Extra Credit

Math, English, History, and Science! What in the world do these things have in common? Why nothing of course. Except, you do have to read and write in the other three classes, and sometimes even do some critical/analytical readings. Also, often when your are reading or writing an essay for an English class, it's helpful to know other subjects like history and science to give you some background on the material. In science, often math is required and vice versa. To give a more specific example, when I was taking human biology, I had to write a paper on my first experience with nature, and I never would have gotten the A that I did if I didn't have the writing skills I had learned in my English classes. In my physical geography class, we learned about makeup of the planet, incorporating important historical events into the story. We also calculated things like the movement of glaciers over time, and we wrote an essay on the film An Inconvenient Truth, so really this class was a few different subjects in one! Another good example is macro-economics. In this class I have to do mathematical equations and relate them to economic principles, I had to understand the political science and history of economic principles and economics today, I had to write an essay on the economics of America today, and I had to understand the science of the field of economics, and this was just one class!

Extra Credit

There are many reasons to become an honors student, but let’s be honest about the main reason that most of us actually bother with this extra endeavor. Being in the honors institute means that you can become an honors scholar, which means that you can sign TAP, which means that you can get into UCLA! Besides that, taking honors classes and being an honors scholar look good if you’re trying to transfer anywhere, and they can bring you a step closer to eventually graduating from a four year university with not only a bachelor’s degree, but “with honors”. This step above what others have attempted in the academic lives can bring you closer to finding a better job faster, or getting you into a better graduate school. So you see, there are many reasons to join the honors institute. However, not everything is about grades and jobs and admittance into good schools. Being an honors student can also give you better reading, writing, and studying skills, which will be essential to you in later life. It can prepare you for the more challenging coursework ahead in a four year university, and get you motivated to work harder in school. The smaller size classes can give you a more intimate relationship with your classmates and professor, fostering deeper and more meaningful discussions in class, and often preparing you for the style of classes you will experience in graduate school, if you intend to get your master’s degree. All in all, I would say that being an honors student offers many perks, including but not limited to, those of an ambitious student.

Intro to my ePortfolio

This ePortfolio is a collection of writings from the past several years. The intention behind this small sample of my writing life is to showcase the ways in which I have changed both as a writer and as a human being. I will be concentrating mostly on the work I have done at Foothill College, with a few pieces from high school thrown in. I would like to show my professor, my peers, and myself, a small piece of who I am and how going to college has changed me. I want to portray both my creative and intellectual efforts in writing during my academic years, and how I have not only changed, but am continuing to change on a constant basis. These samples of my writing will range from creative pieces like poems and narratives, to more intellectual works like essays and critical reviews of articles, plays etc. I will also, in order for my readers to understand my motives better, include an audio clip describing what I would mlike for my readers to understand about me through this ePortoflio. In the future, I will use this ePortfolio as a place to collect future writings and academic endeavors, and as a way to procure the opinions of others on these works. I would like to connect with other students and faculty members on my literary efforts, and to ask for their input on how I can improve. I would also like to solicit suggestions for new topics of interest in writing, and perhaps different styles or themes. Feedback on my work is my main incentive in making this ePortfolio

Honors Infomercial

For my Honors Institute Infomercial, I would want to do it in the style of a documentary. I would want to interview students, (only students), about what they’ve gotten out of this program. I would want to have part of the infomercial focus just on some brief facts such as how to get into the program, how to become an honors scholar and what being an honors scholar means. Then I would want to move on to interview specifically people who have really gotten something out of the honors program, emphasizing those who have been admitted into UCLA because of signing TAP. I would also want to find people who have a specific class or teacher that they really learned a lot from, and for them to explain what about this specific honors experience really changed them or taught them something. I would then want to possibly interview some popular teachers who could talk about their teaching style in honors, how it differs from normal classes, and what they hope that their students will get out of taking these honors classes. I would want to discuss the variety of classes that are offered in honors, and how easy it is to be accepted. I would also want there to be a marketing strategy such as people discussing what classes they would like to have offered in honors that aren’t already offered, or how they wish that certain classes would occur more often in a quarter, or more often in a year, or how they wish more teachers would teach honors classes. This strategy would encourage more students to join the honors institute because they would see that if they did they could help the institute offer more classes, and it would encourage more teachers to teach honors classes because they would see that this would benefit the students.

