Throughout this entire week we were working on our "This I Believe" projects. Monday and Tuesday we worked on our own projects, and on Wednesday and Thursday we watched the videos we had created. Watching that many videos gave me an idea of what a good video looked like. 

Sometimes there were boring videos that seemed to drag on forever, and other times there were videos that really caught my attention. Seeing that variety of videos definitely helped to understand what is crucial to making a video that the audience enjoys watching. 

First of all, there must be a variety of pictures. If the audience is staring at the same background the whole time just listening to someone talk, their minds are bound to wander. There was a video that I distinctly remember watching that I just could not pay attention and my mind was somewhere else. 

Another thing that is important is the volume of the voice of the speaker. If the speaker is talking quietly, there is not going to be as much of an impact on the audience. They will be focusing on trying to hear what the speaker is trying to say, which would take away from the overall experience of the video. 

This is something that I noticed about my own video. My voice was a bit quiet, and with a low volume, it could be very difficult to hear what I was saying. I learned that the volume of voice in a video is definitely important. 

While we worked on our "This I Believe" projects, I ended up learning that it totally okay to completely restart a piece of writing if I do not like the original. I ended up restarting my paper a couple different times, and even now by the end of the week, I am considering restarting it yet again. 

It is totally fine to restart this because if I do not think it is a perfect writing for this project, I can redo it to make it perfect. Restarting papers can be beneficial because it can make papers better.

The first paper I wrote was about how I believe that there is more to everybody than what meets the eye. I believed that I knew exactly how to go about writing my paper, but as I started writing it, it somehow led me to think about what other things I believe in. When that happened, there was one belief that I thought of that I realized it would be even easier to do my project about that. 

So I just restarted my paper and began to write about how I beleive that everything happens for a reason. That paper went a lot smoother and faster than the other one. However, after I finished that paper, I read through it and decided I did not like it. So I ended up thinking about going back to my old topic. 

After a lot of going back and forth, I decided to go with the belief that everything happens for a reason, and I just fixed all my mistakes from the old paper. If I had just went with a paper that I did not like, I would not  be satisfied with my project, and I would not be able to make it the best it could be. So it was perfectly fine that I restarted it a few times. 

 During this last week we looked at what makes a good story. We were able to chose what video we watched out of six videos, and I watched the first one. It talked about how it is important to tell more than one story. 

If only one story of an event is told, then only one point of view of the story can be told. That could lead to misunderstandings. Everyone experiences things differently so if only one story is told, it is possible that someone could have misunderstood exactly what happened and then the wrong story could be told. Also sometimes people will kind of twist the story in their own special way to make stories seem more interesting. 

It is important to tell multiple stories so that this does not happen. With many stories, it is easier to pick out the true things from the untrue. You can find the truth from parts of the stories that are repeated in every story. 

Telling only one story can lead to stereotypes. That is what was said in the Ted Talk that talked about telling more than one story. The example that was used in the Ted Talk was that the speaker was from Africa and she said that many people just automatically felt bad for her because they only heard only one story of Africa. That story was that Africa was full of starving people living in little huts. However, that is not the case whatsoever. Sure, there are poor people in Africa, but not all people are poor. Also there are cities and not everyone is starving, and living in huts. If they had heard more than one story, they would know that. 

Most people do not realize that they are being watched on the internet. There are companies that track every single thing everyone does online, and they could find any bit of information that they want about anyone they chose. 

That is something that would most definitely scare the majority of internet users. There are articles about internet tracking and why it can be a little useful, yet an invasion of privacy. That means that it is a known fact that internet tracking is very real. 

Throughout this week, we looked at a couple different articles on internet tracking and what it really is. Each of us formed an argument as to whether internet tracking should be allowed or not. We went through each article looking at evidence to support our claims. A debate was held between the ones for and against internet tracking. The debate activity allowed us to see both sides to the argument, which then forced us to make a comeback to really back up our claim.

That strengthened our skills with counter arguments. Seeing what the other side had to say about the subject of internet tracking gave us an idea of what some counter arguments might be, which could help us with a paper about internet tracking. The debate definitely helped us to figure out how to support our claim. It forced us to come up with information that would back up our claim in a short amount of time. If we were able to come up with reasons as to why our claim was better in a very short amount of time, we would definitely be able to include some good information in our writings.