The Grand Finale

Introduction

Hello all, we are to the point of the semester where I will be saying goodbye. I started this blog since it was a necessary assignment for my English class, and you have been able to see the variety of assignments that we have completed over the past 14 weeks from my perspective. However, now that we are at the end, I will no longer be updating this blog as I will be moving into my summer break where I will have a job and will be focusing on experiencing life to the fullest. As I am no longer going to be updating this, I would like to reflect on my experiences with this course and how it changed me.


Reflection

This English class was very different to the other English classes I have taken in the past. A big focus in this class had been the different parts of writing from normal such as the exigence of the text, so why should the reader care about the topic. For that essay I spoke about BookTok and how it promotes overconsumption, so I included facts about the environmental impact of over producing and consuming products to raise a sense of urgency in the reader and make it clear as to why this topic should matter to people. The English class I took last semester was more analysis and summarization based as we read classics and reflected upon what happened in the book and the recurrent themes. While we were focusing on books in both classes, this class revolved more on the historical components to books and how they share information instead of the words in the book. Another featured component of this class had been the use of the different technological advances such as writing machines in our writing and how we can use them to our advantage. This was primarily AI which I spoke about in my last post. I have only ever had teachers speak about AI in a negative light and how if we ever used it then we could get kicked from the college, in comparison for this class we were required to use AI for our first essay. This was due to my teacher’s belief in it being better to learn how to use AI writing to our advantage because it is coming rather than ignore it. This is a statement I have come to agree with as the class progressed and I realized how intwined AI writing machines have become in my life. Now when I go to look something up, Bing AI is always there, so knowing how to use it properly is important to me, especially as I plan on becoming a teacher in an extremely digital world. I think that overall, this class has had a positive effect on my writing life and has made me a better writer. With each course I take I have noticed that my writing style is evolving, and this course has forced me to look more in depth at books and articles to pick out information that I otherwise wouldn’t care about. Now, I have found myself asking why something was published as I see things when browsing on the internet and reading for my other courses.


Conclusion

This class has been very interesting and has provided me with new experiences that overwise I don’t think I would have had. In this class we wrote in cuneiform, bound books, created baby wiki pages, worked on collecting quotes in a commonplace book, and experienced public writing. As a future teacher working with different types of websites is good practice for how digital classrooms have become meaning the wiki page was a good assignment to help me learn more about the background of websites. Similarly, becoming more comfortable with public writing is helpful for practice as I become a teacher. Most of my writing in a few years will become more public than private as I will be sharing it with other teachers to use and show parents and students.

 

I hope this blog has been interesting and insightful to read,

Allison

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