Qualitative research is based around the why and how.  This means it is a study of how humans behave and why people act that way.  This type of research is done through observations and studies while direct interaction with the individuals.  These interactions could be done one-on-one or through a group setting.  When conducting qualitative research there are a number of tools, or resources, that could be used to better the study.  Video cameras, voice recorders, or written data are just a couple of the resources that could be used.

Narrative inquiry relates to qualitative research in that it is the study of human behavior.  This concept came to be by emerging under the qualitative research spectrum.  It is concerned with how people create meaning from events that have happened.  Narrative inquiry isn't supposed to be just a storytelling process but it should be more focused on how people take events and make meanings or understandings about them.

Both of these concepts will be used within the collaborative research project in a number of different ways.  One way is that we are going to be conducting a study of human behavior.  We are going to be conducting interviews using qualitative research using video cameras or audio recorders.  The main purpose of these interviews is to get a narrative inquiry about the meaning of the events in the interviewees life.

When I was younger a majority of the food that was consumed in my household were bought at the grocery store.  As the years have passed my family has strayed away from the supermarket when purchasing meat, fruits, and vegetables.  During the summer there is nothing better then eating local sweet corn with a good "free roaming" hamburger.  

While reading the Pollan article I understood the economics that go into the farming and agricultural industries.  I have been exposed to these industries since I was younger but never really thought of the economic impact.  My dad raises pigs for slaughter and my sister raises a pig for 4-H.  Until they started raising the animals I never thought about the cost of feed, the cost of equipment needed, and the cost of vet care for the animals, if they need it.  After reading his article I really thought about all of those costs and I wonder if my dad and my sister actually make a positive profit off of the animals.

While reading the Berry article the one thing that I found interesting was his list of how to be a responsible eater.  On that list it says "Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy food that is produced closest to your home."  My family does this with the meat we buy, as stated above.  We also do this with fruits and vegetables by purchasing them from a local farm.  I feel better knowing where exactly my food is coming from.
Overall both of these articles allowed me to connect the information into my real world.  I enjoyed both of them.

On Tuesday and Thursday of last week we watched Food Inc. in class.  If you haven't watched this documentary you really should.  It is one of those documentaries that is very eye opening and shows a strong point of view on a specific group of people.  Growing up I have been exposed to the farming and agriculture industry so I could relate to some of the topics that were covered during the duration of the movie.  This blog isn't about my review of the movie though, it is about three discussion questions that I have to answer for class this coming Tuesday.

Question 9. Do you think healthy eating should be a right, a responsibility, or a privilege?
I feel that eating healthy foods shouldn't be a privilege it should be available to anyone, poor or rich.  I honestly feel that eating healthy is already a right in some ways.  The country provides healthy organic food to its citizens through the organic food section in the grocery store and the whole food stores that are throughout the country.  As much as some don't believe the government is trying to provide the correct information on their labeling to show the citizens exactly what is in the different products.  Eating healthy is a person's responsibility.  They need to take the responsibility to buy the healthy foods over the junk foods.  Parents need to make sure they are feeding their kids more fruits and vegetables and not the sugary foods.

Question 15. What do you think about Oprah being sued for saying she wasn't sure if she wanted to continue eating hamburgers, as described in the film?  What do you think about a law that prevents you from saying something negative about a particular food item?
Oprah, just like everyone else, has the freedom of speech.  In the movie it shows how she is unsure if she wants to eat hamburgers because of the Mad Cow outbreak.  Everyone at that time probably had the same thoughts as her but because they aren't on television their opinion was nationally known.  The idea of suing her over that incident is completely ridiculous.  If their was a law that prevented citizens from talking negative about a food item I would think that the government was ridiculous.  There is more important things in our country that should be taken care of like poverty, not the negative feelings over food items.

