Entry #1: Hello & Ponderings Thusfar
Hello! This is Huay. [I just realized that I never pressed “publish” on this post. Excellent.]
When I found out that we were supposed to create a blog, I thought, what better way than to make use of this domain I bought back in November but haven’t touched since?! (Ignore the navigation on top. I aspire to be a famous blogger or whatever sometime soon, but I haven’t bought a ring light yet (what’s that got to do with anything?) and I haven’t figured out exactly what I want to focus on… so I just played around with different categories and some yelp reviews I’d posted.) My blog entries for ED257 will all be here on this specific page though.
I’m excited to be in this class and explore new technologies and find out more about ones that I already know of (like Gauchospace, polleverywhere, etc.). I think this class and other people trying new things in general have given me courage to try new things. I played around with the questionnaire/survey thing in Gauchospace. It seems like it might be useful! I use Gauchospace primarily (as an instructor) for a gradebook, assignment submissions, as well as posting resources. I haven’t gotten much into the other options/tools available.
For now, though, in the class that I’m TAing for, I played around with Google forms for the students to submit their preferences for their section topics. (Sam inspired me to try.) I had fun playing around with the types of options (slightly easier to figure out than Gauchospace version). Unfortunately, the way I had them do it (dropdown list of 1st preference, 2nd pref, 3rd pref) wasn’t the most convenient way to congregate their preferences (in terms of most preferred in each section). I ended up having to manually calculate totals for each category. This shows me that I have to be thinking about the end results when designing a questionnaire and choosing the question types (hey! this relates to my Questionnaire Design class too!).
Another note: In my section coming up this Thursday, I plan to use Google Docs for group work, as we were shown in class. I really like it.. I’m not quite sure how it’ll look (function, i.e., lag) with so many people on it at once (unless I choose like a scribe for each group)… But we’ll see.
Another fun note: I got my ESCIs today. One of the written feedback I got was, “She should use more media/visuals in class,” or something like that. I never used the podium in those sections (whereas I did Fall Quarter). To be honest, I was too lazy to make powerpoints, especially since we were supposed to be focused on the readings… So I didn’t really have time to think of bringing in outside resources. SO. In my current TAship, we don’t necessarily have to focus on readings in class, rather we should assume students have DONE the readings, and then supplement the readings with other media, visuals, activities. Therefore I think I will have to include more visuals—but also, just this context and topic would make me feel like I have the freedom to incorporate stuff. So I will do my best!
Another another fun note & about the readings: I love it when my classes connect, and today in my Second Language Learning class we talked about Behaviorism, Cognitive Psychology, and Constructivism again! I was like (thinking), “I know theseeeeee!!” I had read about these before, but I never really remembered what was what, or what came when. I think now I’m finally at a point in my academic career where these are theories that I will remember. It’s super interesting because each time I hear/read about each of the theories, I think, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense. This must be true.” But then the next one is presented and I’m like, “Yeah, this is much better.” But I guess that’s why they’re theories, right? In order to be a theory, it must make some logical sense and be believed by some large group of people. I think the point is that as people, we learn with aspects from behaviorism and cognition. But at the same time, we ARE people, so theories MUST incorporate the social aspect.
HUAY