http://korshkwriting2.weebly.com/wp2-final.html
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Sunday, May 29, 2016
WP3
Kailah Korsh
Writing 2
Prof. Zack De Piero
WP3: Using Music to Help Recovery
Older translation: click here
Younger translation: click here, here and here. (first is a picture of the app, next is an overview of all pages on app, last is the textual page. You may have to zoom in on pictures)
Summary
The scholarly article that I chose, Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise, was written by members of the Department of Internal Medicine and Rehabilitation science at Tohoku University in Japan. The article investigates the relationship between music and the autonomic nervous system activity after exercise. The article uses the IMRAD organizational form to talk about a study. Researches carried out a study in which 26 subjects participated in four randomly chosen sessions throughout four different days of a control session, a biking session, a music session, and a biking with music session. Researchers wanted to find out the autonomic nervous system activity varied during all four sessions. The autonomic nervous system was operationalized, or measured, by monitoring the subjects’ heart rates during each session. The study found data that suggests music increases parasympathetic nerve activity after exercising. This is important because the increased activity in the parasympathetic nervous system helps muscles with rehabilitation, leading to a faster recovery and decrease in cardiac stress.
Reflection
For my WP3, I really wanted to write about some aspect of music, because that is one of my biggest interests. I thought it would be interesting to investigate an article that showed a relationship between music and the brain or music and the body. I found a scholarly article called Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise, which contains the kind of information that I was originally looking for. This article’s main idea is ultimately that there is a surprising relationship between music and the Parasympathetic Nervous System, which reveals that music could help people have a faster recovery after working out. Using this main idea, I transformed my article into two pieces that inform different groups to whom this information would be relevant. I picked adults from age 40 to 50 years old, and high school kids. I took into consideration “the different social spaces that affect how we communicate, what is said and what is not said,” in order to translate my pieces to reach these new audiences (Losh and Alexander). To target the adults, I made an informational flyer that would be posted around and handed out at their gym. For the high school kids, I wanted to target athletes specifically, so I made an iphone app that would inform kids about and help them with their post workouts in order to prevent injury.
The first translation that I did—an app allowing people to monitor their heart rate while listening to music after a workout, and tracking the information gathered—is tailored to high school athletes. The exigence for this app is that high school athletes often work themselves to extremes and end up injured, which can drastically impact their future if they wanted to play sports in college of even afterwards. Many of my friends and acquaintances in high school had to completely change their college path and life plan after a bad injury. In order to address this exigence, I chose an iphone app because technology is very relevant to this age group. Three quarters or teens have access to smartphones, and the age group from 18-29 year olds are the most likely to partake in the use of smartphone apps (Lenhart and MarketingChart). Because high schoolers are aged from 14-18 years old, the platform of an iphone app is an effective way to reach them.
The aesthetics of the app were important in appealing to the chosen age group. The app itself is brightly colored, so that it does not seem too serious or boring. The layout is extremely straightforward, with one main home screen and four tabs on the bottom, titled “Music”, “HR” for heart rate, “Progress”, and “Info”. The directions for acquiring accurate heart rate information are also easy to follow because the home screen contains a message that says “place thumb here”, and a space for the thumb. This direction was a choice that I made to “add valuable information” and to “work well with the images around [the words]” to make the app straightforward (McCloud). In addition, the flow that I chose for the app pages reflects the app user’s priorities—music and heart rate first, and info page last. The kids will not be bombarded with hard-to-decipher information about the science behind why the music will help them recover more quickly because they may not have time to read about this or care that much. The aesthetics of the application reflect choices that I made about the layout and overall flow of the text, which aid in the application’s usability.
