I believe that there are different ways in which “youtube voice” can be used and delivered. I think that this could depend on what kind of audience the youtuber wants to reach.

For example in Francesca Ramsey “5 tips for being an ally” she uses an overall more informal and conversational language, possibly aiming to reach a wide audience. Furthermore Francesa clearly displays many of the linguistic components discussed by Julie Beck in “The linguistics of YouTube voice”. Such components that Francesca uses in order to keep her viewers watching are; Overdressed vowels, Aspiration and many more. These are more subtly used is the language that Senelma Heinoen chose to use in her TED Talk “Spokes Up”. She speaks at a more formal event with a more academic audience. Personally I was moved by her speech, her message was strong and she delivered it very clearly with a lot of passion. Towards the middle, after assessing her credibility with the use of anecdotes and personal experience, Senelma transitions to talking about the benefits of commuting on a bike. She decides to focuse on 3 reasons and similarly to Francesca and many other youtubers, Senelma uses her hand to display the number 3 at the same time as she says “I will focus on three”. This is effective in strongly transmitting the point that there are 3 reasons.

Both videos use some degree of youtube strategies and both are effective in their purpose to deliver their message to the audience. However, there is a clear distinction in the level of “YouTube Voise” that is used in the two videos. In her video, Francescas’ attention grabbing way of speaking fits what people expect from a youtube video and has been proven to be an effective way to communicate to the audience of these kind of videos. On the other hand, Senelma doesn’t try to stretch out vowels or sneak some between consonants, this is because her audience expects a more academic tone. In conclusion i think that you have to keep in mind the audience that you are addressing when considering using “YouTube Voice”

 

Hello everyone,

Around campus i have identified a problem; there is no storage for bikes and furthermore it is hard for people to buy a bike. This could be because of poor knowledge of the bike rules of the road, which might cause people to be scared to ride. Another difficulty in getting a first bike is that they can often be expensive for a college student.

I will propose a solution to the university board members, they will be interested because it will aim to improve transportation for students, faculty and give USF and overall better image.

My idea is that USF should have its own bike rental. Giving different kinds of memberships people can sign up to get a bike. Moreover this will provide storage for everyone who already has a bike. The shop could provide repairs or work stations, for personal use. Finally I will suggest that the shop also should provide workshops to improve the knowledge on safe riding.

Thank you

 

After reading these two articles i had a similar reaction as Daniel Duane did in “Is it O.K to kill cyclist” when he writes about seeing an SUV hit another cyclist which brought him to reconsider cycling. The reality of the dangers of the road hit me and left me confronted between two different opinion on how we should ride.

Before reading the articles i had a confident approach towards riding fast in the city, while reading “if Kant were a New York Cyclist” i was thinking about riding even more freely but it was went i read “Is it O.K to kill a cyclist” that i started thinking that maybe riding so fast is not such a good idea.

I can very much relate to “If Kant were a New York Cyclist”, especially with how Randy Cohen describes his riding style and thinking. Since i was young I always enjoyed riding all kinds of different vehicles as fast as possible and in the most tricky bits, it was thrilling and fun. I was always aware of the possible dangers and drove responsibly, knowing my limits but pushing myself to improve. In his article Cohen says “I choose my riding style mindful of my own safety and that of my neighbors, but also in pursuit of happiness.”

Although for me, coming from the country side, riding in the city was a change. You can’t only think about yourself and your ride but you have to be aware of the other million of people circulating around you. Cohen says “Drive dangerously, you’re apt to injure others; ride dangerously, I’m apt to injure myself. I have skin in the game. And blood. And bones.” I have been riding in the city for just under two months now, at first i had to get used to even checking if cars were approaching at every stop sign, i also needed to remember to signal my turns, all basic things but not easy to remember for someone that is not from the city. Fortunately, the San Francisco bike coalition, which i was invited to become a member of by my Speaking of Bicycles class, offered some workshops to learn the rules and i was able to understand better what the safe way to ride is. This changed my riding style towards a safer one but every now and again i would still not fully stop at every crossing or sometimes ride on the sidewalk.

