This blog will contain how our collaborative research is going so far! So far our Collaborative Research Project seems to be coming along really well. I have found a lot of interesting facts about this movement and I think it is a great topic to help implement within schools. All of the work has been divided into sections where we are each going into detail about various celebrities and different grades creating our own lesson plans. The celebrity that I chose to find a little more about is an advocate of the Meatless Monday, Gabe Canales. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the age of 35, so after being the founder of the Blue Cure (which is like the male version of implementing breast cancer awareness for women). Gabe had to change the way he ate, and Meatless Monday was a place he could start, he joined this movement along with creating the Blue Cure to help make awareness about things that can help prevent cancer. Also along with our project we have found meatless recipes from allrecipes.com where each of the kid-friendly recipes is less than 350 calories and less than 10 grams of fat per serving. We felt this would be a fun, and healthy way to get children in the kitchen making food (with supervision) and making their own food without any meat products.
Meatless Monday
This past week, our class watched the award winning documentary, Food Inc. This documentary goes into detail about the growth in the United State’s food industry since the 1950’s. Needless to say, it was less than appetizing! For our Collaborative Research Project, we will be analyzing the grassroots movement of “Meatless Monday.” This global campaign encourages people to skip eating meat on Mondays to help our planet’s sustainability and to improve our health. One day a week is all this campaign is supporting to change our planet and improve our well-being. This campaign was originally started back in 2003, by a non-profit group called “The Mondays Campaign Inc.” They work with the John Hopkins school of Public Health Center for a Livable Future. Guidelines set by the UDSA have been implemented nutritional guidelines. Together as a group: Melanie, Lauren, Alexis and myself, will research why not eating meat just one day out of the week can improve our lifestyle and also help the planet. We will explore the various ways meat production has made an impact on our economy and the environment. We will also explore alternative ways of eating along with meatless recipes that can kick start healthy habits and improve our longevity. Below are research questions we came up with individually that we’d be more interested in learning. Alexis- Have schools implemented Meatless Monday into their lunch program, and have they been successful? What are the long term effects of scaling back on eating meat? How does the consumption of meat affect our planet? Melanie- Is there a significance for Monday versus any other day of the week?Who has implemented Meatless Mondays with success (companies, organizations, celebrities and families)?What kinds of yummy meatless recipes are out there?How can we start our own program and be successful?Can I replace meat and still be satisfied (protein intake)?*****Really great video I found on YouTube about Meatless Mondays.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bU8Gg6mRiULauren-Why did The Mondays Campaign come up with the idea of having one day without meat?What other foods can we intake that are meatless?How can we implement this in our schools?Why can't it be meatless everyday of the week by supplementing meatless recipes?How can consumers benefit from going meatless?Tiffany-What has caused this movement to be implemented in the first place?How many people are participating in meatless Monday?What positive or negative effects on Meatless Monday have individuals noticed?
Collaboration is definitely part of school, especially in the Education
field. We are always doing projects together and working together to get
assignments completed. Personally, I would rather do my projects alone. This way
I know the grade I get was solemnly due to my work itself. Also, if I miss
something I am the only one to blame. I have been in situations more than once
where partners did not finish their parts of s project and I was up most of the
night competing their section and sometimes the professor did not even care of
my partner did not contribute because it was a group effort.
I feel that in writing collaboration can have a great benefit because I
really like input from other people about my writing. I think it really helps me
with knowing what to changes and what to keep. Sometimes I second guess myself
and it is good to know when I will have someone to help me fix and make change.
While working I am always working with other people, whether it is figuring out
how to display things, making up the schedule, balancing the register, or while
substituting, when I am an aide for the day and I need to work with the other
teacher to get the students to stay on track and get things done as if I were
the teacher their daily
When being reflexive it is often instated by something that triggered the idea
or something that triggered the idea or thought. Qualley states on page 14 in
the article Turns of Thought "reflexivity complicates our understandings and
efforts to know by making us self-conscious, cognizant of our role in production
of knowledge.
Reflective is thoughts we think in our own minds, and is based off of the
information and knowledge that we are already conscious of.
In the article “ An Introduction to Qualitative Research” definitions were given for both quantitative research and qualitative research and it was also very easy to follow the bullets listed within the article. I feel the easiest way to remember the difference between the two is to remember the questions that each should follow. Qualitative research should answer why? How? And in what way? Whereas quantitative research answers the questions how much? How many? How often? And to what extent? Qualitative interviews are only slightly or totally unstructured and qualitative interviews are formal, but our assignment sheet I believe that we will be doing our own interviews and I am sure that they will be more towards qualitative rather than quantitative. In Chandinin’s article “ Situating Narrative Inquiry”, it is explained that narrative inquiry that there are four turns towards a narrative; (1) a change in the relationship between the person conducting the research and the person participating as the subject (the relationship between the researcher and the researched), (2) a move from the use of number toward the use of words as data, (3) a change from a focus on the general and universal toward the local and specific, and finally (4) a widening in acceptance of alternative epistemologies or ways of knowing (page 7). I feel as if this ties into our Twitterive projects because we have had to conduct some sort of research and information was analyzed before we jumped right in to the Twitterive assignment.
During class this semester we watched the movie Food In. as an introduction to our next project for this semester. We were given a bunch of question to answer and we had to choose 3 from the sheet and respond to them.
