Finals thoughts

 Entry 67:

Topic: Thoughts

    I am slowly but surely, running out of things to talk about in my blog. As time has been progressing I keep forgetting to write. I also, do not have much left to read anymore to work my ideas to write for the blog. Next week is our last week of work for this class and many of my other classes so I guess we will see how everything goes, I may just quit using my blog to try and focus my thoughts and energy into my other courses. Who knows though. I guess we will see next week if I can come up with anything else! Oh yes, I should probably check if I turned everything in that was due today (with finals week approaching I feel like everything is due at the same time and I am afraid of missing a deadline as they are more strict right now). 

Portfolio

 Entry 66

Readings

Topic: Portfolio checklist/ handout

    So the final portfolio is due in two days time and the handout calls for a letter of introduction, I know that the professor says it is not due just yet in its entirety but I am unsure how I want to introduce and talk about my projects. I still have another week to actually figure it out but I need to think of something, I do not want a boring or basic portfolio. 

 Entry 65:

Topic: Writing Work Due/ Thoughts

    The only work we have due this week is our troubleshoot portfolio, this means that this week we will be gathering all of the work that we have done this semester, editing and creating a pretty presentation of it all. I am putting together a hopefully beautiful collage of projects one, two and three and all of their drafts. I think the hardest part of this may be finding all of my drafts because I used a lot of sources that do not save every version of the projects or I may have forgotten a draft or two, I do not know. I guess we will see how my final result of my portfolio project turns out. 

Thoughts

 Entry 64: 

Just Writing

Topic: Finals Week

    Finals week is approaching and happening next week, and for many this is a time to stress. Everything is due and these grades will make up for your entire semester or this is the time you actually find out your grades. I personally am draining and I feel like I am running out of energy to complete these courses before my summer break. I feel like it would be wrong to just give up though. I only have what two weeks left of work and then I can finally get my break? I can do it. I can hold on just a little while longer. 

Quote

 Entry 63:

Reflection

Topic: Quote

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write"

    I think that this quote provides a rather interesting approach. Makes you question why someone would say that to you. Upon reflective on this though, if you get out of bed, whatever you feel you need to say is obviously important. I know some of my best writing ideas are when I just get into bed, and when I write them down, I have something to work off of and can write forever. When I just go to sleep, I forget the idea and it drifts away from my mind like it never existed. What is there to change, only thing that may need to be done to that work is some slight editing. I think middle of the night writing is some of the best writing that there ever is. Thoughts and emotions are more raw and pure. 

Celebration of Student Writing

 Entry 62:

Reflection

Topic: Celebration of Student Writing

    For the past few days, students all over campus within our schools writing class have been sharing their project that they have been working on all semester. There are several different multimodal designs I have seen from other classes and there is some very beautiful work, discussing very serious and important topics. Some things were topics I had not even heard of nor thought to consider but I felt very informed at the end of it all. This is a very interesting approach and thing to do because it lets students inform one another on topics important to them. This has been my favorite part of the whole semester! 

Quote

 Entry 61:

Reflection

Topic: Quote

"Every writer I know has trouble writing"

    Many writers experience writers block, and the best way to overcome it, is get out of your head or just start writing. I have done a lot of research for my blogs and I found that so many good writers just start writing ideas and brainstorming on paper to get their brain working and words on a page. Sometimes, you just need to throw yourself off and start doing whatever it is you need to do. 

    For a while I struggled to write, I have been using a lot of guided questions from my writing class as prompts or ideas for my blogs until I can use them. With the semester coming to an end, it is hard to find things to write about. I have been very unmotivated this month but I have been looking within the readings and the course for things to discuss for my blog, and I have done it!

Final Touches

 Entry 60:

Reflection

Topic: Final touches

    Our final copy of project 3 is due tomorrow, and I know that when turning in the final copy of anything, you hope this and should pray this is your best copy. If this copy is not good, then there is a serious problem. Final touches on any work is the make or break of your success. Since project three was a rather simple project, it was very easy to create and then add small details. For me, I added a couple images to my work that fit my project, not just some random things, although it was hard for me to find images I loved, I found a couple good ones. I also fixed my wording and spaces. It was really easy to do, and I think these few final touches made my project look a lot better. Final tweaks are amazing when working, especially with writing and designs. 

