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Final Refleciton

2007-05-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

Throughout the semester, I was exposed to many new things, ideas, and strategies in which I gain meaningful experiences from. These new skills that I have acquired can really be useful to me in my future career. One of the things I learned this semester was creating a digital document. I didn’t know what my computer has such thing to offer. I didn’t know that I can do such thing on my computer with the simple program it has installed because I was always afraid that I might damage something. Within this assignment I learned about my own computer and to use the many different features on my camera in addition to taking pictures. Through the making of my digital document, I learned to appreciate people who make movies; it is hard work and time consuming. Having this background knowledge of doing a digital document, I will truly consider using it in my future career whether I’m a teacher or not. I see it as a tool for learning.

In Gee’s book, I was introduced to different ideas of learning principles. I learned from Gee that effective learning involves many factors, some of which are interactive, challenge, identity, and affinity group. From Gee, I was able to see the importance of video games and how it can be use to facilitate learning and problem solving. After reading Gee, I came to identity my own affinity groups and understand how they help me in my life.

The articles and the use of wiki really help me to focus on the main ideas of the teaching of writing. The articles give great examples of positive method of teaching writing. Effective writing as described in these articles involves modeling, teaching, and scaffolds. These articles emphasized that students are able to produce more writing fluently when they are able to identification themselves with task, when it is interesting, and collaboration with other students. I can see myself as a future teacher using some of these teaching strategies to teach writing.

Also in this class I learned how to write a memo, something that I have never done before. In doing the memo, I questioned myself about the genre of writings, and how to teach it effective. Only after I’ve wrote the memo that I found Harvey’s book to expressed similar ideas and strategies. Harvey discussed the importance of writing nonfiction. She also stresses the idea of getting students engage in nonfiction activities. I agreed with Harvey that we need to teach kids to write more nonfiction, and make it interesting enthusiastic for them. This is something that I will definitely incorporate in my teaching. I discovered that nonfiction is only as fun as you make it. Olefia and I have fun working on our writing assignment sequence. Through this experience we concluded that establishing a fun and engaging lesson plan, as a teacher, is not a simple task.

As a learner, I discovered that exploring and practice are key factors to my cognitive development and understanding. As a learner, I also give myself room for improvement and mistakes. I learn to not apologize for my work, as it is what I can produce at the time. Reading is not always a simple task for me. I learned that I tend to skip more information and the key ideas when I just scam; I learned to read more carefully. Also, reading the summary that other classmate summarized on their article really help reduce the reading time that I have to do to for my memorandum paper.

Overall, I really like the digital document, and writing assignment sequence project. I think these two projects really make me think about how to approach teaching in the classroom and available myself to different technology and tools out there for me to use. These are two activities I can see myself replicating as a teacher. As a future teacher, I agreed that it is a good skill to know how to write a memorandum. I’m glad to have learned it now then try to understand one later on in life. Most of all, I would like to thank you for being patient in helping me to understand things. I really learn a lot from your class in which I think are essential to my career. Thank you!

Memoradrum Blogging

2007-04-26T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Memoradrum is an interesting genre to write. I have to really think about the kind strategies that I read about and the what will be an appropriate recommendation that I can make based on those readings. The hardest part of the memo for me was writing the discussion and back it with evidents and examples. I know that there are examples that I can use, but I'm just not sure if it fit in within well with what I'm trying to say. I try to provide as many examples and evidents I can to get my points across, and to do this I have to go scan and read some other articles in which my inquiry group members have shared that I felt it is relevent to what I'm writing about. I have to really think about what I want to say and because I writing to an educator I felt that my paper has to be professional, by that I mean, proper usage of words in a certain way or certain kind of words. As I'm finishing my memo, I felt like I'm not doing it right (in terms of the discussions, recommendation, etc.), even though we kind of discussed in class with our group.

Rules of Thump

2007-04-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

"A word about correctness" in Rules of Thump basically just say not to worry too much about spelling, puntuation, or grammar when trying to write. However, it is important to know basic errors can cause distraction to one's audience and may lose their interest. By mastering these simple rules, one will feel more confident and be able to concentrate more on its writing and be able to write more effectively.

