Author: jturner11

React to Reality

Introduction
Emergency situations can happen any moment, at anytime during the day and there is not much that is taught on how to handle these situations. Children are taught to call 9-1-1 when there is an emergency, but most likely never actually practice acting in such situations. Some common emergency situations that children should be aware of are a house fire, someone choking, stranger danger, car accidents, and house break-ins. React to Reality is the newest state of the art educational virtual reality program. The goal of this program is to teach children the correct way to react to common emergency situations. Our product will be a program that can be downloaded onto PC’s and is run with an oculus rift virtual reality device. The goal is to provide the students with a life-like visual of emergency situations, allowing them to work their way through the steps of dealing with each situation, to help prepare for real life scenarios. This product is for elementary school children to be used in a classroom setting with a teacher. The product will be sold to school districts and individual schools in a classroom size set of oculus rift virtual reality devices and a PC that will run the program. Schools will need this new technology to replace the old and outdated curriculum that is already in place. The only curriculum in place is a packet from the Federal Emergency Management Agency which is given to schools. This program is just a 30 page packet that has various educational activities like matching and short quizzes. FEMA describes this program as, “This standards-based, cross-curricular program is designed to provide students in grades 1 and 2 with the knowledge, awareness, and life-saving skills needed to prepare for a variety of emergencies and disasters.” (Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum-Grades 1-2, 1). The program will be advertised to school boards as this product will not only replace old curriculum, but fill the void with a fun, interactive virtual reality simulation. Our main audience is students K-5 as the program will be made for children to learn what to do in emergency situations, which older students should already be aware of. We market to this young age because these are the children who would be less experienced with the situations and the ones who wouldn’t already know what to do. This new technology will have ground breaking visuals as it will show emergency situations that could either contain kid-friendly animations or life-like graphics. Our first simulation will be on fire safety where there will be a simple stove fire, then it will ask the student using the device what the next step would be. All the simulations will be interactive, so students will be forced to analyze the situation and pick what step would be best to take.

Learning Outcomes
Our application is educational because it is allowing children to learn what to do in situational emergencies. It allows for children who are in kindergarten up to fifth grade to learn how to react when an emergency situation arises. It will be a tool first used by school boards to train their faculty to implement lessons where the virtual reality application will be used. It then becomes the teachers job to instruct their classes on how to use the simulation and relate it to the real world. Our application will be available for students to be right in the middle of an emergency simulation so they can experience an emergency and have the chance to make mistakes so that if there was ever a real-life situation where 9-1-1 needed to be called, they would be properly prepared to make the right decisions in the heat of the moment.
Outcomes will be assessed by allowing for the application to be available in school systems. Meetings will be held with school boards and school faculty to train them in how they can use the application in their curriculum. The application will reach to young students in efforts to allow for the reaction time to emergency situations to increase and to feel more comfortable in knowing what to do. This virtual experience will provide emergency simulations for students to ensure their ability to do the right thing without hesitation and with ease. A sample question would be what would you do if you were in one of the certain virtual simulations, and there would be 3-4 answers to choose from before you can continue in the simulation. If a student fails then they will see a red x across the screen and it will say that you had failed. The user would then have two other chances to complete that level and choose the right outcome. The teacher would be able to see what the students are doing within the application. If the student gets x’s then after the simulation the teacher will have a set of directions to help the student understand the outcomes.

