6.8.2021

 Today we were told by Mr. Paterson about the realities behind our blogs and how some were misinterpreting the information in class, whether it be about Donzigher's connection with Chevron or the "Pakistani"-Israel conflict, I became worried about the facts that I wrote in my past blogs. To be fair, I remember that I wrote some late at night so it makes the experience more concerning. In fact, while we were working on our next task, I was given the opportunity to reflect and read back on the past 100 or so of accumulated blog posts, and oh did I find some mistakes, like the recent blog post about Chevron where I had written"Dolzigher" which I, later on, found out wasn't his correct spelling. I wonder how many other mistakes I had made during my LE journey. Since there aren't any big final assignments, I want to optimize my LE time to organize my blogs and analyze to see if there isn't any false information. Some reasons that I thought may have lead to this status quo was due to the fast-paced contents of the semester. Since we weren't really told specifically about methods of note-taking and their significance in this class, students may not have efficiently outputted their learning in words. This also accounts for me as well, as Mr. Paterson had explained in the past, that the multi-task of hearing and outputting together is difficult for humans. However, with the constant multi-tasking of homework between other subjects, sometimes it is hard to remember all the minute details in a class even during its 3-day span.

So, during the group work, I focused on the memorable aspects of class and see if there are similarities in the way of pedagogy in the listed elements. As a result, I found that a lot of the unforgettable moments were when we were actively engaged in the topic of the class through demonstrations and active learning. The Saitama people role-playing, the BGF, and the media comparison are the few examples that were quite immersive. However, Mr. Paterson had also pointed out that the Saitama people were retold as "Yokohama" people, so although they might have been personally impactful, for others, it may have not been enough to have it be stored in their memories. I think the main reason for the misinterpretations is due to the demonstrations being short-term. Since this course is very packed with an abundance of information, topics, and activities to cover, it may be hard for students to organize all the information for the better. This became apparent when we had a hard time unearthing all the past subject matter, which proves our inability to grasp the connections. This is why I thought implementing a long-term activity on the side would help students engage with the class material better. Simple examples would be to extend the length by having students experience the "Saitama" privileges throughout most of the class and giving no particular explanation about it towards the end. However, it would be ideal if the students were given an active learning task that could stimulate their learning process such as the documentary task that Mr. Paterson showed us before where students would create their own documentary site which showcased their essays and videos regarding a certain issue. Moreover, I thought that there still existed a line between teacher and students. Although we are given time to discuss with each other, we never have the time to have a big group discussion with the teacher being the mediator. Perhaps stronger and closer in-class relationships between the teacher and students could relax the atmosphere, allowing more students to actively participate. Such motivations may indirectly help with increasing the accuracy of their learnings because they are willing to reflect as opposed to dealing with it like a homework task due in 3 days. Overall though, this lesson made me want to reflect back on my past posts to check for dire discrepancies.