The following is my understanding of qualitative research and narrative inquiry after reading "An Introduction to Qualitative Research" by Beverley Hancock and Situating Narrative Inquiry, part 1 of "Handbook of Narrative Inquiry" by D. Jean Clandinin.
    I understood qualitative research to be research that seeks to understand human behaviors and the reasons behind those behaviors. While quantitative research deals with measurement, qualitative research deals with why the world works the way that it does. When doing qualitative research it is not the researcher's goal to manipulate or interfere with the situation that is being observed. Researchers collect information through the process of either encounters, observations or interviews which are "time consuming" in nature according to Hancock.  It is the researcher's goal to understand how people arrive at opinions, feelings and decisions based on what they experience.  I understood narrative inquiry to be a more specific form of qualitative research. It involves seeking to understand human behaviors as described through stories, or narratives. Like qualitative research, the researcher does not seek to find out what happened, but the meaning that a person took from an event and why.
    This information will help my group when completing the Oral History Project by providing us with understanding of what we should and should not do when collecting data, understanding our purposes for data collection and understanding what we are listening for. It will also help us to properly interpret data and include the proper information when interpreting. Interviews usually involve a question answer process that answer what happened. These readings were important to help us understand that we are seeking to discover what an individual's reaction is to what happened.

    The following blog post was created for Writing, Research an Technology which I am taking at Rowan University. After watching the movie Food Inc. we were asked to choose and consider 3 questions from a list of 17 questions based on issues that were discussed in the movie. I have included the questions that I chose and my opinion on what the answers are/should be.
3. Whose responsibility do you think it is to inform us about what is in our food? Is it our responsibility to find out, the producer's responsibility to make it more clear, or both? Why do you think so?
I chose this question because it is one that I feel very strongly about. In the past, I have stopped eating certain foods after finding out what was in them. I believe that many educated consumers would do the same thing once they knew exactly what was in their food. I think it is the producer's responsibility to inform us about what is in our food. As a consumer who has no choice but to purchase food to survive, allowing these companies to turn huge profits, the least they can do is make consumers aware of what they are putting in our food. Producers should make the composition of ingredients, as well as the process they put these ingredients through before they are put in our food, a matter of common knowledge among consumers. They appear to have made profits their main concern and in the mean time they have lowered their regard for the consumer. Seeing how producers fight to limit what must be on food labels in Food Inc. indicates that they think they might lose sales if consumers were better informed. These companies have the funds and resources to inform consumers, and it is my opinion that a percentage of profits should be dedicated to doing just that.
4. Kevin's mother says, "Sometimes it feels like industry was more protected than my son." What do you think of her words?
I think that she means since her son could die from eating a hamburger and the company that was responsible for the tainted meat could remain open, even if they showed consistent issues with food safety, that the government seemed to be more concerned with protecting the rights of the industry than making sure that innocent consumers, like her son, were protected from becoming ill and/or dying just because they purchased something to eat. I think she is right. When a child, or anyone, dies as a result of eating something that should never have made it off of the kill room floor, it is the government's responsibility to protect the consumer from having this happen again. The government should not be concerned with the rights of the company at the point when consumers are found to be in danger, especially when they have been put in danger multiple times by the same company.
9. Do you think healthy eating should be a right, a responsibility, or a privilege?
I think healthy eating is a right. As discussed in the movie, healthy food is much more expensive than unhealthy food. As a result, poor people tend to eat less healthy foods, sometimes having to make the choice between life-saving medications and fruits and vegetables. I do not think this is fair. I have often heard my parents discussing how easy it is to find a coupon for a bag of chips, when there is never a coupon that can be used for fresh produce. As discussed in Food Inc., since it is more profitable for companies to sell non-fresh items, they have no motivation to lower the cost of produce. I believe this imbalance should be corrected, especially since these packaged foods are killing us. It is not okay for the poor among us to not be able to eat in a way that is beneficial to their health. I believe this is especially true in a country that prides itself in the rights of its citizens. There is no reason why companies should be able to make billions selling food when all citizens do not have proper access to any kind of food that they want to buy. If profits have to be lowered to accomplish this, so be it.

