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Nadine Tawfik
WR 39B
Dr. Lynda Haas
26 August, 2014
Observing My Progress
Ten weeks ago, I had started this writing 39B online course. Since this was my first
online course, I did not know what to expect.
After knowing the courses theme, our first assignment was the introduction video. From
working on that video, I learned to be more open and creative. Instead of making a normal face
video, I decided to make a Prezi presentation. My creative idea I had gotten, was to make my
intro video as a small newspaper full of articles. My first article was my information. I started the
presentation by talking about myself as the author of all the newspaper articles. Then, I moved
on to the mystery. I wanted my story to be unpredictable. My goal was to make the reader
believe the crime was a murder when it really was a kidnap. I had that element of confusion.
That was when my creativity had grown. After making my presentation, it came time to record
my voice. However, I did not have a program on my computer to simply record my screen.
Because I had been persistent to stick with my unique presentation, I searched for many ways to
record the newspaper. After a long time, I used the video recorder on the computer. With
openness in my mind, I used pictures of the presentation instead of animation. After this
assignment, I noticed my openness, creativity and persistence already developing.
The next assignment was the wiki pages. After talking with my group, they gave me the
questions to write my own page. The groups leader guided us through the process. During this
project, I developed my responsibility, curiosity, flexibility and engagement habits. During my
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research, I stayed responsible because I wanted to finish my part of the project and not let my
whole group down. While reading the online articles, I became more curios of the different ways
males and females had been treated in schools during the Victorian era. Because I knew wiki
pages should be visually comfortable, I decided to be a little creative by adding pictures and
organizing the page in a way to be comfortable for the readers eyes. On the due date, my leader
asked me for help. Because I knew how hard it was to be group leader and try to make
everything work, I gladly wrote the last missing wiki page. That was when my engagement and
flexibility habits grew. I became more ease at writing a page on the spot at the last minute. In
addition, I liked being engaged with my colleagues in a group, and trying to help them.
The third assignment was peer reviews. Personally, I appreciated peer reviews. I believed
it helped to have a new pair of eyes to look at my writings. After reading the review I got by my
two peers, I could reflect better at my own writing, which was when my metacognition ability
came along. I also learned to accept critics. Even though some of those peer reviews were
supposed to be for constructive criticism, one of the reviews I got was only a critic. The peer
could not see half of my page, and they still criticized it. However, I learnt to be open and accept
critics and I edited my page based on the constructive feedbacks. On the other side, I was
assigned to write a review as well. My group did not assign a page to each person, we each wrote
to anyone. Since all of them had been reviewed, I decided to review on page for the second time.
I learnt to be more flexible because nothing will be perfect. I wrote a well detailed and
constructive criticism to my peer to help them look at the small detail mistake I found. At the end
of this assignment, I developed my openness and flexibility skills.
Furthermore, I started the forum. For this assignment, I developed my curiosity and
persistence skills. To find the right theme, I was required to research through everything we had
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read in class. I tried to encourage myself and make it fun to find the right theme. Because my
group wiki was about education, I got influenced by that project. I noticed that Sherlock Holmes
was a hidden teacher. He was a curious and fun teacher. Sometimes the reader wanted to be like
him with his incredible abilities. Since this idea was not brought in class, I wrote about the
teacher Sherlock Holmes to make it creative and curios.
The start of week five, the first assignment was a second part of the forum. For this
assignment we had to talk about one main idea which was supported by two scholar resources.
For this forum, I developed my sense of curiosity, engagement and creativity. When thinking
about the main idea of the assignment, I decided to write about the same scheme as the older
forum to have a stronger support for the essay later on. My curiosity for the theme of Sherlock
Holmes as a teacher expanded. I researched the new scholarly texts with determination of finding
my theme. Thus, my habit of engagement was expanded as well with my curiosity. I felt
involved in the assignment. After finding my examples, my sense of creativity grew. As I wrote
the forum, I was determined to make creative references to the scholarly texts to amplify my
theme.
Then, I worked on the extra credit. For this opportunity, we had to review three forums
and include advices. Also, we had to summarize the forums we reviewed and summarize our
own review. For this opportunity, I developed my responsible, persistent and metacognition
sides. First, I felt responsible to send a constructive criticism. I knew that destructive criticism
makes the writer feel discouraged, so I felt responsible to send advice with encouragement. Also,
I was persistent to send the right message. Sometimes critiquing a work was boring, but I kept
my interest and attention for the good of the writer. In the end I wanted to send my colleagues
advice to help them improve as much as they would help me improve. In the summary part, my
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metacognition grew. Every time I read my won work, I realized my own mistakes, I reflected on
my own thinking which made me be able to improve.
