Wrapping Up the Year

This year's experience of collaborative learning has taught me to utilize things like peer review, and especially the blogs. With peer review and looking at other students' blogs, I can see how my peers are fairing with the same assignments, and I can use their viewpoints as something that could influence my thinking. Overall this collaborative learning style has taught me it's incredibly useful to work together with other people, and to me it's much better than working alone. Since I am a business major, this semester in Writing 140 was extremely useful because collaborative working is a key aspect in the business world. Few things accomplished in the business world are done alone, and this course has shown me that even writing papers can be the result of collaborative efforts such as peer reviews.
I will consider starting another blog in the future, because it could be useful for connecting with people in ways other than Facebook or texting. The business world revolves around making connections around the world, and I believe blogs are a great first step to doing this. Writing 140 was an amazing class and I hope my future classes at USC give me the chance to experience collaborative learning again like this class.

Less Wikipedia For Me

After investigating just how inaccurate and unreliable Wikipedia can be at times, I am definitely less likely to rely on it as any type of source of information. I will only use it to see how accurate it is on some subjects I am well educated in. I didn't use Wikipedia that often before I investigated it, so now I will only use it as a means to look at the accuracy of the information it has. I most likely won't join the discussion myself, unless some facts on the subject pages that are just completely inaccurate. There are too many people just like me trying to lead the discussions on Wikipedia when there are far more experienced people that could better lead the discussions. I am hoping one day that Wikipedia does change to an encyclopedia that is considered scholarly, and can be considered a reliable source that everyone in the world has access to.

Communal v Authoratative Acquisition

In my experiences, I have mostly experienced tensions between authoritative and communal acquisition of knowledge when I simply cannot choose which source to listen to. For example, in high school, when our teachers gave us different insights then my fellow students, it was tough to decide who to believe. This was true for solving math problems, writing essays, and a paucity of other subjects. Personally, I find it more useful to listen to the authoritative source, because he or she is specifically trained to help me in that area I am requesting help for. In addition to this, when using a communal knowledge source, there are often opposing sides to the same subject, and it becomes even tougher to decide within the communal source who to believe and trust. Therefore, even though I can get a variety of knowledge in a communal source, it is more beneficial if I just use one authoritative source so that I can be confident that the source is trustworthy, rather than trusting the opinions of many people I'm not completely sure about.

Logical Fallacy-Advertising

This is an image of a billboard in the United States. Religious billboards tend to controversial, and I found this one to be specifically misleading. This one simply provides a false conclusion in its advertisement. This means the billboard incorrectly labeled atheism as something that causes civil war. This is an oversimplified conclusion, and this can be classified both a false dilemma and a false cause fallacy. This sign is first misleading when it claims that atheism is anti-American. Then it claims that being anti-American is treason. Lastly, it claims that therefore since these things are true, then being an atheist leads to civil war. This is an oversimplified statement with a false cause conclusion and thus it is a fallacy in advertising.
here is the link to the image: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1280&bih=666&tbm=isch&tbnid=drs80n4JeQdMZM:&imgrefurl=http://godlesspaladin.com/2009/01/13/anti-atheist-billboards/&docid=LV-14vp2GxB42M&imgurl=http://www.bored.com/billboards/images/atheist_billboard.jpg&w=500&h=375&ei=PEXAToqjFoz9iQKK4vCPAw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=365&vpy=264&dur=913&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=138&ty=114&sig=112444100257690343710&page=1&tbnh=139&tbnw=182&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:13,s:0

Japanese Immigrants-1940s

I will be writing about the Japanese immigrants in the 1940s, around the start of World War II. I find it extremely interesting how this group attempted to keep close ties with homes even at the onset of World War II. As executive order 9066 was issued, the loyalty of the Japanese people in America came under question. Thus, it became extremely difficult for Japanese Americans to even attempt to assimilate into the American culture, because they were already seen as different people, and it was actually dangerous for the Japanese people to keep close ties with Japan. Therefore, Japanese immigrants did not have the best reception during the 1940s, considering they were seen as the enemy in World War II. The internment camps reflect this reception, since clearly the Japanese Americans were not completely trusted in the eyes of America. In conclusion, the Japanese immigrants did face a multitude of barriers in their attempts to assimilate into American culture during this time period, and the 1940s can be considered one of the most troubling times ever for Japanese immigrants to assimilate properly into the American culture.

Sources from Assignment #4

The sources from the readings are extremely useful. Many of the articles use a myriad of sources to support their claims. This is useful, because different sources are used to backup the same argument. There are few, if any sources that are from 2000 or later. Most of the sources are from the 1990s, and some fall back to the 70s and 80s. A wide variety of sources betters the argument, because perspectives from different time periods can be used.
These sources are used to illuminate how minority immigrants were able to cope with their new surroundings in the United States. The sources therefore often highlight how Los Angeles was a remarkable place of great diversity, but this led to conflict, racial tensions, and other problems. The two specific sources I chose were Racism in California: A reader in the history of oppression & Immigrants Out! The new nativism and the anti immigrant impulse in the United States. These sources reflect on how the Japanese Americans were usually treated as different than the typical American person; Even if they were born in the United States, they were from a different ethnic background, and this usually meant they were treated unfairly. It would have been better then for Japanese Americans then to assimilate into the typical American culture, because as history shows (Internment Camps), the Japanese were treated unfairly if they held close ties to their homeland. I can use these sources then as a way to support how difficult life was for Japanese immigrants in the 1940s because regardless, they were seen as different people that native born Americans.

Spectrum Series event

The Spectrum series event was a fantastic speech that effectively engaged the audience with the speaker. The goal of the speech was to try to display just how brutal the conditions are in places like Burundi, because of violent events such as civil unrest and ethnic conflict. Many people have probably never heard of this nation in Africa, and many more people are probably unaware of the conditions that exist there. Burundi is not a safe place, as many people are extremely sick, malnourished, and simply afraid. The speech definitely succeeded in both showing the audience what exactly is happening in places like Burundi, and inspiring the audience to help improve places similar to it.
This speech connects to what we have learned in our AMST 100 class in that racial and ethnic conflicts can terrorize any country and tear it apart. Racial conflicts exist everywhere in the world, and people should step up to help protect these places from civil unrest. Countries have literally been destroyed by the fighting of its own people, and learning from these past occurrences, the world can become a better and safer place.