ARW 4/26 Response

Yesterday, ARW took place at Macs room and we had a lecture on how to use the Google Reader and Feedly properly. I really wonder how many powerful tools Google has, because I have not been familiar with most of them before Rab taught us. By using the Google Reader, we could easily access to other section mates' blogs. There are three advantages to this. First, we can see if anyone uploaded his or her blog by checking a number next to their names, so we can remind ourselves even if we were forgetting to write one. Second, by reading blogs reciprocally, we can look for different answers, perspectives or ways of thinking. Especially for responses to chapters of a book, as we are now doing for Lies My Teacher Told Me, this method of learning is very effective since we all think and comprehend differently. Third, even if anyone is absent, he or she can catch up to class by knowing what lecture or class activity took place on that day. We can even add websites we visit often into this program and search pages that have a certain keywords. For example, if I want to look for the articles about the Global Warming in The New York Times, I can just type in "Global Warming" and it will look for all articles about this topic.

One thing I cannot understand is why Google is going to remove this program; it is understandable that it is unprofitable, but Google is already a big company, and as Rab said, many other programs function based on this program (ex. Feedly). The Google Reader will shut down on July 1st, 2013, so we should learn and use this program wisely before the deadline approaches. Google should reconsider its decision.

 

 I truly enjoy Rab's psychology-related lectures that also link to essay writing tips. His metaphors are always amusing and interesting. One I enjoyed the most yesterday is the lesson about two musical composition videos. The first video was "Mother of All Funk Chords", made by Kutiman. This music was composed from several different songs performed by several talented musicians who all play different instruments. Therefore, each segment of music does not mean much, but the process of combining all of them makes one great music. This is the type of music we have to aim for. However, he showed us another example as a metaphor for the writing we should avoid. The second example was "Thriving Ivory's Angels on the Moon". This music was composed from many different people singing the same song, but since the level of singing varies in a big range, this did not give much good impression to listeners. Thus, the lesson is that we should not just search for opinions that match to ours, without caring their qualities. We should look for high quality opinions and statements, no matter what the position is. It is important to blend many sources together to create a high quality piece of writing, as people blend several kinds of coffee beans for a delicious cup of coffee.