Dominique

Portfolio Assignment

2007-05-16T20:23:00.000-07:00

This semester, I learned a variety of different things that I never would have learned if I had not taken this class. While thinking back on everything, I think my favorite assignment was the digital document. I would have never learned how to do that if it was not for this class. I really want to make another one soon.
In the beginning of the semester we read Gee’s book about video games. I really found this book to be interesting. Some of the topics that Gee touched on I completely agree with. Kids learn everything they need to in order to advance to the next level in a video game. If kids could learn school subjects/materials like they learn video games then they would probably retain more knowledge. I learned so much more than just video games from Gee’s book such as semiotic domains and affinity groups. I really enjoyed this book.
The articles on the teaching of writing brought up some really interesting points. I always knew that I enjoyed writing about a personal experience better than some specific topic that the teacher assigned, but I never really thought to actually implement that into my classroom when I become a teacher. I learned that children actually write better when you allow them to choose their topic. I learned that as a teacher, you need to be a model for your students. Also, the way the teacher approaches the children about their writing affects how well they are going to write. I learned so many different ways to teach children how to write that I did not even think about prior to this class.
Harvey’s book was really interesting also. I liked that there were children’s sample writing throughout the book. She noted on some really interesting ideas. I really enjoyed the chapter on showing kids how. As I read it, I just wanted to remember everything so I will use it when I am a teacher. I know that I will not remember everything that I took out of the book. Therefore, I plan to keep this book and reference it later when I actually have my own classroom.
I loved doing the digital document. It was extremely time consuming, but I really enjoyed it. I learned how to use so many different features that I did not previously know. I also liked that this was different. It was different than just sitting down and writing a paper about something we learned or are learning. This was more exciting and entertaining while also giving you the same information the paper would.
I liked the blogs and the wikis because again it was different. I liked that we got to see what other people had to say about the same topic also. Our world is becoming so much more technologically influenced, so it was good that we actually got to use some of this for a real purpose.
The memo was hard. This was the first time I had ever written a memo of that type. I thought that it was somewhat difficult in the beginning, but it was okay once I got the hang of it. I am happy that we did this as an assignment because it is something that we will have to use later in life. This pertained to a real life situation and I liked that. I liked the assignment sequence. I thought of something that I would have enjoyed doing when I was in 2nd grade and then created my assignment.
Most of our assignments were things that we will have to use later in life. We can actually relate to them because as one time or another we will have to learn how to do all of these things.
I learned that as a learner, I like to learn things that I can relate to real life situations. Also, I like being able to talk to my peers about the assignment and get ideas from them or give them ideas. That really helped me. I learned that as a reader, I need a lot of time to read. I have to re-read things many times before it really sinks in. Also, I have a lot of trouble reading material that I am not interested in. If it is something that interests me then I have no problem reading. As a writer, I learned that it really, really helps to write about a subject that I can relate to or is a personal experience. I, also, like being able to talk about what I am going to write about with my peers.
I want to remember to allow my students to choose their own topics to write about. Even if you give them criteria to follow and then they get to choose, that is still better then you choosing what they are going to write about. I also want to allow my students time to talk about the assignment with their peers. I want to give them time to think about what they are going to write about and then share it with their peers. I want them to be able to read each others’ rough drafts. I want them to go to their peers for ideas and/or suggestions.
I learned a lot of information from this class that I hope will stay with me until I become a teacher. There were times in this class that opened my ideas to new ideas and ways of doing things.

Memorandum Reflection

2007-04-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

After completing my memorandum on the teaching of writing, I realized that I had a completely different perspective of what exactly a memorandum was. I thought that they were extremely short, brief, and to the point. I had no idea that some memos are multiple pages long. At first, I was extremely intimidated by the assignment. I had never wrote a memo that long before. I did not even really know how to write a memo. Once I realized how to write it and I actually started doing it, it came easier than I had imagined. I leared a lot by looking at the sample memo beforehand. I also was really happy that we got to bring a rough draft to class and talk about them in our groups. That helped me so much. I was able to ask questions and fix the problems I was having. After talking to my group about the memos, I really understood much better. I was able to go home and write my memo without any problems. I am happy that we had this assignment because this is something that I might have to do one day. I am glad that I learned how to do this now instead of later.
I learned a lot from the articles that we had to read and incorporate ideas from in the the memo. I learned writing approaches that I will definitely use as a future teacher. The articles really opened my eyes to how teaching writing differently affects how the students write. I have learned so much about effective teaching of writing approaches and I have learned some approaches the generally do not work so well. I will definitely implement some of the appropriate approaches into my classroom one day.

