I started out this semester feeling less than confident about my technological skills, and the background I had when working with different computer programs. As the semester progressed I saw how my attitude and my skills improved. With a little help from my classmates, my professor, and a few YouTube tutorials, I’ve finally become successful in the ways of technology. I think that each assignment helped me, because each one added on to the knowledge I learned from the previous assignment. Over the course of this semester I have gained the knowledge to be successful in future classes, and take what I’ve learned about technology and apply to other areas of my life.
Weebly:
When we first began using Weebly at the beginning of the semester it took me a good amount of time to understand how it worked, and what each tab meant. Just like many things in life, everything gets better with time, and that’s exactly what happened. In my first blog post I wrote, “My negative opinion towards the technological world has come from a wide range of bad experiences mixed with confusion and self-doubt.” I feel that as the semester went on I began replacing bad experiences with positive ones, and becoming more confident in my ability to learn and use new programs. I definitely feel that working in groups for peer review and talking over assignments helped me better understand the goal of the assignment, and pinpoint how I wanted to go about it. After using Weebly I’ve become an advocate for blogging. I’m in love with how easy it is for me to slide my fingers across the keys and simply free write my ideas, or blog about my day. I think more teachers should take advantage of this form of communication and implement it into their curriculum.
This I Believe:
It took me a while to come up with a topic for the This I Believe assignment because I was so focused on trying to create something memorable. I wanted to make it creative yet enticing and interesting for my readers. Along with something they could relate to on a personal level. It wasn’t until I stopped overthinking the assignment that one-day my topic just came to me. In a blog entry I wrote, “The minute I sat down in class today and started to acclimate myself to my surrounding, I suddenly realized what I wanted to do my TIB essay on…the more I think about it the more I realize that it was in front of me the whole time I just never thought to write about it until now.” When I decided to write about Hurricane Sandy I knew that I needed to think about how I was going to approach it, especially since it was still a sore subject for a majority of the state. I knew that in order to relay a strong message I had to have a strong presentation.
Once again I struggled with the technological aspect of the assignment. At first it was the sound essay that I struggled with. I must have tried at least three different programs, each one with varying processes, and ways to operate the program. I was beyond lost. Once I got that figured out if was on to the photo essay. At first I was going to create a Prezi, then I decide it would be best to create a slideshow as I read my story aloud in front of the class. This seemed like a great idea until I actually had to go up in front of the class and present. My nerves had got the best of me; I completely forgot everything I learned from chapter 6 about stage freight. As a result I sped through my story, not realizing how fast I was reading until I was so out of breath at the end. In a blog entry I wrote after my presentation entitled "Lessons Learned" I said, “This experience showed me that public speaking is not my forte…things such as slowing down my speech, and connecting more with my audience are definitely ways I can improve.” This assignment showed me the importance of slowing down when I read, and that if I have the option to record to a voice over, I should take advantage of it.
Advocacy Project:
Out of the three projects we did this semester I think that this one was definitely my favorite for a variety of reasons. First I loved the topic my group and me chose to research. I think our topic definitely appealed to a significant and specified audience, which allowed us to zero-in on what we wanted to talk about, as well as what direction we were to go in for our project. With this, the second reason I loved this project is because I loved my group. We all worked incredibly well together, and each took on different portions of the assignment. In a blog post entitled "So Far So Good," I wrote, “I really enjoy working with my group. We all have similar ideas and work methods, making it easy for us to get along.” I liked how we immediately trusted each other, which made it easy for us to delegate who was to do what portion of the assignment. I think the main reason we worked well together was because we each had similar visions, and were able to execute a great assignment because of that.
The assignment itself took time, and researching was the more arduous part of the entire thing, but we were able to make it work with time to spare. We took on a different approach to makeup, one that is rooted in making girls feel confident in who they are, with and without makeup. I think that there are two aspects of our project that really demonstrate our point of view, and adequately relay our message. The first is our video. I like that there are no words and it simply showcases that cosmetic companies take advantage of women’s insecurities by exploiting them through a variety of advertisements. The second thing we did well was creating tabs for each of us to write our own personal stories about our relationships with makeup and our insecurities. This aspect really helps our credibly and creates both ethos and pathos with our readers.
Social Media Investigation:
I definitely enjoyed the research aspect of this assignment. Just like the previous assignment I started off not knowing what kind of “investigation” I wanted to do, or what my topic I should focus on. I feel that learning about the topics that other people were researching helped me concentrate on what I was interested in; therefore, I was able to narrow down my topic selection. I chose to research single girls in college because of how relevant it is. Being that a majority of my friends on twitter are girls in college, I had an abundance of research right at my fingertips. I liked how different this project was in comparison to the previous projects, because in some ways I felt like I was learning about the sociology of college girls, and investigating their habits, which was interesting and different.
I struggled the most in this assignment with finding accurate themes throughout my data. I didn’t want to offend anyone, or make girls feel that they were condemned to the single life forever based on the traits that I found many single girls exhibited. I had to choose how I worded things within my final paper, in order to make sure this didn’t happen. Overall, I was very satisfied with the outcome of my paper, and I’m happy with the research I was able to conduct.
Conclusion:
I learned so much from this class, and I am so grateful to have had such an amazing professor and classmates, that helped me along the way. I feel that this class taught me to never be afraid of the wonders of technology. This class showed me the many ways technology can be implemented into daily activities, and projects, and how I can use the tools I now have in future classes. I definitely feel that this class has helped me for my future when I become a teacher. I can use the programs I have become familiar with to present class activities, and implement them throughout my curriculum. In conclusion, I couldn’t be happier with how I have ended the semester in this class, and I can’t wait to take the things I’ve learned and use them within various aspects of my life.