Research Process

 Entry 59:

Reflection

Topic: Research Process

    It is nearing the end of the semester, so I would like to reiterate some research processes. Now, everyone has their own method and uses different databases. I choose to research and find articles based on their abstract to make sure they are going to fit my topic before I waste time reading 5+ pages to realize that my topic is barely mentioned in all of the work I plan on reading. I like to make sure that my topic is highly talked about in the abstract and introduction so that I know it is fitting. I also take notes and then read it over again while working so that I can make sure everything sounds like a scholar wrote it, or at least a somewhat decent researcher. This outcome is very important when you are writing, no matter the class or topic. Research is everywhere so knowing how to do it properly is very important.

If He Had Been With Me (2)

 Entry 58:

Review

Topic: If He Had Been With Me

    Like the last blog that I posted, I talked about this book. I have been thinking about things to talk about for this blog and this book has been heavy on my mind. In the beginning of this book, with the title of this book, you know that at the end and throughout the book it is building up to a tragic end. How the author portrays events and tells the story is beautiful all throughout. When I finished this book, while crying, I still for some reason almost decided to go back over it. Read it all over again, but this time take time to reflect and take notes for discussion- I have not read it again but it is that good. 

    In this book, the story is told in what some may call flashbacks and there are time skips, because she is referring to "Before"- you would not know if you do not pay attention that this book went from current time, then went to memories and is building up to tell you the story. This book is a love story, "if he had been with me" tells us what happened but does not actually provide an alternative story to if he had been with her. It is telling us the past, what actually happened but it does briefly address how everything could be different had he been with her. This is a very deep love story that does not last long but also kind of did. The authors goal was to show that time is not always granted, and to love people while you have them because you never know what the future holds. The book did just that- my heart was hurting over this book at 4 am. 

If He Had Been With Me

 Entry 57

Reflection 

Topic: Book Review

    Over this week, I found time to sit down and read a book in its entirety. The book is titled "If He Had Been With Me" and was written by Laura Nowlin. I would recommend this book to anyone, it is a pretty realistic book in terms of feelings and emotions. This book made me bawl my eyes out at the ending, and while I do not want to spoil it there are some things that I just need to get off of my chest about this book. 

    Throughout the book, there was a lot of inner battles within the characters. The mother has depression, the father is rarely in her life, she loses friends over the years and gains friends back. There is a lot of realistic problems within the book, but the way it was all put together made a beautiful story. One of the main things that I noticed in the book would be the main character, Autumn, you can see she is a young girl trying to figure herself out and to fit in. She feels like she is an outcast and she tries so hard to fit in with the other "misfits", she dates a guy who makes her happy, but she is not in love with. She tells herself when she loses feelings, to just stay because he makes her happy and she will love him again one day. I think that this is a serious problem that she maybe could have avoided. It bothered me all throughout the book, I have felt like this before. Just staying somewhere that I just feel content, not happy but just okay so I do not hurt anyones feelings. 

    The main goal of the authors was to create a realistic style book, with real problems and a love story embedded in it. They did an amazing job at that and I fully recommend this book. It just made me realize somethings about myself while reading because I felt a lot of similarities with some of these characters. 

Peer Review, Project 3

 Entry 56:

Reflection

Topic: Peer Review of Project 3. 

    Going into my peer reviews for project three, I thought it would be hard to comment on poster like projects because there would be less to talk about, especially if there were multiple partners. However, it was very easy. I could tell them to perhaps add an explanation for something, or add pictures where there was too much open space, there was many things to comment to help them achieve the best project that they could do. Many peers had amazing papers with amazing multimodal designs this week. Perfection in time for the Celebration of Student Writing. 

Reflective Interaction

 Entry 55:

Reflection

Topic: Reflective Interaction

    In this course, we have gotten to interact with several of our peers. We got to give them feedback and interact with a lot of their work as they got to do with ours as well. This is a good way to help students, reflect on mistakes and errors of their own and see what they can help other students correct or praise as well. This is a course outcome that has been worked on throughout several projects. 

Multimodal Design

 Entry 54:

Reflection

Topic: Multimodal Design

    Upon first hearing and learning about multimodal designs, I was insanely confused as to what exactly this was. Now, I have a better understanding as I work on project 3. This is one of many course outcomes we have been working on all semester and it is important to know that there are several ways to do one. Most of my confusion on the topic was that there was only one specific way to do this when in reality, there are several ways to do one. Sometimes, asking for help is what you need to do. 