Question 16. Author Michael Pollan points out in the film that "to eat well in this country costs more than to eat badly.  It will take more money and some people simply don't have it.  And that's one of the reasons that we need changes in policy level so that the carrots are a better deal than the chips."  If healthy, environmentally sustainable food were to cost less than other food, do you think people would eat more of it?  Why do you think that?
I think it depends on the family whether or not they would eat the less expensive healthy foods.  If a family has children that are involved in sports every night out of the week it is easier for them to just go through the drive thru line then it is to cook meals.  Usually sports are over late, especially for younger children, and cooking a meal after that would take away from the time available to help complete their homework.  It would also make bed time later, in the view of these parents.  If a family already eats healthy I think it would just improve their healthy eating.  They would continue to eat the healthy foods and maybe shy away from the drive thru lines altogether. 

Over the past week I have been receiving feedback on my Twitterive project by some classmates and professor Mangini.  When we first got assigned this project I wasn't exactly sure in which direction I wanted to take it.  Once I decided that I wanted to do it about Disney World, the question was how to develop a story making it both multimodal and multigenre.  My first draft was defiantly on the weaker side but I wanted to get some feedback before I attacked the project for the second time.  

The feedback that I have received had some good inputs on how I can kind of explode the story a little more.  Christie suggested, in her blog, that I should include more diary entries throughout the project to serve as a repetend.  I really like this idea and I think I am going to incorporate a "dear diary" before each of the trips that I have chosen to feature in my project.  Sam O suggested that I should add myself as a character throughout the piece.  At first I thought that I had done this but after looking back at the project I realize that I didn't add myself in the piece.  I think I am going to create myself as a character through different events that have happened while traveling to Disney World.  

Professor Mangini also provided some good feedback.  One part of my project that I thought was the weakest was my prologue.  I felt like it didn't really fit nicely into my project and needed to be changed some way but Professor Mangini said that it was one of the best he has seen all semester.  That was a surprise.  After reading all of his comments on my project I learned that I need to develop the story a little more and make sure that everything is stated clearly.  For example, I had written a piece about attending the half marathon there but never really explained it before hand so it seems to just be thrown in there.

Overall all of the feedback that I received was very helpful.  It made me realize things about my project that I hadn't realized before.  I am going to take some of the suggestions and use them to explode my project into a more powerful piece.

Today was Day 3 of Twitterive presentations.  Again it was day filled with good projects with great topics.  All of the projects were interesting to hear about and interesting to hear about why the "place" they have chosen is important to them.

First off today was Samantha Caltabiano whose project dealt with her family.  She explained that her "place" was the physical place of her family room.  It is the place where the family is always together.  The place where important events have taken place.  In this room she found out about having two other brothers.  It was the place from where her mother called her to tell her she was getting a divorce.  I think that this is a good direction to head with the project.  One thing that we discussed as a class was the idea of making a family tree, which I believe is a great suggestion.  It will make the connection of where and when you found out about the family members you discussed.

Next was Alexa Kalin who explained the road that she has traveled to find the perfect house.  She feels as though her opinion isn't being heard because she has her mother and her fiance trying to sort of take over the situation. This project was good with a lot of potential.  While she was presented the Twitterive you got a jest of what was going on but as we discussed it as a class we found out a lot more information.  Like how she never had a "home" when she was little because she was always moving or the fact that her mother was her realtor.  I feel if these get put into the project it will make it a stronger, better understanding, project.

Samantha Olenowski was the next presenter of the day.  She portrays the life of her grandfather, who passed away ten years before she was born.  She expresses how she has the feeling as if she has known him even though they never got to meet.  I really loved how the idea of her roots flowed throughout the project with the graphic.  The project consisted of a lot of important information in the form of narrative text.  To make the project more powerful I believe that this narrative text could be broken down into different genres such as maybe a interview with her father or grandmother about her grandfather or a timeline of the important events throughout her grandfathers life.

The last presentation of the day was Michael Youngkin whose project was probably more of the most interesting ones.  His project dealt with the idea of limbic space.  I really loved the first person piece that was read before the presentation was presented.  It really set the tone for the project.  The video was also another interesting piece for the project.  The sense of a disconnect through space or distance is an interesting concept throughout the project.  When all of these things come together and get polished this is going to be another interesting project.

Today was another day of Twitterive presentations.  All of the presentations had such great topics everywhere from cancer to waiting to be a kid again.  Each presenter did a great job while constructing their Twitterives and three of the four projects brought a tear to my eye.

