Metacognition: Quarter 1

Throughout this quarter I have learned many things about myself.

The Mindbook assignments taught me things about myself that I did not know. I learned that when I start a project I start off with one intention for the project. But as the assignment progresses I find myself adding details and coming up with new thought processes and ideas as I'm working. One thing I did not know about myself is that I am capable of thinking on a deeper level when it comes to a project that seems simple.

Through the essays I learned about "The Elusive Big Idea" and how social networks are not helping but rather suppressing the creative personalities we all possess. "The Creative Personality" helped me learn about what makes a person 'creative' and made me reflect on my own personality. I learned the reason of why our nation seems to be falling behind academically from reading "The Creativity Crisis". These essays all teach something specific and I learned that when I take the time to really read them, I'm overcome with the wisdom I hear in those sentences.

Finally, reflecting on all of these essays through my class blog. At first I was a little terrified at the idea of having to write my own blog and be graded on my posts, but as I was writing my first entry the words would not stop flowing! On every entry since, my posts have been significantly longer compared to those of other classmates and it's only because I had so many thoughts and ideas running through my head that I had to express them all in each post. This blog has taught me to open my mind to the ideas inside of it and put these thoughts to paper (or virtual paper).

If I can learn all of these things in the first quarter of the school year, I can only imagine what's waiting for me in the next three.

Until next time,
Rachel.

 

Blogging Around: Justine and Stacey

Justine G

In Justine's, "Connection: The Creativity Crisis and School" blog entry, she talked about how the crisis in our schools and nation is the lack of time that kids have to be creative anymore because we have adopted China's old education system. Because we have adopted this system, we are no longer focused on the creativity of our kids, and we are more concerned with how much information we can pound into every students head. Her post represented what I also believed to be the problem and I replied:

I loved this post because it was short but incredibly important! You were able to explain the problem, compare it to another nation, and get the reader (me) really thinking about what we could do to fix that problem.

I definitely agree with you on the fact that we, as teenagers, rarely have time for ourselves with all of our school work and jobs that we no longer have to time to create or be creative.

Nice Work!

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Stacey L

In Stacey's "Best of the Week: Born Into Brothels" blog post,  she talked about the movie Born Into Brothels that we watched in class that week, and about her conflicting emotions towards the children. She talks about how it was difficult to fight back the tears when watching the way these children were living but also the incredible joy she felt when she realized how smart and insightful these kids were. I was touched by her emotion so in response I wrote:

Stacey,
I loved this post. There was so much passion and emotion overflowing in your writing that it made me feel exactly what you felt while watching that movie.

I'm so glad that after you mentioned how insightful the children were, you ended the post with that quote because that was one of the top things that really stuck with me after the movie ended. It astounded me to hear that kind of wisdom come out of the mouth of a 10 year old boy.

Awesome Post!

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Until next time,
Rachel.