Number 9
I feel as if eating healthy should be a responsibility. The reason I feel this way is because eating healthy is something that people take on themselves, it doesn't generally just happen. Most people blame their weight on everyone but themselves. People do not take responsibility for what they are putting into their bodies. Eating healthy takes time. I have grown to be a lot more aware of what I am putting into my body. Growing up I used to not care, I would eat McDonalds and fast food all of the time because it was quick, cheap, easily accessible, and it as already prepared. I did not have to worry about cooking,
I could pull up and within seconds it was already in my mouth. Now being more conscious of what goes into my body, it takes more thought. I have taken responsibility for what I eat and how the food I eat makes me feel. When I eat crappy food, I feel sick after because my body has grown accustomed to eating healthier.
Number 16
Yes, I feel that if the cost of healthier food were to decline instead of rise then what it generally does do then people would definitely buy more of it. When was the last time you saw healthy almonds on sale? But you see chips and pretzels on sale nearly every week at the food store. It seems as if the healthier the food is, the more expensive it is. If we made the price of healthy food as cheap as the junk food, people would be able to also take more responsibility for their weight. People wouldn't be able to make up the excuse that healthy food is not something that they are able to afford.
Number 17
I think that people would most definitely make better choices if they knew what they were eating. When I first started watching what I was eating, at first I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I thought okay a salad is great there’s nothing wrong with that, sure that’s fine but add on the additional dressing and that can add an additional 150 calories to a meal. I began counting calories and writing down everything that I ate and drank. Before I knew it I was consuming way more calories than I needed. It does take a lot of work but once you memorize calories in foods it becomes a lot easier to prepare healthier meals.
Where do I begin?!?!? Technology is a huge factor in my life. My cell phone is in my pocket or within arms reach at all times, unless I am substituting. If I do not have my phone with me, I feel lost. It’s pretty pathetic I know but I also know that I am not the only person who feels this way. My iPhone is my minicomputer that fits in my pocket. I have a communication device, a camera, and a computer all easily accessible. I am also pretty connected to my laptop. I am always online looking something up or typing papers. I love being able to bring my laptop to various places to type papers. On a nice day, I will sit outback and type up school work, or even take it downstairs when I don’t feel like sitting in my room. Technology is definitely a huge growing part of society and I cannot wait to see what else the future of our technology brings.
After presenting my Twitterive in class I received a lot of valuable feedback that I will be sure to include within my second draft. I was a little timid to present my Twitterive at first because a lot of my classmates had very personal topics. Mine however; although it was still personal to me, it made it easier to share because I knew I would be able to get through it.
What I am going to do first when I am revising is that I will be making it more about me and making it more about how I have evolved into a Thai fighter. I need to give a little bit more background about how and why I decided to travel around the world for this experience. I also need to organize the time of events when they happened during my trip to make it a lot easier for the viewer to follow.
This week’s blog posts by Michael Pollen "Omnivore's Dilemma" and Wendell Berry's
"The Pleasures of Eating" are transitioning us into our second assignment of the semester and giving a slight inside for the movie Food Inc that we will be watching in class. In Michael Pollen's article it kind of made me think a little bit as to where some food comes from and how they get it the way that they do throughout processing. I am generally pretty conscious as to what I eat. I usually spend the extra couple dollars and shop at Whole Foods to get the organic foods.
Before I started seeing a nutritionist and working out as much as I do I would eat fast food all the time. Then I realized how processed it is and it doesn't break down like it should, making it just sits in the body (grossssss). Needless to say it has been about 4 years since I've been through a McDonalds, Burger King, or any other fast food chain.
Pollen states that many people today seem perfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them. There are things in it that will ruin their appetites. But in the end this is a book about the pleasures of eating, the kinds of pleasure that are only deepened by knowing. Years ago I would have probably said who cares if it tastes good and is covered with sodium I don't care, I’m eating this.
Wendell Berry's article I really enjoyed to read. It also made me think more about farming. Berry made a point that got my mind to think when this was stated “And this peculiar specialization of the act of eating is, again, of obvious benefit to the food industry, which has good reasons to obscure the connection between food and farming. It would not do for the consumer to know that the hamburger she is eating came from a steer who spent much of his life standing deep in his own excrement in a feedlot, helping to pollute the local streams, or that the calf that yielded the veal cutlet on her plate spent its life in a box in which it did not have room to turn around.” This made me think, where does it come from, what farm was it on, and what chemicals if any am I ingesting, although its organic food does it really mean it is, and who is monitoring this food making sure it is safe to eat where I won't get sick.
Food Inc is a movie I am looking forward to watching. I can't wait to see what type of information I can get out of this.
Who: The character in my story mostly involves me and there are a few little things about my boyfriend that I have included as well.
What: My Twitterive is about how I started Muay Thai and how it brought me to one of the best experiences of my life. It brought me across the world to Phuket Thailand where I got the opportunity to train Muay Thai for two weeks with some of the greatest Thai fighters.
When: January 2011
Where: My Twitterive takes place in Phuket Thailand with a few flashbacks of the long flight.
Why: Thailand is a place where I would love to go back to. I have traveled many of times before but nothing was even comparable to this trip. It wasn’t a vacation where I sat on the beach with a drink with an umbrella in it. I was training Muay Thai 2 times a day for 2 hours at a time in the hot, humid tropics.
How: I was my audience to get a slight taste of how it was for me for the two weeks that I spent in Phuket. I want them to be able to see how absolutely beautiful the country was and also how much Muay Thai has become a part of my life.
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