students stop? Because it is wrong. When we were growing up we were told not to steal, lie, cheat and plagiarism is all of these things. Just because we are older does not mean we should cease to live by our morals that our parents' instilled in our youth. I honestly think that plagiarism is the easy way out of doing the work. Some may see it as a harmless filler in an essay, but I see it as a person who can not fully commit to doing all of the work, and doing it right. Plagiarism subconsciously teaches that it is okay to okay to take the easy way out and steal someone's ideas and works and use it as our own.