The following has been written for Writing Research and Technology at Rowan University and is meant to explain how the use of technology has impacted my writing.
    So far in this class there has not been a single print assignment. All of our assignments have involved reading something found online and creating tweets, a website, blog posts, and, so far, one project based on these readings. We were thrust into this world of technology immediately, and it is my opinion that this was the only way to do it. Some of the things we have been required to do are not unfamiliar to me. I have used twitter for a class, created a website for another and even kept a blog on Tumblr for another. The similarities end there. I was never before required to do all aspects of classwork online on a website that I created for myself.
    The use of Twitter was the easy part. I have only used twitter for school, but I have used it previously. Although I prefer to use Facebook, the small amount of characters was not a surprise, and I got used to it again pretty quickly. The only part of twitter I have not enjoyed is having to make my account public. I have been followed by several people I don't know in the past few weeks, which adds to my concern of how many people are reading this blog and the other things I will post to this site. In some ways Twitter provides an advantage, especially when I don't feel like writing much. I am forced to choose my words carefully and I can only post so much.
    Having created a website previously did not help me when creating this one since they are completely different formats, but I was able to appreciate how simple it was using this site and I was more aware of what my website would need. I have appreciated creating all assignments on this site because everything I have done and will do for this class is all here in one neat package. All completed assignments are added to my site live and easily changeable if I notice mistakes or just want to improve something I've done at some point in the future. While you would think that putting all assignments online would cause a feeling of finality, it has the opposite effect. Instead of handing in one final paper that cannot be edited once it is out of my hands, I can improve upon my assignments all semester.
    The most noticeable impact that technology has had on my writing is that I am more guarded about what I write, since I know that many people have access to it. While my audience would normally include my professor and a maybe a few classmates, I now consider that many others (who may or may not know why I'm writing the things that I am) could potentially read anything I write. This knowledge has caused me to want to steer clear of anything that would be too boring or unimpressive. I feel immense pressure with each blog post that I complete. While part of me believes that this is good practice for writing professionally, the part of me that sees this as yet another stumbling block that distracts me from the purpose of the assignments. I cannot tell yet if this has made my writing better, worse or unchanged, but I am sure I will appreciate this aspect of my writing experience much more in the future.
     I have had mixed results when creating my twitterive. The twitterive could not exist without technology, but I have also found that it can be a distraction here. I have had trouble finding the right balance of technology and narrative. At first I used too much technology, and now I am struggling to add the right amount of narrative to compliment it. On the positive side, I have enjoyed not having limits on how to express ideas. Instead of just words, I have videos, or screen shots, or sound-clips, or pictures, and the list goes on. I am only limited by what my imagination can come up with. I have been afforded an opportunity that no paper project would ever allow. I only see positive results coming from this, since I will be able to think of various ways to express myself and engage my audience in the ideas I am trying to convey.
    Overall, I feel that the benefits to working exclusively online outweigh any of the discomforts that I've experienced. This experience will be invaluable in the very near future since the use of technology is becoming more and more pervasive in all areas of life. Having to think a certain way when creating assignments is good practice for this future. I have already begun to change the way that I think about writing as a result of this experience.
   

