Studying Peer Based Learning

For homework, Lacy had us choose what we wanted to read. There were three different options that we had to choose from. I choose to read about peer based learning which talked how it revolves around informal learning with friends. Parents look at peer based learning as something that is bad because  students get off topic and dont learn as much. This is interesting because students look at this as the complete opposite. Students feel that they are able to get more done because they are able to "bounce" ideas off of others and get a good amount of feedback. This idea of peer based learning exists in many different forms. One of which is social media. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Myspace, or Instagram, there are many different ways that students can dive into this "peer based learning" idea. Above is a picture of a sheet of paper where our group put all of out ideas onto paper. I'm sorry that it is upside down, I tried everything to get it to be rightside up and I couldn't figure it out.

A New Semester of Blogging

Winter break is over and everyone has come back to school relaxed and ready for a new semester. This semester is going to be a difficilt one for me. I am taking 18 credits over 7 classes. I am sure that I will be able to do it, but it is going to be difficult. Anyways, classes started this week and that meant that we started with the "interesting" approach to English 1102. For you all in my writing group that dont know, I had Lacy last semester for 1101. Her class was interesting and fun. It's hard to believe that an english class can be fun but the was that Lacy approaches it is very different. Last year she did imporv sessions almost every day and this allowed us to be silly and relax before class started. 

So this week we started out with playing these string games. They are something that i used to play when i was younger and completly forgot about. These string games allowed us to let are creativity show and make simple designs out of a single string. We also watch a "TED" speach that talked about how everyone can be a "Maker". I think this semester is going to be another great one and i am excited. 

A Little About Me

I figured since we are all going to be basically writing to each other for the next 16 weeks, i would tell you a little about myself. My name is Michael Shaw. I am currently studing to be an Electrical Engineer. I am a freshman (I think all of us are) and am looking to start a Co-Op next year. I have two pets, a dog named Marcello and a cat named prime time. In my spare time, I ompetitevely mountain bike, play drums, guitar, piano and I am a DJ.

I am excited to get to know you all this semester and I hope you enjoyed your long weekend. :) 

Final Reflective Blog Post

Alright so this is my last time that i will be blogging for 1101. This class has been interesting and very fun. I was skeptical at the beginning of the year about how I was going to feel about doing blogs, but it actually wasn't that bad. I am not sure if i am going to continue to blog or if this will be it, but I do see that it is an interesting way to say how you feel.

This class has had many different things that other English classes have not. There have been many times this semester that I have felt a sense of "wobble". One of the biggest things that we did was that gave me wobble was the improve every morning. We would do simple tasks that would require you to think in a different way, but even though it was simple, it gave me some trouble. Different events would include us to say the first word that came to our mind and even though that sounds easy, sometimes i couldn't think of a word. A complete mind blank. I didn't know how to describe it.

There was another time that i felt "wobble" and this was when we would write to a prompt in class and spend about five minutes and then take a break. After that we would "go deeper" and write in more detail. This was something that would give me trouble because i would have to think about it in a different way to write in more detail.

All in all, i feel that this class has taught me to think in more detail and to think in a completely different way. It was very interesting and i had a great time working. I really enjoyed working with my writing group and enjoyed getting to know them. I hope you all have a great rest of your year and enjoy your holiday break.

Ethnography Blog Post

• What it was like for you to figure out what to write about.
• 
  
• It was interesting to see how our ideas changed throughout the project. This project was very interesting because there was really not too much guidance to it. Basically we were supposed to come up with all of ideas on our own and figure everything out.

• What it was like for you to revise your work.
• The way that we revised our work was based on what worked for us as a group. As we started the project, we had ideas of what we wanted to do, but they were not practical. So we ended up changing our ideas and then if that didn't work, we changed it again.

• What it was like for you work in a collaborative group.
• It was difficult for us to work as a group because both of my partners did not live on campus and there were many scheduling conflicts. What we had to do was work on everything in class and then divide it out and come back next class period and work on it again. I usually do not like to work like this, but it seemed to be the only way.

• What was it like for you to create an untraditional (not an essay) piece.



• I thought creating this project was a lot of fun and it opened my eyes to different ways of creating a project. Usually i will create some sort of a paper because that is easy, but for this project, we created a video. This project helped me to work on my editing skills in iMovie which is a mac product.

