Think about your experience and history as a learner. What story can you tell? Write about your
disconnections with learning (the things that cause you grief, create barriers, impede your progress as a learner). Then, write about the tensions and excitements associate with learning. Use specific examples when possible to illustrate your meaning.

I have always enjoyed school. There has rarely been a time when I felt uncomfortable in the classroom. The only negative experience I can think of occurred in the 8th grade. We had a new teacher that year, Mrs. McKinney. She had us keep a journal during class and would often take the journals up to make sure we were writing in them consistently. One day when she took them up, a girl in the class did not have as many entries as Mrs. McKinney expected. The teacher just blew up and started yelling at her in front of the whole class. I’ll never forget the way Tesha just sat there crying while the teacher humiliated her.

After that incident, the class was never the same again. We were terrified of our teacher after that. If her purpose was to ensure that we always had our homework done on time, it worked. We were all to scared of her to slack off. That was the most uncomfortable situation.

The next year, our English teacher was the complete polar opposite of Mrs. McKinney. Mr. Mills really made learning active and fun. The first time I ever felt excited about class was in his ninth grade English class. We were studying the short story and we read a piece entitled “The lady or the tiger.” At the end of this story, the audience is left guessing what is behind the door the protagonist is preparing to open. It is either his beautiful lover or a deadly tiger. For this story, we had to choose which lay behind the door and then support our theory with evidence from the story. This assignment made me very nervous. How was I supposed to know for sure whether it
was the lady or the tiger? I went through the story, gathered as much evidence as I could to support my theory, wrote my paper, and crossed my fingers. When the papers were handed back, I realized the real purpose of the assignment. As my classmates and I compared our graded papers, we discovered that it did not matter whether you choose the lady or the tiger, it matter how well you defended your point. No one really knows if it was the lady or the tiger. There was no right or wrong answer, only an answer poorly supported.

As I progressed through school, I came to realize that this principle can be applied to other classes. Science, math, psychology, and almost every other text book is full of theories. These theories cover every subject and are from every school of thought. Not one of these theories can fully explain their topic. That is why they are called theories. Each has its strengths and its weaknesses. We hold to the theory, that based on our own experience, makes the most sense.

This seems like such a trivial thing, but it had a profound impact on me. Once I realized that there
is rarely an absolute, I understood my role in the learning process. No one is going to tell me what the right answer is. There’s seldom a right answer. It is up to me to discover what I think is the best answer. This is why I love taking new classes and learning new things. The more I learn, the more capable and prepared I feel.

Our objectives this week included subscribing to a professional mailing list to aid us with our research, performing several Internet searches to get us familiar with search engines, addressing several questions and prompts to help us refine our research question, and starting to build our webliography so people can learn more about us.

This week the content we addressed was designed to prepare us for work on our Multi-Genre Research Project. We learned about the different types of search engines, how they work, and how to search on them. We also found and book marked, a skill we learned last week, several helpful web sites. This week we further examined our process of learning by completing several prompts and taking a learning inventory. The last area of content addressed this week was involved in our webliography. We addressed how to use html code to create links.

Learning about the different types of search engines was very informative. I never realized that there were differences. When I was completing my searches, I tried to keep these differences in mind. I also tried using different types of searches to get wider results. I also tried the suggested variations, like capitalization and different spellings. These were two things that I never thought about before when I did Internet searches. I never realized that they could make a difference.

When I was trying to complete the prompts and writing assignments for this week, I discovered that I have an easier time writing them if I write in sessions. First, I read the article or question and think about it. Then I sit down and write whatever thoughts or ideas I have after reading it. After this, I may come back to the writing a day or so later and add any new thoughts or organize the earlier thoughts. Instead of sitting down and trying to write the prompt all at once, I find it much easier if I write a little bit at a time.

This week we also began to work on our webliography. Learning the html code to add links to
the page was really neat. I found that it was easier to add the links if I just copy and pasted the web addresses. I also got some ideas for format from visiting the samples you provided and visiting my classmate’s webliographies. Mine is still very rough, but I really enjoy working on it.

I really learned a lot this week. The most interesting thing was learning about the html code. I’ve always wondered how to make links. It is so cool. I’ve spent a lot of time this week just finding cool web sites that I may want to add to my webliography. I’ve also visited a lot of my classmate’s links. It really is a good way to get to know each other. I also enjoyed learning about the different Internet searches. I always thought that they all worked the same way. I learned just by use that some search engines were more helpful than others, but I never knew that difference was based on how they looked for information. Doing the sample searches really helped me realize what type of searches I need to find the information for my research question.

My only question this week is how do we change the colors on our web log. I went to my preferences and there are spots for colors, but there are not actual colors written in the spaces. It looks like a code of some sort. I’m not sure I want to add color. On some pages, the color made it hard to read. But, it would be neat to know how to change the color.