Reflection on English 333-Spring 2007

I think this class challenged me as a student, writer, and future teacher. I have been in many English classes before this one and my experience in this class surpassed the experiences I had in other English classes. Sure...I was expecting to write papers and read texts, but, not to the extent that we did throughout the semester. First off, I was extremely surprised to do a movie. I had never tried nor attempted to do this and this class offered new experiences, new outlooks, and an open mind on how to express one's self.

The texts (especially the How to Learn Through Video Games) made me realize that children do learn a lot from these visual components. This text made me also realize that as teachers we must always try to convey the information through every student and through every learning style as possibly. I learned or recieved from the text rather that education and learning is a chain reaction starting from pre-school and/or kindergarten.

I really enjoyed the Memorandum the most because it gave us as future teachers to envoke what we thought should change in the school systems in our countries. I thought the memorandum was my strongest assignment I completed in this class and felt really proud of my finish project. It gave me an outlet to vent rather to what I believe our school systems need in order to improve test scores since NCLB looks like it may be here for a while.

I honestly enjoyed this class and have taken in a lot of important information through the texts, lecture, and my peers. This class has opened a new outlet in my realm of the computer world with the movie we had to made and that alone was a huge stepping stone for me!!!!! I thought this blog thing was great and would even be a great tool for the future highschool teachers to use with their students. I loved it!

reflection on memorandum (blog 8)

This past unit helped me gain a lot of interesting information in regards to classroom management, classroom teaching techniques, various students and their needs, and much more. I enjoyed how we were set up and how we used designated class times to interact with one another before attempting the drafts of the memorandum. I was a little confused about what exactly we needed to include, but, after going over it in class, I knew exactly what to expect and what I wanted to include. I think that this assignment opened a lot of our eyes in to the "real" world of teaching and that we may be asked to research on recommendations for the school(s) that we will be working at. I feel that someday we may be asked by our fellow staff members, principals, and/or possibly our district to find what can be used differently in our classrooms. I took on this assignment as if I was already an elementary teacher and tried my best to convey that my recommendations would definitely help our school.

I worked on two drafts before turning in my final draft last week and felt that my time during peer editing gave me confidence that my memorandum was leading towards the right direction. In my memorandum, the recommendations that I listed included that students should have a choice of what to write about, modeling is key, ensuring the classrooms that writing is a social process and the power of feedback. I thought these recommendations are something that teachers need to work on more and by doing so, I feel that students will learn to enjoy writing more and respect their teachers when they accomplish the same things in the class with the rest of the class. Did that make sense???

The wiki site took the time to get used to, but, I did feel that it helped a lot. Our particular inquiry group made the graphs on the actually annotated bibliography page so that we can go to it anytime versus the large paper the teacher ad given us. I felt that placing the graphs on the actually wiki site worked much better that the paper form. In the future, maybe that could be a requirement so that other inquiry groups can use it for quick reference.

Overall, I do think that this was an excellent assignment. It made me realize that we can be put into this position and our recommendations could possibly make a difference. In other classes, group discussions always lead to what can we do as teachers change what needs to be change within our schools, communities, districts, classrooms, and etc....wouldn't this be a great example of attempting to change what we would like to see change. I think the assignment gave us an insight and a good experience with writing memos in our future careers.

correctness

Chapter One talks about all the aspects of correctness when it comes to writing. The entire chapter took about 50 pages and talked about different aspects such as spelling, sentence structure, capitalization, abbreviations, numbers, most commonly confused and misused words. I thought that this was very interesting because it caught my attention on some of the things that I actually do when writing. For example, atleast, actually it should be written at least. I do this all the time until my computer catches the mistake and lets me know that I should change it. Since I brought up how computers sometimes help with spell check and grammar, I should include that the chapter also covered this topic. I always use spell check but previous teachers I have had for writing and other classes has warn me that spell check does not always catch every error. The chapter on correctness also reiterated that statement.