Things that I think could be different if this were done again would be to actually do the memorandum in groups or only write about the articles we read. I usually do not like groups work, but I felt like the hardest part of the memo was writing about topics in articles that I did not read. Even though I read my group members bibliographies, it is still not the same as actually reading the articles. It would have been alittle easier if we only wrote the memo on the articles that we read.
Something that I really liked about the project was that we were able to bring in a rough draft and have our group members go over it. That was extremely beneficial to me. I was able to work out my issues after I brought in the rough draft and asked my group for help.
This is a project that I am glad I participated in because I will actually have to use all of the components of this project in real situations one day.

Importance of Correctness

2007-04-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

As I was looking through the book, Rules of Thumb, I noticed that there are so many rules that students have to learn when they first start to write. These are rules that come naturally to me now. I don’t even think about all of those rules when I am writing. When I was in school all of my teachers were sticklers for correct grammar, but never to the point where I felt as if they were not actually paying attention to the concepts of my writing. Now, I am so happy that they pushed and pushed me because I feel like it has helped me so much in college. I will have other college students ask me a grammatical question that I learned in 3rd grade. Therefore, I definitely believe that the correctness of writing is important.
However, when having your students write, I do not think that you should focus on the grammar. I believe that it obstructs their thinking process. I think that when students are so worried about writing correctly, they are not worried about what they are writing. If they do not have to worry about the correctness of their writing then they will really write what they are trying to say. There will be much more to their actually story than just correct grammar. I do think that if the grammar is completely off-based to the point where the reader does not understand what the writer is trying to say is not okay. I think that the author of this book says it well when he states, “too much concern about spelling, punctuation, and grammar can inhibit your writing; too little concern can come between you and your readers.”
As a future teacher, I think that when I assign a writing project I will have my students write and tell them to not worry about the grammar at all. Then, I will talk to them about their story, not the grammar. Then, I will have them go through and correct their own grammar. Then, turn it in. If it is done that way then the students will be able to write worry-free. Then, they can correct the grammar. I definitely believe that the content is much more important than the correctness of it, but I would want my students to understand that correct grammar is important.

What do I know

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

I have now read three articles about the teaching of writing. I have also discussed with my group some other articles. I have learned that When you assign children to write you can put them in groups. They can talk with each other about their writing and ask each other for help. They can assign roles to themselves and to the other members in their group. This helps children in their writing process. I have also learned that when students can write about a personal experience rather than a topic given to them by the teacher, they write much better. Students want to write about an experience. Students enjoy writing about topics that they are familiar with and know a lot about. Personally, I would much rather write about a personal experience than a random topic that a teacher assigns that I am not interested in. I am knowledgeable about the topic if I can relate to it. I think that students write better when they can relate to the topic. Another important thing that I have learned is that you cannot teach all students the same. Some students will need that extra effort to get them into writing. English language learners, for example, usually have horrible experiences with writing. They have been taught that literacy only occurs within the classroom and that is all that they can write about. If you take those students and just have them talk about their lives or their experiences they become interested. Once they have talk about those experiences then you can ask them to write it down on paper. Most of those students just want to tell you their story. They want to tell you that they think that making money out in the field is more important to them than writing about useless information that they will not need in their future.
I have learned that everybody is different. Different styles of teaching will cause different styles of writing. All in all, letting the students write about their own life experiences seems to be the most rewarding.

