Website Audience Proposal 2.0!!!

The Communication of Destiny!!! ( get it? its a Tenacious D reference)

1) The audience of this site would ideally be three fold. The first and most obvious audience would be Job Corps. Employees, staff, and benefactors. As I hope to influence policy with this site. The second would be those interested in communication applications in the real world. And finally college students. I realize that hoping college students would see this site might seem odd. But I’d like them to see the freedoms we have in our respective courses to enter into free and easy communication without professors about any topic. We are given some freedoms and even power over BSU’s policies simply by being a student. I am sure other Colleges are much the same way, giving their students the opportunity to respond and the possibility of changing policy. Those in other programs such as Job corps – seem to be getting a lower level education, while relinquishing a maximum in price. Granted its not as expensive, but many students there wish to go to college afterwards. So I’d like possible and attending college students to see this site.


2) Hmm I’d say the background of my audience would be minimal of some college education. Probably with some type of communication background. The others would be possibly employees and benefactors of Job Corps who have had college educations. I think having college experience will be important for those who see this site since college communication classes are hard to describe. Communication classes in general are hard to wrap ones head around unless they’ve experienced them.


3) I think I’s be writing towards an interested – moderately disinterested audience. I think those in communications, and the Job Corps policy makers, employees, or benefactors will be interested, but the average college student focused on beer pong and football may not be. Also I think they will be a resistant audience. Simply because I suggest a change to the current system and changes are never seen as a good thing, or as welcoming until things become dire. I think I will also have to be very sensitive with the topic, because suggesting ones policies should chance can give the impression that I’m blaming someone, or suggesting that they’ve failed, or that I have more experience in the matter.


4) The gist of my sources conversations are that communication can improve all aspects of ones life, but it can also create barriers. There are so many types of communication that trying to work with every little nuance would be crazy. But most sources agree that some type of communication education is not only necessary- but it helps improve ones, identity, personal mental growth and stability, and helps develop relationships in any situation. I have noticed some disagreements between how certain demographics affect communication and how they affect them. Such as the differences between the male and female brain or how age affects decisions.


5) I still think taking the approach of an add instructor would be the best option. Yes if it became too flashy it would harm and distract rather than inform. But I believe a truly powerful presentation has both movement, color, and can keep attention while having the supporting content be impressive. – Like having a magic show that not only has the act of rabbits disappearing, but can provide provocative and interesting ways of getting the audience to believe actual magic took place. – I think that the same information – presented in new ways is the key. – Hopefully tho I will be presenting new information in new ways – and hopefully it won’t be too much stimulation. – I also think I want to keep a very objective voice and my color schemes will be blues and greens. – This will promote calm and relaxing emotions- and hopefully help keep the resistance lower. I like the thought of going with an earthy plant option. This will help keep the “nurturing” aspect in their minds.

( See doesnt this just FEEL relaxing?



As the entire point of the program is to nurture. I think the objectivity will help build my Ethos. I’m afraid that if I choose a side at all it will be discrediting. And since this is such a sensitive matter – picking one side will undoubtedly have some repercussion of something like prejudices mixed in. – For example if I say – On behalf of the students- the system needs to work better- it sounds like I think they need to be coddled, and that there’s too much authority. It sounds like they need – less structure that way – Whereas if I say – on behalf of the system we have to treat them differently- it sounds as tho I think they are getting too much freedom, or aren’t worthy of respect. But saying – speaking from a third party completely objective bystander- the structured system needs a couple of patches that would benefit everyone.


6) My viewpoint is that Job corps should put a greater emphasis on communication, and communication courses. With only one example, I can see several areas that could be improved with simple communication courses. These areas involve, morale, students mental well being, class room manners, relationships in all areas, easier transition to outside world, goals, and a stronger command of language skills. All these aspects which are noted to be an issue can be solved – or at least greatly helped with communication skills. – Which given their cut off surroundings should be emphasized.

( Thats just SOO COOL!)

Website Proposal

If you have any comments or ideas to help me out please let me know!!!

1. My audience could be mostly young adults or parents who are looking into the GED, the pros and cons of the GED, and statistics about the people who already have a GED. This could be for students who have already dropped out of high school or are thinking about dropping out and getting their GED. People that would be most interested would be those who want to know about the advantages and disadvantages about having a GED versus a high school diploma.

2. The type of background my audience could have is young adults who are always getting in trouble with the law, low-income families, or teenagers that have been home schooled. Background information that I could include is how the GED came to be what it is and also who doesn't accept a GED.

3. I envision my audience to be interested in my topic because it will tell the audience what they can and can't do with a GED. I'm hoping that it will convince my audience to get a high school diploma and only get a GED if it is their last resort.

4. The types of conversation my sources have been having is just basic statistics about the GEDl where the GED came from, who accepts it, benefits and disadvantages of a GED. Some, however have been more against young adults getting a GED while other are all for young adults getting their GED.

