Courtney W's CyberEnglish blog

Growth is what life and education are all about. In my opinion, growth in everything you do should be your ultimate goal. Everyone tries to be better or just like their friends, a celebrity, or a role model. Truth is, we are all our own people. Each and every one of us is put on this earth to be their own individuals. I have a role model, as I hope everyone does. My grandpa is the person I look up to. Well, a couple weeks ago he organized a speech at my church. The speech was given by an old friend and my cousin now in college. They both have been through a lot, their own stories, their own life experiences. The idea of the speech was to talk about choices youth face in our world today. One of the key points I took away from that speech was; What do you want your name to represent? Your name is the one thing that you own, and no one can argue that. When you hear someone say your name in the hall way or through texting, you hope what is being said is positive things, not negative. I went home that night and thought, I want people to say I’m an honest, caring, and positive person. Everyone can be who they want to be, represent their name the way they choose to.

When we’re born, you start off as a little fraction of this world. Your body is tiny, brain is tiny, and your image in this world is tiny. Starting with preschool, kindergarten, then grade school. You have to work your way up to the top. Learning basic things like colors, body parts, addition, subtraction, shapes, etc. You slowly develop through the school years into something bigger and better. Each school is a different difficulty in things you learn. Middle school you grow into being mature enough to start high school, then after high school is the real world. Being exposed to the real world is like an incentive, you have been in school for about fourteen years, trying to be at an adult level like everyone else, to grow into what you want to be, how you want to live your life. Now you are a part of the world. You are noticed and contribute to the happenings around you. An adult, making your own decisions. Getting better in everything you do is the only way to succeed in life. Progress in the way you learn, think, act, feel.

No one is better than everyone else. You just can’t be “number one”. You can try your best at everything you do,  practice skills to become better, grow into something bigger and better. If you ever make a mistake, change things. Everyone makes mistakes large and small. Change your ways, don’t ever repeat what you did wrong and learn from your mistakes. Get better. Be the bigger person. No one stops growing. You can always learn from experiences. So what do you want your name to represent? Who do you want to be? What do you want to do with your life? Take nothing for granted, life is short. Getting better in all you do, growing in every way, you can succeed.

The short fiction unit went by fast. Creating different aspects of our story with a group was a good learning experience I think we all needed. We all could offer our opinions and ideas of what we want to write about. We could create unique characters, setting, conflicts without having any boundaries. I was an active group member. Within my small group I created the characters and the other members did the setting and conflict. I think we all participated one hundred percent of the time and I wouldn’t change anything.

I feel like my story meets all the requirements set. I made sure my work was done before it was due just in case. I loved the peer review process. I think it’s a good idea to get other people’s opinions on your writing, what they liked/didn’t like so you know ways to improve your story. If they didn’t like it then your readers probably won’t either. Our peers can see how creative we can be and maybe what we are interested in. Overall I thought the peer review was very helpful.

“Anyways, whatever this was it landed on a fat, hairy man enjoying a popsicle next to Nigel’s stand. Poor Innocent guy. All I can see is this man’s feet hanging and sticking out of this metal piece that landed on him” “ Out stepped a beautiful blonde girl with big blue eyes, blinding everyone on the beach.” “Being brave I took a couple steps toward her. Sparky started yelping, he is a little protective and Majesty was on Nigel’s shoulders, Foo Foo behind me hiding.” These parts of my story represent characterization, I tried to give little clues to reveal what kind of character they are and how it effects them. “It was a nice day during the middle of summer, I could feel the breeze coming in my window and the warm sun beating on my skin.”
“Out of the corner of my eye I can see little ripples in the water.” I tried to represent setting through these two lines, I could have improved that part of my story. “On the count of three we all lift.” “Nigel, you call an ambulance.” “Do you know any ways to get this thing back up there?” I asked “You know, when I was little my grandfather told me if we ever crashed we have to find some magic symbol, all I can think of his how a pearl in our culture means success.” Pandibee said. “So we need to find a magic pearl?” Nigel looked at her with confusion. “I guess so, any ideas?” Sparky is sliding towards us, “You guys!!!!!!! My friend Whale told me about two and a half miles west of here near the reef there is a clamshell there, with a guard but maybe I can be sneaky. Would you think that would entitle a magic pearl, one to get the spaceship back to the station?” “That is such a great idea Sparks, I guess we will never know until we try. Can we put you in charge of this mission? You need to be speedy. The longest is four days Sparky, or its going to be a bad ending.” Nigel answers. “I can do this. Faster than four days, with no floaties.” he promises trying to convince himself. “Friends! Here comes Sparky! This is our only hope now.” I yell as loud as I can with excitement. As he flops towards us Nigel can’t help but ask, “Any luck down there?” I represented my knowledge of dialogue a lot throughout the story with my characters communicating trying to solve the mission.