Reification of My Digital Document

2007-03-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

I don't even know where to begin when talking about the process of making my digital document. I guess I would say that it all started when we did our very first blog. I blogged about recently learning how to ski and wanting to learn how to ski off of some sort of jump. The next time I went skiing I had my boyfriend take a bunch of random pictures and videos of me skiing. After that, every time I went skiing I had people taking pictures of me, the scenery, and my little brother. After I had a lot of pictures I started thinking about what I was going to talk about. I had a general idea that I wanted to talk about how I am one of the only people my age who still skis and that when I first started it was horrible. After a small amount of brainstorming, I just wanted to start putting my project together. I wanted to put the pictures in order and then worry about what I was going to say when I was done. I quickly realized that was a bad idea. So I wrote my narration. After writing my narration, putting the pictures together on the slide show was so much easier. I did then realize that I didn't have a lot of pictures that I wanted. I decided to incorporate my family. So I needed pictures of me skiing when I was really little and I needed some pictures of my family. I called my mom and she searched our whole house and finally was able to dig up some old ski pictures. The following day she took them to a place to have them put on a disk so she could e-mail them (remember these pictures are from back in the day of no digital cameras so they were not on any computer). I didn't have a couple of pictures that were not really crucial but that I really wanted so I photoshopped some pictures. I had never used photoshop before so that took hours and hours of time that I was not expecting. Then I finally had all of the pictures that I wanted/needed for my project.
So I had written my narration and had all my my pictures. That is hen I THOUGHT that I was almost done. Little did I know that was just the beginning. That took the least amount of time. I put all of the pictures in the order I wanted them in. I did my project on my computer using windows movie maker. I did my narration and music using garageband on a mac. I had to learn how to use gargaeband first. Then I started to do my recording. I liked garageband because if you had said a lot and then messed up a little bit you could just cut out the part where you messed up and not the whole thing. That took me about an hour or so because I messed up a lot. Then, I looked through my music on itunes and came up with like ten songs that would fit different parts of my project perfectly. I realized if I did that, I would constantly be switching songs and that wouldn't sound very good. So I narrowed it down and choose 2 songs. I put in the music with my narration and figured out where in my narration I wanted the music to fade in and out. All of this was extremely time consuming, but by far the most time consuming part of my project was getting the timing of my words and pictures down. I sat with the mac computer and my computer next to each other and would push play on both at the exact same time to do the timing. Then I would stop them both and edit it and then start again from the beginning and then stop again to edit it and so on. I probably sat at those tow computers for about 5 hours until I decided I needed a brake. Then I went back and finished. I can't even explain how long that took. I heard the beginning to the song Mudfootball by Jack Johnson so many times that everyone in my house was ready to kill me.
Once I got my timing down, I saved the garageband file to an MP3 file and e-mailed it to myself. I then dragged it right onto windows movie maker. That actually went much smoother than I had envisioned.
I did not specifically incorporate Gee into my text because my audience is my family and friends. I talked about learned how to ski in a snowboarders world. I did not fit into the snowboarder affinity group and I had my own identity. Then, I brought into my document my family full of skiers when I am back in my affinity group. Gee also talks about once you start feeling confident in something to almost move up a step. He talks about trying something a little bit more difficult and stepping out of your comfort zone. That is how I felt when I had just gotten skiing down and then I was going to attempt going off a box.
There is one picture in my document that I feel may need some explaining. Right before I go off the box I show me skiing down to the box. I talk about how everyone I was with was yelling at me and telling my what to do the whole time I was skiing. Then, I showed a picture of the people I was with to enforce the fact that they talking at that point.
All in all, this was a long, long process but I really enjoyed making it. I realized that I could do a lot more things with computers than I thought that I could. It was extremely time consuming but I had fun making it!

Reflecting on Digital Document

2007-02-27T08:01:00.000-08:00

As I coming close to the completion of my digital document, I have realized that I have learned a lot about computers that I did not think I could do before. Although it was time consuming, I do not think it was as difficult to do as I imagined.
When I begin this project I started to brainstorm about something that I am learning how to do right now. I came up with skiing (in particular skiing off of some jumps). So the last few times I went skiing, I had my boyfriend take some pictures and videos of me. So I had all of the pictures I needed but I still didn’t know exactly how I wanted to do this.
I thought I was going to want to put all of the pictures in order and then write my narration afterwards. I was wrong! That was definitely not the way to go for me. I didn’t know what order to put the pictures in because I had no idea what I wanted to say. Then, I wrote my narration. Writing the narration was much easier than I thought. I put my pictures in order after writing my narration. That made it much easier for me. The only thing that I had trouble with was importing my videos because my videos were all QuickTime and I didn’t know how to convert them. Luckily, I figured it out after a little searching.
So, where am I now? I have the whole narration written, I have all of my pictures in place, I have half of my narration recorded, and I still have more to do. I still need to record all of my narration, add music, and get the timing for everything set.
All in all, I think I am doing fine. I want to say that I am almost done with my digital document and so far so good!

