Monday, June 1st, 2009
This is your final required blog for your 2008-2009 school year. I have hopes that some of you will continue to write in your blog. You have made connection with other bloggers and hopefully are inspired to continue writing. This quarter your self-reflection will take the form of a blog. Please answer the following questions, one per paragraph:
1. In your opinion, what was the purpose of this blogging activity? (Why did I choose to do blogging instead of more traditional writing activities?)
This blogging activity is a new way to express our writing, so that we are not just writing. Spicing it up a little makes writing fun. We were also able to see how many people had viewed our blogs, to tell whether your writing attracted kids or adults, or to tell whether your writing showed voice and style. We were also allowed to write about a topic of our choice which compelled us more to write about what we love so that we were able to try our best without being pushed so much. We also were able to incorporate basic writing techniques and points in our writing to be able to practice using, and getting familiar with, those techniques, increasing our skill and knowledge levels. This was also a chance to get a taste of modern technology. Many people in my Language Arts class had not even opened up a blog page by accident. Wikispaces was unknown to almost my whole class until introduced to us, by our teacher. It is key, to be able to keep in touch with technology while still advancing in your education. This incorporated both technology, and Language education into this process. We were also able to see how communication, worldwide, is vital to sharing knowledge and events. Just from seeing my page, and others’ pages, their cluster maps show that when you write, someone half-way around the world will be listening to you. It was also a very fun activity which increased our learning. The more fun you have, the more you learn.
2. What have you accomplished during your blogging?
Before we had started blogging, we had no clue what to do. We had no idea what dashboards were, we didn;t know how to create cluster maps or edit our pages. We were simply un-educated on the subject of blogs. Now, many of us have mastered the system of edublogs, and now know our way around the site. After this activity, I am now able to better use the four sentence types, and increased vocabulary. This affects how mature your writing is, and what age of audience you attract. If you use simple sentences all the time, with low vocabulary, then you are most likely to attract elementary-aged children. If you use more complex sentence forms, and higher vocabulary and change your style of writing, then you are more likely to attract older persons, possibly adults. I used to make run-on sentences because I wasn’t sure on how to use the structure correctly. This makes it distracting for the reader, and the reader will just move onto something else. It is important to change your vocabulary to show your mind is growing, and that you are educated. Higher vocabulary is a sign of maturity, in my perspective. Also, I was able to write longer entries more comfortably. It is also important to keep your writing interesting, while keeping it a bit lengthy and informative, so that your reading will keep on reading. This activity helped me to be able to attract people, through my style of writing, in blogging. I was also able to develop my writing technique in this sense.
3. What key concepts have you learned while blogging? (This can be about writing, research or technology etc.)
I have learned several key concepts, throughout this blogging activity and process. This activity contributed to my learning very much, and I think that this should be continued. I have learned about four sentence types, voice in your writing, your writing style, vocabulary, research, and the modern internet world. The four sentence types are key to your learning and writing in the future. If you start writing with simple sentences, then you’re pretty much writing like a seven year old. If you write with compound, and complex sentences you’re probably at about lower Middle School level. If you write compound-complex sentences, then you show your maturity in your writing and your development. It is also vital to increase your vocabulary range. When you expand your knowledge of words, you become smarter, and you can be more vivid and descriptive in your writing. When you use more advanced words, you should be able to change your reader’s thoughts or mood and you should draw them into your writing. You should be able to place the right words in your writing to make the reader picture what you are saying. Research is also very important. Even though, I know you’re thinking, I know everything about music, which I don’t, I still need to do research to back-up what I say and apply visual and informative aids. When you do research you are obviously writing about that subject. Pictures and diagrams also help you to back-up and make your writing stand out.
4. Based on the skills you learned while blogging, how will this benefit you in the future? This maybe inside or outside of school.
I learned many basic skills during this time of blogging. I’m not quite one-hundred percent sure how this will benefit me in the future directly. However, one key thing that we learned was how to summarize things well. When we came into class, my teacher told us to write a summary on the scene that we had just read in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We had to write it in ten sentences. Then we had to reduce that and keep reducing then last, into one sentence. This showed us how important it is to keep a summary short, but to still have the main information about the subject. This was very useful and I think that it has increased my writing skill greatly, and I feel that I can write with more voice now. Out of school, this helps us, because we were able to communicate better to others, and see which methods worked best. This is because we were able to practice writing with voice, and we could see who had visited us, and where, through our cluster maps.
This “class” we’re going to talk about rhythms and note lengths. As I explained before, there are bars in music, and usually there are four beats that make up a bar. When you play a shorter or longer note that is always marked in the music. It shows the duration of the note, or how long it lasts. It’s just like fractions in math class. A note that lasts for 1 beat in 4/4 time, is called a crotchet, or a quarter note (because it only fills up a fourth of the bar in 4/4 time). A note that lasts for 2 beats is called a minim, or a half note. A semi-breve, or whole note, lasts for a whole bar – four beats. But, a breve, lasts for 8 beats – it is the value of eight crotchets. A quaver, or eighth note is worth half a beat. Finally, a semi-quaver – which is once again, a quaver halfed which is equivalent to a quarter of a beat.
