Creating Slides Based on C.R.A.P.

Hello!
Recently sunny days are often but its getting colder... I'm very excited that winter is coming soon but have to be careful not to catch a cold!

Last class we made slides based on the principles of C.R.A.P.
For "Contrast", I was able to make good use of the white background and make the pictures and the text stand out. For "Repetition", I used the same font in all of the slides and also happened to have colorful pictures in most of the slides which made the slides look related to each other. For "Alignment", I wrote only the core points of the slides and make it easy to understand. Finally, for "Proximity", I just wrote few words per slide and made it simple as possible.

Overall, what I thought through making the slides was "Simple is the best."

It was very fun for me to create the slides and think about what to present. Can't wait to make more slides for other presentations too!

Have a nice day:)

Evernote

Hello! Having a nice day so far.

Today I am writing about Evernote and "C.R.A.P."
I learned how to use Evernote at the previous class. At first I thought it was kind of similar to Zotero, but it was completely different! Using Evernote, I can clip some sources visually making it easier and faster to understand about the source. This feature will be useful when I do not have much time to organize the information from the sources or save visual sources like YouTube. Also it will be definitely useful for creating our next essay.
Out of all sorts of functions of Evernote, I especially found the screenshot useful because I can cut out only the part I want from a web page. The part that it is editable is making it even more useful.

Changing the topic to "C.R.A.P.", I am going to describe what this means.
"C" stands for "Contrast". We have to consider the color contrast between the text and the background.
"R" stands for "Repetition". It would make a good slide if we use same font and same letter size in all of the slides.
"A" stands for "Alignment". We need to consider the positions of photos and texts in order to make the slides more meaningful.
"P" stands for "Proximity", which means that we have to be careful not to gather the text too much in one place.

I happened to know briefly and follow all of the principles above when making slides, but I did not know the words for it so I learned a lot from the "C.R.A.P." videos.

Can't wait to use all of these techniques and tools at the presentation!
Bye, have a nice day :)

Hello!
 I found a reliable FA article in Wikipedia that is related to my essay which was about returnees in Japan. The article was detailed and it even had the anthem of Japan posted and ready to be played!
Here is the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan

Next, I did a in-text citation of another book and a newspaper article.

Newspaper Source

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerc. Irure dolor in reprehend incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. “Very important quote here”(Saint Louis). Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse molestaie cillum. Tia non ob ea soluad incommod quae egen ium improb fugiend. Officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd dereud.

Book Source

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerc. Irure dolor in reprehend incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. “Very important quote here”(Sueda). Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse molestaie cillum. Tia non ob ea soluad incommod quae egen ium improb fugiend. Officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum Et harumd dereud.

It was very smooth to do the in-text citation. I checked if there were any errors in Zotero and I knew exactly how I should do to do the in-text citation. This will definitely be useful for me to create another essay in the future.

Thank you for reading:) Have a nice day!

Using the Searching Tools for Academic Resources

Hello. Previously my class was taught how to search for academic resources using tools such as Gale, Virtual Reference Library, LexisNexis, ProQuest, and JSTOR. My overall impression was that it would be very useful for writing my essays.
For example, in LexisNexis I can decide which newspaper to search from (The Japan Times etc.) and each newspaper runs different kinds of information.
Also, JSTOR enables us to look at all the academic magazine's texts that were published from the first issue, and we will not miss the old texts.
Lastly, ICU Library Discovery is a great tool that we can find some sources that match with our requirements from various searching tools including the ones I wrote above. This surprised me very much and I want to make good use of this.
Practically I am only using ProQuest, but I want to start using other searching tools in the future.

Thank you for reading my blog entry. Have a nice day!

Zotero Citations

Helo! Here are my citations made with Zotero.

French, Howard W. “Japan Unsettles Returnees, Who Yearn to Leave Again.” The New York Times 3 May 2000. NYTimes.com. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.

Goodman, Roger, Yuki Imoto, and Tuukka Toivonen. A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From Returnees to NEETs. 1 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Sueda, Kiyoko. Negotiating Multiple Identities: Shame and Pride among Japanese Returnees. 2014 edition. New York: Springer, 2014. Print.

It was very exciting to use Zotero, and I thought it is using the internet very cleverly. It would be fun to explore and find out other things that I can do with Zotero. I liked how I can use Zotero on both the internet and as an application. I want to find out more about Zotero by exploring more.

Result and Analysis of the Fruits Survey

Here is the result and analysis for my fruits survey.

I figured out that most of the students like eating peaches. This result was satisfying for me because I prefer peach very much.

I figured out that there are fewer people who eat bananas more often in a week.

Most of the people prefer eating fruits as they are. I did not expect this result, so it was surprising.

The last question was "Tell me your favorite fruit and why you prefer it." Everybody had different answers and was very interesting to read the reasons why they prefer it.

R&P Questions 9/8/14

Q. How do you think the tools or strategies that you will learn in this class will be helpful for your academic research?

A. Through R&P, we will learn things that are very useful for academic research such as sharing documents with large amount of data, collecting primary sources, and creating the works cited page more easier. At academic works such as writing essays, I need to collect data from elsewhere and manage those data in a way to support my essays. At times like these, it is confusing to organize the data that I got from many sources and it is useful if I have one page that gathers all the information related to my essay and can see where I got those at once.  Therefore, the skills I learned at R&P shall be helpful.

Q. How comfortable are you using technology for learning? What devices and apps do you use now that help you in your life as student? 

A. I feel very comfortable using technology for learning. It is stimulating to use technology skills that I do not use regularly. I use my macbook and iphone to work on my assignments more effectively. I do not use much apps for working on my assignments.