Another thing that caught my eye while reading the chapter on correctness is the rule: I before E except after C. I remember learning this when I was just a little kid in Language Arts but it always bothered me that the word receive never fit that rule....I never knew that the rule had more to it. According to the book, it says I before E except after C OR when the word sounded like an A as in neighbor. That really surprised me and think to myself "all these years I thought the rule was a joke" but in reality i just didn't know the whole rule.

Reading the chapter also reiterated information I already learned such as how to write and place numbers in your writing, abbreviations, and using commas. However, one thing that still tricks me here and there when writing is capitalization!!!! In the book it says that you shouldn't capitalize diseases but I always thought you had to...I understand names, brand names, and etc. but some of the things listed in the "no need for capitalization" page surprised me!

learning from these research articles

well most of what i learned and thought about was written in the previous blog. so im not sure if i am suppose to reiterate what i mentioned or add something new. well, after meeting last week in class i come to realize that i still feel the way i do in the last blog i had written. on the other hand, talking about article 3 and reading article 4 had me thinking about my future in the classroom and teaching english structure, stories, grammar, and etc. it seems like the language and its components should be easy to understand because i was born and raised here but in reality its probably one of the hardest languages to teach, speak, write, understand, and comprehend. i have learned that it is up to the teachers to teach their children and make sure they understand what is happening. i have to practice what i preach in sharing my work, sharing my fears about writing, and my expectations from them as students and learn what their expectations of me as a teacher are.

as mentioned before i think of these research articles as a stepping stool to my own experiences with writing. these articles gave me a chance to look at others points of view and put that in the experiences i will encounter and possibly those i have already encountered. it also gave me a window of thinking, meaning what would i do in that particular situation that this teacher did or wanted? by interacting with the others in class it seems like the overall aspect of my articles were similiar to the articles they read and it seemed like they felt the same way i did.

research articles

so far these articles have really opened my eyes to what others (who are professionals too!) think about writing. it also gave me an insight of what others already in the field think, experienced, felt, and disagree with when it comes to teaching their kids about writing. im reading the set of articles in set three and these articles have surprisingly made me think twice and ask myself (many times through reading them) "what would i do?" "is that appropriate?" and notions that made me feel as if i would never do those things to my students and etc.

i really enjoyed the last two articles thus far in my set, because it made me realize that free writes are not necessarily "free" and that teachers are actually in control of those free writes as well. so i ask you....who is actually in control of the free write? you (teacher) or the student? the article mentions that the teacher is always in control of what students write about in class and i tend to agree with that statement after reading the article. on the other hand if you were to ask me before reading this article i would have said that free writes are great and that it enable students to write whatever they feel, want, or experienced that day in question. WRONG! the article gave me insights on how its sort of like a chain reaction when it comes to writing. the teachers have control of what the students should write as far as genre, style, format, and sometimes even ideas. the school board and higher administration has control over the teachers and what they have to teach the students. the state of california or any other state you may work in has control over the higher administration to tell the teachers what they must teach the students. get it? wheres the freedom in that?!?

im curious to get into groups today to really concentrate on what the other articles are about. i would like to actually here experiences in classrooms that did not work out as planned or expected to be...maybe the downfalls rather than the postives to see the spectrum. i would also like to possible hear the students points of view of writing and see if their thoughts and ideas are somewhat similiar to those of teachers. all these are good questions and research is inevitable but i think the main aspect of this is that we never know what we do in a situation until it actually happens to us...time is running out... =(

...reification...

first of all it took me a very long time to pin point exactly what i wanted to do my digital doc on...after a long time of debating the different learning experience i have encountered I decided to do it on the game of golf. my boyfriend of the past seven years has been playing since he was a sophmore in highschool and even received a scholarship to NMSU to go play for them. He even is majoring in Golf Management and is apart of the PGM academic program down there. His life is surrounding golf everyday because he even works at a golf course. Since I plan on being with him forever I thought to myself I should start liking th game or atleast appreciate it because sooner or later it will be apart of my life. Actually, its sorta is already a part of my life because he talks sbout it and i sometimes ask questions when i see games on tv and such. I felt that I also thought i should try this learning experience because i give him a hard time sometimes about leaving home to go to school there and at times he gets upset.