Pre-Planning

My final ePortfolio will be mostly academic. It will focus on writing I’ve done for school, especially at Foothill, although I will also include some items from High school, and it will reflect how I’ve grown as a person. All of my materials will come in the form of a blog. I will show an array of work from poetry to essays that I’ve written. I will also include an audio enhancement which will talk about my growth as a person during my time at Foothill, including both the academic and extracurricular work that I’ve done. My evaluators will be Scott Lankford (obviously), and a close friend. My entire ePortfolio will be based on self-evaluation because I will be discussing changes in myself over the years. I will discuss what specifically has changed me as a person and how. This will include both personality and intellectual changes. I will have my rough draft completed by next week, and then I will continue to add things until the end of the quarter, including comments from others and myself. I will also probably add some sort of narrative about what I think of myself today in comparison with when I started at Foothill. I want to discuss how I have changed, and how I am continuing to change every day. I will also discuss where I see myself in the future, and how I intend to accomplish this. This will include my dreams and ambitions for my education, my career, and my own personality

Honors Institute

I think that the fact that Foothill has an Honors Institute to begin with is amazing. We have a large variety of classes with honors standing offered every quarter, and each of them can count towards being an honors scholar, which looks great to any college, and can almost guarantee you acceptance into UCLA. I also like that even though there are some requirements for being in the honors institute, along with an application process, I do not consider it an elitist establishment, primarily because it really is an institute which encourages everyone to try to join. The requirements are not outrageous and the application process is simple in that as long as you do actually apply and meet said requirements, you're in! I think that the only thing I would change is to add more classes, and encourage more students to join.

steve jobs

Steve Jobs' speech, while certainly inspirational, has little to do with my own personal educational path. I recently decided to major in business with the purpose of eventually getting into marketing. I did this, not because of a secret passion I have for business classes, but because I know that there are a lot of oppurtunities in this field, that it often comes with some kind of stability, and that theoretically I do think that it is interesting. Basically, I took the careers/majors that I know can realistically make money and I eliminated everything I didn't want to do. While I do think that it is important to do something you care about, I also think that most people compromise when they decide what they want to do. They pick something that they like, that they can theoretically succeed in, and that will realistically give them some financial stability in the long run. Doing what Steve Jobs did is difficult because it's living without really understanding what's going to happen in the future, which for most of us is a difficult and terrifying notion. On the other hand, it's not like he didn't have a plan at all. He knew he wanted a business, and that he wanted to be involved in technology, and that is what he did. He entered a field where he has talent, and where he knew that if he did succeed, he would be secure in every way. He just took a little bit longer to get there than many of us would like.

What was I supposed to be doing?

Besides procrastinating, which actually is my worst habit as a learner (BY FAR!), I also suffer from a short attention span. I will sometimes tell myself that now is a time to work, to get started on that homework or project or whatever that I've been procrastinating from for days or weeks, and then I will see something interesting on tv, or I will think something like, what's going to happen next in the book " "? and I will get completely sidetracked and it will take me that much longer to start on my work. Sometimes, I'll be sitting in front of the computer, ready to start typing or researching some topic, and I think, first I'll check facebook, which of course, is never a good idea. Sometimes I don't even need an action or activity to catch my attention, I'll just sit there, staring into space, thinking about some deeply philosophical issue, or maybe just something silly about my life, and I can stay like that for who knows how long! I daydream more than anyone should, it's practically a sport for me. Often when I daydream, I get up and start to pace, which tends to freak people out, but which I find very therapeutic. I am one of those people who can never sit still, I'm always fidgeting, and looking around, and doing and thinking just one thing at a time just seems like an impossible task. This is why the only way I can effectively study is to get into the mood of my particular task, so that it is dominating my thoughts, and just make myself concentrate on it for as long as I can, and then afterwards completely forget about it as soon as I don't need the information any more.

Type C procrastination

I think that it is very interesting to juxtaposition the article about type C procrastinators with the one about structured procrastinators. In a way, they are making the exact opposite statement. Structural procrastination is procrastination that depends on doing smaller things to avoid doing bigger things, until an even bigger thing comes up, and then the thing you were procrastinating will get done in order to avoid doing the bigger thing. Type C procrastinators avoid doing the smaller things, like daily errands, in favor of the larger things. In fact, the type C article describes a structured procrastinator as a type B procrastinator, which it terms "dangerous". In my opinion, both types of procrastination have some validity, but I myself am more of what I would coin a structured procrastinator, especially since I find the term type B procrastinator to be slightly offensive. I think that structured procrastination has many benefits. Usually, especially if you care about something, one way or another it will get done. Even the type C article admits that it's better to face a large problem from a different angle, rather than head on. For myself at least, looking at a big problem directly intimidates me and makes me feel like I can never get it done. I am an inductive thinker; I like to look at things starting from the details and working my way up to the big picture. I find that the only way I can attack a big problem is to start small, and usually the way that I do this is through structured procrastination. I procrastinate on the "more important" parts of the problem, and start with something small. Eventually, it all gets finished, but until then, small steps are key.

