Reflection of the Learning Adventure

This class is a challenge for me in anyways. On the first day Barbara challenged every one of us to be a writer. It is a title that I have never thought of calling myself before the class. I only have four years of English writing before. I was a bit worried until Barbara said “No matter how much writing experience you have you belong here…every writer is learning.” I decided to stay knowing that I would have so much to learn in this class. I putted my full commitment to expand my knowledge on writing.

The technologies that we used in class opened up a whole new world for me. The blog created a huge network of communication for me. This network allows a mutual learning between my classmates and I or even the world and I. Knowing that my writings are exposed to a wide variety of readers, I started to write as a writer not as a student.

By doing so, I became much more confident and was welling to try expressing myself in ways other than plain text. It was a hard but fun journey to learn telling the stories using pictures or voices or a combination of all. I remember when I was asked by Barbara to tell a story using a set of pictures, I felt so dumb. From finding pictures to uploading then describing them, every step was new to me. All I can do was asking questions. I swear that was the first time that I ever asked so many questions.  The same thing happened when I first tried to use my voice to tell a story. I’m glad that I asked questions. With answers combined with many trial and error experiences, I slowly learned many techniques that are necessary to make a multimedia project combining text, voice and pictures.

I’ve also collected many tools to improve my writing during the course of the class. The exercises such as listing adjectives, verbs, events, feelings and settings and then combining them into a story, or writing by looking at a random photo or piece of writing, all these are great tools to explore the deeper layers of memories. If I ran of the idea, I would just ask someone to give me few words, like what I did with my braid essay. My braid essay was extended from three words: green, sky, and me. Other very important technique I learned is how to workshop my writing. It could be the usual technique such as reading aloud, zone in, and printing it out. Or it could be the more dramatic ones such as cutting and pasting, drawing or coloring. They are useful and fun techniques to use on improving my writings.

Although, I haven’t master all these technique yet but I have them in my tool box, but I believe someday I will make them part of my unconsciousness. I will continue to write and hopefully better each time.

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~ by tlblog on January 30, 2008.