in order to get to where my project is right now i went to the golf course in chico with my boyfriend last weekend since he came to visit me from new mexico. he has known about this project for awhile and was very excited for me to show some interest in learning the game. we went to sunset hills golf course in town and took pictures of me attempting to swing and playing the game. when we first arrived on the course, my boyfriend said that it wasnt a good course and that the greens were not kept well. It was obvious that he was right. anyhow, he taught me how to put my hands and feet the correct way before swinging the golf club and made sure i followed thru with each swing. i took vidoes of him teaching me how to swing but i was unable to put that in because i didnt know how to flip the screen so it was upright in the movie. this was because we filmed in upright so i was upset that i could only use pictures.

in the beginning of my doc i put pictures of random golf course pictures i found on the web and introduced my topic as so. i gave a little intro to who my boyfriend was and why i decided to do it on golf. my narration was basically a photo to photo narration because i wanted to let people know exactly what i was going through and thinking in my head. i even included pictures of my hand formation and feet stance to let the audience know that these formations were important to your swing and the destination of the ball. i took pictures of the range and the puttind area and made sure i said those terms in my narration to ensure the audience did not get confused by the different scenes in the pictures. towards the end i included documentary on actually making it and i thought that was important because eventually you will succeed in something after working hard and learning about it.

i concluded with pictures of professional golf players including my boyfriend at the end to show that i may not be as good as them but i finally learned how to appreciate how the game works. through my experience he also taught me terms such as bogey, par, and others and that was quite interesting as well. as mentioned in my doc i realized that it is a challenging game and i learned how hard my boyfriend works in school, at his job, in his program to be the best he can be in the game. i told him that through this i learned to appreciate the game and himself even more!!!

...reflection on my upcoming digital documentary...

to be honest it seems like i wont have anything to share! for the most i know how to do the construction of the project but i am still stuck on what the heck i want to do it on! first it was going to be about my aunt, then my relationship with my dad, then preparing to leave chico, and now i am debating on doing it on my boyfriend attempting to always teach me to play and have some kind of love for the game of GOLF! yuck! i cant stand the game. well its a long story of why...maybe i can start my project with that question...why do i not like the game??? is it because its boring to watch on tv, you have to walk everywhere, or is it because he got a scholarship and it made him move far away from me...

i think this project is going to push me to limits i have not yet been too...it shall be fun and it shall be challenging. maybe i should do it on making a movie and not knowing what to do it on. is that appropriate? my audience would be you guys in class and i know all of u could relate to it!

learning and action/cultural models

this chapter really surprised me because some of the examples Gee had used to describe various cultural models, have wondered through my head and spilled out of my mouth. some of the examples included seeing a homeless person on the street asking for spare change or the teenager example of him/her telling their parents to "F*** Off!" Some of the responses that Gee mentioned were perfect examples of what I would have said and have said.

after reading and grasping the idea of what Gee thinks about cultural models, i began to compare it with what i thought it was. i thought (and after reading the chapter came to believe that our point of view is very similiar) that cultural models are basically what human beings believe in during a specific moment of time for that specific situation. for example, i would think that calling the stage of toddlers at the age of two is known to be the "terrible twos." i think this group naming is considered a cultural model of our time. im sure we have all heard it before and believe it is to be true since it has been passed on through many generations. do you beg to differ?

Gee's chapters so far has really opened my eyes to what video games may really have to offer besides the "basics." it seems like everytime i play any kind of game, on the computer or on the t.v. since reading this book, i tend to look at it different. i wonder if that was one of the points for reading this book. hmmm?

