I downloaded Audacity on my computer and I was able to successfully record myself reading one of my ePortfolio posts. I was also able to download the audio file onto my computer as a .wav file. I made an account with sound cloud, too.
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The annotation method that we were focusing on for this chapter was to look for certain things while reading to give specific annotations. We were asked to make text to self and text to text annotations for the first part of the chapter. For the second part of the chapter we were asked to still make those text to self and text to text annotations but add in some annotations about summary and quotes and also labeling the three learning styles of deep, surface, and strategic. I also color coded to help keep my thoughts organized. The blue sticky notes is me connecting the text to other texts, the pink sticky notes are text to self notes, and the green is just a thought that I had while reading.
I personally did not really like this annotating method because it took me away from really focusing on the words Bain wrote. I was so busy thinking about ways I could relate each sentence to the things I had to relate it to that I lost a little of my focus on what Bain was trying to say as a whole. I think it was just too many things to focus on for me. I like free annotating where it is just me and the chapter with no guidelines for my annotations because then I can come up with some good annotations without getting too distracted by it.
In Ken Bain’s book, What the Best College Students Do, Bain mentions that “These “surface learners,” as the psychologists call them, looked for facts and words they could memorize, attempting to anticipate any questions someone might as them.” Bain is discussing how when given an article the students deemed “surface learners” reacted by trying to look over the article and commit to memory anything they thought was important in order to do well if asked any questions about it. I feel like this is how I constantly view my learning. I prepare myself to learn just enough to be able to perform well on an assessment or to be able to discuss it with someone. Sometimes I struggle with finding the deeper meaning to something that I am learning but I am trying to change that by being more of an active learner. One of the drawbacks to this type of learning is that people often become “routine experts” and learn how to constantly perform well but maybe not learn as much as is possible.
“The Editor” is a podcast that truly captures the attention of the listener because it is full of action and a fascinating story about a man who went to prison for warehouse breaking and entering. The man’s name is Robin Woods and the crime that sent him to prison was committed in 1988 in Cumberland Maryland. He was sent to Maryland Correctional Institute after someone turned him in. It was his second time in this prison which he said was one of the worst prisons that he had been too.
The inmates were unhappy with how they were being treated and caused a riot that Robin assisted in. The inmates were beaten because of this and more time was added onto Robin’s sentence. Since Robin was going to be there for so long he decided he would take out a book from the prison library to read. The issue was Robin never finished high school and could barely read forty percent of each page. He soon became dedicated to reading and looked up words he didn’t know in dictionaries.
After a while of teaching himself how to read he became the go to with the inmates if they needed help reading legal documents. His time soon was devoted to reading an encyclopedia that he got and one day he found an error in an entry. He sent a letter to Mark Stevens the editor of Merriam Webster’s encyclopedias and got a positive response back. Soon Robin and Mark emailed frequently with mistakes Robin found in the encyclopedias.
Eventually Robin was going to be moved to a new prison, but they wouldn’t allow him to bring his collection of books with him. He went on a hunger strike and lost a lot of weight. He told this to Mark and Mark sent a letter to the prison telling them how cruel this was to Robin and how helpful Mark had been with the encyclopedias. The prison guard was surprised by this information and told Robin that if he did not get in trouble for a year he would be released four years early and they restored his book collection.
After Robin got out of prison he and Mark stayed in touch and Mark assisted him with living costs. Robin and Mark finally met and during this Robin’s house was broken into and stolen from. This made Robin feel like it was life showing him what it felt like to be stolen from.
I have listened to a few podcasts in my life for classes, but the difference about “The Editor” is that I actively took notes throughout it. I had never used this strategy when listening and it helped me stay more focused. I often have trouble just listening to things because I am a visual learner but writing notes down and being able to look at those helped me with being able to focus on what was happening and retain the information more.
The first picture is of me studying in the library. The library is nice because the printers are right there and there are books there if you need them too. The library is a little too quiet for me though because I do like a little background noise when I am studying.
I have studied in the commons quite often as well. It is my favorite place to study because I like studying with a little bit of noise. People are talking a little bit and walking by and it is just the right amount of noise for me. I don’t get distracted here and I stay really focused. I also like the commons because there is food nearby.
French novelist Emilie Zola looks perplexed as he is writing at his desk and I feel like I always have a similar face to this when I am doing my homework.
Author Roald Dahl sits in his writing chair and has a blanket over his legs while he writes. I love to be comfy and often am wrapped in blankets while I do my homework.
Ray Bradbury has such a cluttered desk and I would never be able to do work in such a messy place. I like to have an organized desk and have everything in a place where I can reach it if needed.
Agatha Christie has an organized desk with not much on it and I feel like that is mostly what my desk also looks like. But I don’t have a typewriter though.
While I annoted the piece I highlighted things that I thought were really important and smart. I underlined things that most resonated with me and with my life. Some comments that I left were about how my way of thinking in school was mostly the fixed mindset because that is how I was taught in school and I really did not know what a growth mindset was until high school. I also made a note that cheating happened a lot in my high school to get an A instead of just studying more. I often thought about the benefit of an A instead of the benefit of learning. I thought As are good to get into college and did not think about the knowledge that I would need for college. Another note that I made was that nobody says “I really learned that topic,” but people often say “I got an A on that.” I also thought it was really awesome the good results that schools were getting with the not yet grading system.
One of my favorite subjects has always been science. When I was younger it was science as a whole and then as I got to older grades I realized that it was biology that I loved the most. Ever since I was little I was interested in the natural world around me and I would walk around my yard and the woods around my house and pick up bugs and plants. I always wondered how plants grew and how animals survived on their own outside. So when I began learning these things in science I was so excited to finally find these things out. This caused me to always have a growth mindset with science classes. I never wondered how to write a good paper or how good books were written so I never got excited about English subjects which caused me to have more of a fixed mindset in those classes. I did the work for the outcome of a good grade for English and histories but I wasn’t as excited for these classes as I was for science classes.
As I got older I found things that I liked about English and history and I have worked on more of a growth mindset for these classes. My high school English teachers helped me find good books that I enjoyed reading which changed my learning habits and I was able to learn more and absorb the material rather than just worry about the good grade. I do notice when I am doing homework that I could read endless chapters of biology in a short amount of time whereas it takes me a little longer to read an English textbook because I have to focus harder on those.
For my revisions the big part of it was adding a stronger introduction and a stronger conclusion. I did not really have an introduction on my first draft, and although I did have a conclusion, it was not very good. So I added what was my conclusion to the paragraph before it and wrote a better paragraph that concluded the essay better. For the introduction I laid out my opinion on the two different ways of learning and I also introduced the two articles that would be the “They Say” portion of my essay.
I had many surface errors where I switched words out and got rid of spelling errors. I changed “and”s to “a”s and got rid of a lot of “the”s that didn’t fit into sentences. I also tried to shorten some sentences or get rid of some that were repetitive because when I added the introduction and conclusion it made my word count go up and I was close to having too many words.
When I peer reviewed I read the papers out loud and listened how the sentences sounded. If something sounded off I would reread it and decide if grammar or wording needed to be changed, then I left a suggestion of what to change. If they repeated certain words a lot, I let them know because I knew that is something I usually do without noticing.
When my peers left comments on my paper it was really helpful when they pointed out that my intro and conclusion paragraphs were weak and maybe I should add a new one or add more to them. I think this happens because I jump into my writing so quickly and focus most on the body of the paper. It was also helpful to see spelling and grammar errors that I had overlooked. From now on I am going to focus more on intros and conclusions because those are my weakness.
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