Cal Poly Procrastination

The Cal Poly theory of procrastination is that it's a psychological problem, brought on by things like low self esteem, perfectionism, being too busy and more. The aspects of procrastination that I identify most with are being too busy, and using procrastination as a way to cope with stress. I think that many people, especially students like myself, usually have a hundred and one things that we have to accomplish, all with some sort of deadline, and all with their own separate levels of importance in our own minds. There is no way that every single thing can be done the way that it should be, or could be, so we prioritize. We decide what needs to be done first, and then often procrastinate on that by doing something else, as discussed in structural procrastination. I also think that many people use procrastination as a way to cope with stress. If we think too much about all the millions of things that we have to do, and put pressure on ourselves to have everything done just right, we will all break down and have heart attacks. I think that this article makes many good points about the reasons for procrastination, and what we can do to resolve it, but there are things that I don't agree with. This article makes it seem as if procrastination is always a negative thing, and must never be allowed to happen, but I disagree. I think that often procrastination is a completely normal human response, and can sometimes even be healthy. Sometimes we need to procrastinate on certain things to make sure that other things get done, and also for our own mental and emotional health

Structured procrastination

The idea of structured procrastination appeals to me greatly. I myself have always been a lover of procrastination for most of my life, although my strategies have changed some over the years. I used to just never work at all; I never did homework, I rarely went to class, had no job, was involved in no extracurricular activities, and was generally a lazy bum. Now I have a method to my procrastination. Much like in the article, I practice structural procrastination. When I don't feel like doing an important activity, I do something else instead which also seems important in its own way. I convince myself of the rightness of the other thing that I am doing, when really I am only going it to get out of the thing that I was originally supposed to do. I continue to do this until something more important comes along which I am supposed to do, and then I finally get around to doing the thing I had been procrastinating doing, and begin to procrastinate the newer, more important thing.

The Journey

I am on a journey in my life with my schoolwork, and how it will lead to my future profession. My journey has lasted for the past three years, and is still continuing. It began with my first year at Foothill College, as a middle college student. I spent a year in middle college before graduating early, and this year changed my life. It got me out of the standard college experience, which I felt was suffocating me completely, and into a more mature, college atmosphere. This is the first year where I began to take school seriously, and actually seriously considered going to a four year university. I began to think of my major, and I decided on communications because it had a broad range of fields that I was interested in, especially marketing and public relations. The stage of my journey that I am currently experiencing is the CALL. I have received the CALL in the form of changing my major to business. I decided very recently that I needed to pick a more specific major, and settled on business marketing. However, my CALL has come in many other forms too. It is what made me seriously begin to think about my future. It is what inspired me to really consider different career choices, and to finally make a decision, even though it was a frightening and difficult choice. I am a very indecisive person, and settling on one specific career path has always terrified me, but I finally realized that making this choice is just a part of growing up which we all have to face. I am enormously grateful that I made this decision at Foothill instead of at a four year university, saving myself and my family inordinate amounts of both time and money. Now I just have to wait and see what happens.

I think that there are a lot of things that I could do with digital storytelling in my own eportfolio. I would probably make a video about how I have changed over my years at Foothill, and show evidence in the form of samples of writing to depict the specific ways in which I have changed. For instance, one idea for a digital story was to make one about my experience being the Vice President of Activities in student government. I could include projects and papers I've done in leadership class about what I've accomplished, along with fliers for different events. In any digital story that I might do, i would try to incorporate my own personality. I would try to seem natural, along with also hopefully seeming funny and interesting. I would want some of my own goofy personality to show in my digital story. Of course any digital story I do will also have to include reflection. I would reflect not only on events in my life, but on how they have affected me emotionally, and how they have affected my decisions. I would also want to do a digital story talking about my family and how they have affected my life. I would want to speak about the ways that they have pushed/inspired me to change and grow, and what I have gotten out of being a part of their lives. Along with this, I think it would also be interesting to do a digital video about my friends. In the past couple of years I have made the best friends of my life, and they have changed me in more ways than I can imagine. I would probably include pictures of us together over the course of our friendship, along with perhaps pieces of writing about how they have impacted my life. 

I have been at Foothill for three years now, and the experiences that I have had here have changed me so much that I can barely remember the person I was before I came here. I am more confident and self-assured than ever, and no matter what happens later on, I feel that I can make my way through it, and become a better person through all of my experiences. This, more than anything, is what I would want to depict in my digital story. I want to show how I have changed and will continue to change, and how Foothill has helped me to realize who I am.