Situated Learning

After reading Chapter 4 on Situated Learning I feel that I gained a little more of Gee's personality on learning. I feel that he was trying to convey that learning comes from all different angles at all times during our lives. He mentions different examples in the text, that some terms mean different things in different contexts. I totally agree with this claim is presenting. I also feel that in our culture, especially in music and art forms, that our lingo (words of endearment and expression) takes on different meanings depending on who the person is expressing it to.

From this chapter I tried comparing it with video games since it is the title of the book. I come to find that it does have a relationship. In video games, one must learn how to adapt what they learn in different levels, different weapons, different rewards, and etc. Each level is different and harder than the one before, therefore, one must learn how to use what they learned previously in another setting or situation.

If anyone had a different take or similiar take on what I received from reading this chapter I am more than welcome to hear or read it in your blog...

...ViDeO GaMeS...

In our class discussion about Gee's book, there were two claims that I felt really strong about. One claim was that classrooms are not challenging enough where children enjoy going and learning and the other claim was that video games are changeable-similiar to culture we live in.

I agree with the first claim...teachers in classrooms tend to always take the easy route and teach out of the book and expect their students to be excited and intrigued by the information. WRONG! Students love to be engaged and have hands-on activities. They love to see visuals and see how things work and don't work. This is why video games are so fascinating to a child's mind. Graphics, music, mazes, and "cool" moves and secret places makes a child think, imagine, and create a world of their own. If classrooms were just more creative, I strongle believe that students will love to learn and go to school. Teaching is more than just textbook material, especially with all the kinds of technolgy that has emerged over the years. We must learn how to use that technology and "textbook" material and combine it, so that our passion for teaching shines through and our students see that learning can be fun and challenging just like their video games.

On the other hand, I disagree with the second claim. In Gee's book, it mentions that video games are changeable similiar to the culture we live in. Although it is true that we can change our character's appearance on a game by changing their clothes, hair, gender, and race; we can't do that in real life. Wait...we can change our clothes and they style of our hair...but we can't choose what racial background we are. If I were to move and "start my life all over" again, I couldn't imagine changing everything about me. My true character will tend to come out through me emotions, my feelings, me concerns, my fears, and etc. We can't change ourselves. We are who we are and I don't think that can change similiar to what we can do in video games.

... something new ... on a serious note ...

For quite some time now, I have learned how to accept the fact that my aunt has cancer. Early summer of last year, my aunt was diagnosed with cancer. It was a surprise not only to us, (her family) but, to her as well. The reason is because she was only going for a general check-up after being in a car accident approximately a week before. The clinic's doctor saw something peculiar in her x-rays and suggested that she should go to the hospital for a closer look and a professional diagnosis. It came out to be a case of cancer located in her lungs and chest. When my mom first told me the news, I really was not in a sad or upset mood that people may assume you would get in after hearing such news. I feel that I did not feel the pain or sadness because I was not as close to this particular aunt than my other three. My aunt and some other members of my family, including my mother, had not gotten along sometimes and I think that that relationship may have affected on how I looked at my aunt.

I didn't get to accept the fact or accept that this was actually real, until Thankgsgiving Break. After 2-3 months of being diagnosed, my aunt moved into my home in San Francisco with my family and since then my mom has been helping her get to her appointments and etc. Everyday of my break I had spent with her. I watched t.v. with her, ate with her, talked to her, laughed with her, all that and more. When it was time for me to pack up and leave back to Chico, it hit me...I didnt have to be close to her to realize that this is real. It took me seven whole days to understand that life can really be gone with a matter of seconds. Sure, we see it movies, learn it in class, or in the "real world" but when we finally experience in our own lives, it becomes real.

... my first ...

well here i go! this is my first official blog for my english 333 class. this semester should be very interesting, not only with this blog thing, but, everything else that is going on with the semester. i have never used anything like this so bare with me everyone. not sure of what else to mention, but, when i do i will defintely "blog" it!