Week 6: Keep the Tweets Coming & AB Revisions

This week's agenda included peer reviewing annotated bibliographies and advocating for animals on Twitter.

Screenshot of my twitter page. Updated August 1, 2019.

On Twitter, I followed more than 10 new accounts - organizations and researchers. An interesting researcher I followed is Dr. Andrew Thaler, a deep-sea ecologist and conservation technologist. Thaler focuses on deep-sea mining on biodiversity and connectivity at hydrothermal vents while building low-cost, low-impact tools for ocean exploration. Another topic I found while scrolling through my feed was the increase in tiger population in India thanks to intense conservation efforts. In just 4 years, the population rose by 30 percent with a total of 2,967 Bengal tigers. However, tiger poaching is still continuing while an increase in human population in India is threatening the tigers' land to thrive.

Before this week, I never had a strong grasp on what an annotated bibliography was. I believe wrote one in Writing 39B, but they were only summaries of the sources. Through the last exercise of finding three sources and constructing an annotated bibliography for them, I learned that an annotated bibliography contains a summary of the sources, background on the author, information about the intended audience, and a synthesis of how the source fits in the overall essay. I had an even clearer understanding on annotated bibliographies as looked through three of my peers' work:

For Janiece, I complemented her on her page layout. It was one of the most organized and neat AB I click on. However, she could add more to her annotations by adding in the overall purpose of the chosen sources in her essay. I also suggested that she find older sources to incorporate in her essay in order to show differences in research findings of the past and of current day.

For Erica, I felt her annotations were complete, covering all the basic requirements. However, for improvement, she could expand and talk about the research methods. She could also change up the order of her annotations by writing about the summary first rather than always starting with the name of the researcher.

For Nikeilie, her page layout was clean and organized, but her choice in photo and font color is very faint. To appeal to the viewers more, she could choose darker and more vibrant colors. In terms of content, I thought she did a great job. Her sources were of different time periods, and her summaries were thorough and concise.

My comments:

Hi Janiece! The summaries in your AB are throughly and well written.  Although, all three of the articles seem have been published recently.  You might want to add in older sources for comparison/contrast or if you want to show the progress of the research for your topic.  Also, other aspects to write about are the intended audience and the use of the sources in your literature review.  The page layout is fantastic! The different fonts, font sizes, and colors make the page organized and easy to navigate. 

Hi Erica! Overall I think you did a good job on your AB! The sources seem credible and recent.  I like how you introduced the researchers first. However, to add some variety, try switching up the order in your annotations.  For example, instead of starting with the author first, start with the research summary and then give background on the author.  Another suggestion is to be more detailed when writing about the research methods. Great job!

Hi Nikeilie, your page layout is organized and neat.  However, the first thing I saw when I opened your page was the photo.  I thought the image is a little faded and could be more vibrant and easier on the eyes (unless the faded look is what you are going for then ignore this suggestion!).  The page description color is hard to read as well.  Besides the page layout, I thought you did a thorough job on the content of your AB.  I like how you changed up the sentence structure when starting your annotations.  It gave a nice variety.  I also like how you chose sources from different time periods, allowing you to talk about the progression and direction of your research topic.  Amazing work!