User talk:Particular.Individual/sandbox

Hello there, I see you have put a lot of work into finding articles for this assignment. You have many selections which is great, but let me know which ones you'd like to pursue for this course. I'm curious about the tone you may have detected in your article for evaluation. Can you talk about that a bit? Keep up the great work! -Momo Sumomox4nouchi (talk) 01:10, 8 February 2019 (UTC)sumomox4nouchi

Peer Review
Alicia's Peer Review

The language overall is kept pretty neutral and doesn't orient the reader's perspective with persuasive language. The sources all seem to be reliable sources. Great use of statistics that are very informative and relevant.

'''Area 1: Education in Guatemala '''

Perhaps in the last sentence of the first paragraph, there can be some elaboration on the negative impacts that it has on student performance or specific studies that have statistics. The language barrier section with the teachers and students may not belong in the same section as the sentences that describe the Guatemalan schools' electricity or lack of computers.

'''Area II: Economy of Guatemala '''

'surprisingly robust' may be too descriptive or holds connotations about Guatemala

'''Sector: Off the Grid '''

The statistic about those with no electrical grid connection in the first sentence flows well with the next sentence about extending national grids to rural customers.

Abe's Response
Hi Alicia, thanks for the kind words and great suggestions. I eliminated the section on language barriers in the Education in Guatemala sub-section since it wasn't really adding anything.

Regarding the claim about lack of school infrastructure affecting student achievement, I revisited that paper to see what additional detail I could incorporate. The Murillo et al. paper does explicitly state that same claim, but also uses a lot of advanced statistics I don't fully understand yet. I may have to ask Dr. Talkwalker or another professor to help me interpret what the data they present in table form actually means before I can add anything more about it in the Wiki Article.

Lastly, thanks for the feedback on my choice of language about the reliability of the electrical grid there. I changed my terminology to be more neutral.

Cheers, Abe Particular.Individual (talk) 04:29, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

McCalister's Peer Review
Area I: Education in Guatemala (New § Rural Schools) Maybe reword the first sentence to something like this, "Guatemala spends less money on education than almost any other country in the world."[3] Overall great facts and statistics Maybe add a transition sentence between discussing funds spend on education and infrastructure to add clarity. Such as, "while educational funding is at a low, infrastructure is not quite as low". This may help the reader to understand interplay of education and infrastructure. Glad that you mention of the effects caused by lack of infrastructure.
 * "In Guatemala, the strong majority of schools had electricity by the late 2000s.[1][2] However, during the same time period less than 25 percent of Guatemalan schools had computer facilities,[1][2] demonstrating a potential -- I think you can safely delete this word. Seems like a significant need as we live in an increasingly globalized world and people are competing in the same job market
 * "Various government programs such as PRONADE (the National Community-Managed Program for Educational Development), and PROESCOLAR (the Education Development Program) have attempted to devolve educational decision-making and responsibility to local communities.[3]" Have these program been implemented in rural Guatemalan schools?

Area II: Economy of Guatemala (New § Electrical Infrastructure in Rural Guatemala)

"Even when rural users are connected to the grid and pay subsidized rates, their difficulty affording electrical appliances means that their typically low power consumption (less than five percent of average US residential usage) is not profitable for power companies.[5]" It might be helpful for you to comment more on the results of this, such as "therefore there is a lack of investment interests in power companies and a further stagnation of development etc." - this may be a point of departure as you conduct further research. I think it would be helpful for the reader that way they don't jump to their own conclusions as to what lack of profit from power companies looks like.

Sector: Off-the-Grid (New § Off-grid Power for Marginalized Communities) Overall great additions. There is no evidence of opinion or personal critiques that attempt to sway the reader. I think it would be great if you just elaborated on some of the great statistics that you shared in your research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcrussell11 (talk • contribs) 22:40, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Abe's Response
Hey McCalister,

Thank you for the feedback and suggestions. I appreciate you putting in the time to make such a detailed peer review.

I incorporated most of your suggestions in some edits a week or two ago, but here's what I remember.

Area I: Suggestions on phrasing used to revamp first two paragraphs for clarity and flow. In the third paragraph, I clarified that the two government programs I mention were implemented in rural areas of Guatemala.

Area II: I reworded the second sentence to complete the arc of what I was trying to say. Then it was kind of a run-on sentence, so I broke it up into two instead. I think it sounds less academic and more encyclopedic now, so thanks for motivating me on that edit.

Sector: I definitely have more material I could incorporate here. I kind of wanted to keep this sub-section short and sweet, but I can definitely see how some of the claims I make are thought-provoking and maybe suggest further elaboration. They're basically "summarized and synthesized" distillations of findings in different academic papers, avoiding specifics so the section doesn't get bogged down in details.

I'm not clear overall if it is in keeping with encyclopedic writing to talk about research from academic papers, so I may need to clarify how to approach this with Momo or Clare.

Overall, thanks again for going the extra mile to provide such positive, constructive feedback.

Go Bears! Abe Particular.Individual (talk) 05:09, 18 April 2019 (UTC)