The moves that I made in order to transform the scholarly article mostly have to do with simplifying the information, and making it accessible for a younger audience. To do this, I simplified larger concepts by replacing scientific jargon with more easily understood language. For example, I replaced, “post-exercise parasympathetic reactivation appears to be an important mechanism with a cardioprotective effect in both healthy participants and patients with cardiovascular disease” with “this measurement gives us information about your Autonomic Nervous System activity, which plays an important role in cardiac health and your heart rate recovery after working out.” Without sacrificing important information, I still transformed the sentence to be more understandable to high-schoolers. I also took on a very conversational tone, so that kids of a high school age could relate to the writers of the app, rather than thinking of them as researchers who do not really know what teens need in their lives. I directly addressed the audience, and I also used conversational words and phrases such as “basically” and “it’s that simple!”. I made sure to “adjust my tone and voice to get the effect that I want” (Losh and Alexander). I also left out aspects of the study that would be irrelevant to high-schoolers, such as the methods and statistical analysis; I instead focused the results and parts from the introduction and discussion, to give the users the information that is most relevant to them.
The second translation that I did had some similarities to the first in terms of appealing to a non-academic audience, however it had many differences because it was tailored to an older audience who use trainers at a gym club. The exigence of this flyer is that adults can have difficulty finding time to work out, and maximizing the benefits from their time because they are extremely busy with work and possibly kids. However, this exigence applies to a large spectrum of adults. In order to narrow it down a little more, I chose adults aged 40-50, because they are not as agile as younger adults, however still tend to work out. Because of this, they are more susceptible to injury than younger adults, however still work out more than older adults. In response to this exigence, I created a flyer that explains how beneficial it can be to listen to certain music after working out in order to recover more quickly.
The flyer contains an address to those who should listen, that reads “Attention valuable customers”, as well as another notifier, which are then proceeded by a short info/summary paragraph. There are a few more background info paragraphs with titles—“Post Exercise Heart Rate Variability”, “Statistical Evidence”, “Why is this Important to you?”, and then a salutation. The information is broken up into five short sections, in order to give the readers the most important and relevant information about each background topic, and not overwhelm them by doing so. In addition to the reader-friendly layout of the flyer, the other aesthetics help the appeal as well. I deliberately chose a light green background for the flyer with black text in a plain font, because it seemed eye-catching, yet professional. I stayed away from any bright colors that would have appeared bombarding. In order to grab attention, I used a badge-shaped notifier that reads, “Important for all members!” This extra part of the flyer is intended to grab the attention of the adults, without sacrificing the seriousness of the message. The layout and salience of the flyer work together to reach out to adults, while still being taken seriously.
Most moves that I made were based on making the flyer concise and intriguing, while making the source seem credible. Each paragraph on the flyer is short—much shorter than the paragraphs in the scholarly article—because I extracted the main ideas that the adults at a gym club would care about, such as an explanation of what the parasympathetic nervous system is, and why exactly that is relevant to them. I left out a lot of irrelevant information from the scholarly article, such as the specific statistics, and some of the background info. I included selected information about the study, as well as the background info, in order to appeal to the readers’ ethos and gain credibility, while staying concise. For example, I summarized the sentence, “The frequency of HRV, which is obtained from HR using methods such as fast Fourier transform, autoregressive model and maximum entropy methods (MEM), contains two major components: a low-frequency power (LF; 0.04–0.15 Hz) and a high-frequency power (HF; 0.15–0.40 Hz),” into “Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can non-invasively be used to measure the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity.” This transformation altered the jargon to be less medical and more understandable, while still appearing knowledgeable. As mentioned in Writing Identities, “rhetoric is about presenting a character that an audience will trust.” The importance of this information in the flyer is to let the readers know that they can trust the information that is being given to them, while not overwhelming them. Throughout my flyer, I transformed the information from the scholarly article to create a balance between conciseness and in-depth, trusted information.
