Blog Assignment 9

For the group presentation I didn't feel like my group was ready to even have an outline prepared of the presentation and each of the documents until the last moment. Our group had some major setbacks including limited group meetings, lack of working communications, and being a leg short (one of our group members did not contribute anything to the assignment).

A couple of weeks before the deadline our group started to pick up the pace. We started to be more organized and we each took up specific tasks to help get work finished and on time. The distribution of work helped cut down the time each task needed to complete. Even though we were down a group member, the three of us formulated a plan and carried it out.

The division of work can be outlined as the following:
1. Find organization and research
2. Organize and distribute tasks
3. Formulate ideas and solutions
4. Write and edit Proposal
5. Write and edit Market Research Report
6. Construct Power Point slide show to fit report


The main point of our presentation was to get across problems within our organization and ways to improve the company's success. We based the presentation of our market research report. We included statistics in order to catch the attention of the reader, and tried to keep the presentation smooth.

A few changes I would make, however, would be to present the power point myself. I felt I would've made the stronger speaker and the presentation would have gone smoother and be overall more successful. I am overall happy with the end results. I think we did great as a group and we were able to overcome our differences and working styles. The point of the presentation was to teach us different roles in a group and how to adjust working with different people. I definitely learned how to work better with others and it gave me a hands on experience of my likes and dislikes of the group.

Blog Assignment 8

Topic: Abortion

Abortion by definition is the termination of pregnancy by the removal of a fetus or embryo from the uterus resulting in death. It is basically taking the life away from a child who never even got the chance to see the light of day. The child has no decision or opinion in the matter. Is this fair? Who are we to decide who lives and who dies? Is it not a crime to take another person's life?

In the world of today, no society allows the direct harm or taking of another life without serious punishment. Abortion directly violates this code of ethic, yet it still exists without serious consequences. Would it be fair if murders would go unanswered and the murderers to walk free?

Not only does abortion the life of a child, but it also endangers the life the mother. Abortions can have huge psychological and physical effects on the mother. Losing a child can mentally scar a woman and they could suffer further depression even years after the abortion. This could lead to further medical problems such as extreme anxiety and mental instability. The families of the mother would also be directly affected. The abortion could have the impact as a death in the family would have. This could lead to unnecessary and devastating emotional blows.

Currently abortion is outlawed in many states, however, its practice continues around the country, often by illegal procedures. During these illegal procedures, many are performed by doctors (if they are that lucky) that may or may not even have a license to practice!!! Why would anyone go out of their way to have a procedure done by an unlicensed practitioner? Would you get a medical operation done or have one of your family members have one done by the these same people? I would hope the answer is no.

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/antiabortion-arguments-reasons-against-abortion.html

Rhetorical situation:

My view on abortion would be that of a pro-life stand. I view every life as precious, and that we should treat each life with respect. I do not understand how abortion is legal or practiced so widely today because it is the taking of one's life. This has no exception, a life is prevented from living / will destroy the purpose of the creation of life. God gave us the ability to give life, not take it away from a newborn. The only reason I bring God into the equation is because I have a religious background. I was born and raised as a catholic so I was taught to cherish all life. Abortion goes against what I believe in from a moral standpoint. I do, however, understand why abortion is such a heated topic. There are specific situations where an abortion may seem to be the better choice. An example of this would be if a woman was raped and she did not want the child because it was not of her choice. My opinion would be to keep the child because you never want to regret taking a life. Who knows, maybe that one child who was aborted could have been a child that would've changed the world.

Blog Assignment 7

Website choice:
www.cardomain.com

Effectiveness
The site overall is quite effective. If you are looking at the website from a user standpoint you are using this website to browse different vehicle related topics including car sales, parts, blogs, pictures, and shows. The website aims towards advertising many of these cars and parts. They do a pretty good job having a wide variety of elements. They advertise while having sales and have room for fans to post their car pics and blogs. This allows for a community of vehicle fans of all types to join the website and promote sales and site support.

Usability
When first loading the site you can see that it has all the elements laid out on the front page. This includes sample cars of the week, blogs, car company's, sales, and various clips. A user can easily click on one of these to access that part of the website. There is a search bar and pictures to help guide the user. I think, however,this is the weakest element of the website because the website can get jumbled with lag and it frustrates the user.

Persuasiveness
The website offers a good source of information and links to the users. The website's only persuasiveness seems to be the advertising of company's and parts that definitely effects user's choices. When browsing the website, constantly linked with advertisements, the user takes a notice to them and it increases sales.