On March 6th, 2012 several classmates presented their Twitterives as pert of Writing Research and Technology at Rowan University. The following is what I thought of what they have so far and suggestions for future revisions.
Jenna wrote her twitterive from the place of family. She used a series of pictures, definitions, poems and personal comments to build her twitterive. While I like the idea of Jenna's place, she could be much more specific in order to make her twitterive more organized and focused. She seemed to focus on her bond with each family member. I feel this idea might be a good starting point for being more specific. Maybe she could talk about what makes each bond special. Maybe she could follow the concept of a family tree and give more of a background of her family and her interactions with them.
Daniele wrote her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father. I have looked over her twitterive, but since she didn't get very far into her presentation, I am hoping she will present again before I make revision suggestions.
Angela created her twitterive from the NICU where her daughter spent the beginning of her life. I thought her twitterive was well thought out, well organized, focused and thorough. I don't have any revision suggestions except to check for grammatical and punctuation errors.
Alexis wrote her twitterive from the place of being lost. I liked Alexis' twitterive the best so far. I liked the different genres she chose to put us in her place. While there were suggestions for making it more organized and focused, I felt that the organization lent to how she feels in her place. I would suggest that she follow the suggestions of our professor since I will not be grading her assignment, but I had a hard time finding anything to change for her as well.
Andrea's twitterive focused on Doggy Day Camp from a particular dog's perspective. Andre's twitterive was very enjoyable. I feel that the details of the day were expressed well, but I feel that her twitterive could be improved by writing all narratives from the dog's perspective. As fun as it is, it would be much more fun to read the entire twitterive from the dog's point of view.
Tiffany had one of the most interesting twitterive topics so far. Her twitterive focused on Muay Thai training in Thailand. Tiffany's twitterive has a lot of potential and could be improved by adding more about her training experience in Thailand. I feel that her twitterive could benefit from comparison to the place that she trains when she is at home. I would also love to see more pictures from Thailand. She should add more genres as well as make the genres that she has, such as the Green Smoothie recipe, connect better. She should add a repetend, maybe the place she trains in New Jersey would be a good one, to bring all ideas in her twitterive together.
Idalis wrote her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father, specifically during a time when he was in the hospital and she thought he would pass away. While I thought the content of her twitterive was very powerful and moving, I would suggest that she change her formatting to make it easier to follow and read. The color of the font and the font size is a little more distracting than it needs to be.
Abby also created her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father. While I like the ideas that she included, I feel that her twitterive needs much more. Particularly, Abby's twitterive could benefit from more narration. She could also include more genres and give us more of an idea of what her relationship with her father is like through words. She could talk about how her relationship with her father changed after he got divorced, after he remarried, what it was like to see him be a stepfather to other kids, etc.

These presentations were enjoyable, not only because of their content, but also because they let me learn more about my classmates. I was also able to get more ideas for my own twitterive and see how I an make it better, as well as hear more about what Professor Mangini is expecting. Good job ladies.

The following is an update on my revision plans for my Twitterive, which is a multi-gemre, multi-modal narrative that I created for Writing Research and Technology, taught by Sabatino Mangini at Rowan University.
After presenting my Twitterive, I have several ideas of how to improve it. I had an issue with the use of latitude and longitude as my repetend because the links weren't working how I wanted them to, but thanks to my classmates' suggestion, I have decided that I will keep this as my repetend and make it more clear by adding screen shots of the actual locations. I am also considering adding a map at the end which shows the entire journey to make my place even more clear to readers.
I plan to rewrite "The Letter I Wrote", since it was pointed out that while the rest of my Twitterive points to one time period, this letter goes into the general issue and is less focused on this time period. I will revise the letter to make it more specific to the issue I'm addressing. I will be sure to mention why I need my mother right now and why it is bothering me enough to write a letter, which is something I have never done before.
I have decided that I will add some comic strip conversations. These conversations will be the ones I wish I could have or what I wish my mother would say and do when I come to her with these issues. I feel that by making it a comic strip, I will make it clearer to my readers that it did not actually happen.
I am considering removing the tweets that are in the body of my Twitterive, since I am not sure why I put them there and others did not think that it adds to the Twitterive, and I agree.
Even though I expressed fear at my mother's reaction, I am considering adding a video of some sort to give another illustration of what it is like to try and talk with my mother. This is the part that I am the least sure about, and I will only do it if I can think of a way to not show her face.
Finally, I was alerted to a formatting issue with "Friday", since it blends with the text around it and does not stand out clearly. I will change all of the days of the weeks to make them stand out more and to make sure that they are all uniform.
I appreciate all of the feedback I received. I was able to use all of the suggestions I was given in some way. I am looking forward to the end product and seeing what my classmates think of the changes they helped come up with.