Google Apps seems to be a very organized and efficient way to make an eportfoltio. First of all, there is eBlogger, which we are using now in class, which is a good way to prepare for making an eportfolio. Every week we get a topic of interest and we respond in the form of a blog, and since all of our blogs are on eblogger, looking at and responding to other classmate's blogs is relatively easy. While many of us have not attempted this yet, I'm sure that when we begin to it will give us a better idea of what our classmate's are planning to do with their eportfolios, and perhaps even inspire an interesting idea or concept. I think that Google Docs is probably one of the more interesting tools that Google Apps provides us with. It's a place online where you can attach a document, spreadsheet, or slide show presentation, and attach people's email addresses to it so that they can automatically get an email with a link to the site. Then, either party can edit the document and both new and older versions will be saved. The only potential problem I see with this tool is that it might become difficult to keep track of the different versions, in terms of who edited what.

Google video is also interesting, because it allows us to easily put links to videos into our eportfolio. Google notebooks allows us to keep notes or journal entries about anything that we've seen or done on the internet for our own private use. Google reader, which is probably the second most interesting application in Google Apps, allows us to create one place where we put the sites and blogs we've subscribed to and new posts automatically show up for us to read. This is interesting because it makes it much easier and more time efficient to look through blogs then physically trying to find them. At the same time, if we have several blogs and sites we're subscribed to which constantly have new posts, the sheer magnitude of how many new posts pop up on a regular basis may be overwhelming. Also, there is Google Page Creator, which is where you can actually pull things from Google Docs or anywhere else to create your eportfolio presentation.

Learning Portfolios

Specifically in my ePortfolio, I am going to be concentrating on writing and how my writing has changed throughout my life, along with what has changed it. My audience in this situation will obviously be my teacher and classmates, and perhaps anyone else whose curious enough to read it. My goal will be to show to my audience how my writing has changed over time, and to most of all show who I am. I would like to reveal something important about myself, such as what has motivated me to grow throughout my college experience, and the specific ways in which I have changed in recent years. I will go back and show some pieces from my high school years, including essays and some creative writing, to show how my mind worked at that age. Then I will move on to my more recent college years, and show how my experiences have changed my life. I would like to show how my school work  has changed, and also how I as a person have changed. I am most definitely not the same person I was right out of high school, and I would like that to be shown in my own ePortfolio. I will, of course, have it published online so anyone can make comments about how they feel, and I myself will look at it as a chance to evaluate my own work.  A lot of my writing is in the form of essays about books or poems that I have read, and I hope that my analysis of these reveals something about who I am.  I will write about what I am doing with my life now, and what I hope to do with it in the future. Mostly, I would like to concentrate on what I have learned while being at Foothill, through my classes, my friends, and my extracurricular activities, such as being Vice President of Activities in ASFC, and being involved in Jewish Heritage Month and JIFF(Jews, Israelis, and Friends). I want to write about how I've become more motivated, more passionate, and more myself in my years at Foothill than I ever was before.

Practical Portfolios

Obviously, from everything that we've learned in class and through our research, we all know that ePortfolios can be used in life. Personally, I think the way that they work best is in terms of self-evaluation, and also evaluation by a teacher in a classroom setting. For many ePortfolios, the purpose is to show a collection of work which highlights how a person has grown and changed over time through this very work. Often, interesting aspects such as video or audio sound bits, or links to an interesting website, or even just pictures, can be added to an ePortfolio to add a little bit of color, and also to animate the person's life and individuality more successfully. Then, as the ePortfolio continues to change with new additions, you can always look back on it to see how you yourself has changed, and to evaluate your own body of work. This is the part of making an ePortfolio that I personally am most interested in; I would like to have something interesting to look back on in the future which shows some of the work I have done in college. In terms of evaluation by a teacher, I think that this could be a very useful tool for grading and learning in a safe environment. The teacher can get an idea of what the students have been doing with their time and their ideas, and grade accordingly, keeping in mind levels of improvement and overall creativity.

In terms of using an ePortfolio for employment, I think that it really depends on your career. For certain people it might be extremely useful, such as teachers or artists, but for others, such as those working in the practical business world, I think that the helpfulness of an ePortfolio is probably limited. Theoretically, I think that it could be a very useful tool to show your work and your ideas, but in reality, I just don't think that many businesses would accept it as a reliable testament to what you have done, and I think getting it to them in the first place would be extremely difficult. For the time being at least, paper resumes most certainly rule over ePortfolios in the business world.  

What is an e-portfolio?

