Last post!

This semester really opened my eyes to what academic writing and research really is.  Back in the day, I would look at my assigned topic that I really didn’t care much about, look up some articles regarding the issue, then take pieces of each article and put them into a paper.  .  My idea of the process of research has evolved in the past 16 weeks in the fact that I now see that I don’t have to rely on the other research articles I find. This semester I went from basically summarizing old research to analyzing this research and using it as a resource to aid my own thoughts on the subject.  I also learned that the “so what” of a paper is one of the most important parts when trying to get through to your audience.

            One big idea that I took away from this semester is that it’s my job as a student to add to the ever-growing research world.  Yes, it seems like a scary place, but once you’re there, it’s not so bad.  As our class looked at what “counts” as research, I learned that although numbers are great, interviews work just as well in the academic world.  For example, even though I’m not going to a field like chemistry in which it seems easier to conduct quantitative studies, the education field offers many opportunities for qualitative research if that’s what I choose to do.  As I explore what I want to study for my Capstone project, I have realized that I don’t need to have conduct experiments in order to do research.  Also, conducting research isn’t as hard as it sounds; I simple survey or interview can reveal so much about a topic.  This took a big weight off my shoulders!

            At SCREE, I got to talk with many students both in and out of my discipline and listen to them explain their research and what they found.  From them, I learned that some research can be conceptual, almost like common sense, but connecting ideas across different articles is an important aspect of research.  They provided insight on how to approach the project in the fact that they took a big topic, and narrowed it by finding an issue.  Also, I talked with one student in which their research just created more questions, and that’s okay.  The biggest lesson I learned is that usually there is no one answer, and the question I choose to ask will most likely create more questions.

            As I continue my education and work towards my Capstone I have a few goals for myself: 1. Find something I’m passionate about (I think I’m on the right track because of this class) 2. Be creative 3. Don’t get stressed.  Throughout this class, one of the key ideas that has been ingrained into my head is that academic writing is a conversation, and through my research, I am adding to it.  As a writer, I need to keep in mind my audience and anticipate any questions they may have and address them.   This class has been very beneficial to my idea of what is expected of me in regards to academic writing and was actually very enjoyable due to the fact that I got to write about issues that pertained directly to my passion.

Multimedia

Regarding Habits of the Mind and multimodal composing, engagement, creativity, and persistence was the three big ideas that come to my mind.  And I’ll tell you why:

Have you ever watched a movie or a Netflix show but the first five minutes are so boring that you just quit?  Yeah, that was me with Gossip Girl (sorry Chuck Bass fans!).  When having a multimedia component in a research project, it has to engage your audience.  If it’s not interesting, no one is going watch your hard work.  On the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want it to be so distracting that it takes away from the rest of your project.  With a video, image, or any other media component, it should assist your audience’s leaning, allowing them to better understand what you are trying to say.

Going hand in hand with engagement, creativity is also very important.  Using media in a unique manner can enhance the overall view of your argument/project.  Also, creating a visual model could make a concept or study easier to understand.  Being a future elementary school teacher, creativity is a skill that is very useful when dealing with 8 year olds who need help understanding the concept of density and floating vs sinking.

Lastly, persistence, which connects with engagement and creativity, applies to multimodal composing.  Using multimedia opens up a whole new door to get across your ideas and it’s important that if you do choose to use multimedia, you make sure it complements your other work and continues to expound on what you are trying to say.  This also relates to my future career as children have pretty short attention spans and I need to keep them interested in learning.  For example, when I volunteered at a school over spring break, every day for a half hour before lunch, the students worked on their Dinosaur Research Reports.  This was a long term project, so each day as we completed the next part of the project, it was like pulling teeth because they just were not interested anymore.

Some challenges of multimodal composing are that it can be very time consuming, it’s not uncommon to have issues with technology, and the media itself can distract the audience.  The benefits are that it can enhance your project/idea by capturing the audience’s attention, and can also make difficult concepts easier to understand.

I actually have no idea what I want to do for my multimedia project.  The popcorn website we used in class seemed like something I would want to look into more.  With my topic, the math gender stereotype in elementary school, I could use multimedia to show visual representations of results from studies or even interviews form women in STEM fields.  To be honest, I’m not too sure what I’m planning on doing at the moment.

So if you watch my video, you will see a few funny videos of cats  and hear some awesome, yet diverse, music.  I hope it makes you laugh!