Final Reflection

In Authentic Learning in the Digital Age: Engaging Students Through Inquiry, Larissa Pahomov writes, “For student reflection to be meaningful, it must be metacognitive, applicable, and shared with others,” and defines metacognitive reflection as taking the process of reflection “to the next level because it is concerned not with assessment, but with self-improvement: Could this be better? How? What steps should you take?” (read full article here). In light of this assertion, I would like you to write a metacognitive reflection letter on the final project. This reflection should be addressed to me in letter format, with full paragraphs, and aim to identify how you could improve your work. Here are some guiding questions:

  1. Describe your contributions to the final project in detail. What writing/research/design/management responsibilities did you take on in order to complete this project? What did your group members contribute? Did you feel the other group members valued your contributions? Did the reactions of your group members (revisions, suggestions, critiques) help you develop your materials in a constructive way?
  2. What did you learn through the process of creating and presenting the final project? How did this project help you synthesize and apply the topics we covered throughout the semester? Do you have suggestions to improve this assignment?
  3. How do you feel you contributed to the class discussions?  Did you feel that your contribution to the class discussion was sufficient? How might you change your involvement in class discussions in the future?
  4. Do you feel the service learning component enhanced your experience in this class? How did working for a real client change the way you approached your assignments? Describe your engagement in service learning throughout the semester.
  5. And finally, what readings, activities, assignments, and discussions did you find particularly helpful, informative, and engaging in this class this semester? What would you suggest be changed to improve this course next time it is offered?

You may expand or add to these guidelines in any way you wish. This is your opportunity to speak directly to me about what you learned in this course.

This will be submitted as a Google Doc or Word Doc (file name: finalreflection_yoursection_yourlastname for example finalreflection_256ON1_licastro) that you share with me upon completion at alicastro@stevenson.edu or amanda.licastro@gmail.com. For Google Docs, you must invite me as an editor (with privileges to edit, not just read or comment) to amanda.licastro@gmail.com. You will complete this after our final presentations on the day of our scheduled final exam.

Also, please include this statement at the bottom of the document and fill in your name and response:

I ____________ (do/ do not) give Dr. Amanda Licastro permission to use my final project as an example in scholarly presentations and publications.

Reflecting Us Reflection

Reflecting Us is a very interesting and compelling exhibition between its creative work and strong messages that really make the exhibition. I was a part of one of the classes involved and was fortunate enough to have a piece selected and be one of the artist to talk at the event. The photographs are strong and have really amazing compositions, light work, and depths of field, but the awesome part is hearing the stories behind them. A few of the images have captions that tell you a bit about the back story, but it is really cool to heart the artists processes and decisions made to get the final piece. These images mean a lot to the artists to represent who we are in all kinds of ranges. The artists define themselves as black, as gay or bi, as a mental disorder, as a professional, as a minority, the range is phenomenal and these are our colleagues. It really shows how little we many know about each other, what we want the world to see us as and what we hide, and how we truly identify and intemperate each other or ourselves. I highly recommend spending some time reading the captions, flipping through the mini books made, or talking to one of the artists, you may learn something new!

This is me super excited after the artist talk about my self portrait being a part of such a strong collection of work.

Connecting the Ties with Hernandez

Carlos Hernandez had a lot of good advice for our class. A main topic he addressed was digitally publishing work. He mentioned how long poems take up too much space in print form since you are paying for the white space also, but when you publish digitally the price is minimal even if it is a long poem. He also mentioned how you are able to interact with writing on a digital space so that is another benefit to publishing digitally instead of on print. Another thing he talked about was his inspirations. He mentioned how one of his inspirations for one of his poems was a painting and how the painting made him think of how they “would do whatever is necessary to keep living.” He also mentioned how somethings happen in your life that you want to capture and record and majority of the time those are the hardest things you can go through. He also gave recommendations on how to get a writing career started. He said that you should start publishing now to get your name out there. If you submit to a publishing company, they may reject you, but they will also tell you what you could work on for next time. He said to keep submitting work to publishing companies because there comes a point where they will want to publish your work. Carlos also said to attend conventions and build your network because it is all about who you know. I think Carlos coming in to talk to us was beneficial because students in the class who want to pursue a career in writing now have an idea of where to start and begin planning for their career. Him coming to our class also helped connect our class to real world publishing, to me at least. It was cool to hear an author talk about how he get published both digitally and print and how we could start doing that today if we really wanted.