User Interface

There are several virtual reality interfaces out there all ready. There are the HTC Vive, PS Sony VR, Oculus Rift, and google cardboard. For our program we decided to use the HTC vive. We chose this specific headset due to its versatility with the laptop instead of needing a gaming console or a cellular device. Most of these programs are not designed to educate children in emergency preparedness. React to Reality is designed to help young, grade level students throughout the school system. Our program was specifically designed to not just make it known that 9-1-1 is who you call in an emergency, but actually place them in these situations where they are guided through what steps to take and what decisions to make. Children begin learning what an emergency is when they are around 5 years old, which is when they are entering kindergarten. React to Reality shows the user, each student, an emergency scenario and they must make a decision on what to do in that particular stage of the situation. The only materials and technology needed are the computers and graphic designers to finish designing the program and building the virtual world. Each simulation is based on the specific scenario such as the emergency kitchen fire. The kitchen fire scenario takes place in the kitchen so the program places you in the house which is where the emergency begins. Soon after the fire starts you are given multiple choice questions which each have one right answer.One of these questions include what do you do next with the answers stay and cry, call 911, or put out the fire.If the child gets it wrong a large red “X” appears and tells the user to try again. The simulation takes place from when the fire begins to when firefighters have arrived and the child in the simulation is safe. Upon completion they earn a gold star and a thumbs up.

Implementation Strategy
Since the urge to educate children on what to do in emergency situations is so important, implementing React to Reality should not be a challenge. In order to properly use React to Reality a set of five HTC Vive’s needs to be purchased. These are the devices that connect the program to Virtual Reality. Each headset can be plugged into a PC or computer which will run the React to Reality program. Purchasing five computers and five HTC Vive’s allows the class to work in small groups or take turns going through each simulation. When finished, each classroom can pass around the set of devices. Best Buy and Amazon are currently marketing the HTC Vive at $499.95. This comes with the headset which includes an earpiece for sound and two handheld controllers that act as your own hands. According to Technology Intelligence, “with a recent price cut the Vive is looking more affordable at under £600” (Technology Intelligence 2018). This helps with cost efficiency. An alternative headset, the Oculus Rift is sold at a cheaper price but each device needs a gaming PC to plug into as well as an Iphone, which not all elementary students have access too. Using the Oculus Rift for React to Reality would be more challenging to get school boards to purchase because the whole system is way more expensive and requires more technology. So purchasing five HTC Vive’s for $500 adds up to $2500. The MSI GP62M Leopard Pro-406 laptop has a very advanced processor and a large amount of storage for gaming purposes. These laptops run for $1200 so if five are needed this brings the total to $8500. React to Reality only needs to be purchased once per school building since it is a one time buy. Selling at $99.99, this adds to the total to make it $8600. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “In 2014–15, public schools spent $11,734 per student on current expenditures” (National Center for Education Statistics). So that means the whole React to Reality program, including all technology needed, costs less than the average amount spent on one student.
In order to get the word out about React to Reality, advertising must catch the attention of potential customers. Our primary customers are school boards across the United States. Our marketing strategy will be to present our ideas during the National School Board Association Annual Conference. This allows a variety of school boards to hear about React to Reality and learn where and how to buy the program for their elementary schools. If interested, we can come directly to their schools and give another presentation during a faculty meeting with only the teachers from that school. This further gets the word out about React to Reality which will begin to spark interest. Also, adding an advertisement to an education catalog allows administrators to see the program when browsing through the catalog to purchase supplies at the beginning of each year. Scholastic Magazine is a very popular resource for purchasing school supplies and materials. Teachers are able to filter the catalog to a specific grade and subject. React to Reality will be filtered for teachers in Kindergarten through fifth grade to focus the prototype to a particular audience. Along with advertising comes a catchy motto. Our motto for React to Reality is “It Can Be Fun To Learn About 9-1-1!”

