Words&Minds. Chapter 4 Persuasion Control and Argument.

Mercer outlines the apex of persuasive argument, which has had drastic political and cultural implication in the 20th century with broadcast media. Orators demonstrating charisma, moxie, dogged determination, and audience control sought to persuade groups into their line of thinking. A three-part list as Atkinson parlays in his own research were a common component of public speaking. A succinct logic of point followed by three subsequent points that provide cohesiveness to speeches. Compare and contrast in a speech also is an effective tool to provide solution or remedy for the audience to understand.  Vernacular to provide fruition is what political pundits continually seek in order to maintain control. Yet even as speakers to a smaller audience we exhibit the very same mannerisms towards others. We may use metaphors as common understood tenets to our persuasion or a way of explaining something more concisely.

As an art teacher, the use of persuasion is continual process that begins in the first days of class. Student are skeptical about what is expected of them in an art classroom environment. They doubt their abilities, or what type of creativity I am grading them on. It is more subjective than that I always tell them, it is always about effort and your own process to the solution.That is not to say they are not willing to explore subject matter presented to them. It is just the students need time to know what you are trying to explain to them, this usually is done with the end product. Then they say “......oh I understand” what you were talking about.  

Words&Minds. Chapter 3 The Given and the New.

Mercer outlines explicit and formal knowledge that could be exchanged during a conversation. It could be tacit or implied system of cue or hint exhange that is non verbal agreement or common knowledge between participants. A listener can elicit responses from the orator of a conversation to make it more efficient or better yet just getting to the point.  However if neither a participant or group of individuals have no honed system of selective listening that is proactive and helps promote conversation, a serious breakdown of communication occurs.  Within this idea Bakhtim could be just a continual conversation that has never stopped since the dawn of human kind.

As a teacher I often wonder if students catch on to cue and wait time when an answer from me is solicited. I can ask a question on about anything dealing with art. Wait time can be pretty effective as a source of creating response in the classroom. Waiting for a student to answer a question when I call on them proves to be a difficult assertion these days. Even utilizing wait time after an answer has been given also can prove to be awkward. However if there is any success in this endeavor students have the opportunity to answer a question which actually helps them hone an ability of autonomy in an art classroom. As they get older they become more assertive in providing answers.

Words&Minds. Chapter 2 Laying the Foundations.

Mercer starts off this chapter, by writing about the realm of what beholds our language and dichotomy for our society, communications. Instead of thinking of communication as a linear process or path vector path, Mercer assesses that communication is rather a dynamic and ambiguous in nature. Contextual foundation is needed to understand the opinion or rationale of the person you are talking to or an audience, this again alludes to Mercer’s thoughts on the process of interthinking. Context is always is needed to make your communication more enticing to others by use of demonstrative devices during your conversations. Mercer writes about explanation, interpretation, and negotiation as being expressly used for ground rules for these conversations.

This reminded me of a fishing story my father told me awhile ago:

My dad and a friend were going out fishing, they were pulled over by a county police boat to check if they had fishing license. As dad only bought one license both so both men could not fish. As the officer checked the IDs, he asked my dad who the other man in the boat was. My dad stated “He is a rider”. Once the officer was finished checking my dad's paperwork he turned to my dad’s friend and said “and who do you write for?”

One word in the conversation of dialect threw off an individual’s train of thought, the police officer assumed the other person was an author instead of a rider or passenger in the boat. Actually he was not an author but he was proud to be famous for a moment.  

Words&Minds. Chapter 1 Language as Tool for Thinking

Mercer elludes his rationale of interthinking is the scope and sequence for the rest of this book. Interthinking is the coined term for allowing paths to be constructed between verbal interactions and always continually carrying on cultural norms for society. Language is a tool for carrying intellectual activity, and we are the ancestor of an activity provide to us by former generations that provides social need for individuals and communities. Words or along with language can imply different things so misinterpretation can exist or occur throughout structure of content.  Mercer also provides some historical insight into this reasoning with Vygotsky’s research where language provides cultural foundation and a psychological tool for sentience and organization.

I feel Mercer lays the foundation for the rest of his book with this initial chapter. Historical relevance, a junction of where we are today in terms of modern communication, and where it will lead us into the future are all provided. As an art teacher I can understand his point of view and see many numerous examples of communication in art class everyday.     

DynDNS Problems!