Evaluation
If I were to evaluate this website and write to the webmaster my suggestions I think I would highlight my main problems I have when browsing the website and certain revisions that I think would improve the site in a positive manner. I would first address the webmaster and praise him on the creation of the website. I would not want to come off in the wrong way but I would want to get my points across. My main points in the letter/email/call to him would include:
1)advertisement management
2)color scheme
3)link organization

My discussion would talk about these three elements and why I have problems with them. 1)When accessing the website the first thing many people notice is that you may get bombarded with advertisements. This not only lags the website, but discourages the user. When browsing the website the advertisements do not let up. I believe a revision or redistribution of the advertisements should be employed to reduce the lag and be more user friendly.
2)Next I would take note that the website fails to have clean organization of car parts and other links. Many users would appreciate a color scheme that would relate different parts/links to help a user guide their way through the website or search for certain items. Many car mechanics and car fans employ the color scheme technique so the webmaster should understand what I am talking about.
3)In conjunction with the color scheme should come changes with the links. I think the front page should be a little more organized with its links and maybe take out the car company links on the front page. Taking out that first huge link box would save room and let the user see more links (including maybe an advertisement! yay) If the webmaster took more time to compact the pictures and links it would be more efficient.

Blog Assignment 6

Introduction:
This is a report of the progression of my group's collaborative work on the proposal project as well as the podcast project. We have discussed the projects and how to improve on completing them for the last couple of weeks. The purpose of the projects seems to help the student (myself) to better understand working in group environment, mainly because many jobs consist of group work and it would be wise to get a head start on how they work. My group, however, hasn't really taken off until the last couple of days. We tried to set up a group meeting the previous week but no one in the group pushed to organize an exact time to meet so it was basically skipped. I usually push meetings and organize a time but I have been rather busy lately with other unrelated work such as other classes and lab reports so I have felt rather distracted from the English projects.

Facts and Discussion:
With other school work calming down a little my group found a little time to get together to set up some work times and meetings. We are currently a little behind on schedule with the group having just now started to gather information needed to complete it. The group has recently gotten down a better meeting schedule and method of contact to work on the project when we aren't together via email. With our information being processed this weekend, hopefully our group will have a decent rough draft available by the end of the week. This will help our group stay organized and keep up the pace on completing the project. If all goes well in the week our group should start finishing up the project and have a good idea what what we need to add the finishing touches by 1-2 weeks.

Conclusion:
Overall the group's work seems to be going smoothly since the first take off. Even though we had a late start I think we should be fine even though things should get a little hectic when putting the final pieces together. I am hoping that nothing extreme happens this week to prevent the group from meeting, but as of now, everything should go as planned. One problem I see in the future would be the lack of face to face interaction with my group members. We lack the timing to meet more often so we are relying on email and telephone contact to put together our project. This not only slows down the group progress, but makes things very difficult to revise. Questions are answered slower, and communication between the members can become blurred.

Recommendations:
Ultimately it is our job to complete the assignment with the given due date. Even though I always welcome an extended due date, I think the current one is acceptable. I think there needs to be in class time to work on the projects where questions could be asked and groups could collaborate. I am aware that we are currently given time to do this, but I think with the due date coming up most groups would not take this time for granted. I would definitely use the time to help finish the project and having questions answered on the spot would be awesome.

Blog Assignment 5

Major: Exercise Science
Career Opportunities: Personal trainer, strength coach, physical therapist, fitness instructor, chiropractor.

Qualifications, skills, and experience:
Most of these careers will require a degree of some type. The hardest careers to follow will probably be physical therapist and chiropractor because they require more hours of education then the other three. Chiropracting practice requires that I attend one of the private schools in the country because they do not offer their education through public universities or schools. Physical therapy is similar with the requirement of going to a physical therapy school but they are offered in public universities.

Personal trainer, strength coach, and fitness instructor can all be practiced with less than 2 years of education but if I wanted to earn more money or have a better name for myself I could attain more years of schooling to have better qualifications.

All of these careers will probably want me to have exceptional people skills, good body condition/ active lifestyle, and a passion for exercise. I would need these skills because I would interact with people daily and need to develop relations very quickly at an efficient rate.

Past experience in this field is very important to have because it would show that I had the passion for exercise or that I am a active personal willing to learn. Experience would include working at a gym, message school, participation in active clubs, or any jobs that help me interact with people.

My qualifications, skills, and experience:
I have lived a rather active lifestyle since I was a teenager and that has given me a lot of experience in this field to begin with. I try to stay active and participate in races, weightlifting competitions, and other activities to network and have fun. I am in my third year of college with my expected graduation date of 2011 for my 4 year degree in exercise science. This degree would give me a better chance at attending chiropracting or physical therapy school. My past job experience includes working at as a jet ski rentalist, lifeguard, and Smoothie King. These jobs all required me to interact with people on a daily basis and have good relations with them. These jobs were also active in nature, meaning I needed to be in good condition to perform well.

Position selected:
Given my past qualifications, skills, and experience I think a career that I am well suited for would be a personal trainer. I would pursue this career because I could work this job while still attending school and maybe pursue another career in the future. I have a few friends who are currently personal trainers and I think having these connections would also help me in finding a job a lot easier than the other choices. Personal training with also give me great experience in working with clients on a physical level. I would develop skills needed in future career choices. I think the best way I would go about pursuing this career would be to first get certified by one of the recognized fitness organizations for personal training and begin working on a decent resume and cover letter to start my job searching. I think my biggest concern of my resume would be to start networking a little better and gather more experience with clubs and activities.