Overall, I used a professional, yet friendly tone throughout my flyer in order to be polite without transcending any boundaries with the customers. I used words like “valued customers,” and referred to the readers as “members,” in order to be polite and make them feel as though they are part of a caring community. Also, during the “Why is this relevant to you?” section, I took on a more conversational tone in order to relate to the members. For example, I started out with “I know that big words about the inner workings of your body may seem a little far fetched in terms of relevance to you.” This sentence takes away the sterile tone from talking about the study, and brings the flyer back down to being relatable to the member’s lives. It is extremely important to remember that your tone “should engage your audience in a way that will invite them to feel receptive to your messages” (Losh and Alexander). Incorporating a friendly tone into a flyer that contains important medical information was a very significant part of my appeal to the adults.
Writing my WP3 meant experimenting with different identities that I took on in order to reach different audiences. Appealing to audiences who are as different as middle-aged adults and high-school kids meant completely changing not only what I said, but how I said it. I enjoyed this project a lot because it allowed me to be creative with content, delivery, and even the visual aspects that go into every writing piece. From the relatable, fun and friendly tone I took on in the iphone app translation, to the polite and knowledgeable person I became in the second translation, I learned how drastically writing changes based on the exigence and audience that are being addressed.
Works Cited
Jia, Tiantian, et al. "Music Attenuated A Decrease In Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity After Exercise." Plos ONE 11.2 (2016): 1-12. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 May 2016.
Lenhart, Amanda. Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015. Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 2015. Web. 28 May 2016.
Losh, Elizabeth M., Jonathan Alexander, Kevin Cannon, and Zander Cannon. Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
McCloud, Scott. Scott McCloud | Journal » Archive » Writing with Pictures. Scott McCloud Journal RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2016.
Young Adults Lead Mobile App Use. MarketingCharts. N.p., 2010. Web. 28 May 2016.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
WP3 Draft
Older Audience Gym Flyer:
*Important information for athletes and gym-goers*
Attention to all of our valuable club members,
The care you take of your body before, after, and during exercise is important to reach the maximum benefit from a work out. If you do not give your body adequate time to heal and recover after working out, it is possible to injure yourself and prevent further work to strengthen your body where it needs it most. In order to become your healthiest self and reach your full potential, you must take care of your body after exercising by stretching and rehabbing it in the correct ways. Recent studies have shown that listening to music after exercising improves parasympathetic reactivation, which can result in a faster recovery and reduction in cardiac stress after exercising, which is explained further below.
Post Exercise Heart Rate Variability
Exercise rapidly increases heart rate, so post-exercise shows a rapid decrease in heart rate. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) can non-invasively be used to measure the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. This measurement is important because the rate at which the heart rate decreases after exercise can play an important role in cardiac health, and avoiding excessive cardiac work.
Statistical Evidence
In a recent study (Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity After Exercise), researchers used 26 healthy volunteers, who partook in four different sessions of measured ANS activity. The sessions were one sedentary session, one biking session, one music session, and one biking with music session. The study confirmed the researcher’s hypothesis that music elicits activity in the parasympathetic nervous system—a smaller component of the ANS.
Why is this important to you?
I know that big words about the inner workings of your body may seem a little far fetched in terms of relevance to you. However, listening to music after a workout, specifically sedative music, can facilitate relaxation as well as release tension. It can ultimately make a difference in the rehabilitation of your muscles, and can help to prevent injury. This is why we are spreading knowledge about this new important find.
We hope this information serves you well, and keep up the good work!
Sincerely,
The training team at Rob Gym
Younger audience iphone app:
Reflection
For my WP3, I really wanted to write about some aspect of music, because that is one of my biggest interests. I thought it would be interesting to investigate an article that showed a relationship between music and the brain or music and the body. I found a scholarly article called Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise, which contains the kind of information that I was originally looking for. This article’s main idea is ultimately that there is a surprising relationship between music and the Parasympathetic Nervous System that reveals how music could help people have a faster recovery after working out. Using this main idea, I wanted to transform my article into two pieces that inform different groups to whom this information would be relevant. I picked adults in their 20s-40s, and high school kids, and created a gym trainer’s info sheet, as well as an iphone app that reveals this new find.