Response to Articles

2007-04-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

After reading these articles, I found many interesting ideas in the teaching of writing. Many of these ideas seem to be very effective and successful. I notices that these articles share similar writing prespectives. One important elements in the teaching of writing that I saw in these articles is the consideration of the students and the use guided practice as a structure to teach the writing of students. I do, however, wonder what intial steps do these teachers take to develop such effective writing development? What kind of help does the teachers receive from it communities, such as parents, staffs, and aides?
Overall, I now understand that writing is something that needs to be inclusive of the writers, and developing a writing prompt that will not exclude any students.

Reification Blog

2007-03-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

I put a lot of pictures and clips of baking in my video because I wanted the audience to get the feelings my baking experience. In my narrrative I included how I got involve in baking and what were my purposes for learning to bake because I wanted my audience to get some background information of how I even got started on the idea of baking. Also, I wanted the audience to see what's important to me in this learning experience. In my narrative I also inlcuded the indregents of macademia cookies to show the idea that I very didn't know that baking cookies is easy. The clip of my little sister holding her baby didn't have anything to do my learning to bake, but I think it express the idea of the separation between my sister and I, and ironically because of him it also brought us closer together. I try to put music in the background to really express my emotions in this digital document, but I couldn't find one that will fit well with my video and that it does not get in the way of my talking. I use the music in the beginning and ending as a way to transition my audience into and out of my video. In the beginning I note that this is an Eng 333 project becuase I felt that I would have never done this if it wasn't for the class, in which I would have never realize the main reasons of why all the suddenly I wanted to bake. The cartoon pictures are just there because in a way it kind of match my narrative.
When I was doing this, I have to decide on what image goes where and how that image decribe what I was saying. I took a lot of photos and video clips, but a lot of them didn't get used. This kind of frustrates me because I want to be able to use most of the images that I took, but somehow using them don't express the idea that I want it to.

Reflecting on Digital Document

2007-02-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

I'm still working on my rough draft trying to put my movie together. The hardest part about the this project is putting in the pieces in the right order and sequence so that it make sense and that it float well with the narrative part. One of the problems that I've experienced was importing videos from my camera to Window Media Movie Maker. By accident, I finally got my videos on Window Media Movie Maker, not knowing exactly how I got it there other then messing with the program. I also found that when recording my narrative, I have a lot of miscues. Most of the time I went back and record the whole thing again, which is not an efficient method. I need to find a better way to record my narrative or I will be recording forever. Right now, I'm thinking about recording a paragraph at a time and just put it together at the end.
I'm not quite done with my digit document, thus I felt that I cannot write an adequate reflection on my experiences. Though, I found myself addicted to Window Media Movie Maker because I'm having fun discovering new things as I continue to work on my project and being active in my learning. I shall reflect more on my experiences after I complete my document. I think by then I will have more to express on my reflection.

Digital Learning

2007-02-24T10:56:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to learn that the process of making a movie is much more complicate then what I thought, but at the same time I like the feelings of becoming a "computer literate". For the past few days, I've been playing around with Windowmedia Movie Marker to become familar with the program so that when I did my real project I can do it with ease. My sister have always have Windowmedia Movie Maker on her computer and I never knew that. I didn't know that she have the program to create a movie. If I would have known easier, I would have find use for Windowmedia more inadditon to listen to music and burning CDs.
I started working on my project and found that I cannot do it without my narrative. I have some pictures and some music, but I cannot put the pieces together until I have a narrative. For me, I found it easier having the narrative or at least the written part of the project first before I can put the pieces together. Finding the right clips and the right sound to project the kind of story that I want is not easy. I found that adding the video clips or pictures or deleting things is simple, but arrange them in ways that it tells a story to grab my audiences attention is very hard. I think that, perhaps, if I have all my pieces and narrative, then maybe it will be easier. Right now, I'm still in the process of editing and finishing my narrative, and collecting video clips and pictures. I believe that if I have all these elements together, I can proceed on with my movie. I will continue to work with Windowmedia Movie Maker to achieve my goal of creating a successful movie about my learning experience.