Long-term Vision
To limit our prototype and to stay focused and while keeping everything manageable, we will start off with one simulation and then as time moves on, create more. There are many situations that can happen in real life, and we want to have the situations be put into the VR system and used for the education of elementary kids. Right now, we are selling it to schools because it is for teachers to use to show the importance of being ready for scary situations if children happen to be faced with such emergencies. We are keeping the age group for our first situation K-5, and then as the program and the world progresses, the scenarios will progress with situations occurring throughout the world. In an article we read it says that “The Brown Box, that was used as a gaming system started out just a normal system with all different games. Then as time went on, special attachments and different weapons were added on” (Chikhani The History of Gaming: An Evolving Community). In the same idea, with our program, having only one simulation right now will eventually lead to more situations with more features added.
Our next phase of development will be to put the word out for our VR. In addition, we would try to get the ad for our product into a catalog. Teachers all around the world read catalogs, specifically Scholastic, when looking to purchase new materials and resources for their classrooms. As soon as React to Reality is noticed in those catalogs, business will take off. Lastly, there will be presentations to the school boards. We would do surveys with the school board and get feedback from them to see what we can improve and what can be added. See what teachers and faculty think and see what they see could work as best for the kids and make as most educational. These schools need to know what this can do for their students. They can learn numerous lessons and skills that will get them ready for actual emergencies that may occur. Parents will be impressed with what their children know and will see their children’s confidence in these situations progress over the years.
Our five-year plan is bound to include many more emergency simulations for young students as well as simulations for an older audience. For examples, students at the middle school and high school level can be prepared with what to do in the case of a school shooting. Even teachers will be able to begin using the program for what to do in scenarios such as a school shooting. Also, a CPR simulation will be designed for a more mature audience such as adults, babysitters, and lifeguards. Using VR for all different types of emergency situations can ultimately impact any age group from kindergarten up to adulthood. Preparing society with the proper knowledge for emergency situations will lead to a safer and smarter community.

Work Cited

Reporters, Telegraph. “The Best Virtual Reality Headsets You Can Buy.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 5 Mar. 2018, www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/best-virtual-reality-headsets-can-buy/

Nguyen, Tuan, and Tyler Wilde. “The Best VR Headset.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES, 10 Aug. 2018, www.pcgamer.com/best-vr-headset/

“Public Schools Expenditures.” National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a Part of the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Apr. 2018, nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmb.asp

“Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum-Ready Kids.” Emergency Support Function Annexes | FEMA.gov, 14 July 2014, www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/34411

“Scholastic.” By Marilyn Burns, 2018, shop.scholastic.com/teachers-ecommerce/teacher/grade/2nd-grade.html

Author, Guest. “Best Laptops for HTC Vive: 5 Top Picks with GTX 1060 or Better.” Pick Notebook, 27 May 2018, picknotebook.com/blog/best-laptops-for-htc-vive

Storyboard
https://www.storyboardthat.com/portal/storyboards2/paige15089

Google Slide

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YuPhWXWxZhyPplvWEBWE9spQ84p8UZrK3LzHzH5gICw/edit#slide=id.g4649b37f69_0_0

Pitch:Football

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a rising technological device in our generation over the past years. As we look around today, we use video games and play in our activities such as sports to develop as human beings (Isidori, Sandor, & Fazio, 146). VR and sport games together can shape our way of thinking when it comes to motor skills and our cognitive thinking. I plan on reaching people between the ages of 16 to 35 because those are the people who have a wider span of athleticism and are more inclined to be into video game type simulations. I plan on projecting this outlet trough ads on social media outlets such as
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and television advertisements on sport channels, shows that target teens and middle-aged adults, and advertisement channels. You may be thinking how this idea could be something to learn from, let me tell you how. When a college football player steps foot on a field on a given Saturday it requires for them to go through a great deal of practice that involves remembering and going over plays, footwork, and play calling in order to translate that into game play which uses cognitive and motor skills(Isidori, Sandor, Fazio, 148). A player uses what he learned from practice to translate that into game situations which allows for a football player to use cognitive skills to a high degree as you must recall plays that are said to you and execute them on the swift to the highest level possible. The motor skill aspect is so you can take attributes such as foot work and correct form from the VR and translate that into real life actions such as running or lifting weights. You are guaranteed to have learned some basic motor skills such as form and technique in the way we run or assess other actions in our physical or daily lives. You will also be able to choose the experience level you may have in the field of football which will determine the difficulty of the skills you may learn. One thing for sure is that you will complete this VR experience with a new outlook on the way your thinking is and how you move physically.

