Final Blog

This class has overall taught me a great deal about teachiong and the teacher i wish to be. Through the numerous readings and assignments i have learned a great deal about teaching. This class had many inventive ways to get our minds thinking about teaching and writing. The movie maker, the memorandum, the writing sequence, and all the readings are something i will definetly remember when teaching and allowed much creativity which i wish to have in my classroom. I think my favorite assignment in this class was the memorandum beacuse it taught me the most but was also very useful to me for my future career. I truly felt as if i was a teacher at a school that needed new ideas in literacy curriculum. All the articles i read for that assignment were very helpful and made me realize a lot more about how i wish to teach my own classes. One of the main ideas i got fromn these readings that i wish to implement in my classroom, because i alwyas did better in classes if my teacher implemented it, was giving students choices. When students have some say in how or what they are writing it allows for more crativity and thought and therefore success in their writing.

Another activity i truly enjoyed, but stressed me out incredibly, was the movie maker on learning an activity. This assignment allowed me to learn a new program on the computer but also allowed me to explain in a creative way something i have learned recently. This is a good way to implement writing assignments because i will also get to keep this forever and it is really fun to show people something i spent so much time on and am proud of. Overall i truly enjoyed this class and am proud of all my work in it and think it will be something i will remember forever.

REFLECTING ON THE MEMORANDUM

Although the memorandum assignment took a lot of time, i feel it was very valuable to learn about what a memorandum is and how to write one. Learning how to write a memorandum can be very helpful in my future profession as a teacher. The topic of literacy and standardized scores was very believable and could definitely be a real situation i may come across in my future. All the readings for the memorandum were very helpful for research in how i may want to teach writing to my future classes. The readings gave me many ideas and ways to help me be a better teacher in the area of writing and reading. I tried to show through my memorandum what i found to be important to teaching through the readings. I feel that the 5 recommendations i stated in my memo were the main points that kept being reiterated through the readings. The hardest part of the memorandum for me were the introduction and the closing. These were the most difficult because i had to explain the fake problem to my fake principal i tried to be as precise, formal and creative as i could be. The closing was tough because i found it hard to restate what i said throughout the whole memorandum without saying it the same way. The most simple part of the memorandum was the body, or the recommendations. This was the easiest for me because of all the research i read made it possible for me to choose the recommendations and back them up with evidence from the readings. Overall, i feel this assignment was very useful to me and i am glad i learned how to write a memorandum.

The Importance of Correctness

The importance of correctness allows readers to focus on what the writer has written and not be distracted by other things. Perfect grammar and spelling are not the main concern in writing,but they are very important to making it easier for the audience to read the written piece of work. There are many common mistakes that writers make that seem to almost be universal. The way to correct these mistakes and move past them in your writing is to learn more about them and practice the use of them more. There are tons of words that sound the same but have different meanings and spellings that get mixed up in many peoples written works. An example of these are some that i have problems with like affect and effect as well as conscience and conscious. The way to get past these errors are to understand the different meanings of the two words and then remember how they are spelled differently. The more you practice your mistakes the better you will be a correcting them. The importance to learn how to correct your mistakes is so that when people read your work they are more focused on the content and not the distractions.

My Thoughts on Teaching of Writing

Throughout the articles that i have been reading for Wiki about the teaching of writing, many thoughts about teaching have been generating in my head. One of my main concerns that i have been thinking about is how am i gong to stand out as a good teacher and make my students interested in writing and learning? Through the articles i have learned that there are many concepts to make me a better teacher in this area, and that much of the stress i feel is necessary. In one of the articles i read it says that it doesn't matter what methods you are using, it all relies on the teacher to push the students to be the best they can be. Ways to push them are to make it interesting to them. Allow them to choose topics to write about and give them inventive ways to express themselves that follow the times so the themes are parallel and realtive to the students lives. Allowing them to use knowledge that they had previous to my class from the outside world (ie the media), is key to getting their interest and making them feel comfortable to extend their boundaries of writing. I have to choose my criticism wisely so it does not make them lose their ability to take risks in writing, but still give them good feedback so they learn how to correct themselves. I have realized through these articles that having an audience is key, and letting the students know who that audience is so they can write accordingly. There ae many things i have to consider in teaching writing and i hope i exceed my own standards.