5. I hope to make my website very user friendly and easy to find the information the viewer is looking for. I have noticed that the information I'm looking for is actually not that easy to find. I'm going to have all of my sources linked in my website so my audience can see where I got all of my information. Overall, I hope to combine all of the websites I've found about the GED and put everything into one easily accessible website.

6. I plan on stating that the GED should be a replacement for a high school diploma and should be a last resort. Some of my thoughts on improving the GED is to raise the age limit to eighteen years of age. Also, I think the standards to pass should also be raised. This way Universities and the Armed Forces might be more willing to accept GED holders.

Annotated Bibliographies

Powell, Sharon E., and Jean W. Bauer. "Resource use of rural low-income families caring for children with disabilities." Journal of Children & Poverty 16.1 (2010): 67-83. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Mar. 2011.
In this article the authors stress the imporatance of the Temporary Assisstance to Needy Families Program (TANF) and how it helped the low income families with disable children obtain help, get off welfare, and keep their jobs. For these families to finally have something that helps them with their disabled children without so many barriers was a great thing. Many of the low income would have to stop working and take care of their children because it was hard for them to find child care. With the new program TANF the parents are required to have a job in order to recieve help this way the family always has two forms of recieving money and hopefully will not be stuggeling to much. Another thing TANF provides is "A five-year lifetime limit for families receiving cash assistance". I chose this article due to the fact that it still goes with my essay topic but gives me more information and another aprroach to the question. Not only to I now have information on regular low income families but now I have information on low income families that have children with disabilities.



Press, Julie E., Jay Fagan, and Lynda Laughlin. "Taking Pressure Off Families: Child-Care Subsidies Lessen Mothers’ Work-Hour Problems." Journal of Marriage & Family 68.1 (2006): 155-171. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 4 Mar. 2011.
This article states why single mothers who recieve subsidies to help pay for child care are more likely to work with their employer to get the right hours or even work more than normal to help provide for the family than the ones that do not recieve subsidies. Mothers are able to set up two different time schedules with the subsidies so that the schedule fits exactly what they need and not just giving out random hours. Hours are set up by how bad off the family is, if the mother needs more hours she can sign up for more but if the mother only need partial hours she can sign up for that. What the authors are explaining is that when there is only one parent its hard to make ends meat and spend time with the kids and with subsidies it provides some setting for that to happen. This article relates to my topic because many lox income families normally have only one parent providing for the entire family.

First 2 Annotated Bibliographies

Rocky, Barker. "Job Corps Expands Curriculum into Green Jobs." voices.idahostatesman.com, 18 March 2010. Web. 6 Mar 2011. . Rocky Barker states in his article about the improvements that Job Corps is making to their program to keep it up to date and in sync with the work force and also with today’s economy. I wouldn’t take this as a credible source because even though it may be posted on The Idaho Statesman’s website it is still on a blog and has no links to show where the author got his information. If there was some resources he showed that he got his information from I feel like this would automatically become a reliable source. In the article, the author talks about how the Obama administration hopes to give the kids a hand up because the up coming jobs in this economy will be in a greener direction. I could use this in my paper if I was writing more on the training programs that Job Corps offers or also if I was writing about what type of job training does Job Corps offer and how it relates to the jobs that the students get after they have finished the Job Corps program.

"Job Corps: Links with Labor Market Improved but Vocational Training Performance Overstated." gov.us.fed.congress.gao.reports. Google Groups, 6 Nov. 1998. Web. 6 Mar 2011. . The author of this article talks about the success that Job Corps has stated they had with their program in the year1998. It then goes and talks about the questions they had when they looked into Job Corps, their method of reviewing the data, and the results they came up with. I would be skeptical with this websites credibility because it is on a Google Groups blog but it also has a letter to Christopher Shays who is in the House of Representatives and is also the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Due to the formality of the text and the reasons why it was posted all point to this being a reliable source. I think one way to improve the reliability is for the group to share the link that they got this article/information from. This source illuminates my essay topic because it gives me some statistics about the success that Job Corps actually has with its program as a whole.

Annotated Bibliography

Schochet, Peter Z., John Burghardt, and Sheens McConnell. 2008. “Does job Corps work? Impact findings from the National Job Corps Study. “American Economic Review.

Right away in this article the authors make a clear statement towards the success of the job corps program they state “Job corps is the only federal training program that has shown to increase earnings of the population.” However shortly after this they talk about her earning drop off after seven years in the younger population of the program. The article talks about the different courses Job corps provides, I would like to talk to students and see what factors make them decide which courses to specialize in.

Charles R. Hayman and Arthur Frank. 2008. “Job Corps experience with health problems”
Public Health Reports.

Job Corps has a health system in place that seems to be working. No real problems or complaints have developed, but no records or evidence of its effectiveness have been recorded. My main thoughts about the health care program is if they offer mental help or counseling to their students that may have been abused or just had life struggles. I think this is just as or more important than there physical health. This directly relates with the essay topic I have chosen In where I want to connect a student’s social skills to their up bringing

Discourse Analysis

It's a little lengthy and I apologize!

