Dear Professor Mangini, 
Throughout the course of this semester I have made incredible leaps and bounds that have drastically improved the way I use and view the world of technology. Through this class I've learned how significant blogging is within today's society, and how blogs can be used personally, academically, and professionally. I've seen first hand how important it is to form a strong connection with the audience during oral presentations, something one can do easily through the use of a comprehensive design plan. By working with my peers I've learned the importance of collaboration, something that will forever be a part of my life, especially once I have my first job. I've learned about the different ways to collect data, as well as the different ways to present it. I can now even say that I am able to view social media sites differently, by taking a more philosophical and sociological approach to what people say within theses mediums. Above all else I've learned that technology is not something to fear, but rather, something to embrace and accept. Technology has become an essential part of our lives, and as time progresses, we will only have more uses for it. To me, the knowledge I have learned in this course outweighs the grades I have received. If I had to put a letter grade on my performance, I would give myself an A. This is not because I think I deserve an A based on the projects I have done, or the blogs I have written. It is simply based on the abundance of knowledge I have retained, and how far I have come from the beginning of the semester. I started out as unconfident and unintelligible  Now I leave this course feeling unstoppable, and I couldn't be more grateful. 

I'd like to believe that I am not so egotistical that the only thing I talk about via social networking is myself; however, it seems that out of all my tweets, almost half of them are talking about me, or have to do with a current situation that I'm in. It's weird how I never realized this before, but I feel that it's so easy for people to get caught up in the moment, and when things are pissing them off, or they're bored they resort to social media. I see how I do just from looking at my twitter page. I'm either whining about the weather, talking about how broke I am, or expressing my concerns about how I did on my last test. For the most part, everything has to do with me. Rarely do I talk about the world, and when I have someone that doesn't totally relate to me I wind up quoting it and tagging my friends, thus talking about someone else. No matter what I'm always talking about something, and usually that something is pretty unimportant. It's kind of sad how disappointing my page really is, I'm kind of ashamed, and secretly hope that no one goes on my twitter page to read interesting and fun tweets about my life.

I didn't mind high school, but overall I was happy to leave and go off to college, happily leaving behind that life. I was eager to start over. For me, Facebook didn't prohibit me from enjoying myself at college, and it certainly didn't make it harder for me. I think that for those people who formed a majority of their friendships through online chats, and communicated primarily through status updates, it was a challenge. No one in college knows you, no one can comment on your things, and those who do just remind you of the past, or the fact that they aren't around for you to talk about these things during lunch time or study hall. 
Personally, in high school I didn't care too much for Facebook, but went I got to college it became more important to me because it was the only way I could keep in touch with people I had just met. Today, if someone looked on my Facebook page they'd either think I had no friends, or that I forgot I even had a Facebook. My last status was about my dads birthday back in September, which is also the same time I changed my profile picture. Rarely do I post anything on Facebook. I use it primarily to see what other people are doing, and to connect with the groups that I'm in, or create events. Also to remember birthdays since I have a horrible memory. I think that if someone viewed my Facebook it would be hard to tell anything about my personality, but that's kind of the way I like it. I'd rather have a Facebook and be private, then not have a Facebook and be considered weird, or not know what's going on in the world, or with my friends. 

I really enjoy working with my group so far. We all have similar ideas and work methods, making it easy for us to get along. This really helps us because we are able to come up with quick compromises and solutions to problems that we face. I think that each of our ideas for the outcome of our assignment is similar, which also makes it easy to work with my group. We all seem to be on the same page with most of the assignments, and we're currently on track with everything we need to get done. If the rest of this assignment goes as smoothly as it has been going so far I think we will do better than we ever expected. 

I think that so far everything is going smoothly. My group and I are getting along great and everyone is working together to collect sources; however, our design plan is not as far along. I think that if we all pull together that should be pretty easy to get done so we can focus more of our attention towards our bibliography and our visual. The more I think about the assignment as a whole, the more excited I get because I really do love our topic and I think we can make a big impact. Overall, we're definitely not ahead, but we're not far behind either, in my opinion we're just working at our own pace, and that has been working well so far. 

I really enjoyed reading Chisholm's article, because it references the daily struggles a teacher goes through when having students collaborate. I feel that collaboration in general is a great experience and one that everyone can learn a lot from; however, we have all gone through bad experiences with this as well. I think that Chisholm does a good job of highlighting the positives and the negatives, and provides teachers with techniques that not only combat the negatives, but also prevent them from happening in the future. There are a lot of things that teachers and students alike can do to improve the experiences they have while collaborating with other people. 

Collaboration to me is the combining of ideas, thoughts, and experiences to create a joint union in which everyone is able to learn something from someone else. With that said, I feel that in order to fully collaborate one must be open with the people they are grouped with in order to get the full experience. I think that collaborating is similar to beginning a relationship. First is the official meeting, or the first date, in which everyone is nervous and hesitant. Next is opening up to one another and see if everyone's opinions mesh, and everyone accepts other peoples ideas even if they don't agree with them. Lastly, if everyone is feeling good they will move on and have an even better second date, in which they can learn more and help each other further. The problem is that some people will not be as open as others, and other people will be stuck on their "exes" or other friends, and won't be fully committed to the group. Therefore, it's good to set up boundaries and explain on the first meeting what the goals are, and what everyone is looking to get out of this experience.

I feel that to advocate for something is very important, because it shows that you deeply care about something that is meaningful to you in some way. Being an advocate for something can be very powerful, for example, those who are advocates against animal abuse. Advocacy to me, means to stand up for something that you believe in. It can also be something simple. I feel that the items I collected are successful because they talk about things that are meaningful to the people my age, or their targeted demographic. They understand that they are trying to reach college student; therefore, they pinpoint exactly what it is we want to read about. 

I feel that the people who presented today were very prepared, and took the lessons they learned from the first set of presenters and applied them to their own presentations. Each person had a very unique story that gave a little more insight into who they are as people. I think the hardest job people had throughout all of the presentations was matching their photos to their essays, especially when they were reading aloud. Out of all the presentations I think my favorite was Danielle's because the timing of her photos was perfect, the tone of her voice matched the emotion she wanted to create, and she had a great meaning behind her essay. I hope that my future presentations are as clean and memorable as hers. Overall, I was very impressed with everyone, because I know how hard it is to get up in front of an audience and give a presentation! 

This experience showed me that public speaking is not my forte; however, I did learn a lot about ways I can improve. Things such as slowing down my speech, and connecting more with my audience are definitely ways that I can improve in the future. Everyone who went today did a great job of demonstrating how important love is, whether it's in the form of dogs, relationships or community. Each speech gave me an insight into someone's life, and I really enjoyed learning more about them. I hope that my next speech I can improve on the little things and won't be as nervous as I was today. Even more so I hope to work out the little kinks and not have to start over! Above all else today was a learning experience and I'm glad that it's done and over with.