Cohen argues that car rules do not necessarily fit with how you would ride a bike, but most bike rules are as he says “a clumsy misapplication of motor vehicle laws”. He states that if the laws were more directed towards bikers more people would respect the rules. If more people respected the rules the risks of injuries would go down. Daniel Duane agree saying “Laws in most states do give bicycles full access to the road, but very few roads are designed to accommodate bicycles, and the speed and mass differentials” He further adds the point of speed mass differentials something that we examined in class as an important factor of safety. Therefore, maybe if the bike lanes and rules were more appropriate for bikers i would be able to ride faster and safer?

Duane unlike Cohen is against cyclist who ignore traffic rules and believes them to be “immortal, entitled fools.” and that this could cause people to see them as risk takers and who therefore deserve their fate. He tries to get people to understand that “cycling is’t sky diving”, but the opposite, that “it’s a sensible response to changing transpiration environment”. Duane at the end encourages us to; “Every time you get on a bike, from this moment forward, obey the letter of the law in every traffic exchange everywhere to help drivers (and police officers) view cyclists as predictable users of the road who deserve respect.” Duane makes a good argument, and ethical one that aims towards a more civil style of riding, using strong evidence, such as death reports, to convince the readers.

In conclusion, i am left torn between what is moral – riding appropriately and respectfully as is suggested by Duane or riding in a fun, enjoyable and maybe a bit reckless way like Cohen suggests. Something that i am sure about and agree with both of the writers is that bike laws should be more appropriate, even by having all designated protected lanes for bikers the levels of fatalities and injuries would go down and riders could ride as fast as they’d want to.

 

 

For David Byrne, a former musician a now an artist, it was riding around the cities in a bike that allowed him to see things that he would have otherwise never seen, and changed who he was. This thinking was also advocated earlier in 1991 by American political scientist Robin Leblanc who said that we see cities differently depending on how we choose to move through them and that this affects what we see and how we understand things. In summery that our perspective of things can affect who we are, or in other words our identity.

There were many different points that Byrne makes in his writing, i would like to focus on a point that particularly stood out for me, the tech boom and how it revolutionized not only the economy but also how people lived and interacted. Byrne explain that in order for the dot-com boom to develop people had to be ready to live entirely online, which would have meant a major shift in how people interacted and lived their lives and most people were not prepared to do that. It was later with the Web 2.0, a more socially interactive and responsive commerce-based web sites, and wifi that allowed more mobility which meant that some of those imagined shifts might actually occur. These shifts impacted several aspects of community and interaction, the hippy community; first allowing them to have affordable houses and then later being pushed out and onto the streets, the tech boom created a social barrier for many people and circumstances, it also gradually reduced face to face interactions.

I was further intrigued by this social evolution due to technology after reading Byrne’s essay on Istanbul, where he talked about many different countries For example he mentions Turkey, Syria, Greece, Egypt and even India. I thought that one thing that all these countries have in common is a similar level of technological development. That being present, with high use of phones, computers, tv etc but that it has not taken over most daily operations like in Europe or America. This made me reflect on the kind of interactions that these countries have and their economy. Take as a specific example Istanbul, situated in Turkey it sits on top of a beautiful hill mostly surrounded by water, this active town, like many other in the countries listed above, relies on people leaving their homes and actively interacting with the community. By going to the market, instead of ordering online, or communicating by voice often to spread information, similar to how Byrne saw San Francisco before the tech boom.

In conclusion, i am left thinking, will places like Istanbul also move towards and economy that is based more on the internet as technology in their country develops? and if so what will this mean for their level of social interaction, will it go up or down?

My experience at the speaking center was overall a very pleasant and helpful one. I went today at 11:30 and met Samier for 30 minutes. During our session we discussed what the outline of my speech would be, we also talked about statistical interpretation of my data. This was something that i was struggling on, with Samier’s guidelines i was able to be more confident on how to plot my data. I will definitely use this resource again in the future.

Hello again,

This is my third and final practice video. This was after i went to the speaking center which caused me to think of some new and different points which made my speech different from the first two videos. In this video i was just trying to practice my speech before class.