My article investigates the relationship between music and the autonomic nervous system activity after exercise. The article uses the IMRAD organizational form to talk about a study. Researches carried out a study in which 26 subjects participated in four randomly chosen sessions throughout four different days of a control session, a biking session, a music session, and a biking with music session. Researchers measured how the heart rate of each subject varied throughout different times of their sessions in order to find out the autonomic nervous system activity, which was operationalized through measuring heart rate. The study found data that suggests music increases parasympathetic nerve activity after exercising. This is important because the increased activity in the parasympathetic nervous system helps muscles with rehabilitation, leading to a faster recovery and decrease in cardiac stress.
The first translation that I did—an app allowing people to monitor their heart rate while listening to music after a workout, and tracking the info— is tailored to high school students, particularly athletes. The exigence for this app is that high school athletes often work themselves to extremes and end up injured, which can often impact their future if they wanted to play sports in college of even afterwards. High schoolers are also usually very keen on technology, and use new apps more than any other age group (cite this). The app itself is brightly colored, in order to appeal to the age group (it does not seem too serious or boring), and the layout is extremely straightforward, with one main home screen and four tabs on the bottom, titled “music”, “heart rate”, “progress”, and “info page”. The directions for acquiring accurate heart rate information are also easy to follow because the home screen contains a message that says “place thumb here”, and a space for the thumb. The kids will not be bombarded with hard to decipher information about the science behind why the music will help them recover more quickly because if they want to read up a little on it, the main ideas are on the info page. The idea of the app itself is relevant to high school athletes, and the aesthetics of the app are intended to reach out to this specific age group.
The moves that I made in order to transform the scholarly article mostly have to do with simplifying the information, and making it accessible for a younger audience. To do this, I simplified larger concepts without taking away any information, by replacing scientific jargon with more easily understood language. For example, ________. I also took on a very conversational tone, so that kids of a high school age could relate to the writers of the app, rather than thinking of them as researchers who do not really know what teens need in their lives. I used words to directly addressed the audience, using “you”, and I also ______. I asked rhetorical questions to address the problem at hand of injuries happening to much to pull the app users in and make them see how useful this app could be to them. I also left out aspects of the study that would be irrelevant to a high-schooler, such as the methods and statistical analysis; I instead focused the results and parts from the introduction and discussion, to give the users the information that is most relevant to them.
The second translation that I did had some similarities to the first, however had more differences because it was tailored to an older audience, who use trainers at a gym club. The exigence of this flyer is that adults can have a harder time finding time to work out, and maximizing the benefits from their time because they are extremely busy with work and possibly kids, and tend to be less active than younger people. Because of this, I created a flyer that explains how beneficial it can be to listen to certain music after working out in order to recover more quickly. The flyer contains a title/address to those who should listen, that reads “Attention to all valuable club members”, which is then proceeded by a short info/summary paragraph. There are a few more background info paragraphs with larger titles, and then a salutation. In order to appeal to these adults, I made a flyer because when this group of people goes to the gym, they will likely see it and want to know what information it has on it.
Most moves that I made were based on making the flyer concise and intriguing, while making the source seem credible. To make it concise, I had to take out a lot of irrelevant info from the scholarly article, such as the specific statistics, and some of the background info. For example, I summarized this sentence ________, into this ________, which changed the jargon to be more understandable, while still appearing knowledgeable. I still however included a little info about the study, as well as the background info, in order to appeal to the readers’ ethos and gain credibility. I used a professional tone, without being sterile, and spoke politely in order to not transcend any boundaries with the customers. For example, ______. The colors and sizes of the titles were meant to catch the viewer's’ eyes, and keep their attention, while the spaces in between paragraphs and relatively large font were intended to guide the reader through the flyer. This flyer is intended to appeal to adults of a certain age group, by using the various moves mentioned above.
Works Cited
Jia, Tiantian, et al. "Music Attenuated A Decrease In Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity After Exercise." Plos ONE11.2 (2016): 1-12. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 May 2016.
