We have finally come to the end of our collaborative research project. Our group decided to make a prezi for our project, instead of the traditional paper or video. I personally had a lot of fun making it because it was something different. I have never used prezi before and it was cool to work with. I liked how you could change the fonts and add pictures. I liked the fact that you can create a path and guide your viewers through the presentation in a more interesting way then a power point. It was also interesting to be able to see the project as a whole and then be able to zoom in on particular aspects. I enjoyed working with prezi and hope to use it more in the future, hopefully in my classroom.
Our group has decided to make a Prezi for our collaborative research project. It seems that this direction is different and help our group come together a little more. We have decided to focus our project on the stuggles our interviewees have had with their diseases at home and out in restaurants. To do this we will use our interviews as sources, along with some articles and two cookbooks. To dive into the home aspect of our project we are going to compare recipes from each cookbook and a recipe for someone with no allergies. Our articles will help with the aspect of these people with food restrictions when they go out to eat. I feel confident about our research and look forward to taking the presentation in a new direction.
Yesterday afternoon my and Aubrie did our final interview for our project. We interviewed Elizabeth Mason. She has a dairy allergy and is unable to eat beef. Our interview went well even though it was difficult to meet the half hour time block. She answered all of our questions fully and accurately. I realized that during the interview I would ask a question and her answer would spark another question. That process helped fill in the time block. I enjoyed interviewing Liz and look forward to the end product.
Our group as decided to change our research topic. We are going to look into food allergies and how differently those people's eating habits are. Olivia has interviewed her cousin who must eat gluten free foods. Aubrie and I are going to interview our friend Liz who can not eat dairy and other foods. We want to know how food allergies affect the way people eat. I will keep you updated!
This weekend has brought its ups and downs with our project. We ran into a problem where we may have changed our question completely. Our interview for the weekend fell through because we weren't sure what we were going to ask yet. We are trying to get in touch with a representative or an employee at Wegman's or Whole Foods. Our communication skills are not paying off as nicely as I would have liked. Hopefully, tomorrow will bring us some answers.
Our group met at the McDonald's in Glassboro this morning to discuss possible research questions and to do some more research. Our main research question is, "Are McDonald's efforts to be healthy successful for the corporation and the public?" We came up with follow up questions as well. These questions include, "Who benefits from McDonald's push for health: the corporation financially or the public nutritionally and financially?" and "Even if McDonald's is making money off of these healthy efforts, is it keeping the public healthy?" After developing these questions we discussed who we are going to interview for the project. We narrowed it down to one of Aubrie's co-workers (who is a health nut), an employee of McDonald's, and an employee from Whole Foods. We decided to find out if McDonald's efforts are successful, we wanted to see if it was successful in different aspects. McDonald's efforts may be successful financially, but they may not be successful nutritionally. With our interviews we will get the feelings of the employees about the food choices and look for alternatives to these eating patterns.
Our group finally decided on a topic for our research paper. Our topic will see how McDonalds chains are trying to become healthier with their food choices. We are looking into the choices of french fries vs. apple dippers, milk vs. soda, water bottles, oatmeal, and many more. We are also going to dive into finances. Is it cheaper to order the non-healthy items or the healthy items? Our research so far indicates that there are many ingredients just in walnuts, yes walnuts. I look forward to furthering our research and finding out more answers to the many questions we have.
1) Why is healthy food more expensive then unhealthy food?
2) How are fast food chains trying to become more healthy?
3) Why is the government scared to tell us what we are eating?
4) Do people who work in fast food chains eat at fast food chains?
5) Is there such a thing as real organic food?
6) Why do companies have to been so secretive?
7) How have documentaries like "Food Inc" and "Super-size Me" changed our eating habits?
8) Why do people choose to become vegetarians or vegans?
9) Are fast food chains' efforts to be more healthy successful?
10) Are shows with over-weight people helping or hurting or society?
2) How are fast food chains trying to become more healthy?
3) Why is the government scared to tell us what we are eating?
4) Do people who work in fast food chains eat at fast food chains?
5) Is there such a thing as real organic food?
6) Why do companies have to been so secretive?
7) How have documentaries like "Food Inc" and "Super-size Me" changed our eating habits?
8) Why do people choose to become vegetarians or vegans?
9) Are fast food chains' efforts to be more healthy successful?
10) Are shows with over-weight people helping or hurting or society?
After reading both pieces, I believe I got a good aspect of what oral history is. To me oral history is taking an interview about an event to another level. Interviewing a person is easy, but making it a part of oral history is a little more difficult. Oral history allows you to capture a person's emotions. You can do this by video taping them, taking pictures, or using other visuals. Words are good when discribing a person's features, but actually seeing them talk about something you can see their emotional attachment to it. History should be recorded orally all the time for accuracy and emotional appeal.
"Situating Narrative Inquiry"made a little more sense to me than "What Do Narrative Inquirers Do?". As I was reading this piece flashbacks of last semester started popping into my head. I took Communication Theory and we discussed qualitative and quantitative research, as well as narrative inquiry. In this piece the author tells us what narrative inquiry is on page four, "What narrative researchers hold in common is the study of stories or narratives or descriptions of a series of events." The rest of the piece discusses in detail the four turns in narrative inquiry. Before discussing each they sum up the four and tells why they use the term 'turn' on page seven, "We use the term turn strategically because we want to emphasize the movement from one way of thinking to another and highlight the fact that such changes can occur rapidly or slowly, depending on the experience of the researchers and their experiences when doing research." As they go into detail about relationships of researcher and researched, from the general to the particular, and the blurring knowing I can't help but think that from numbers to words as data is the most important. On page fifteen the say, "The turn from numbers to words as data is not a general rejection of numbers but a recognition that in translating experience to numeric codes researchers lose the nuances of experience and relationship in a particular setting that are of interest to those examining human experience." In other words, numbers don't capture the emotional aspect of a narrative.
In the second piece, "What Do Narrative Inquirers Do?", stories were told as examples of narrative inquiry. The first story is about Ming Fang He, "Ming Fang He is a mainland Chinese woman who went through the cultural revolution as a young girl, spent time on a reforming farm, received her bachelor's degree in China and her master's degrees in English and in linguistics at two different universities in Canada." This story was interesting, but I didn't relate to it as much as I did the second one. The second story is about a group of five people, "They are a part of an ongoing research group--teachers, principals, and teacher educators--who are trying to understand their places on the professional knowledge landscapes on which they live." As a future teacher I relate to their struggles and having converstations with other future teachers about students. The author gives the reason why they used this story as an example, "Our purpose in giving this example is to demonstrate the use of terms that structure our three-dimensional narrative inquiry space."
In the second piece, "What Do Narrative Inquirers Do?", stories were told as examples of narrative inquiry. The first story is about Ming Fang He, "Ming Fang He is a mainland Chinese woman who went through the cultural revolution as a young girl, spent time on a reforming farm, received her bachelor's degree in China and her master's degrees in English and in linguistics at two different universities in Canada." This story was interesting, but I didn't relate to it as much as I did the second one. The second story is about a group of five people, "They are a part of an ongoing research group--teachers, principals, and teacher educators--who are trying to understand their places on the professional knowledge landscapes on which they live." As a future teacher I relate to their struggles and having converstations with other future teachers about students. The author gives the reason why they used this story as an example, "Our purpose in giving this example is to demonstrate the use of terms that structure our three-dimensional narrative inquiry space."