Weebly:
When we first began using Weebly at the beginning of the semester it took me a good amount of time to understand how it worked, and what each tab meant. Just like many things in life, everything gets better with time, and that’s exactly what happened. In my first blog post I wrote, “My negative opinion towards the technological world has come from a wide range of bad experiences mixed with confusion and self-doubt.” I feel that as the semester went on I began replacing bad experiences with positive ones, and becoming more confident in my ability to learn and use new programs. I definitely feel that working in groups for peer review and talking over assignments helped me better understand the goal of the assignment, and pinpoint how I wanted to go about it. After using Weebly I’ve become an advocate for blogging. I’m in love with how easy it is for me to slide my fingers across the keys and simply free write my ideas, or blog about my day. I think more teachers should take advantage of this form of communication and implement it into their curriculum.
This I Believe:
It took me a while to come up with a topic for the This I Believe assignment because I was so focused on trying to create something memorable. I wanted to make it creative yet enticing and interesting for my readers. Along with something they could relate to on a personal level. It wasn’t until I stopped overthinking the assignment that one-day my topic just came to me. In a blog entry I wrote, “The minute I sat down in class today and started to acclimate myself to my surrounding, I suddenly realized what I wanted to do my TIB essay on…the more I think about it the more I realize that it was in front of me the whole time I just never thought to write about it until now.” When I decided to write about Hurricane Sandy I knew that I needed to think about how I was going to approach it, especially since it was still a sore subject for a majority of the state. I knew that in order to relay a strong message I had to have a strong presentation.
Once again I struggled with the technological aspect of the assignment. At first it was the sound essay that I struggled with. I must have tried at least three different programs, each one with varying processes, and ways to operate the program. I was beyond lost. Once I got that figured out if was on to the photo essay. At first I was going to create a Prezi, then I decide it would be best to create a slideshow as I read my story aloud in front of the class. This seemed like a great idea until I actually had to go up in front of the class and present. My nerves had got the best of me; I completely forgot everything I learned from chapter 6 about stage freight. As a result I sped through my story, not realizing how fast I was reading until I was so out of breath at the end. In a blog entry I wrote after my presentation entitled "Lessons Learned" I said, “This experience showed me that public speaking is not my forte…things such as slowing down my speech, and connecting more with my audience are definitely ways I can improve.” This assignment showed me the importance of slowing down when I read, and that if I have the option to record to a voice over, I should take advantage of it.
Advocacy Project:
Out of the three projects we did this semester I think that this one was definitely my favorite for a variety of reasons. First I loved the topic my group and me chose to research. I think our topic definitely appealed to a significant and specified audience, which allowed us to zero-in on what we wanted to talk about, as well as what direction we were to go in for our project. With this, the second reason I loved this project is because I loved my group. We all worked incredibly well together, and each took on different portions of the assignment. In a blog post entitled "So Far So Good," I wrote, “I really enjoy working with my group. We all have similar ideas and work methods, making it easy for us to get along.” I liked how we immediately trusted each other, which made it easy for us to delegate who was to do what portion of the assignment. I think the main reason we worked well together was because we each had similar visions, and were able to execute a great assignment because of that.
The assignment itself took time, and researching was the more arduous part of the entire thing, but we were able to make it work with time to spare. We took on a different approach to makeup, one that is rooted in making girls feel confident in who they are, with and without makeup. I think that there are two aspects of our project that really demonstrate our point of view, and adequately relay our message. The first is our video. I like that there are no words and it simply showcases that cosmetic companies take advantage of women’s insecurities by exploiting them through a variety of advertisements. The second thing we did well was creating tabs for each of us to write our own personal stories about our relationships with makeup and our insecurities. This aspect really helps our credibly and creates both ethos and pathos with our readers.
Social Media Investigation:
I definitely enjoyed the research aspect of this assignment. Just like the previous assignment I started off not knowing what kind of “investigation” I wanted to do, or what my topic I should focus on. I feel that learning about the topics that other people were researching helped me concentrate on what I was interested in; therefore, I was able to narrow down my topic selection. I chose to research single girls in college because of how relevant it is. Being that a majority of my friends on twitter are girls in college, I had an abundance of research right at my fingertips. I liked how different this project was in comparison to the previous projects, because in some ways I felt like I was learning about the sociology of college girls, and investigating their habits, which was interesting and different.
I struggled the most in this assignment with finding accurate themes throughout my data. I didn’t want to offend anyone, or make girls feel that they were condemned to the single life forever based on the traits that I found many single girls exhibited. I had to choose how I worded things within my final paper, in order to make sure this didn’t happen. Overall, I was very satisfied with the outcome of my paper, and I’m happy with the research I was able to conduct.
Conclusion:
I learned so much from this class, and I am so grateful to have had such an amazing professor and classmates, that helped me along the way. I feel that this class taught me to never be afraid of the wonders of technology. This class showed me the many ways technology can be implemented into daily activities, and projects, and how I can use the tools I now have in future classes. I definitely feel that this class has helped me for my future when I become a teacher. I can use the programs I have become familiar with to present class activities, and implement them throughout my curriculum. In conclusion, I couldn’t be happier with how I have ended the semester in this class, and I can’t wait to take the things I’ve learned and use them within various aspects of my life.
RSS Feed