Is a General Education Development (GED) good enough to replace a high school diploma? Many colleges, universities, and jobs think that a GED is adequate enough to replace a high school diploma while others don’t think it suffices. The General Education Development exam was originally in a GI Bill to help veterans and returning students obtain enough credentials to get civilian jobs and to also obtain a higher education beyond high school. The minimum age requirement to take the test was 18 years old but has recently been lowered to 16.

Most community colleges will accept GED holders along with a satisfactory score on the SAT or ACT. However, universities are a little more skeptical and need to see that the person applying is able to start and finish a big project; therefore, recommendation letters are required from community members to prove the person applying is motivated enough not to drop out.

In the work force almost every job that has a minimum education requirement of a high school will accept and treat a GED holder the same as a high school diploma holder. I find this interesting because one of the sources I found was against the GED and thought that it shouldn’t be a short cut for teenagers to drop out of high school and jump straight into the work force. A study done in 2002 showed that 42% of everyone that had taken the GED exam was teenagers compared to only 33% in 1991. The sad fact about this is that the students that drop out of high school and plan on getting their GED don’t get around to actually doing it. Of the 60% that dropped out of high school and then got their certificate, most likely a GED, go on to some sort of college; of that sixty percent only 10% actually go on to obtain a degree while the others drop out of college.

What I find ironic about the GED was that originally it was the United States Armed Sources that confronted the American Council on Education for a way of testing veterans and returning soldiers to get a certificate that has the same skill level as a high school diploma and now the Air Force is only permitted to have 1% of its enlistees have a GED and the Army is only aloud to have 10% of its enlistees to have a GED. This is because that most of the people that enlist with a GED typically are expelled or quite after their first tour of duty.

I don’t think that the General Education Development is not an adequate test to give a person the credentials that a person with a high school diploma has. Along with specific skills that are learned in high school, GED holders don’t have a lot of the social skills that high school students do. For example, GED holders don’t have the motivation high school students do to finish large projects or to complete a goal. This is why most universities require satisfactory SAT or ACT scores and recommendation letters from community members. I believe that the age limit for taking the GED should be raised yet again to motivate high school students to finish in school rather than dropping out and taking the short cut. The GED exam shouldn’t be an alternate route for high school; it should be a last resort for those who can’t finish high school for financial or family issues.

Work Cited:

Thornburgh, Nathan. "Does a GED Really do the Job?." Time. 11 April 2006: Print.

"DiplomaGuide.com." Is the GED Enough to Get ME into College?. 2006-2011. Web. 1 Mar 2011. .

"Howard Lee speaks out." YouTube. Web. 1 Mar 2011. .

"General Education Development." Wikipedia, Web.

Discourse Analysis

For this analysis my main focus was the children in the families of the students at Job Corps. Job corps offers this great schooling for the teens and adults that have not had the best education, they are able to get there G.E.D. or study for a benefiting job. There are some students that have children so my question is, " Where do these children stay, is it hard to find child care with no or little income?". I tried to find articles on just the children involved in job corps but came up empty handed, so I then focused on just the ending of my question. I did find some great articles that all had a common topic, Low Income Families and Child Care. It seemed to me that many families that have low income tend to have there children watched by family members or friends instead of the high or medium income families that have a daycare provider.
Another thing I noticed in the article is they seemed to have a harsh bias towards the low income families. One article I read said that children in low income families were more likely not to graduate high school and support their family, and i would have to completely disagree with that statement. I personally have friends in low income families who have worked twice as hard than others due to the state they are in. They want the best for their furture children and want them to feel just as special as everyone else. I feel they sometimes have a stronger motivation to succeed in life because of what they have gone through.
The thing that caught my eye the most in almost every article I read was that many low income families only have one parent which is most likely the mother and the father is not in the picture. Growing up my parents go divorced when I was young and I remember it being hard for my mom and I at times. As I continued to read the articles the tone was informative to allow the reader to understand what is going on. However at the same time it almost seemed like the authors wanted you to be concerned about these kids and families. Which i would say worked because when i finish reading each article it made me be thankful for what I have but at the same time I was thinking aboout ways I could help.

Sources:
Adams, Gina, and Jeffery Capizzano. "Children in Low-Income Families Are Less Likely to Be." Snap Shots of America;s Families. 16 (2003): 1-2. Print.

Campbell, Frances, and Craig Ramey. "Effects of Early Intervention on Intellectual and Academic Achievement: A Follow-up Study of Children from Low-Income Families." Child Development. 65.2 (2008): 684-698. Print

Fuller, Bruce, Sharon Kagan, Gretchen Caspary, and Christiane Gauthier. "Welfare Reform and Child Care Options for Low-Income Families." Princeton University. 12.1 (2002): 96-119. Print.