Learning and action

2007-02-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

after reading chapter 5 & 6, I felt that most of the time Gee is explaining and giving strategies of how to play the games. However, he did tie the venture of these games with different learning principles, in which he defined at the end of each chapters. From ch. 6, Gee identified three cultural models: world, learning, and semotic domain.
One of thing that I thought was important was the Cultural Models of LearningPrinciple. In the chapter, Gee describe how video game players may achieve this principle by learning to take different perspective from the vitual charaters, and identify oneself with it. I believe that most of the ime in order for us to understand something we have to think and identify ourselves with that thing. For example, I'm learning to bake so in in the process of me learning I have to first identify myself as a person who is baking and familize myself with the things in that area.

Situate Meaning and Learning

2007-02-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

In this chapter, Gee discussed his experiences playing the video game Deus Ex and how he think it is related to real life situations. He decribed four steps process that Deus Ex can assist as a basis practice of how children learn. Gee also talked about how the human mind is so powerful at recognizing pattern. He give the example of how a child reflects in his or her action unconciously and from this experience the child learns to form a hypothesis about a certain kind of pattern about certain things, such as the meaning for book is "something like hard flat surface good fro supportating a piece of pape". As the children develop thier concepts they use patterns to create meanings that make sense to them (situate meanings).
Gee also said that not many player read the manual before starting to play the game. One may took a glance at the instruction booklet, but reading it doesn't make a lot of sense until one has already experienced it. Sometimes manual can be confusing and one wouldn't know what to do until one actually try to work it out. Like a biology book, it doesn't make much sense if one doesn't have a lot of background knowledge in the subject and haven't really been expose to its concepts. One will become to understand more and become better as one continue to practice and being exposed to it.
Overall, I think that situated meaing and learning is being activitly involve in whatever that one's trying to learn and be a part of it. This also include putting one's the mind and the body working together to make meaning out of the situation. By going through different experiences in life one also seek patterns to explain or make meaning out of things. Being a part of a situation in the world of experince, over time, these new things will eventually make sense and one will become better and better at it (like Gee playing Deus Ex).

Response to Gee

2007-01-31T17:50:00.001-08:00

In the first chapter of What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, one of of Gee major claims was that we usually think learning as holding a book or going to school, but there's more to learning than just schooling; he beleives that video games is an entertaining way of teaching us. In so doing, video game makers create games that are challenging and require problem solving skills, and using different strategies to over come many obstacles in a game. If only schools can be more entertaining and more challenging it would engage students to learn and be more active in school. I agree with Gee to some extent that video games in some ways do help some people to think critically. As I observed my brothers play Final Fantasy, which to me was a very hard and challenging game, I can see that they enjoy playing the game very much and at the same time trying to find new strategies to defeat the "bad guy". They are so into the game that sometimes it seem as though they have forgotten to eat or do their homework. Video games do grab a lot of people's attention because it is some form of entertainment for them and if they can apply the "good things" that they learn in live then it would be great. It seems like Gee have a great start in getting his readers to double think or have an opinion about video games. I look forward to reading about Gee have to say about the what video games can to teach us.

Learning something new

2007-01-24T16:47:00.000-08:00

I'm always learning new things whether I want to or not. It is something that I just have to accept in life. However, one of the new things I'm trying to learn right now is learning to bake. I know how to cook, but baking is something that I have never really learn how to do before. So to me, baking seems hard. Baking seems to compose of many ingredients that I'm not familiar with. There are so many different kinds of flours, sugars, utensils, and so fort. I don't know exactly what to use. So recently I've asked my sister to make copy of some very simple baking receipts so that I can start learning how to bake. I thought that it would be a fun and exciting learning to bake cookies, cakes, brownies, and all kinds of stuff. Once I learned how to bake I don't have to buy store cookies or manufacture easy bake stuff anymore, which would be more healthy. I'm looking forward to this intriguing new experience and hoping that I can bake soon, so I don't have to depend on the store for cookies, and cakes.

My Blog

2007-01-23T12:04:00.000-08:00

Wow...my first time learning how to post a blog!!!