Last BLOG!!!

One thing that I have really enjoyed about this class is the writing. I was a little worried going into this class because I heard it was going to be a lot of writing. I really do not enjoy reading and writing I am more of a math student. All of the reading in this class made it interesting and an overall good experience. I really liked Gee’s book as it brought out an opinion that I had never thought about. I loved the articles that we read in preparation of our memorandum because they all related to something that I am going to have to deal with real soon. I learned so much about how to teach writing and am going to look forward to using this new knowledge when I am student teaching. My memorandum assignment was a great experience. I think I had such a great experience because I had such a great group. We worked so well together. It was nice to have someone their because they helped you get past any question you had right then and there. Where as when you usually have a question you have to stop and ask the teacher, then wait for a reply. We all worked so well together we did our Assignment Sequence paper together. Another thing I really enjoyed about this class was all the different medias we used to present information. Some examples, the mini movie we had to make, making a blog account, making a wikipedia, etc. I never knew how to do any of these things when I started the course looking at the syllabus I was scared when you were describing it the different types of things we were going to do. But you helped us with each of these because you understood that we had never done anything like this. I feel like this was so cool because the way things are going right now with students you need that technology edge in order to keep them entertained and excited. I truly feel that if I had not had this class I would have never been exposed to these in the past and probably would have never used these in my future class room. Overall I really enjoyed this class probably my favorite English class. I have learned that I am actually a pretty good writer.

Have a great summer!

memorandum

I really enjoyed this assignment. I feel that I learned some great things about how to teach writing. I really enjoyed that it was not a regular paper. It made it fun to have a different sturctured paper. I spent probably about four days writing it and gathering the information from the other articles. My group all wrote the project together which made it a whole lot easier. It was nice to bounce ideas off each other and they were their to tell me what qoutes out of their articles would work for supporting arguments.

Corrections

This was really interesting to read. I think that it is funny that I am a college student and I still make some of these errors. For example, accept and except I always get twisted, to and too, I had always wondered when to use too and just recently learned how to use it perfectly. It makes me feel that better that they are the most commonly confused words at least I am not the only idiot! :) Also the part on One word or two...I really like how it says always one word or always two words. I think that is funny because everything has a definition but not these it just simple says that. I always borke up without for some reason and one I used to have a problem with in High School is a lot. I always wrote it as one word. This was funny and entertaining to read!

reading about writing

I really am enjoying the articles that I am reading. I think my favorite so far is the A Letter to Stacie from her grandmother. I really liked everything she wrote that she expected from her grandaughter. It was interesting because the entire time I was reading it I thought how is this even possible to do everything in the classroom. Then towards the end of the letter she states how she had been an educator for years and knows that all of those things were not possible in every classroom but she does expect it. I also like that she stated she hopes that teachers have high expectations from their students because they will try and meet in instead of just settling for what they already know. My favorite quote from this article is, "I want your teachers to build on what we are teaching you at home." I think I like this quote because it implies that it is not just up to the school to teach students foundations are built at home and then the teacher helps the foundation grow.

The article from Donald Graves about writing was really intersting. I love that he states children need to pick their topics so they can write on something the know. This way he can help them build an essay and really truly learn the foundation of becoming a writer. My favoite quote from this is, "children must revise, if they aren't revising each piece, then they aren't really becoming writers."

ALL DONE!

This was pretty hard for me to start. I first could not find my topic and when I did it was just something I settled with. I first started just looking at pictures on line. Then I decided to start writing and fill in with pictures. The fact I was in a classroom helped becasue if I could not find the pictures I wanted I would take them of my class. Then as I worked on my paper and putting my pictures in order I started adding to my paper. I had a longer movie made but I noticed that it was beginning to say things over and over and then it was just not making sense. Therefore I shortened it. I hope that it is long enough. I also could not find any music I wanted to play so therefore I decided not to play any music. I have to admit this was a fun way of writing. I have never done anything like this and was excited at the chance to do this. Since we are your guinea pigs for this project I think that this should be passed on through semesters to other students. I actually told my cooperating teacher about this project and she wants to make a little movie out of all the kids fields trips from this year. I told her I would be more that happy to put this together. Their are a couple of kids that I think I am going to have record their voice from essays they have written about what they liked about a particular field trip. My audience for my movie is aimed at anyone. Anyone that feels like they have no idea what they want to do after college. All of the difficult things for me was my own error. For isntance instead of finishing my movie I kept trying to move the file from my zip drive to my cd. This was just my mistake becasue after wasting three cds I then looked where it said finish movie, and save movie to a CD. So that was my error. I liked how we in class went over how to use movie maker. This helped a ton.

Progress on Multimedia Project

I have not really started my project just yet. I am working on my credential applications and getting those into the mail today! Therefore tonight and tommorrow I am working on just that project. I would like to get my pictures taken on Wednesday due to the fact I will be in the classroom, and my script written by tonight. Hopefully by Thursday I will have a good chunk of it done.

cultural models and learning

This chapter was interesting. I like how he went into depth about what you learn from video games. I like what he said about cultural models to. It seems like a theme throughout the book in the sense of your experiences are how you interrupt. For instance the little kid describing the sonic hedgehog. When he is the "shadow" even though it is an evil character you are doing a positive thing by staying alive. I have never thought of it that way in the sense of grand theft auto also. Even though you are killing for the mob you are doing positive thinking and organizing how you are going to stay alive. Really interesting. I think the last chapter will be interesting to see how he concludes it and how he compares it all wrapping up!