Post #10-Reflection Essay

Going into English 271 for the first time, i wasn't really sure what to expect, i didn't even know what expository writing was. I originally did have some background information, and ratemyproffesor.com, so i kind of had an idea of what the teacher would be like, which was the reason i chose to enroll in the class. I was excited to find out that it wouldn't some other boring typical English class, where i'd want to claw my eyes out and beg for it to be over. The whole idea of having a blog and doing assignments online was interesting, even though i had never had one, the idea enticed me. This class really taught me on how to present information and not including much or any bias.  

POST #1

This was the first blog post that i have ever done, and it was a struggle at first for me to grasp the concept of the whole thing. I was supposed to read a Wikipedia and do my best to summarize and rewrite it. This was by far the worst post I did for this class, but it still helped me understand what it was the teacher was looking for. 

POST #2/3

This was the post about how we had to rewrite the news, and I thought that this taught me a lot. It taught me on how to take a news article, break it down and make it a greater piece of writing overall. I decided to write on the effects of psychedelic mushrooms and how they impact someone’s future. I chose the article because I thought it sounded interesting and something that no one else would actually write about. This taught me on how to focus my writing and choose the right information to keep, and throw away anything unnecessary. 

This was when we had to write about the effects of integrating voice in a piece of writing and seeing if voice helps or creates problems in your paper. This post was very helpful to me in getting a better understanding of how style and audience greatly impact the overall paper. I decided to write about the newly release movie, Paranormal Activity 3 and how my experience with that movie made me feel. I learned to choose my words wisely, choose my effected audience, and write the most effective way I can.

POST #4
            This was just a revision of the previous post that I had finished earlier, about integrating voice in an expository piece of writing. I had decided to keep the voice in my post because I thought it would be more effective because it gave the audience a better understanding of the fear I felt while watching that movie. If I were to write it without including my voice in it, it wouldn’t have the same effect and probably wouldn’t have been as successful.

POST #5
            The extended definition essay was when we had to define a certain concept, without it being too complicated or complex. For instance, I remember that love, which had so many definitions and meanings to different people that it’d be impossible to write an effective piece of writing with only 750 words. So I thought about using the word family, which I thought could be identified easier than other concepts while still being capable of writing effective in 750 words. I thought more in terms of American families, and how they can be defined. I learned on how to pick important information and how to write it efficiently.

POST #6/7
            These posts were on the process-analysis assignment in which we had to write a step by step process on how something occurred, or how something is done. I chose to write on how to sell something and make a post using Craigslist.org. I thought I wrote a pretty effective procedure, I did a step by step process on how it happens. This taught me on how to effectively decide which steps are worth putting in, and how important detail is. For the post #7, it was just the revision of post #6 and I fixed mostly grammatical errors and some organization issues I had.
POST #8/9
           The last couple blogs that I had to do dealt with classification, and how things are sub-categorized into different categories. I decided on the transformation of the phone and how it’s changed over time. I decided to first write about the common household phone, than the transition to the cell phone, and finally the invention of the Smartphone. My revision to this post was focused more on the structure and organization to make it a more effective way of writing. I also changed some aspects and tried to narrow my topic to make it more focused.

           Overall, I had a great time in this class and really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about expository writing and how to implicitly and rhetorically write an effective piece of writing. Even without having a college class, I may consider the idea of stating my own personal blog, just for fun. I would never have been able to do that if I hadn’t learned what I did in this class.

Post 9-Revision of Classification

    No one ever really thought about how indispensable phones are in modern society. It has been around now for over a century and has changed on a dramatic scale. It used to be the number one way of communicating with someone else. There is a large variety of phones that have been out in the world varying from simple household phones, to highly sophisticated smart phones. There are 3 main types of phones out there, the simple household phone, the cell phone, and the current Smartphone and each have different designs and ways to use them.

            Household Phone 

The first phone to be invented was by a man named Alexander Graham Bell in the 1870s but didn’t become a more common household item until about the early 1900s. In 1903 there was an estimated amount of 3 million phones in America at the time. The most common model of phone was introduced in 1927 when the "model 102" came into the picture. This phone had a rotary dial technique and this style of phone stayed until about    the 1960s when the invention of number pad dialing phones were created. The increase in phones in homes sky rocketed and soon became an appliance most individuals couldn’t survive without. The idea of a cordless phone came out in the 1970's but didn’t become more common until the 80's. The common household phone was the only type of phone out at the time, and could be used to make calls to other phones. Then the cellphone and smartphone came out, allowing all three types of phones to make calls to each other.

            Cell Phone

Cell phones are becoming more and more common as the decade progresses. Most people in this day and age need a cell phone just to run their daily lives. Some people even have up to 2-3 phones depending on their job. Companies even lend cell phones to employees to use as their personal work phone. Cell phones shape, size, and weight have slimmed down to a more sleek and easy to use design. When they were first introduced in the 1970's, there were extremely expensive, ranging to easily over a thousand dollars. These genre of phones were the size and shape of a brick and probably could be used to kill somebody. These were called the first generation phones, meaning there was one way to communicate with someone else. You could call someone or receive a phone call, nothing more. The next step from these phones were what are known as second generation phones or "2G" phones. These phones were primarily on a GSM network and were first introduced in 1991. These phones had the capability to talk, receive and send SMS or text messages. When these types of phones came out, the popularity of mobile devices exploded. 

            Smart Phone

The idea of a Smartphone is not that far from what the second generation of mobile devices were. These however had "3G" capabilities and are often referred to as the third generation of mobile devices. What 3G means is basically it being able to access the internet from the phone. The first Smartphone to come out 3G was launched by NTT DoCoMo in Japan in the Tokyo region in May 2001. These phones took longer to grow in popularity due to the expensive costs of having to pay for the internet service fee. Most common data plans coming from Verizon or ATT have a minimum data plan of 15-30$ a month. By the end of 2007, there was a total of 295 million users on the 3G network. The most popular Smartphone to ever come out was introduced by apple in 2007, known as the iPhone. The phone became so widely popular, that swarms of people cancelled their contracts just so they switch over to ATT. Now Apple has come out with 5 devices, the newest one being the iPhone 4s. The first iPhone are iphone 4s are like completely different Smartphone's, the memory, RAM, camera, operating system, and processor have all been redesigned and upgraded.

There is a new kind of Smartphone coming out, known as the fourth generation or "4G". These phones have been reported to have the capability to run at speeds 10 times faster than 3G speeds. However these phones need to be in an area where 4G is available, such as large cities. These kind of phones aren't that popular, but are expected to increase over the next few years.

            Closing
 Phones have changed dramatically over the past century, and in the next hundred years, they will be incomparable to the up-to-date phones of today. Its a wonder what the next generation of phones will be like, if it's anything like the past as brought, there will be yet again another dramatic change in phones. Who knows what the future will hold, and how many types and categories of phones there will be one day.