VR and Education at It’s Finest

Virtual Reality (VR), is a technological advancement that allows three-dimensional images or environments be simulated and recalled by a person. Education is the process of receiving or giving information systematically. The two didn’t have a connection until now. Virtual reality is a tool that is starting to make an impact on not only our daily lives, but also on the education system as well. VR is a tool that should be allowed in all education systems.
Chris Milk, a man who is an American director and CEO of a VR company makes arguments about how VR can teach and change people’s minds. Chris Milk discussed in his TEDtalk that virtual reality is an experimental machine that makes you “feel present in the world that you’re inside and you feel present with the people that you’re inside of it with”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). According to what Milk had said, virtual reality and education may go hand-in-hand. If you’re in a history class for example and your professor says that you are going to be using virtual reality in order to fully understand the history of the World Trade Center and the Twin Towers you can expect to feel as if you were there and get the bigger picture of the event rather than just reading about it. Professors can benefit from incorporating virtual reality into their teachings to better engage the students and so you can be what Chris Milk describes how using the virtual reality will create opportunities to say “I saw people having an even deeper emotional reaction to this, the things that I had made in rectangles”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). Chris Milk also brought out how “we can change minds with this machine”(Milk “Empathy Machine”). Virtual reality can change the minds of people as Chris Milk says because it will give us insight on different aspects of history or viewpoints of other people we may not have thought about, so why not allow virtual reality to have a positive effect on education.
Just like Chris Milk, Jelia R. Domingo and Elizabeth Gates Bradley argues the positive effects of virtual reality in education through tests they did regarding students perception of virtual reality in education in their article “Education Student Perceptions of
Virtual Reality as a Learning Tool”. Domingo and Bradley believes that “virtual reality can be considered a tool. The reason that virtual reality can have a positive effect on education because “Instructors can customize virtual classrooms to have content-specific information and resources continuously available in the virtual environment”(Domingo & Bradley,330) which allows for students to attend a class that may focus on subjects that can be more beneficial in a virtual environment than it would if the subject was just being taught straight from a book. I can relate when I used the Google Cardboard in class and watched videos on the NYT VR application on my phone which made me feel as if I was in the same environment as the people within the virtual reality experience. VR has become a tool in our education system because many educational based institutions have made strides to have three-dimensional worlds in their courses that are online(Domingo,331). If the situation of not knowing if students may have a good experience with virtual reality arises, Domingo’s tests reveal that little over half of the student participants said they had a good experience with virtual reality(Domingo,339).
Ready Player One, a book that depicts a fictionalized version of our world using virtual reality, has many aspects of the way virtual reality may have an effect on our education. There is the example of using virtual reality to go to school as the character Wade Watts uses the Oasis to go to school just as the other kids do in that world(Cline,28). In our education system virtual reality can be a useful tool because if the student is not able to physically make it to school then they’re able to attend school in the virtual reality world that is created. Attending school in a virtual environment will have differences than attending school in the real world because in the real world people may call you by your first name or a nickname you like while in a virtual school you will be seen with a gaming tag with your first name and a set of numbers at the end of it(Cline,29). VR gives many aspects that may appeal to people in the education system that would like for VR to be a factor in the way they use it in their teachings.
VR a technological tool that is starting to make an impact on our education. Why not use virtual reality to hold a class so you can witness an event for yourself in a history class instead of reading about it in a book or watching a video that does not give you much insight on the topic. Instead of having bland lectures, professors can use virtual reality in order to incorporate three-dimensional environments within the classroom. Virtual reality can be used as an option of going to school if not physically capable as well. As Chris Milk said “we can change the minds with this machine”(Milk “Empathy Machine”) so why not take advantage of virtual reality and incorporate it into the education.

Koa Kekahi

My avatar’s name is Koa Kekahi because in Hawaiian it means courageous one. I chose for my character to have similar characteristics as me because I believe that I am courageous so why not embody that in my avatar. My avatar has glasses just like me but the difference between my glasses and my avatar’s glasses are that it can beam lasers from them when you press a certain button on the side of them. The jacket my avatar has carries an unlimited amount of useful tools and weapons my avatar may need as well such as health packages or swords for combat.

