Thoughts about Assignments

I have only had one online class before, and so far it seems to be nothing like this course. Although the other class consisted of readings, videos, and commenting on others' posts, it was far less interactive than this class seems to be. I've had to blog for other classes before, but I rarely really used my blog besides a couple assignments. For this class, I'm excited about the storytelling assignment. I used to really enjoy writing, but have noticed I enjoy it less since arriving to college where almost all my writing assignments have been research papers. I am looking forward to being able to write creatively again. Honestly, though, the extra credit options seem the most interesting to me. I am particularly excited about the Tech Tips, Wikipedia Trails, and HEART options. I am not very tech-savvy, so I think Tech Tips will be beneficial for me. I think Wikipedia Trails looks interesting because there have been many times I have found myself clicking through links in articles and ending up on an article that is seemingly completely unrelated to the one I started on. I haven't heard of HEART, but I enjoyed learning about Growth Mindset, so it seems like it's something I will enjoy researching.

Heart by Kevin Dooley. Source: Flickr

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Story Lab: TED Talk Videos

For this Story Lab, I watched Ted Talks about stories and storytelling . The first video is the TED Talk of a woman named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Nigeria. From a young age, she has been a storyteller. She read foreign books for much of her childhood and based the stories she wrote based on what she read in these books. She eventually discovered books and she learned that writers could look like her. When she came to university in the United States, her roommate was surprised to learn Nigeria has English as an official language and that she was familiar with many of the comforts of American life. She believes people like her roommate have a view of Africans because of writing that portrays them as living in a dark place. When Chimamanda wrote a book, her professor told her the book was not "African enough" because the characters were similar to him, a middle-class man, and they drove cars. When she visited Mexico, she realized she saw the people there as poor immigran...

Tech Tip: Word Counter

This word counter is so helpful! I usually go to a word counter website and write my text in there, then copy and paste it. This extension makes it easy to just write where I will posting my text so I don't have to flip between tabs. I usually am worried about meeting the minimum word count, but I usually don't have an issue hitting, I am just afraid that I won't. I think I am generally bad in estimating numbers in general, so I probably would be very off in my estimate if I just tried tried to guess how long my writing is.

Growth Mindset

I had never heard of Carol Dweck or the growth mindset before this week, but I love learning more about personal growth and leadership development, so I really enjoyed hearing about the idea. I'd be interested to see how much of a different a growth mindset can make, especially in school or the work field. I feel as if I have a growth mindset at times, but a fixed mindset at others. Sometimes, when faced with a difficult task in school or extracurricular activities, I think of it as a growth opportunity, while I sometimes feel like I absolutely cannot do it and shut down because of my mindset. I would like to try to focus on having a growth mindset this semester, and know I will need to find specific ways to do this. I think this could potentially be very beneficial to me as I try to practice my Italian language skills even though I am not currently taking a language class. I know keeping up with the language and continuing to practice on my own will be difficult, but I can use t...

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