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
thlog 5/18/16
It seemed like the comments that helped people most with understanding where they ran into issues during their WP2s were about the discrepancy between how a writer reads something and how the reader interprets that same thing. I think it is extremely important to read like a writer when reading texts, in order to gain techniques that will help with rhetoric. However, I think it is just as important to write like a reader in some cases. Stepping into the shoes of the reader definitely would have helped me, and possibly some of my classmates, who said things like, "I learned that even if my organization made sense to me, it does not necessarily make sense to the reader." If I had put on a different lens to read my WP2, I could have possibly seen that the organization would not make sense to someone on the outside of my paper.
Overall, I think I did well on WP2, and I'm proud of my work. I improved a little from WP1, which shows progress in my mind. Hopefully WP3 will be as interesting as it seems like it will be. Creativity is key for WP3 and I'm hoping that I can integrate my creativity with school-work, because for all of my life those have been pretty separate parts of me.
In class today we briefly talked about summaries. I am still a little unclear on this because the summaries on the board were usually just one sentence, but I’m assuming that in our PB3A, our summaries had to be longer than that. I understand the concept of a summary, I just hope that mine came through in a concise way, since that is often something I struggle with.
I actually am excited to look back at my WPs and take the comments to heart to try to change some stuff around, hopefully improving my papers. I think that not just seeing the comments, but the act of creating new essays will really help me to see where I went wrong and why.
PB3A
5/17/16
PB3A
For my WP3, I really wanted to write about some aspect of music, because that is one of my biggest interests. I thought it would be interesting to investigate an article that showed a relationship between music and the brain or music and the body. I found a scholarly article called Music Attenuated a Decrease in Parasympathetic Nervous System Activity after Exercise, which contains the kind of information that I was originally looking for. This article’s main idea is ultimately that there is a surprising relationship between music and the Parasympathetic Nervous System. Using this main idea, I think it would be interesting to play off of the idea of a surprising “unity” of concepts/ideas, and turn that into two genres that concern relationships between people.
My article investigates the relationship between music and the autonomic nervous system activity after exercise. The article uses the IMRAD organizational form to talk about a study. Researches carried out a study in which 26 subjects participated in four randomly chosen sessions throughout four different days of a control session, a biking session, a music session, and a biking with music session. Researchers measured how the heart rate of each subject varied throughout different times of their sessions in order to find out the autonomic nervous system activity. The study found data that suggests music increases parasympathetic nerve activity and attenuated the exercise-induced decrease in parasympathetic activity, while the orthostatic tolerance of activity remained the same.
The translation for the younger audience could be a gossip column about two celebrities that unexpectedly started dating. I think middle schoolers and even high-schoolers are sometimes targeted by magazines and can tend to be more interested in celebrity gossip, especially if the celebrities are relevant to them (in shows that they watch, artists of music they listen to, fashion icons for their age group, etc.). Young readers are less likely to sit down and want to read a long article that has professional jargon. For this reason, the jargon I will use exciting adjectives and other language. I will use a lot of punctuation and short, impactful sentences. I will use conversational language as well in order to relate to the younger audience, and keep the blurb relatively short in comparison to a longer article. I would emphasize details that show the music and nervous system’s relationship—the moment in the experiment when they realized there is a correlation—rather than focusing on smaller details such as the methods of the study. The most important information for this translation will be the intersection of the two, not the background information about each one. I think this article will work well to transform into something that will appeal to preteens and teenagers because of the main idea, and the conventions of gossip columns that I will employ.