Why the Digital Age Helps!

Many people have their own take on how technology can, or in some cases does not, help us learn. Some may say that technology helps us and that “The Web has been a godsend” (Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”) to the many who uses it for work and learning purposes. Then there are people who argues that technology is a bad way of learning and you should not use it because it causes us to lose focus when it comes to handling multiple jobs at once, for example typing an essay and drawing points and references from within an article. Both points are valid, but we can all see that technology is becoming more prominent in our daily way of life and in the way, we learn. Schools should adapt to the way technology has come in the lime light of learning by having the students take classes regarding how to manage using the internet for learning and not as a distraction.
Carr is someone who makes several points about how technology positively impacts learning. Carr eventually recalls how “A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after” (Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”) in turn meaning that the internet has shortcut tools in order to find information faster and much easier than you would if you were searching through a physical copy of an article. I personally feel that technology helps me when I’m doing school work, such as different research assignments since I can go search up something and go deeper into the topic at hand. Technology helps us because it allows us to make phone calls to people who are not with you in the same area physically, it allows us to quick search different researches, it allows us to make papers look professional, it also allows us to our jobs if we work corporate jobs at a desk. There is nothing bad with allowing a little technology in the way you learn; many people are doing it and it is becoming the new way to learn.
Davidson is another person who you can refer to who argues the view point that technology gives some benefits towards many peoples learning. Davidson mentions an experiment called the “gorilla experiment” which was based on the phenomenon of “attention blindness” and how the technology we use can help us overcome attention blindness (Davidson, 2). Attention blindness is when you focus on one event so much that you don’t pay attention to another stimulus or object that is thrown into the fray. She proposes the argument that “Fortunately, given in the interactive nature of most of our lives in the digital age, we have the tools to harness our different forms of attention and take advantage of them” (Davidson, 2). Davidson was saying that we can collaborate with each other in the modern world we live in, so we can have the ability to overcome attention blindness. Agreeing with Davidson’s point when she said “But once we acknowledge the limitations we’ve been living with, we can come up with a workaround” (Davidson, 8) I can say that I myself have been able to get around being blinded by my own mind and many obstacles thanks to technology giving me insight on a subject from many sources that has different viewpoints on it.
Goldhill disagrees that technology is helping us within our learning. She believes that “… despite the downsides of multitasking, we’re juggling an increasingly frenetic list of activities, as online notifications deliver ever more distractions” (Goldhill, “Neuroscientists say multitasking literally drains the energy reserves of your brain”). She’s basically saying because of technology we will be more inclined to struggle when it comes to juggling obstacles or in other words multitasking. Collaborating helps us because it allows us to see different viewpoints of a situation or topic such as the gorilla experiment when the objective was to count how many times the team in white passes the basketball, a gorilla was then thrown in the fray and depending on some people you either saw it or you didn’t. If you collaborate with one another then one person can count how many times the team in white passes the basketball and another person can catch the gorilla walking through the group of people, giving you the whole picture of what is given to you. Goldhill is blaming technology for the distractions it brings when it comes to handling multiple forms of works or topics when it comes to learning, such as pop up ads, emails popping up on the screen, or colorful pictures that may be within a website. I can see where that could be a problem, but you must know how to prioritize your work for you to not allow technology to take you away from what you are meaning to accomplish.
I say we can change schools for them to adapt to the way we are learning with technology by allowing the students to take classes that trains them to moderate the use of the technology in learning for only the purpose of learning. If schools acquire new methods of teaching with the technology such as classes online, uploading assignments online, having students use the internet to research everything they need, or even reading articles online. If schools take the initiative to enforce technology in their teachings then it will be easier on the students and the teachers to adjust and be more comfortable with the climate the learning world has come to, using the internet to learn.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? Rhetorical Analysis

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v36oibr9ylxs3pd/Article%20Analysis-Is%20Google%20Making%20Us%20Stupid.MP4?dl=0