You can find the video here;

HI!,

This is my second practice video, in this i used another laptop in order to show the power point that i made for my presentation. I did this to practice my transaction from slide to slide.

After this video practice i attended the Speaking and Writing center at USF where they gave me some tips which made me change some of my speech. More information on ‘practice video 3’ post and ‘Speaking center reflection’ post.

Here is my second video;

Hi everyone,

this is my first practice video. In this one, as i have done in the past, i chose to record myself standing up while presenting the speech. I like to do this to pretend that i am speaking to the class and therefore have to project my voice.

You can find the video here;

Hi everyone

My name is ettore marzotto,

Today i want to invite you to think about the bicycle rules of the road, illustrated in this leaflet, please pass it around and have a quick read through. With a show of hands how many people feel safe about riding in San Francisco?

Great thanks,

I now will talk about my research into wether or not a correlation exist between knowing the bicycle rules of the road and how safe you feel about riding in san francisco. In other words, does your knowledge of bike rules affect your perception of how safe it is to ride in San Francisco?

Lets find out!

In order to prove if a correlation existed between my two areas of focus, knowledge of the bike rules, and how safe people feel about riding in san francisco i decided to formulate a survey. A survey is a useful tool to gather data in an quick and simple way. Surveys usually require the use of questionaries, i made my questionnaire using an app called Qualtrics found on Canvas.

Here is my questionnaire

I will now talk about why i chose this format and how it served the purpose of my investigation. So, i was interested in finding out how confident people were in their knowledge of the bike rules, which is why i chose the style of Strongly Agree, agree and so on. Instead of a simple yes or no answer this style gives me different degrees to which someone knew that a statement was a bike rule. This was important for me in order to judge if different levels of knowledge affected peoples perception of how safe it is to ride in San Francisco.

A survey also has to be well formed in both the structure and order of the questions so that people are clear on what they have to do. I chose to write my instructions at the top of the survey but this might have caused the people who did not see those instructions to be confused while taking the survey. I could have been more clear by sending a cover letter, which is often sent out with a survey in order to explain your purpose.

I though that it was logical to order my survey as i did because it made people think about the bike rules before thinking if they felt safe or not. Which gives me better data or evidence to prove if a relationship does in fact exist.

Another key component of a survey is the sampling size and population. How many people and who we send our survey to. In my case because i was not able to access the right group of people and because i had a small sampling size of only 22 people my results might not be a credible.

Before i go into my data analysis with a show of hands how many of you would say that after reading the bike rules from the leaflet felt safer towards riding in San francisco?, didn’t change your opinion?, felt less safe?

Thanks,

Your feedback and the feedback from people who took the survey allowed me to evaluate the possibility of a relationship between my area of focus. I gathered the evidence and looked at it in different ways such as plotting a table showing how many people chose which option for each question or a bar chart also showing the distribution of answers.

As you may have noticed all the question before the last are bike rules, i did this so that when i got the answers back i could calculate how well people knew the rules and compare it to how safe they felt. I gave each value a score out of 7 so that i could add them up and divide that by the amount of questions that were on bike rules and get an average score. I then compared that score with how much people felt safe and plotted a graph showing the correlation.

This is what i got, there isn’t a very strong positive correlation but you can see that for most people who answered the statements on the bike rules with strongly agree or agree which are the people with a higher score, were more likely to feel safe about riding in San Francisco. Although that was not always the case as you can see some people despite knowing the rules still did not feel safe, and similarly people who did not know the rules so much felt safer. Likewise some of you said that you felt safer after knowing the rules while others did not.

This suggests that some degree of relationship does in fact exist, but i believe that i have insufficient data to fully prove a correlation.

In conclusion, i had set out to find if a correlation existed between the bike rules of the road and how safe people feel about riding in San Francisco. Because of the limitations discussed in my speech, such as small sampling size or format i was not able to gather sufficient evidence to prove a relationship.  As i said my data shows some relationship, that a higher knowledge of the bike rules might cause people to feel safer but through my study this cannot be proven. Hopefully someone will do a more intense research and be able to find the correlation, until then;

Know the rules and ride safe !