• What else do you want to say about this assignment
• I really enjoyed doing it. It was a lot of fun and i am glad that we had the opportunity to work on it. Not every group is perfect, but i feel that we were able to divide and complete the project.
• Everywhere is some of the inspirational ideas that we used for our video which you will see on Tuesday
• 

The Final Stretch of School

We are getting to that point where everyone is going to the library and studying up for their final exams. This is my first year with college finals and from what everyone tells me, it is going to be very difficult and i will be taking lots of energy drinks. I am not to sure if i believe this because ever since i have gotten to college, i have been spending a lot of my free time in the library studying. I feel like i know the information really well and i don't think i will be cramming everything in the final weeks of school. For two of my classes, i have to make some sort of presentation and present it to the class. Those two classes are English and my UCOL class. Both of those projects are completed and all i have to do now is present them. One of my classes is having a chapter test and i already have two of the three chapters memorized and then my last two classes have cumulative finals. Those two classes are math and chemistry. They are probably my strongest subjects. So i am not really to sure how hard this is going to be but i feel that i will be very prepared. Its hard to believe that school will be over in two weeks. I feel like this semester has flown by. I hope that everyone else has had a good first semester experience.


One of my friends took this picture of me in the library when i wasn't paying attention.

I don't know what to call this

I am not quite sure if anyone will see this other than my group but I need another blog and so I figured I would talk about it on here. I had kind of a bad weekend. I know its only Saturday, but I feel like my weekend starts on Thursday. This blog is going to be very vague, but in a way i feel that this class has changed me. It sounds kind of stupid to say that because it is an entry level freshman class, but when i got home last night, i was very sad. I want to talk about the full story with someone but i don't know who to do to. All the things I want to say, i type out and then realize that this will be permanent and then i mash my delete key. The only safe way for me to figure out my thoughts at the time was my writing into the say journal. I am not much of an emotional person and i am not much for writing my feelings, but i figured it was the only safe, judgement free place that i could write. I ended up writing a poem that expresses my feelings and is meant to go to someone, but i can't decide if that is a good choice. I spent so much time writing it and it felt like ten minutes. Its is the most true and to the heart thing i have ever written and i am too afraid how it will be taken. I know this blog does not have to much to do with you, but i just wanted to get a little bit on my problems off my chest. I don't know what kind of picture i want to end this with. I was going to post a picture of my day book but that is just a composition notebook. So in an attempt to lighten to mood a little, here is a funny picture i found a few weeks ago.

Also i have realized that when you are happy, you enjoy the music you listen to. When you are sad, you understand the lyrics. Kind of  a weird thing when you listen to a song that has been on you phone for over a year and just now you understand the lyrics.

We are making a video!

Alright, so with our ethnography project, we have had many ideas about what we were going to do with it. Our first idea was to make a simple PowerPoint/Prezi. When we thought about Prezi, we thought that we might be able to make some kind of kinetic text thing (Where the words fall onto the screen). We thought that would be an interesting way of talking about our "journey" because they are not boring like a typical PowerPoint. This led us to doing research about making kinetic texts and we found out thy are actually very hard to do. Not only that, but they take a lot of time. So that kind of ruined that idea. Back to the drawing board. We started to think about other things that we could do that would be interesting. Oh and our topic was Objects, which is very vague. When we met on Thursday morning, we came us with the idea of walking around campus and filming us finding hidden texts and literacy's. We already knew of a couple places that we wanted to include in the video, so we just started to walk. When we did this, we came up with a 25 minute video and we were going to fast forward the parts where we are walking to the next destination. In thought, this would make about a 5 minute video. Well the program that i am using for this cant take a video that long and speed it up in a smooth way. This makes our video very rough and choppy; however, it looks exactly like a stop motion movie. I am using this idea and running with the ball. We are going to act like we made a stop motion movie which is when you take thousands of pictures and play them in a way that it looks like a video. It is really cool and very effective if done correctly. I am going to talk to Lacy about it to make sure that she approves, but i think we have made a big move in the right direction this week.

This is a video of one of my favorite stop motion videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ8ZWMlObGE