Revision/Addition Post

Our group has now created a rough draft of our actual digital documentary. Everything so far has gone very smoothly. Our website is up and running and it looks very good. The only thing that’s really left to do is add the rest of our research to the site. Once we do this our digital documentary should be complete. When we meet on Wednesday we will figure out how to add all of our research to the website in the most effective way possible. After we figure that out, we should be able to complete our full rough draft and have you revise it so we can make any final changes and finishing touches by Friday. We have to put all of our recorded interviews on in the separate tab we created. This will be as simple as transferring the interviews from our phones to our computers then uploading them to the website. We also have to improve our sound map. We have to pick out the sounds we want to put on there since we only have a couple on there right now. We also are going to add pictures of the libraries to the map when you click on the boxes. This should really create a good visual of each specific library. You can see where they are relative to Lexington and you can also see actual pictures of them. Paired with the ethnography each of us did for our libraries, our audience should be able to have a feel for what it’s like to be at that library without ever visiting. We only have a few things left to do, and if everything goes as planned we will be completely finished with our website before Thanksgiving Break. That way we will be able to relax during our break and not have to worry about anything except for presenting our project to the class when we get back.

Progress Post

Our group has a couple things lined up for the near future in order to further progress us in our project. The first thing we will do as a group is go to the writing center. We have an appointment for Wednesday right after class to meet with one of the people who can help us with the technology side of our map. Once we meet with her, we will be able to understand what type of map we will use and what type of information we will need to gather before starting this map. Hopefully she can explain to us a simple way we can create a map that will display our research so that it is as informative as possible. This will be a big step in the right direction in order to complete our digital documentary. My personal progress has been a little behind. I have been extremely busy these last two weeks and have not been able to get any of my research or interviews done. I have two tests at the end of the week that I will be devoting my time to until then. After these tests I will have much more free time and I am counting on getting my interviews done this weekend. Once these interviews are complete, I will be able to help get the actual document going by starting the map, helping with the website, etc. Since our rough draft is due on Monday, our group will definitely need to meet this weekend in order to complete that assignment. I believe that from now on, our group should meet at least twice a week until the document is complete. Getting our research and information is the hardest part, so once we gather all of that this weekend, our project should be easily put together and finished in a timely manor.

Map-Making Techniques

There are many map options our group could choose that would represent our project well. The map should represent the people that use each separate library as descriptively as possible. One idea I thought would be interesting was a sound map. We are planning on recording our interviews with the patrons so it would be cool to put those on a map. There would be the four separate maps of the different libraries and there would be a button you could press to listen to each interview in the place the interview was conducted. This would be really cool and I think it would represent the people in a very unbiased way. Another idea I had for the map would be a map of the surrounding area of each library showing the average incomes of the residents. This would show the socioeconomic side of our research. It would tell you what part of town it is in, the average income of the people that go to each library, and the type of funding each library gets. This would be very informative but I don’t know if it would represent the patrons as well as my first idea. If we could do both of the maps, I think it would be really cool to be informed through interviews and facts on a visually appealing map. I think our audience would enjoy this as well.

Visually Appealing Website

A very visually appealing website that I often visit is the ESPN website.There are many factors going into making a website visually appealing. This website is laid out well to get their information across. The home page of the website has a large picture of the main story that day. You can easily access more information on the story by clicking on the picture. There is a crisp font used for the stories that creates a contrast from the more artistic font used on the ESPN logo and the headlines and such. They also use repetition with their logo. It is all over the website so it sticks in your head and makes you remember it. It is a beautifully simple logo that is easy to remember and it looks very classic. The website offers so much information yet it seems simple because it is laid out very well. It’s easy to use and that also makes you appreciate the website even more because it doesn’t frustrate you when you’re trying to find information. It also allows you to interact with the website by voting on relevant topics in sports. The proximity of the website is how the website is very condensed and not spread out. This makes everything easier to access. If you’re a sports fan then you have more than likely been to this website, it’s like the wikipedia of the sports world. It has so much information in an easy to use format, I think this is why it has been so successful and it is the place you think of when you want to find out any sports news.