To create my Digital Document there was a lot of work i had to put in. The first thing i had to do was the thinking stage. In the thinking stage i had to think of something i had learned recently that would be interesting to me and to others in a Digital Document. I finally decided on Learning how to play Flag Football, because i had just learned in the Fall. This was also a perfect subject for this project because i had a lot of pictures of my team and i that could use and it was a very rewarding experience for me because we got first place in the sorority league. Since this was such a great experience for me i knew that i could talk about it and make it interesting for others. The next step of creating my Digital Document was getting together all the different types of pictures i wanted to use to show my audience my experience best. I, of course, used a lot of the pictures of me and my teammates playing flag football, but i also chose to dig up a lot of other football related pictures online. I chose the pictures according to how i wanted to tell my audience my experiences with football. I wanted to explain the tradition across the country that football is a males sport and it has been ingrained in society, and girls were the cheerleaders on the side. Then i decided to show how i grew up watching SC football and became a huge fan of the game which sparked my interest to play for my sorority. I tried to incorporate Gee in my Digital Document, but it wasn't very easy because it didn't really fit with my topic or target audience of athletes, and people who aspire to be athletes. I did throw in the affinity group because it fit with my team members and i tried to explain my learning process in different aspects of the game. I chose to talk about how i learned about the positions and how to play my own position and read plays. I also discussed how i got over the initial nerves and bad throws. Another thing i chose to include was the fact that i did not know how to keep score of the game i was playing. I chose to input the scoring section because it was funny how i conquered the aspect of playing the game but still didn't know how to keep score. I tried to show as many aspects of the game i had trouble with, including the competition. After i found all the pictures and wrote the narrative to fit the pictures and what i wanted to say it was then time to record. Thanks to Allison she let me use her microphone and helped me with the recording. Then it was time to time out the pictures with the narration and insert titles and credits to the project. Once i did this i wanted to see if there was any music on pod safe that would fit my experience and pump up my audience. I couldn't find anything, after about an hour of searching, so i decide the best was for them to experience my digital document through my narration only. This project took a lot of time, but the end product was worth it and I'm glad that i know how to use the movie maker program now.

Reflecting on Creating a Digital Document

Creating a Digital Document has been much more of a difficult task than i had expected. The hardest part for me has had to deal with all the audio stuff. Picking the subject of what i wanted to do my movie about was he easiest part because i joined my sorority flag football team earlier this year and it was quite the process learning all the rules and the ways of the game. Since i was on a team i had some photos that i could put into the movie and i knew i could get a lot of pictures from the internet that went with the theme. I put them in order as i wished easily, but then that is where all the hard things to tackle came in. I still have music to put in, i have to finish writing the narative and somehow make it timed and work well with all the pictures. Most of the troubles that i have ran into are all computer program problems because i don't know the program very well. I am very nervous about the time limit and am afraid it will be too short. Also i am nervous that i am far behind and dont know how to do this as well as everyone else. I realize i will have to put a lot of work and time into this project still and i hope that it meets the standards i hold for it.

Ch. 4: Situated Meaning and Learning

In Chapter 4: Situated meaning and Learning, Gee points out great evidence of different ways that people can learn or find meaning to things. People have to use what they have experienced or learned hroughout their lives to understand the meaning of new situations that may arise. Gee writes, "They use these elements of past experience to think about the new situation (p 74)." Gee discusses 'embodied experiences' that help humans understand and gain more knowledge. These 'embodied experiences' are the way people percieve things, actions they take, and thoughts on actions and dialouges that take place. All these factors contrbute to ways that people will build situated learning. Today knowledge is just pounded into the students, without any thought of if they understand the symbols or ideas being taught. It is important that students can relate things back to other things they have learned, this way they have a better understanding and they take part in the process of their own learning. Gee points out that, "While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied thinking and doing, school often does not (p 86)." Video games allow people to make choices about how they will obtain the goal set for them, school on the other hand does not always offer students these choices. I thought this Chapter was important to read as a future teacher because it teaches you that it is good to allow students to find answers and discover things their own ways, based of future experiences they have experienced.