Week 1
Blog 1: To begin my project with the right information I decided to do some thorough research on my topic. I researched online and then I also decided that it was better to talk to someone who understood a lot about educating other people on the topic of the climate crisis. So I decided to facetime my best friend who is a political and environmental science major at UConn. After we talked for an hour or so I believed I was ready to start my project.
Blog 2: I decided that it was better to separate my information in categories so I could better assemble my ignite talk and not scramble on my topics. After I did that it became easier to talk for 15 seconds per slide and to then add the pictures that better represented the topics I discussed. I presented the Ignite Talk and had Professor McVerry to record it.
Blog 3: Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum
Newer concepts in technology, physics, or modern culture, are not easily compared to the “experts”.
The process of Negotiation is being viewed as a learning process.
The Rhizome: a rhizomatic plant has no center and no defined boundary, it is made up of a group of semi-independent nodes (who are able to grow and expand on their own).
The concept of knowledge is fluid and subject to cultural and historical forces.
Information is the foundation of knowledge.
The foundation is constantly changing because knowledge is fluid.
Blog 4: Essay on Flawed Assumption:
They want to promote the badge idea because it gives a new unified way to “quantify, describe and give evidence of the student learning inside the classroom and out so that jobs would be able to identify strong qualities in students.
The biggest criticism is that they are proposing to erase all these different “languages” with an unnecessary universal one that is fundamentally flawed.
Badges are representatives of the skills that a person possesses. There are boy scout badges and girl scout badges that are most commonly used as the example. It only motivates until a certain point.
Week 2
Blog 1: I was going to work with a tri-fold poster and make a photojournalism experience, but then I decided that I could make a portfolio page on my website and still achieve the same result without using paper waste. So, I began to edit my pictures and taking certain pictures that really represented the message I was trying to relate and edited them in order to become my own. The editing of the pictures was actually the easiest part because it is something that I quite enjoy doing.
Blog 2: The hardest part of this process has been finding time to really organize my thoughts and not be all over the place with everything I want to incorporate into my portfolio. I do enjoy working with the website and using Glitch even though sometimes It can be quite frustrating to get the tags for certain things right. Besides that, everything has been smooth. I have to wait for all of my elements to be ready in order for me to start placing them on my portfolio page.
Blog 3: Getting the Ignite Talk video to upload correctly to the glitch page was honestly such a struggle. I couldn’t find the right link and the video never seemed to play. I then decided to use the “embedded” version of the link and to change the size to 1200 width and 1085 length and now it finally fits and looks like it’s in the right place. I am debating on changing the colors of my website to better fit the theme of my DO something project.
Blog 4: Affinity Spaces:
Believes that a student it’s not just a data point but a complex body of experience that is gained over the years.
Believes that testing should be done on experience and not just one field. Wants to know how the experience will aid in the long term.
Target assessments tell us next to nothing about human beings and even less about individuals.
Practice and experience in the domain being tested will yield better results.
Week 3:
Blog 1: Editing my pictures went very fast. I decided to use a few pictures that I happen to take myself and that showcase the oil left behind in a water puddle from a leak I came across a few weeks ago. I also used pictures from my friend’s protests against authorities that are supposed to be taking care of the green part of the university and continue to slack on their responsibility. I also used other pictures I found online that I thought represented my points of view well and edited them to give my own spin.
Blog 2: There is really not much to talk about my data. I kind of expected the responses that I received on my survey and really wish more people took the survey so I would possibly have a more mixed response ratio. The one thing that really called my attention was that most people were willing to make changes to their diets but were not willing to commit to going full vegetarian or fully vegan.
Blog 3: I realized that it is a lot more difficult to talk about the climate crisis without sounding repetitive. In my project and the portfolio page, that was something that I struggled with. I could definitely let my pictures speak for themselves as I find that they can relate the message to the readers very well, but I can’t shake the feeling that if I don’t explain the pictures at least a little bit I would be leaving something off.
Blog 4: The glitch process turned out to be more stressful than what I thought it would be. I guess it might be due to the fact that I haven’t touched my website since we had to complete the lessons on in and create our own page with pictures and captions. However, I did find that having completed all of the lessons tutorials from before gave me a little advantage of knowing how to deal with a few of the problems I have encountered.