Live and learn

Entry 53

Reflection

Topic: "Live and Learn"

    One thing people seem to often forget is that we are all human and that we all make a mistake. Life is about making mistakes, we all make a mistake eventually whether it is big or small. How people, including ourselves, react can determine how we treat making the same mistake again later. Live and learn to me means that we know it is okay to make a mistake, we can correct it or just walk it off- but we should not judge ourselves or others for their mistakes. Unless someone else was hurt intentionally- that is not really a mistake though I guess. No one is perfect and I think that is what live and learn truly means. We should all keep in mind that mistakes are bound to happen, we are all human and we will never not make at least one mistake.  

Infographic presentation / Canva Review

 Entry 52

Reflection

Topic: Infographic presentation / Canva Review

    I have never heard of this terminology so when I saw what is was I was like no way, never knew they gave these presentations a fancy name (granted I also never really gave or saw presentations in high school so college is teaching me a lot). Anyways, I decided to try this for my project three and may I just say that this is an amazing way to share information and there are a lot of templets online to help create this type of model. I used canva and they had so many, they also had some with similar topics which I thought was interesting as it helped me decide what I wanted to include in my infographic model. If anyone is considering doing this model, I really recommend canva (I had never heard of it before today). Canva has a lot of options for a variety of things and most things on there are free! Maybe they should pay me for the free advertisement and promotion, kidding! 

Multimodal Projects

 Entry 51

Research

Topic: Multimodal Projects

    There are several different ways to create a multimodal project. However, there are also specific things to consider when creating one. There are different parts to a multimodal structure: visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and linguistic; depending on what type of multimodal you consider doing will help to determine which parts you should look into the most (obviously you want to use a bit of all, right?). 

    When I say visual, I think everyone thinks of pictures or images shown, but visuals is so much more than that! It also includes backgrounds, color, transition, and more. I think everyone can get what audio is, the noise included in the project. Gestural is on what the person presenting (however they present) behaves and what they do throughout. A lot of good presentations have gestures but it is knowing when and where to use them that can make a presentation good or bad. Spatial is about line spacing, sizes, alignment and more. Linguistic is about how things are worded. All of these factors play into a multimodal project and each is as important as the other. 

Quote from week 11 reading

 Entry 50

Research / Reflections

Topic: Quote from "Multimodal Projects" from Kettering College Writing Center

"Never read your slides to an audience-- they can read!"

    At my high school one thing that the teachers hated was when people would read word for word off of the board while they were presenting. The teachers always said it seemed like they threw the presentation together in a day and just wrote a bunch of stuff on there- complaining when students look at the board their voices start to struggle to project. A lot of teachers preferred note cards, and only looking at the board when demonstrating a picture to show what they are saying. 

    Teachers hated when students seemed to show a lack of knowledge on their subject to where they cannot even give a presentation and not take their eyes off of the slide because they struggle to remember. For me, I either struggled with this or would do good. I get nervous when publicly speaking so I would forget what I was trying to say. Some things, most things, sound much smarter in my head. By the time the spotlight is on me, I forget what I was going to say and then I need to rely on the presentation but if I were to talk one on one I could give the best presentation. So I guess I could argue on teachers disliking it because a lot of students have social anxiety and struggle to speak in front of groups. 

Guided question week 11

 Entry 49

Reflection

Topic: How do we approach transforming research into a multimodal structure?

    When we start turning a research paper into a multimodal structure there are certain things we should consider while transforming them. Since the overall topic and research is already done, it is important to remember who the audience is and what would be the easiest way to communicate the topic? Things to consider would be what information to use, what to add on top of the research, multimodal is less words and maybe more pictures and much shorter. It should be more of a visual type of structure instead of something that may take over 15- 20 minutes to read.

Deductive reasoning vs inductive reasoning.

 Entry 48

Reflect / Multimodal

Topic: Deductive reasoning vs inductive reasoning.

Things that are very important in writing is our sense of critical thinking and know inductive and deductive reasonings. When we are reading and writing arguments we should be able to distinguish if the argument is good or not. 

This picture above explains the differences and provides examples of what inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning are. 

    This picture provides a more simple explanation of each. 

    Why is this important? When we read or write and create arguments we use our sense of critical thinking. We see what type of argument needs to be made or are being presented, knowing the differences between the two and what goes into each sense of reasoning can help one become a better writer. There is a sense of power that comes with being good at critical thinking. Knowing how to read and break down an argumentative paper or even just any type of work can help someone be able to write any type of paper and know how to find different parts to arguments that you may never have even noticed before learning how to expand your critical thinking.