According to Dr. Barrett’s FAQ about what an e-portfolio is, it’s a digital collection of an individual’s work, focusing on growth over time, the person’s reflections, insights, and personality, and often includes additions such as pictures or video. There are three purposes for an e-portfolio: learning e-portfolios that are aimed towards education and development, assessment e-portfolios meant for grading or evaluating, and employment e-portfolios meant for people who are looking for a job. E-portfolios help with multimedia skills, and usually the process you go through in making an e-portfolio is decide the goals of the e-portfolio, decide what message you want to send, gather work that answers reflective questions such as what?, so what? And what now?, add links and digital tools, present it to an audience, and post it online. There are also two ways to make an e-portfolio according to the tools you use. You can take the common tools approach, which requires limited software and digital additions, or the customized systems approach, which is designed with an online system and is more high tech. Both can be relatively inexpensive, but obviously the customized systems approach can get more complicated. There is also a series of steps people often take in the development process of an e-portfolio. First there is no digital artifcats, and there can be word processing in electronic files. Then there can also be databases, hypermedia, or slide shows. Then it goes to portable document format, then an HTML based web page, and last a multimedia authoring program.

E-portfolios

I read five very different e-portfolios. The first two were from people interested in the field of marketing. The first e-portfolio included a bio, school history, work experience, volunteer work, hobbies, "what's new", and contact info. I have to say that this was the nicest e-portfolio that I saw. It opened with a beautiful picture of Toronto, where the woman lives, and spoke extensively about not only her experience, but her personality. This is an e-portfolio that really shows a glimpse into the wants and desires of another human being. The second one I looked at was also from someone interested in marketing, and it included an about me, objective, a resume, work experience, links, and contact info. This was also a pretty extensive blog, with a lot of information about customer service experience, with an extensive resume. It wasn't quite as creative as the first one, but still interesting. 

Next I looked at three photography e-portfolios. These were all pretty sparse on personal details, concentrating mostly on the pictures themselves. The first one had just different categories of pictures he had taken, the second one was a simple resume, and the third also had pictures. The third was by far the most interesting of the photography e-portfolios. It concentrated on pictures to do with tattoo art, and it included a page to make comments on each picture, and a forum. All of the e-portfolios were interesting, but definitely artistic e-portfolios focus more on the art itself, while professional e-portfolios focus on work experience, and often on interesting aspects of the individual's personality.

Other Blogs

I read two different blogs one the same subject, which is a new organization of liberals called Jstreet, and what they are doing in the political sphere for (or against) Israel. One blog showed the positive aspects of the group and one the negative. The positive side spoke of how many liberal Jews support a two state solution, and formed this group specifically with the purpose of funding and publicly aiding this end. They claim to want peace, and are angry with America's view that most Jews are in support of Israel "occupying" Palestine. The negative blog said something entirely different. It spoke of how the spear headers of this group are not true politicians or "thinkers", but simply those with money, and that one of these men is Avram Burg. Avram Burg is a supporter for the end of Israel, the end of a Jewish state. While Jstreet claims to want peace among two separate nations, one of their main supporters is an anti-Israel activist. This blog also brings up the point that it's all well and good to rally for peace, but what if the Arab terrorist groups are not quite so receptive to this idea? What if they simply do not want a peaceful solution? How do you make peace with those who want you dead and gone? Should the Jews simply leave their homes and lives and let the Palestinians have it all? Can there ever be a truly peaceful solution, or will this just be a never-ending fight which culminates in WWIII? The ultimate Middle East question.....

My U-Museum

The glory of my U-Museum is that it will be dedicated fully to the celebration of the kind of beauty and wonder that is only felt when looking at truly amazing works of art. The entirety of my museum will be one large square room, each wall representing a different artist, but all connected through their ability to escape from the real world into the emotional outcry of Impressionism. One wall will be for Monet, one Renoir, one Van Gogh, and one Degas. Everywhere you look there will be astounding beauty, the kind of art that makes you stand back and think about life and love for hours on end. Renoir's "The Dancer", with her childlike grace and fragility, will make you long for that period of playful innocence. Degas's numerous paintings of ballet dancers, albeit now grown women, will make you appreciate the female form for its lines and natural beauty. Van Gogh's shocking swirling colors will make you think of the chaos of the world, and yet how it somehow all makes sense in the end, and Monet's gorgeous sunrises and city landscapes will make you weep with the desire to explore every inch of the outside world. Each brushstroke will encompass some hidden desire, or hope, or dream that you have had at one point or another in your life, and these emotions will be overwhelming, which is exactly why only one room is needed to provoke the necessary response. No modern art will exist in my museum, only that which is classically beautiful and intriguing will have a place on my great walls.