Links:
http://www.txwesleyan.edu/exercisescience/CareersinExerciseScience.htm
http://www.acefitness.org/
http://www.acsm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home_Page&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTFILEID=98
http://www.udel.edu/HNES/car-opp.htm

Blog Assignment 4

To: T. Leoni, Manager, Personnel Department
From: Donald Pryzblo, Manager, Data Processing Department
Subject: INCORRECT PAYROLL CHECKS
I have been reviewing the “errors” in the computer files.
Contrary to what you insinuated in our meeting, the majority of these errors were made by your clerks. I do not feel that my people should be blamed for this. They are correctly copying the faulty time tickets that your clerks are preparing.
You and I discussed requiring my computer operators to perform the very time-consuming task of comparing their entries against the time sheets from which your clerks are miscopying.
My people do not have the time to correct the errors made by your people, and I will not hire additional help for such work.
I recommend that you tell your clerks to review their work carefully before giving it to the computer operators.

Revised
To: T. Leooni, Personnel Department
From: Donald Pryzblo, Data Processing Department
Subject: Payroll Check Miscalculations

After reviewing the computer files I believe that there may be errors with the initial time sheets for each employee.

The data being sent to my department seems to be incorrect and my main concern is to figure out how the time sheets are passing through the initial reviews and make it to my department. If the time sheets are copied correctly the problem should be eliminated.

We discussed having the operators compare their entries against the time sheets but I feel that would not solve the issue and end up wasting valuable company time. I also would not be able to afford the additional help required to run these comparisons.

To save time and money I was hoping that that time sheets could be reviewed more carefully before they are sent to the computer operators in order to prevent further complications.



In the revision I basically tried to take out all emotion and sound more professional. I feel Pryzblo sounded very unprofessional and that made the message very weak and that would have diverted any reader to become emotional as well. The message would basically fail to be sent. I also took out the capital letters in the subject because I felt they were unnecessary. I wanted to elminate dancing around the subject and get to the point very quickly. I also did not want to direct all the fault to the other department. I felt this would cause feelings of anger and did not contribute to solving the problem. I did, however, offer a solution in a way that would not threaten the reader.
I basically wanted to make the message less threatening and get the point across in a more professional way. I wanted to be able to pin point the problem in the time sheets without letting my anger or emotions get in the way of my message. All the points that Pryzblo wanted to discuss were still present but in a more calming way. Pryzblo, being a manager, should have never written such an unprofessional message because it made him and his department sound informal and made him look bad.

Blog assignment 3

http://www.acsm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home_Page&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTFILEID=98
Less effective brochure
The first thing that I noticed about this brochure was it looked like a random boring page of paragraphs, nothing else. Other than a title saying Exercise Science in it, I lose focus on what the page is trying to tell me. The page has almost no visuals to give the reader an idea of the major. Another problem I had with the site was that it was very short. A combination of these elements made this a poor choice of convincing a student to become interested in it.

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/sportex/Media/index/brochure.pdf
More effective brochure:
This brochure utilized an "eye catcher" technique that I really appreciated. The pictures are the very beginning of the page gave me an idea of what kind of interesting work that can fit under the Exercise Science programs. Right it grabs your attention you are given a brief decription of the program but also some reasons why one student should that school as well. It was very organized and nothing seemed out of place. The website page gave a nice color layout and seemed very inviting. It all seemed to flow together.


I believe that the second brochure really captures most of the effective elements in getting a students attention and gives a great outlook at the major. It has visuals, clear description, and future opportunity establishment at the facility. The same type brochure may be implied at USM to attract a student to the major. I think a few changes would be ideal, but those changes would probably just be my opinion. I think there should be more emphasis on a certain ideas or questions to further grab a student's attention such as "do you like exercising?", "have you ever thought about the science behind the work outs?". or "are you interested in sports equipment testing?" Questions like these can catch a students attention and make them want to read more, leading to their research into the major on the brochure. Some questions I think that a brochure should really concentrate on is who the reader is. Brochures are read mostly by passing students or people who randomly come across them. The brochure needs to be able to catch their attention and give them enough information about the major to see if the student would be interested in it. The brochure must be able to appeal to someone who is already interested in my major though. This way the brochure can also convince a student who is already interested to maybe attend that program at that certain school. So all together is must appeal to both new students and existing Exercise Science students.

As stated before I think the major components of the second brochure (the good one) will definitely influence the creation of my brochure. I will hopefully include good visuals, clear descriptions, and some way to convince a student of why Exercise Science at USM would be a good decision as a major. I do not necessarily think including what courses a student must take under the major because I think the brochure should grab attention then lead to a student learning more about it through an advisor or another website.