Ch. 10 Response

• Initial impressions are important (show that you care and take project seriosly early on).
• Think carefully about words and the ethical issue that we had involving vocabulary usage.
• We need to discuss how we're going to present our project- with a written anouncement to readers about what we're presenting to them.
• The most important achievements to describe are the final products themselves. CLARIFY audiences, purposes, uses; note the positive effects the texts will have on the community.

Ch.9 Response

The evaluation report:

How the project went and what it produced. PERSUASIVE because we need to make a credible and compelling assessment, which will end with a final grade.

I guess that our weekly group evaluations will come into play in this report. The progress and process of our work is just as important as the final deliverable. Since our group inparticular has experienced exceptional team work and collaboration, we will make emphasize this in our report. Of course we will also asses our weaknesses and make an honest claim.

Ch. 7 Response

Executing Your Project

Our group has already gathered documents from our client. (We have their basic guide to the drip irrigation and information printed from the garden's website). The existence of these documents means that our project isn't starting from scratch; we have to synthesize and adapt the existing documents into something more effective.

What we need to keep in mind:

• Our discourse community. These are the people within our community who share a common interest/concern. Our discourse community is made up of those who are interested in garderning and those who are concerned about the environment; HOWEVER, those who aren't aware of environmental issues or things such as the green movement will also be targeted. It's important that our brochure reaches everyone because "healthy living" is sometimes seen as an "upper class" concern. The drip irrigation guide has a different audience- it is those who are physically involved with the garden.
• The brochure- Include organization's history within the brochure, avoid using info that's likely to become absolete in the near future (even though there's template).
• The drip irrigation guide- A design layout that avoids flipping back and fourth between between pages, use action oriented language, place safety info before the steps to which it relates, test with actual users!

3.5.09

Today Drew, Jaime and I went to the garden to talk to some of the volunteers. My perspective on our project changed after talking to Joe, who is one of the most dedicated volunteers of the garden. We discussed our class project and our mission to make a volunteer handbook. Joe's response was that he didn't think a volunteer handbook is necessary in a project like the community garden. His belief is that community gardening is focused around working out problems as a team effort and spreading knowledge by word of mouth and hands on instruction. For a moment, this made me feel like a handbook wouldn't be a necessary project. Then I re-thought the layout of our project to focus on the community aspect of gardening. This idea can be reinforced in the handbook's text and shown in photos/clip art throughout the booklet (ex.people gardening together).
After going to the garden, we met with Shari and discussed our proposal. Rather than a handbook for volunteers, Shari and Andrea decided that they are in more of a need for a brouche. The brochure will be slightly more general, for those who are interested in the garden. Information we put in the brochure will be overviews of topics covered in our fact sheets, (and the fact sheets will be detailed descriptions of topics taken from the brochure). They are stressing information about Also, these documents need to be on the website, first and foremost. Andrea and Shari aren't as concerned about having paper copies as they are about having the information on the web site. This also slightly changes the direction of our project. We need to think about the layout of the brochure and fact sheets in terms of the one dimensional space provided by a website.

Discussion Response 2.17.09 Gender Stratification in America

Feb. 17 2009- I attended an open discussion conducted by USF St.Pete Anthropology Professor Kathryn Arthur. The topic discussed was gender stratification in America. Charts from the National Science Foundation, (dating from the 1960s to 2006), reveal that women are exceeding the number of men who hold University degrees in sciences, social sciences and non S&E. Men, however, still outweigh the number of women who hold engineering jobs (54,821 to 13,300).
Why is it that women have more degrees in sciences than engineering?

I think that women have a tendency to lean towards degrees in social sciences (79,350- the largest of any science category) because the subject matter of social science allows them to relate the history of women's struggle for gender equality.

The most shocking information discussed in this lecture was the gender pay gap in our country. The pay gap between men and women has been a sort of invisible issue to me because I've never experienced earning less than my male co-workers. Statistics of the pay gap in ink came to me like a slap in the face. "One year after college, female graduates working full time earn only about 80 percent as much as male graduates earn. After accounting for all factors known to affect wages, about one quarter of the gap remains unexplained and may be attributed to discrimination... Ten years after graduation, women working full time only earn about 69 percent as much as men working full time earn."

We dicussed ways to close the pay gap:

• Negotiate more! It's more likely for women to take the first salary offer, whereas men tend to negotiate a higher salary.
• Do research on salary before interview. (To make sure you know what you should be getting paid).
• The private sector needs to mandate and ensure equal pay. For example, the state of Minnesota keeps track and ensures, through research and periodical statistics, that men and women are being paid the same for state jobs.
• Maternity leave needs to be mandated so that women are ensured a job after they have babies.

Ch. 5 Blog

Somethings that I didn't think about, regarding our potential documents:

-Instructional documents usually include many illustrations, such as action-view drawings or photographs. *Can we come up with these drawings ourselves and have them printed on the pamphlets or should we use clip art?

-Documents are used as a reference resource. *My understanding of this is that we should list references in our documents, such as, books, web sites, and local organic farms and CSAs (A term that I learned TODAY :-) that means Community Supported Agriculture).

-Field test the documents with potential users. * Good idea but sounds like a lot of work. I want to talk to my group/instructor/Shari & Andrea about this to see if we have enough time to do this one!

Sunday 2/15 Organic Farming Workshop

The Garden held a workshop today, led by organic farming instructor Susan Huff. I attended the 2 hr workshop (11-1) and took notes that will most likely be used later on in our fact sheets or handbook. Learn to grow your own food and sustain your own life as a means of beating the system, the system being the government. This comment made by Susan during the workshop impacted me.