I am posting this in case anyone else from IT566 has DynDNS and experiencing problems seeing their web page. I emailed a DynDNS "ninja" last night (March 29th) and got a response the next day, also I am posting this so I can easily reference this email while troubleshooting on my server machine, and or not logging into my gmail all the time. 


DynDNS Ninja response..............................................................
"What you need to check are:

       1.  Make sure the IP address in our database is correct.  You can't connect with your hostname until you can connect using your external IP first.

       2.  Check that no firewall is blocking access

       3.  If you have a router, make sure this is configured to forward
       the necessary ports to your computer

       http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/routers_and_port_forwarding.html

       4.  If your ISP has begun blocking port 80 and you want to run a web
       server (or some video cameras and other devices that use that port)
       you'll need to use our WebHop service to work around this:

       https://www.dyndns.com/services/webredirect/

       This link will also walk you through what to check in detail:

       http://www.dyndns.com/support/kb/why_cant_i_connect_to_my_server.html

--
Alan Ellis
DynDNS Ninja Squad
http://dyn.com
http://twitter.com/dyndns  "

Drupal 7 installed on local host.

Double Quack! I installed Drupal 7 on my local host computer. Not sure if I am completed the total requirements of this assignment I must say that installing LAMP and looking (examining) through the phpMyAdmin hierarchy files made me understand how to create a database folder in phpMyAdmin SQL. Just went with the "plain jane"database that I named quaxster. So onto the journey! 

* Assuming you have apache or apache2 and LAMP requirements.
1.find the......./var folder, ..............inside /var folder right click on the www folder, rightclick properties, goto the permissions tab..............set owner and group to your username

2. Download Drupal 7 from drupal.org. I selected the 7.0 tar.gz (2.6 MB) | zip (3.05 MB)  it automatically unzipped and ready to go in my computer.


3. Rename the folder that downloaded onto your computer from "drupal-7.0" to "drupal7"  (no space).


4. Move the drupal7 into the /var folder then into www folder. The ubuntu yellow tags at the top of the window help with outlining the file extenstion which should read............./var/www/drupal7.


5. Inside this very same drupal7 folder (which is in the /var and www folder!) open the sites folder, then open the default folder, create a files folder that goes in this default folder. Thus you have /var/www/drupal7/sites/default/files. Right Click on this files folder and select properties and then the permissions tab and under the 'Others' tab, set "folder access" to 'create and delete files'

6. Whoa there Nellie!........while you are here this default folder notice the default.settings.php file (placid blue globe on a piece of paper) .......right click and copy and paste it. Rename this .php duplicated file to settings.php. I left the older default.settings.php file there with the new settings.folder.......will it hurt who knows!
 
7. Now in your 127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin for your computer go to phpMyAdmin located on the home site (click on the phpMyAdmin logo) and create a new database that Drupal7 will be housed in, I named my quaxster, yeah baby! no just quaxster. The database perimeters were plain jane and created it without all the bells and whistles.

8. Type in your web brower h*tp://localhost/drupal7......(substitute this * with a t....yup). Your computer should open a drupal installation window with a little oily guy icon. If not you have your files or folders out of order go back to step 5! 

9. Go through the Drupal install from this series of dialog boxes.

10. Until you hit the roadblock! For in the Drupal installation Database configuration it will ask you to align drupal7 with your new database you created in phyMyAdmin (step7). My database was named quaxster.

11. Drupal will ask for Data base Username: Use your phpMyAdmin username, mine is "root" as I never changed it when I installed phpMyAdmin. Yet I would prefer more edible nutrients for I am a duck!

12. Drupal will ask for for the Data base password: your phpMyAdmin password. 

13. Provide email address for Drupal updates. yada yada....complete the install.

14. I may have forgotten something in these steps..... but I got excited when I was past the hard stuff........yup yup yup

Vector Based Software

Been working on my school's emergency plan for the last 4 weeks with little time for anything else. No one in 10 years has produced an updated floor plan of my school with labels electrical and utilities cutoffs as well as exits and camera locations. I am using Freehand MX which is a vector based program that has been discontinued but still is sold by Adobe (yea!). Once Aldus then Macromedia software product, Freehand started with a large user base that was whittled away by Corel draw and Adobe Illustrator.

Now once I get this plan passed by the numerous powers to be in my at my school district I will covert it to Libre Draw and see the results. I miss the fact that Freehand has no b/w preview of color graphics like Libre offers. Oh well just press command P and hope it is not too dark.