Ipads, Ipods, Smart Phones, Kindles, laptops, projectors, smartboards and more can surprisingly help enhance our learning. The idea of an ideal cyber school inspires me. I see children, smiling ear to ear. I can sense what they are thinking, “We can finally use our electronics in a school learning environment without getting into trouble.” Each student is holding their most favorite electronic device. This can also help them feel comfortable if this device is something they use daily. The new thing for electronics is touch screen. In my cyber school kids will feel the soft and shiny screens of their favorite electronic. Touch screen was a great invention. In school touch screen works great for games and so the teacher can be standing by the smart board or projecting something from an Ipad for instance and not have to be sitting in the computer desk. I believe this can help those who learn better by hands on learning and can make others feel more involved. I can hear the students helping each other out on the latest cyber news or about where to find certain answers. Starting with IPods and IPads, they are my favorite electronics. IPads can be used like laptops, but offer much more. They offer different learning Apps that are quick and easily accessible.I prefer an IPod or IPad rather than a laptop because on an IPod all you have are two touches, one to unlock the screen and one to go to the internet app, rather than finding laptops, waiting for it to start up, log in, then wait for the internet. Using IPods can seriously save time. Teachers and/or students would use these. Each student would have one and each teacher. This could be very convenient for teachers with uploading grades, blogs, or checking on other things. Kindles and smart phones could be used for the same thing. Kindles offer more of the reading opportunities but the smart phone would work the same way. Projecters help the teacher teach the students by projecting information from their laptop or other device that is worth sharing. These electronics can also be very important communication tools, it would be quite simple to send a quick email about a concern you would have, etc. The technology used by my school is the best because we all are on the same page, we all communicate regularly, and are up to date on all assignments, we all can talk about upcoming events and how to prepare for them, and can have something to connect with. These devices are what we have grown up with, and what we are used to, if we have the right rules, I believe this way of learning would succeed and prove a lot about modern day society.

Critical Thinking Reflection

This unit was very interesting and hands on. I researched the topic money. From the beginning this wasn’t my choice to do this topic, but I got it anyways. Now looking back on it I’m thankful I got something to research that I didn’t know much about. I learned so many new things. I never really thought about how money adds stress to our daily lives and how much we need it to succeed. Money is important in our modern society. This project makes me re think how I want to spend money and how to congregate between wants and needs. There are so many things to do in this world and spend your money on that are worth more than always getting what you want, like volunteer work and buying supplies for people who have a difficult time surviving. If I could go back, I wouldn’t change my topic for anything. This really impacted my life. Love and faith are keys to success,  not money.

For group work, I was put in charge of finding articles, drawing an image and finding quotes that could better represent our claim. I think we all did a good job working together to get what needed to be done, done. I rate myself at an 8 out of ten because I missed a day, while my group typed up our presentation.

Most of the images in our poster were represented in our writing. We tried to find images that go along with our claim. We had some ways to get jobs and a list of how to understands morals and values. Some pictures were included, and also a graph showing what teens most spend their money on. If I could change one thing on our poster it would be a better list on things teens can do to feel better about themselves, and do something good for someone else instead of for themselves. That would have made more sense than the list on ways to educate. My favorite part of the poster was the visual at the top, of the parents on one side and teen on the other of the broken heart. This showed how money can tear apart relationships, and that family should be more important than buying the latest items.

In our presentation, I was in charge of explaining the visuals. We practiced our presentation and typed what we were going to say on the back of the poster. It was equally divided and I think it worked out well. My favorite part was the last part of our essay on how to make yourself feel better about spending money and to value other things over something else because that is what our claim was about.

The other presentation I really enjoyed would have to be social networking. Their visual was outstanding and I could follow everything that was being explained. It was very informative. That was also my favorite poster, because it represented everything they said and they knew what they were talking about. I learned that social networking can be fun, but there are so many ways to damage your life and you have to be careful. What is said on the internet can come back to you.

Overall, this was a great project to do and expanded my horizons on some of the latest issues and how to solve them.

The past two months have been busy! I have learned so much compared to how we learned in middle school. Our first lesson was on hypertext. This unit was interesting. I learned how to use hypertext, when it is appropriate to use, how it benefits the writer and the reader, and how it help improve the text. In my opinion, hypertext is a great way to have the reader connect to your writing. This helps you create more background knowledge also. They can better understand what is going on by using a hypertext either a visual or a description. This also helps the text become more interesting instead of just reading a long writing piece and getting off track. I really enjoyed writing about a personal experience. It’s always nice being able to take a break from reflecting off of a reading piece. This helps us expand our knowledge and  maybe go back in time and remember some great times we have had. It’s a good thing to reflect on yourself and your life sometimes and helps you become a stronger person and seeing your life as a gift. What I liked most about creating my personal essay was the freedom to writing about what you want, but under a category. For instance, I wrote about my mission trip this past summer and the category was my most significant experience. I like reflecting on personal experiences and writing about them so my reader knows how the experience impacted my life and what I would like to do in the future. From these experiences, I learned I can write about whatever I want as long as I think about my reader and the level they are at and how I can have them connect and understand my writing.