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Final Blog!

Fri, 25 May 2012 06:18:46 +0100

Every time I thought I had finished assignment 3b but I would think of something else to put in to maybe bump my marks up. Luckily I didn’t submit it the first time that I thought I was finished otherwise half of the information that I have included wouldn’t be there.

Today is my last day of Uni for semester 1. Assignment 3b is my last assignment for the semester and I’m overly keen to submit it.

In the YouTube video that was shown in class today that Jenni made as an overview of the assignment 3b rubric it said each person needs at least 8-10 blogs from the past 4 weeks, which means at least two a week. I try to do one long blog each week as I find that I don’t have much to talk about if I do two short blogs each week. Most of my blogs I find sums up my entire week of EDN113 especially my feelings and attitudes towards them. The video that Jenni made was superb. It helped me an incredible amount and as went through each section of the rubric I went over my website again to ensure I had done it to a high distinction degree. I believe a majority of my website is of excellent standard.

Through making this website I have learnt a lot about technology. At the beginning of this unit I wasn’t confident at all about technology, besides word documents and facebook. But this unit has shown me not only how to create my own website but how to use taste.com, diigo and how to upload a video onto YouTube. It really has been a learning curve for me and I am extremely appreciative of Helen being a great teacher and successfully teaching me these skills that I will definitely use for future references. Especially when I graduate from uni and become a teacher.

Well, this is my final blog. Huge thanks to Helen and the lecturers.

Now to face the exam!!

Semester 1 comes to an end.

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:50:32 +0100

It seems like it has come so fast, this week is my last week of my first semester. Only 3 and ½ years to go! If the next 3 and ½ years go this fast, I’ll be extremely pleased. I’m just about to do my final touches of my personal website and add my reference page. Luckily most of the things I need to reference, I have hyperlinked because at this moment I have referenced absolutely nothing. I didn’t know that we had to include a reference tab until the lecture on Tuesday morning. So that will be a big job. Other than that I have done all my essential readings and I can’t wait to walk out of the tute doors on Friday. It means that my first semester will be over. I get to have a giant break and go back home to Kalgoorlie!

All in all, I have thoroughly enjoyed this unit it has taught me a fair bit. The part I loved the best was assignment 3a. I learnt an incredible amount. That assignment was by far out of all the units I did this semester the best one I did. I felt like an actual teacher creating a lesson plan.

On another topic, the mark I received for assignment two was okay. One the highlighted parts in the rubric I disagreed with but other than that I was happy with it. However on the rubric it said I received 15.5/20 then on the ‘my grades’ section it said I got 16/20 which I hope I got.

Hopefully this isn’t my last post, but goodbye for now.

Resource Mayhem

Fri, 18 May 2012 04:41:25 +0100

This assignment was a challenge that’s for sure and certain. It was so hard to get our group together and organise it. Doa’a and I have done a majority of the work to be completely honest. Qian was only available once and Hannah wasn’t available at all.

On Wednesday we had a group session where Qian, Doa’a and I met at the library to sort out the resource. We had all done the sections we were allocated in the previous workshop besides Hannah. We had to wait for Hannah to email us her section she was supposed to do before we could complete our wikispace. Apparently she hadn’t got the email about joining the wikispace still. Anyway, she emailed me her part which was task which she was supposed to do. She did it wrong. She did Qian’s part over again which was Teacher Information. We then had to tell her she had to do it again because she was wrong. She finally did it and sent the right thing to us this morning. THE DAY THE ASSIGNMENT IS DUE! Doa’a and I have been at uni for 2 hours Wednesday, 5 hours Thursday and 3 hours this morning doing the final touches and pulling the other group members slack which seems like it is taking forever. But in reality this is a group assignment designed for a four student group not for two people. If everyone could meet up at the same time it would make it 100 times easier. But of course it didn’t work like that.

I felt like just doing my part which was resources and putting it on the wiki and leaving it. However we all get marked the same on the whole assignment. So I couldn’t do that at all. Otherwise I would get a bad mark because no one else pulled their weight.

I’m glad this assignment is over now. I learnt a great amount through this assignment though. I didn’t know there was so much to know about a frog. I learnt that there is a lot of effort that goes into lesson plans for students. It is great that there are resources just like the one we have just made to make the life of teachers easier rather than creating a whole new resource for every part of the curriculum they wish to teach.

Group Work.

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:50:50 +0100

Thank god everyone got an extension on this second last assignment. We have finally gotten back into on campus classes. That has helped a lot being able to catch up with the entire group at the same time. In our group we have Doa’a El-Youseff, Hannah Oxwell , Quin Yu and I. We didn’t know who one of the girls was that was a part of our group, Quin Yu. She didn’t come to the first on campus class we had after the couple of online tutes because she had a skin allergy but thankfully she arrived the second week and we got to meet her and talk more about the details of our assignment. We all allocated ourselves a section of the assignment each as it seemed simpler if we did it that way. Then on Wednesday we are going to meet up in the Library as a whole group and put it all together and hopefully do the final finishes.

Our topic is going to be the cycle of a Frog. Although this is aimed at year 3s and 4s I have learnt quite a bit. I think that if we can make a resource like this then there must be plenty of resources about that assist teachers. As I am studying to become a teacher it’s safe to say I’m glad.

Quin cannot speak English very well so that is also a learning curve for me and the rest of the group. We have to take our time explaining and help her out a lot more. It doesn’t matter though because we will encounter many of these difficulties throughout our teaching careers and lives anyway.

I think this assignment is really quite good. It is a giant eye opener for what we may be teaching in the future. Technology in the future would possibly have evolved so through the use of doing this assignment revolving around technology it really is teaching me something.

