Looking back over the course of this semester and the assignments I have completed, I am proud of all I accomplished and learned. From text and article readings to written assignemnts and multimodal projects, I am happy with the time and effort I put forth, as well as the outcomes of each.
From Gee's text, the article readings for Wiki, and Harvery's text, I learned to accept the ways in which we as teachers ask to assess a students learning through multimodal ideas, rather than just plain papers. I learned that in order for students to truly write well, they must write about a passion or a topic of choice, and we must allow them this, with little or no boundaries. Teachers need to work right alongside of their students, both as role models and to assess the assignment they gave in order to understand the challenges and triumphs their students will face.
As for the composition assignments throughout the semester, I learned a lot about myself as a person and as a future teacher through each. The digital document pushed me to "present my knowledge" in a foreign way, through a short film, and it also allowed me to get creative and talk about something that related to my perosnal life. It showed me how fun a "composition" assignment could be when using multimodal sources and relating it to my life and interests. My blogs have really helped me reflect back on readings and assignments and helped my pull key points and concepts I learned from each. Blogs were helpful in narrowing these key points down, and they were a useful line of communication between myself, Pkittle, and my peers. Oh the Wikis! The Wikis were also quite helpful when pulling out important concepts, especially with a few of my assigned articles which were quite long and a few drawn-out. I enjoyed re-capping on each article through my Wikis, and I liked the idea of each group having a Wiki and being able to look at other Wiki summaries of your group members. My memorandum truly helped me in my "professional" realm. I feel confident now if I ever have to write a letter of this or any type that is in this kind of a administrative or professional context. I was also nice because we were able to once again use the Wiki articles we read in the memo, causing me to reflect on the past assignment and take more from it, or take more/analyze more of the key concepts regarding the teachings of writing that I learned from my Wiki articles. I enjoyed the memorandum! And lastly, the assignment sequence! I had a lot of fun working on this assignment, partly because we were allowed to work with a partner, and Jenna and I pushed eachother to get ours finished (so we'd have less to do during finals and all). I believed ours turned out great! And although we both already knew quite a bit about writing lesson plans (due to previous liberal studies courses), we still learned a lot from this one, and Harvey's ideas were easily incorporated into our assignment sequences. Also, I was really happy to have spent so much time looking through the California Language Arts Content Standards and now I feel more knowledgeable in that aspect of language arts. That assignment was challenging, but rewarding and fun!
The work I completed and presented in this class will most definitely be useful in my future. Its utility is going to be of great benefit! As a current college student, I've learned that there are other ways in which to "show" your knowledge. This will also contribute to my future as a teacher, as well as a few other key points, like self-choosing topics and modeling alongside students. With my own students, I will take all of this information and apply it. I honestly have found the information learned in this class, from Wiki article ideas to Harvey's inquiry ideas, interesting and useful, and I will apply them in my practices both as a continuing student and a future teacher.
Thanks so much, Pkittle! Happy summer! And I hope to be seeing you at one of the Northern California Writing Conferences down the road!
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