Ethnography for Beaumont Public Library

When I pulled into the driveway of the Beaumont branch I noticed the library has fairly modern architecture, built with light colored stone. The entrance has automatic doors, to the left there are checkout desks, to the right there is a children’s section. When I went, it was 6 PM and there were about 15 kids in the children’s section and probably 50 patrons total. The majority of the people were using the computers, I noticed a few kids were working on power points and a few adults were surfing the Internet. The computers that were provided were Dell computers that looked very similar to the ones I had when I went to my public high school in the area. The floors were carpeted and there were wooden chairs at wooden tables. There was also an area with chairs that were a little more comfortable to read in, next to the chairs were tables with granite tops to them. The library had very tall ceilings with fancy light fixtures, and at the very back of the library there is a huge stained glass window with an abstract design. The people inside varied from age and ethnicity. There were high school, middle school, and elementary school aged kids of black, white, and Hispanic races. There were young adults, middle-aged adults, and some fairly old adults. These were also of all different races. There was a movie section where you could rent movies, there was a music section where you could rent CDs, there was a section that had books on tape you could rent, and of course there were plenty of books. It seemed to be a very state of the art library, even the lamps had fancy lampshades with designs on them. All the librarians I saw were Caucasian, there was a mixture of women and men, and some were a little older than others. There were people studying, doing homework, reading the newspaper, reading a book, working on computers, and some of the children were just playing. It seemed like they had a big focus on the children’s section. There was also a conference room where you could have private meetings if you needed to work on a group project or something of that sort. I am excited to interview the patrons to see if they feel the library serves that community well and continue with our project.

Rhetorical Analysis

The speaker is a journalist who, from what I understand, was interested in learning more about the issue of human trafficking. She was speaking to an audience of anyone because she was trying to raise awareness to this issue. She gave a summary of the seminar/presentation and threw in her feelings about some of the topics. Towards the end of the piece you could really see her purpose of trying to get people to understand how serious this issue is and how we need to try and stop it.The type of argument was presented as a narrative in a sense because she is telling a story about the presentation she saw but it could also be a proposal because she asks the audience to get involved and even puts a hotline number at the very end. Her argument was aimed towards your emotions when she gave details about the speaker’s experiences with trafficking. She described how terrible it would be to be a victim of this crime and how the punishment for something like this is less harsh than trafficking drugs. Overall, she did a good job of getting her point across and I believe it will help bring awareness to this issue.

Ethnography – Central Baptist

When I walked in the hospital I looked at the maps to find the maternal unit. I walked through the hallway that had white tile, a white wall with a wooden handrail. Once I got to the maternal section I sat down in the waiting room to observe. As I sat there I noticed a front desk, double doors leading to the hospital rooms, navy chairs, wooden side tables with lamps, old magazines, and it all had a musty smell. There weren’t very many people there when I was there, but there was a few. I saw an older man and woman, he was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, a black pullover, and glasses, he also had a mustache and whitish grey hair. The woman was wearing slip on shoes similar to Toms, jeans, a grey sweater, glasses, and had her hair in a pony tail. There was also a woman with a child who looked to be around 5 or 6 years old. The woman was wearing a red blouse, black pants, and had short brownish blond hair. The little girl was dressed in a red top and red leggings, she had dark hair that came to her shoulders. All of these people seemed to be nervous but happy at the same time. They were mostly jittery and would tap their legs every once in a while, it seemed like they were waiting to hear news about their friend or family member that was having a baby. It was interesting to see these people and just observe the way they acted in the situation that I assumed they were in. There wasn’t much action at the time I went but that could have been due to the fact that it was a Sunday at about 4 P.M. I would assume during busier times, there would be a lot more that I could have observed.

Revised Proposal Statement

After discussing with my group, we have decided to change our place. We have decided to do our report on Central Baptist Hospital’s maternal program, more specifically we will focus on how mothers with insurance are treated in comparison to how mothers that are uninsured are treated. We are breaking the research up and we are trying to get two people to research statistically and two people to research more personally. We will be researching through the internet, books, and interviews. These will hopefully give us an unbiased report that can look at things from multiple perspectives. We assigned a few small tasks in our meeting on Wednesday and they should be complete by Monday. Friday hopefully we will be able to work on our proposal a little more and find out how our research is going.

Purpose Statement

My group has decided to focus on the UK hospital. On top of that, more specifically, how the healthcare is distributed about socioeconomic classes. We will have to find out how to gather information on that topic. We will be able to find out which parts of the hospital the wealthier patients are in and visa versa. We want to find out how people who don’t have great healthcare are treated and if there are programs that can help with their bills or anything. We hope to be able to use primary and secondary research in our project. Our audience will be anyone interested in this topic as well as our classmates. When we go into the library tomorrow we should discuss how we are going to get information on this topic and break up the research among all four of us. Hopefully we will be able to get great research because if we do, I’m very confident our project and presentation will be very informative and in most people’s eyes, successful. 

Digital Documentary Ideas

I’ve been brainstorming on places I might like to do my digital documentary on, here’s some of them:

1. The Health Clinic

2. The new UK hospital

3. Saint Joseph

4. Any volunteer medical services provided for underprivileged citizens

Also here is the link to my map that I found interesting. It shows per capita medicare costs in rural hospital service areas in the United States. This relates to my topic because it deals with healthcare as well as money.