For the full length draft, I developed my persistence, metacognition and my flexibility
habits. Since I already talked about the same idea for two forums before, I started to lose interest
in the theme. However, I kept persistent and reminded myself that the essay summarized
everything I had written about. I took parts from the forums, but did not want to only copy what I
had written before. Thus, my flexibility around fixing my own writing and creating new ideas
and sentences grew. In addition, reading back what I had written before made me realize what I
did wrong and made me try to fix my mistakes.
For the second wiki, my sense of responsibility, engagement and openness advanced.
During the time of writing the wiki, one of my group mates sent us an email. Since it was a
group effort, I felt responsible to be engaged and engage them as well. I knew how awkward at
the beginning a group assignment was. Thus, I talked about my idea. The idea was to make each
person do the same work for all the different topics. I was responsible for the definitions. My
other group members were responsible for examples. I was open to talk to them about my idea
without shyness. They agreed with me. As a result, the group wiki was successful. For the
second part of the wiki, I developed the sense of responsibility. I took ownership of my own
actions and my own ideas. I decided to make two examples of the four topics, while my two
other colleagues made one for the last two topics. Also, when one of my group members made a
mistake, I felt responsible to point it out to them because it was a group effort. Thus, everyone
was responsible and was affected as well.
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For the revision strategy, my senses of metacognition and openness advanced. The
reason why was because I had to read and realize my own mistakes. Also, I had to accept the
different criticisms, so I opened up because they were written to help me become a better writer.
For the forum about Sherlock Holmes films, I became more curious, creative and open.
Because of this assignment, I became curious about the cinematic tricks. While watching the
different movies, I grew to be more creative realizing the tricks and their effects on the audience.
Since the topics of the forum had been already written for us, I became open about writing about
an already written theme, not my own.
While fixing my portfolio, I turned more creative and more aware of my own writing.
Since I had to write a reflection about my own work, I became more aware of my
metacognition. Because I wanted to make the portfolio more interesting and personal, I worked
creatively to make the portfolio represent myself.
During all the connect projects, I developed my metacognition and persistence skills.
The reason why was because during those modules, I understood first my own ability as student
where I stood in grammar before I developed my knowledge. That was when my own
metacognition grew. On the other hand, some of the lessons during the connect modules were
already known. I had studied them for more than half of my life. As a result, sometimes the
modules took more time than they should or they were boring, so I stayed persistent to be able to
finish my homework. I would make it more interesting and not give in to the boredom. My three
main problems in language and grammar were: wordiness, word choice and proofreading.
Though the modules respectively, I understood my mistakes and learned new ways to fix them.
During all the readings and the quizzes, I developed my curiosity, responsibility,
engagement and flexibility skills. I tried to be flexible and make the readings more interesting
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and fun. I used audio books with animated voices to be able to imagine all the right movements
and details. As a result, I became more engaged in the stories. Also, if I did not find the audio
book, I would read out loud to myself trying to enact the events to have a better understanding.
That was when I became flexible with the circumstances. Since I knew the importance of the
reading, I made myself more interested and became more curios to read the appealing detective
stories and the articles about them. I was the only person responsible for the readings and I got
tested about them during the quizzes, which was why I became more responsible during those
readings. I had to be curios and responsible for myself to do well on the quiz and get a better
knowledge for the other assignments in the class.
In brief, during this course, I developed all my seven Habits of Mind in a variety of
assignments. I felt more matured as a writer. For rhetorical essays, I leant to better analyze. I
learned that analyzing was a process which needs persistence and patience. With the online
environment, I understood many things. Throughout this course I learnt the importance of peer
reviews, the group projects and metacognition. Through analyzing other works, I learnt that
analysis was important. It was important to understand my own writing and be able to fix it.
Also, peer reviews helped to point out the mistakes. Lastly, the group projects were effective
because the students listen to each other. My group members and I listened to each other and
collaborated together. That collaboration was what brought success. Thus, instead of my own
idea, I could have many ideas from different perspectives. In the end, throughout my life I would
keep learning new things. This class made me learn various lessons through writing. I thought
that I disliked writing, but this class had proven me wrong. I liked writing. I thought that I was
not good; turned out I just needed help. With the main lessons, the most important one had to be
my discovery of my new hobby: writing.
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