Nicholas Carr, the author of Is Google Making Us Stupid, is a writer on technology and culture in which his books has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. Carr has written for multiple big-name publishers such as The Atlantic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Nature, Wired, and MIT Technology Review. Carr has received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association in 2015. He has a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.A., in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University. Carr has written many other articles, journal entries, blogs, and posts related to technology and how it plays a roll in how we learn and read. (www.nicholascarr.com/)

When Carr was writing Is Google Making Us Stupid, he was writing towards the people who were raised in the age where almost everyone has a cell phone and information is available at your fingertips. He is also writing towards people who argue that reading online and the Internet is either helping us learn, read, and write better or it is making it worse on us as a generation. Not everyone who Carr considers his audience may agree with his argument which he backs up with evidence and main points that all his audience may adhere to.

Carr’s purpose in writing this text is to make the claim that the reason for the downfall for the concentration factor and having the feeling the brain is changing in a way is due to the Internet. He also claims that “The Web has been a godsend” to him as a writer. Carr talks about how his mind isn’t going bad but rather feels as if his mind is changing. His mind is changing because everything that he is doing now seems much easier with the use of the Internet. Carr recalls how “A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after.” Just as Carr suggests how the Internet has helped him, I can also say that the Internet has also helped me get to what I’m looking for more effectively than I would if I was to look for information that I need in physical copies of books.

Carr’s published work was published in the July/August 2008 issue of The Atlantic under the technology section. During that time, you can say that technology and the use of the Internet really started to rapidly consume people and the way we started to think, read, write, and how we did our daily routines. The development of technology has been rapidly evolving since the time the article was written and published all the way to present day. This article contains many researches from other publishers such as when successful students from University College London who published a study of different habits people have when it comes to online researching (Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?). The downfall that could come from the text being published is that there aren’t any new or updated studies between 2017 and 2018 that broadens on the topics touched on in the text. The information within the text is still valid today but more updated information and studies would seem more credible and relatable to Carr’s audience today.

The genre of Is Google Making Us Stupid? is informative and technology education. Carr is informing his audience on main points and evidence based from researches and studies. Carr mentions how in his book in 1976, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation, late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum had observed how the view of the earth in which came from the vast use of timekeeping tools “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality” (Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?). The information provided by Carr is to inform, teach, and make an argument for his audience to interact with. Carr states “the Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition” (Carr, Is Google Making Us Stupid?) which points directly to the genre of technology education because not only is Carr referring to the way technology effects our mind, the way we read, and carry on in our daily lives, he is teaching us how technology is helping us in those ways as well in many other different phrases within the text.

My Journey….

My name is Jamèk Turner and I learned how to read and write in multiple ways that has benefitted me as a person and student. I first started to learn the basics to reading when my grandmother read to me just as she did with all the daycare children that she had in her in-home daycare. Then, I started to learn certain letters and words which helped in reading and writing. Learning how to trace letters and words was another tool that helped me. Reading stories and then writing a paper on it strengthened my reading writing skills. Lastly, writing informative papers over the summer before college and presenting the papers in front of friends and family helped strengthen my writing skills.

My grandmother uses to sit me down every day when I was with her and bring out the bold, foam alphabet mat where I can sit on it and point out the letters while she said the letters out to me. While she would do that I can remember the faint sound of babies crying in the background from the in-home daycare she runs in her home. I never really got a break from learning from my grandmother as she took every opportunity that was given to her to teach me something involving the alphabet, words, colors, or animals. I used to have a speech impediment, so it made teaching me to pronounce words a little more difficult than it usually would. I was ahead of my learning curve for my age. My grandmother would make pasta that would be so savory in your mouth after she taught me something new and I succeeded in learning it on the first try due to what I knew was waiting for me if I succeeded. My grandmother and I would sit on the sofa with a sippy cup in my hand and a coffee mug in hers and I would listen to her read The Cat in The Hat. That book meant a lot to me because I was so drawn in to The Cat in The Hat due to the vivid pictures and rhyming scheme that Dr. Seuss included in that book.