I needed clarification on authentic learning, after all, if I didn’t know what that was I couldn’t do this assignment. I remembered in previous lectures Jan has gone over the learning types in great detail. I had printed those lectures out and used them as references to study authentic learning and further my knowledge. I also found the online reading Blue Gum School. (2011). The best way to learn really easy to understand and really easy to grasp the authentic learning facts.

Sorry for the long delay in posts. Watch this space for more frequent posts.

Thanks to Helen

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:15:22 +0100

Phew, finally after liaising with Helen, my tute, I have completed my assignment. I’m so glad to have a great tutor. So that was my strategy this time after looking at the example and the discussion forum I chose to communicate with Helen to clarify a few aspects of the assignment. I realise that I was completely over analysing what we had to do and in reality I was thinking it was harder than what it really was. Once I had overcome that and spoke to Helen I felt like I had completed it to the best of my ability.

I must admit I have been lazy with the online tute and lecture this week (week 10) and I have realised that I probably could never be an external student, that’s just a note to self. I shouldn’t take the internal lectures and tutes for granted at all.

Yesterday I created a new page on my yola site and uploaded my assignment thinking it was perfect, but today I went through my assignment and saw that I could improve a little more, which I did, and this is now the last time I change it, hope you like it.

one assignment down, only to face another

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:15:22 +0100

This assignment was probably the hardest assignment so far. Endnote was a little confusing and hard to use. It made it even harder with the fact that we had online lectures and tutes for two weeks so we could not see out tutor in class, instead we had to attempt to contact them via email or the discussion forum. It took a while for me to get hold of my tute Helen because at first I wrote in the wrong email address and was waiting for an email back from someone I didn’t even send the email to. After a while I sorted myself out and have finally finished the assignment to the best of my ability.

The discussion forum was great as many people posted their web site URL’s on the forum and I was able to not only use the example from the companion website but other people’s websites too, to ensure I was on the right track.

Another student from my class, Doa’a and I did the online lecture and tutes together. The tutes helped me more with referencing more than the lecture but they worked hand-in-hand and helped me out especially with referencing which I struggled with the most.

I still haven’t been in contact with my group members for assignment 3, but that is the next thing on my to-do list as this week has been extremely hectic due to our recent break. Getting back into things was fairly difficult. I know who two of my group members are but none of us knows who the fourth group member is and it even harder to get in contact with her now due to the EDN 113 being online for the time being. BUT, luckily we have recently been introduced to wikispaces in which we will all be able to stay in contact.

That’s all from me today, enjoy the rest of your week.

End Note

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:56:49 +0100

Just to add to the previous blog I just uploaded, I have attempted to install EndNote twice now and I cant seem to get it to pop up in my word document where I have noticed it belongs on the uni computers. I have a different type of referencing material on my word already but I'm unsure if its the same as EndNote. I must find that one out ASAP!

Until next week,

Where I'm at.

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 14:52:07 +0100

I have just viewed my result for assignment 1b, thanks to the announcement made by Jan on LMS about how to access it. I am actually really impressed, I don’t think I could have got the mark I did if it wasn’t for the help I got from the companion website and my peers. Due to getting a short and an ill described peer review from my ‘peer reviewer’ I got one of my peers from our tutorial class to review it for me and tell me what to improve rather than attempting to guess myself. I think for me getting someone else to read through my work and being honest about telling me what I should change really helps me out. Because like everyone else, we think we have done a great job and have turned a blind eye to what can be improved but when someone else goes through your work, it opens up your eyes and you can change that and potentially get a better result.

This is the first week that we start our online lectures and tutes. Luckily for me, I got reminded by a friend that we didn’t have a lecture this morning otherwise I would have rocked up ready with no lecture to attend. I haven’t yet viewed the online lecture but that is on my to do list for my day off on Thursday so I can do my lecture and tute immediately afterwards. Nonetheless, I have done two of the recommended readings available on the companion website that will assist me in assignment 2 (Non-Discriminatory Language Guidelines and Information Quality). To get a better understanding and to refresh my memory I will revisit them on the weekend after our group meeting at the end of this week. To get our assignment underway as early as possible we will meet up this week to discuss what resource we will utilize as our focus of assignment #2.

Social Resource done and submitted, yahoo

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:34:10 +0100

Last week I got my review back from my selected reviewer. It didn’t help me all the much. I was quite disappointed by the quality of it. I barely got much feedback at all.

The review I sent back to the person I was reviewing was extremely honest and constructive. Every bit I found confusing or what was missing and didn’t match the high distinction profile in the rubric I mentioned. However, my reviewer selected pass or credit for a majority of the boxes in the rubric but didn’t rectify why and how I could improve which now makes me a bit nervous for my marks from my tutor because I’m not really sure how to improve a significant amount. I emailed the person and asked for a bit more clarification however didn’t really receive much again.

Besides from that I felt like I had great success in learning how to use taste.com and writing simple instructions for others. Due to me not being about to use the site initially I think my instructions I made for taste.com are much better than instructions I would have created if I had used Facebook as my social resource. This assignment challenged me a bit because I didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning but after I kept on playing around with things and trying out what I didn’t know helped an enormous amount. Also this link that was available to click on that directed me to an example of a good social resource was the best help I could have gotten. I have worked out that another student teaching me by showing good examples is actually a really good way for me to learn and get clarification well. I may talk to Helen about going into a peer mentor group as I find it’s a good learning strategy for myself in particular.

Once i've submitted this Blog, ill be on my way to submit my assignment that im fairly proud about.

Thanks, :)

Grammer and Spelling

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:47:07 +0100

I'm extremely sorry, I do apologise for my horrible grammar and spelling to anyone reading my blogs. Once I get started writing my blogs I get so into it that my finger type at one hundred miles an hour and I get so eager to post it that I forget to check and realise that I can’t edit it once I’ve submitted it. Sorry again!
:)