Blog Entry #1

After reading the proposal for President Michael Crow at Arizona State University written by a student Jo Donald, I agree with his overall idea about having E-books available for all classes. I think he makes a good point that we are moving into a more technological generation that relies very heavily on technology for work, school and social purposes. Being a "green university", ASU needs to find ways to innovate classes with technology in order to have graduates prepared for the real world and job opportunities. Arizona State University and the instructors here should encourage the use of technology as most as they can in order for students to keep themselves up to date with technology and the new generation yet to come.

Although I agree with his argument, there are some things I would change to his proposal in order to make his claim stronger and more convincing. Something that I would suggest that may strengthen Jo Donald's argument about online textbooks could be providing more evidence to support his claim that online books are a lot cheaper than textbooks. He did provide an example about his Computer Information Systems book that was about a hundred dollars cheaper than the hard copy, but did not include information on average how much a student will save my making a switch. Possibly if he provides more statistics and percentage of savings, people would be more encouraged to buy E-books rather than hard copies of books.

An example of a resistant audience in this proposal could be the students who do not agree with changing into E-books. These particular students have become very comfortable with working with physical copies of books since they have been working with them for years so making the change will not be easy at all for most of them. The author does mention them in his proposal, suggesting that these students change to E-books as well to keep up. He appealed to the opposition with the use of pathos when making it an option of obtaining hard-copies of books or electronic. However I disagree with one of the points he makes about what will happen next if his first proposal is successful. He suggests ASU should provide an electronic device for all students on campus who agree to use electronic books by raising tuition. I do not think this needs to be made at all; students who select the option of using E-books could provide their own from of electronic device that suites their needs instead of having the school provide one for an extra fee. I feel like it was not very relevant with the proposal to have higher E-book availability. It does not strengthen the argument, instead I think it takes the argument in another direction.

I think the writer's ethos in this proposal were well made, because he is a current student at Arizona State University which provides credibility for his suggestions based on what his observations are currently as a student. He could have backed some things up better to make the proposal a bit more credible. Overall I do think this was a good model for our proposal assignment. I was able to really understand what I am expected to do for our next writing project. I think it was also beneficial for us to be able to point some things out that didn't work very well as the things that did work out to apply in our assignment. The research should include more about how students feel about this issue to make this proposal stronger and more likely to convince Mr. Crow to show that more students feel this way.