The first presentation was by Stephanie Bowser who discussed dance and the importance that it holds in her life.  Being diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome at the age of 17, dance has become the one place where she feels normal.  It is the place where her tics don't exist.  It is the place that is an escape for her.  I really liked the video that she added in Act Two because as she said "it gets the point across" easier then if she tried to write it.  The emotions throughout the video were raw and not scripted.  Stephanie is on the way to having a really moving project and I can't wait to see the final draft.

The second presentation was by Darren Gaunt who showed a creative Twitterive project.  He took his project through the perspective of going back to being a child but still having an adult brain.  The way that he tackled this idea was very creative.  The use of the micro fiction pieces set up the basis of what was going on.  Then he added the video of a child running around the day care and the interview with the children to really enhance that basics.  It was overall an interesting project.

The third presentation was by David Lucas who discussed his battle with Nasopharyngeal carcinoma.  For those who might not know what that is, it is a form of cancer.  David's project was probably the most moving project that has been presented thus far.  He didn't dwell from this diagnosis and you can tell that throughout the project as he uses humor to kind of lighten the mood.  If you watched the presentation in class you could see this humor present throughout its entirety.  I really liked how he used the Prezi to show the statistics instead of just typing them on the page.  Another thing that I felt was really powerfully was the photo essay.  

The final presentation of the day was by Katie Collins who discussed with us about a loss she had within her family.  This was the loss of a relationship with her father due to alcoholism.  Due to this loss she has gained a strong relationship with her grandparents that took her in their home.  She starts the Twitterive with a letter to her daddy and ends it with Next Stop The Road To Forgiveness.  This was a really great way to end it.  Katie started out unsure of what her exact place was.  She didn't know if it was the loss of her father or the gratitude for her grandparents.  Which ever she choses will leave her with a powerful project.

As you can tell it was a day of powerful presentations.  I can honestly say that I look forward to seeing what the rest of the class has created for their Twitterives.

Within the construction of my Twitterive I have become faced using multiple different modes of technology.  Some of the modes were a struggle to understand and some were simple to being with then became frustrating.  So far in this project I have used Weebly, iMovie, YouTube, BeFunky, and Microsoft Word.

The first mode of technology I had to face was learning how to work Weebly, which I am still not fully comfortable with.  At first I was completely overwhelmed trying to learn how to create the pages and all of the little details that needed to be added to make the website look professional.  I am slowly becoming more comfortable as I continue to work more and more on my Twitterive.

The next mode of technology I used was iMovie on my MacBook.  I have used this program before and the first time it defiantly went smoother then it did this time.  I grew frustrated multiple times in the three hour process that I went through trying to make a six minute movie.  At first everything went smooth then I tried to add multiple songs and everything went downhill.  Growing frustrated I walked away from the computer screen and then would come back and fix all of the mistakes that I had made.  I actually felt as though I almost gave up on the video and just finished it as fast as I could.

Youtube was the next mode I used in order to upload the movie I had made into the Twitterive.  The one problem that I had with YouTube was the long, drug out downloading process.  I think it took about a hour for the video to fully download into YouTube.  Besides that the process wasn't completely intolerable.

Another mode of technology I used was BeFunky.  This is a photo editor that I used to edit a boring photo of the castle in Magic Kingdom.  The process of using this program was completely seamless.  Everything was easy to access and easy to understand.  I will definitely use this program in the future.

For the last couple of pieces that I created for my Twitterive were created in Microsoft Word.  I took pictures off the internet and used text boxes to incorporate the text that I wanted to include with all of the photos.  The only thing that irritated me about this was that I could never line up the words from the photo and the words from the text I created.  They always looked slanted.  But after playing around with them for a little while they kind of lined up the way I wanted them too.

Creating this Twitterive has definitely forced me to face multiple modes of technology I had never used before.  It forced me to step out of my comfort zone with the technology in order to create the pieces that I felt would help enhance my project. Overall even though some of them frustrated me I am glad that I used all of the different programs that I did.