For the older audience, I will transform the scholarly article into a marriage announcement via a facebook post. This i s again playing off of the idea that the article describes a unity between two concepts that people did not know existed beforehand. People in their late 20s-30s create facebook engagement/marriage posts in order to let all of their friends know in an efficient, easy way, that they have decided to get married. People used to send letters or just invite people to their wedding, but with the presence of social media, everyone likes to update everyone they know about what they are doing in life. This post will be longer than your average facebook post, but nowhere near as long as an article. It will also be conversational, however, still be appropriate for all of the people who adults are friends with on facebook—friends, acquaintances, old friends, co-workers, bosses, old bosses, parents, other family members, etc. I will use happy and positive adjectives, while I highlight the story of how these two came together. In this post, the most important information will be these people’s journey to get to the point of engagement (in the article, this would be the background info and methods), rather than the conclusion of discussion (this would just be the idea that they got engaged). The relationship of music and the parasympathetic nervous system will make a good engagement facebook post for young/middle-aged adults because I will combine the conventions of that type of post with the information from the scholarly article.
One question I have is, are my genre transformations too similar? I think the conventions for each are very different, but the idea of being centered around a relationship are the same.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
thlog 5/12/16
5/12/16
Well, WP2 went pretty well. It flowed out a lot more effortlessly than WP1, probably because I had so much to talk about. I hope I improved my previous problems as much as I could (having a more specific thesis sentence, not being as repetitive, etc.). I’m glad that I really tried to focus on those aspects that I know I struggled with, but I also hope that no other aspects of my paper suffered because of that.
I think it was harder for WP2 to incorporate sources from our class readings because I ended up re-defining a lot of terms that I had already defined in WP1 and in my PBs, which felt repetitive. I know that they are separate pieces and practice makes perfect, however it still felt annoying to get myself to repeat concepts.
Another thing I struggled with was differentiating ‘moves’ and concepts because we worked with them separately, and I think they overlap a lot. Their similarities were plentiful, so in the end it was up to me to determine what I considered a move and what I considered a concept. This was fine, but then I had to be consistent about those differentiations.
Moving onto WP3, it seemed a little confusing, but honestly not that bad. I like creative projects once in awhile. It seems like this will be a good chance to take the skills that we have learned and play with them in a less serious way. I think the creative aspect of this project will facilitate outside-the-box thinking, more-so than our previous projects have. Not that our past projects have lacked creativity, but there was no first-hand creation involved; there was just analysis, which is what we are used to doing.
The online class was interesting. I did like sort of being in my own space and thoughts, and being able to work in a comfortable space. However, it was a little stressful having everything on one screen. I had to keep track of time while checking the chat, gauchospace, my google doc, and my blog. All of these was a tad overwhelming, but overall I think it was a successful class.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Bob Ross video response
What are some "moves" you see in these videos?
- creating the illusion of a lake and reflection
- using a sharp edge of a brush to create trees
- not defining the shapes of trees that were far away
- using different tools to create mountains (scraper/knife, brush)
- blending in new paint with old background paint
- using a fan brush
- creating a sharp edge with the paint on the fan brush
- taking perspective into account when painting
- they describe how the viewer will see what they are painting. Bob Ross talks about how some of the branches on the evergreen are pointing towards us, and some pointing away. Therefore, he did not need to draw in every branch
- they refer to the small brush strokes by explaining the nature of the paint and the brush on the canvas
- they also refer to the overall picture by taking steps back every now and then to say "see? doesn't that really look like an evergreen?" or "a reflection?"
- they talk a lot about how hard or soft they push the brushes onto the canvas and how much paint they put on the brush
- they talk about why they do what they do. for example, why they do not define the farther away trees or why it does not matter yet what the inside of the mountain looks like
- they talk about what essence of the scene they are trying to capture- the light on each tree branch, or the intricate detail of the bark
- I would characterize Bob Ross' style are caring more about the overall image at the end and how the illusions play out, rather than caring about every tiny detail in the picture
- I would characterize one of the disney painters as being abstract because he used more geometrical shapes than small brush strokes to capture the tree
- I would characterize another disney artist as being extremely detail oriented because his main concern was capturing the grooves in the bark of the tree, and showing how much the tree had been through
- I would characterize the last disney artist as focusing on the texture of the tree because he used paint that captures the depth of it
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