Learning and Action

2007-02-15T08:21:00.001-08:00

After reading Chapters 5 and 6, I started to think about myself and how I learn information the best. I am really good at learning things like sports, games, video games, crafts, songs, math, and so on. I am not very good at learning things like history, science, etc. Everything that I am good at learning is something that you actually do or use. Take sports for instance, I am great at sports. When somebody teaches me a sport, they are not teaching me on paper. They are teaching me outside on the field or court. I am actually watching and doing what is being taught to me. Then, I will use what is being taught to me over and over. It is not something I have to hurry and memorize just to never use it again.
I think that we learn better if we actually use what we are learning. When you play video games, you have to learn how to play and what buttons to press. Then, you will keep using that over and over. Thing that are fun and hands on people tend to learn better because they have to learn it if they want to participate. If the thing that we are trying to learn is something that does not relate to our lives on a regular basis then we tend to just forget about it.
In Chapter 6, Gee talks about the different cultural models. One of the cultural models is about learning. He talks about how learning is driven by goals or particular objectives. For example, personally, I have no interest in history. So a goal of mine would not be to know a lot about history. Therefore, I do not really learn it because I am not interested in it. I am interested in things that I will actually relate to my everyday life.

Situated Learning

2007-02-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

As I continue reading this book, I am starting to realize that Gee is making so many different claims. He not only states his own claims, but also claims that other people have made. When I started reading Chapter 4, Gee immediately captured my attention when he "claimed" that the human mind is like a digital computer. I don't really support this claim because I think that there is so much more to the human mind than a computer has to offer. He then goes on to say that "humans learn, think, and solve problems by reflecting on their previously embodied experiences in the world." I completely agree with this statement even though I don't think that at this point Gee has mentioned "situated learning," I think this is kind of what he meant by it. I believe that situated learning can happen anywhere. I think that it can be encouraged by school, sports, hobbies, family life, video games, etc. Later in the chapter Gee claims that video games encourage situated thinking that schools do not. Personally, I don't think that it is fair to say that schools do not encourage situated learning. Even after reading this chapter, I am still a little unclear to what situated learning is exactly. So far my eyes have been opened to many different claims and ideas that I would have never previously pondered. There are many that I agree with and many that I disagree with!

Video Games

2007-01-31T23:50:00.000-08:00

I was extremely intrigued when I first found out that we were reading a book about how video games teach us about learning. I was excited about reading this book because is different than most books teachers assign students to read. This book has a topic that we can actually relate to. So far, the “claim” that I have been most interested in is that students need to learn in school like they learn video games. As a kid, I loved playing video games. I would not sit there and play for very long because I would get bored after awhile even though I really enjoyed playing them. My little brother, on the other hand, could sit there all day and never stop playing. I completely agree with Gee when he says that children will put in the time and effort to learn a video game but will not put that same amount of time and effort into their schoolwork. I cannot wait to read more because I want to know why Gee believes that students learn from video games. Why do kids take the time to figure out how to solve a video game but will not take the time to figure out their schoolwork? Hopefully, as I continue reading my question will be answered.

Learning Something New

2007-01-24T23:39:00.000-08:00

I first learned how to ski when I was really young. I was never an exceptionally good skier. Last year, I tried to pick it back up and I was horrible. My whole family was really good and I really wanted to be good. I recently tried it again this year. I am much better than I was last year. Now, I am actually a pretty decent skier. There are still so many things that I do not know and am trying to learn. I would like to learn how to go off a small jump soon. Lately, I have learned to absolutely love skiing. I wish I could go all of the time. Although, I do think that it would be really fun to be able to go off a few different jumps. I am not about to try anything too intense, but something small would suffice. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to go skiing some time soon to try to learn how to go off a jump, but it may need to snow a little bit more first. I feel like skiing is my time to have some fun on the weekends because I am always so busy during the week.

My First Blog

2007-01-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

This is the first blog I have ever done! I thought that this would be more difficult than it was. Posting a blog is actually really easy!