On some days I could smell when my grandmother made a good cheesecake, those were the days I knew that I would have some sort of break from learning a whole lot. My grandmother sat me in front of the tv with Barney, The Wiggles, Sesame Street, and Zoboomafoo on for me to learn some new and informative tools. When I would wake up in the mornings from staying over my grandparents’ house the first thing I could hear were nursery rhymes playing on the television from tapes she had. While listening to the nursery rhymes while still in bed I then could start smelling fresh pancakes being made. On some occasions my grandmother would tell me to count to ten or sing my alphabet before I could take a bite of food she made in the morning. By my grandmother drilling me on my alphabets and making sure I remember the information that I attained it helped me to remember relatively everything that she had taught me.

I would then grow old enough to attend elementary school in which I came in a little more advanced than some of the other kids in my class. The class would sit in colored boxes that were on a rugged mat on the cold floor and would sing the alphabet, listen to the teacher read stories to us and help us trace our letters properly in the My ABC Tracing Book. The activity in which I had a difficult time in was tracing my letters properly because I had bad handwriting and my grandmother rarely worked on writing letters and words with me. The harsh eyes my teacher would give me once I gave her the tracing paper back with the tracings not on the dotted line was what struck fear into my body. I would then receive extra lessons on how to trace properly and then actually write these letters and words out while the rest of the class was singing the alphabet and listening to the other teacher in the room read them a story.

Using my skills of tracing and writing learned in elementary school, when in middle and high school I had a better chance to write better when my teachers would pair us up in groups to read a story of the groups choosing, write some things you like about it and that you learned from it, and then reenact what you learned in the story to the class. I found this beneficial to me and my class because it helped us to like reading, be more confident in presenting in front of people, and it helped with our writing as well. I would read a book every day until I was finished with it whether I liked it or not I would write some interesting facts or new information or words I didn’t know from the story down, so I can look it up and go over them on my own time. By doing this it helped me be a better studier while I was in school and it helped me be more advanced in the classes I was in. I read the story To Kill a Mockingbird and I thoroughly enjoyed that story due to the vivid imagery and the suspense that I felt from reading that story. After reading the story the class had wrote a paper on the story describing how we felt about the story, how the author used certain tools to attract a certain audience and what information or new words and phrasing we took from reading the story. From writing that paper we did some peer editing and that helped me to understand some different viewpoints of the story I had not thought about beforehand.

Over the summer I trained myself to read everything I saw or received from somewhere. I eventually would just start reading the newspaper for fun after I would eat my breakfast in the morning. I did a lot of writing over the summer as well for my personal use and because my mom wanted me to keep typing up papers on some things I may learn in college or get out from college. I wrote about two different papers over the summer about what I need to accomplish as a student to get to what my future has in store for me. After writing these papers I would read them to different friends or family members, so I can build my confidence up with not only writing but presenting the reading that I had wrote at that time. I now have some sort of confidence to write papers and present the readings that I had wrote down on or typed up on the paper.

Resulting from the tools that was used to help me to learn to read and write it not only put me ahead of the learning curve a bit, but it also helped me to get up at this point of my life as a first-year college student. Having a grandmother help teach you some fundamentals such as learning your alphabet, reading to you as a child and making sure that not only are you learning the material but also retaining the information is a key moment in my life. My grandmother also sat me in front of shows that were not only fun to watch but also taught me other reading and writing properties such as certain phrases to use and how to pronounce certain letters and words. Being in a school where they teach you how to trace and write down letters and words will also help in your writing skills. Reading books as a class and then working on a paper about what you read will help with reading and writing because not only are you going in depth of what you read but you’re putting all of that onto paper or in a typed paper. Lastly, writing informative writings and presenting them in front of people on my own time helped me to be a better writer and be more comfortable with presenting the writings I generated on paper. Having multiple tools as a child helped me fundamentally with my reading and writing, some people may have other ways they learned but at the close of business we all learned some way to read and write to get to where we are today.