Week Four Blog: Wrapping Things Up

Wrapping up week four has been a tough one. I believe researching for my project has been the most difficult task of the class so far. I was so stressed out throughout the beginning of the class wondering “am I even doing this right?” but I learned so much from this class that I wouldn’t trade this class for any other this summer. I found it helpful this week to read all of the extremely insightful posts that classmates have written in the discussion forum part two on my research topic. This made the process of figuring out what specific technologies I should be covering in my paper a lot easier.
This has been a very interesting class. It has increased my confidence in my writing and discussion writing skills as well as my ability to share what I really want to share with the class. Although this was a four week course I feel as though I have learned more than I have learned in some of my complete semester courses throughout the years. Making a class interesting makes all the difference I believe because people are going to be more inclined to learn if they are interested and intrigued by the topic at hand, and this topic of the class definitely interested me.
One of the most interesting things I found this week was how much people responded to our research posts. Although my post in the project discussion forum did not get much feedback, the one in the discussion forum two got a ton of feedback which was extremely helpful. I honestly thought that I would only have one to two comments on my posts but was pleasantly surprised to find that almost everyone commented on my project post. This made me feel even more confident that I was choosing an interesting topic to discuss for my project. One of the most beneficial posts that boosted my confidence was one from Michael when he said “I think that this point can connect back to the first week videos and the discussion about the advancement in technology in robots. Some people may be worried about what could happen (much of this is a Hollywood depiction of robots) in the coming years if technology like Watson continues to advance”. It is so great to see that other people are thinking about what I am thinking about when looking at the focus of this topic. My most beneficial aspect coming out of this class will be the confidence I have gained in my writing. I never thought I would say that I learned to become more confident in my writing from a four week summer course, but I have.

Week Three: Researching

For week three we were able to focus a lot more on our research papers and decide what we were wanting to research and find sources to back up the research. I had a hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to write about because I kept thinking that my topic was way too broad, however, after talking to Joyce I found that starting out broad and then narrowing your topic down a bit was not a bad idea. The readings this week were based on helping us to research and to better understand the effectiveness of an online course. This information was really insightful; however, this was not the most interesting thing I learned this week. What I am going to talk about in my blog today is that ezine.com site that I have been discussing a lot with the students. I am so excited to learn about this site, I just can’t seem to stop talking about.
I found this website fascinating. I cannot believe I had never heard of this site before, but it is most definitely something I wish I would have known about in high school even. I do not know how many paper I have written than I could have used this site for, but it is more than I can count on two hands. This site is easy to access, easy to navigate, and extremely helpful in the researching process of a paper. It makes me wonder why I had not heard of this before. I am so excited to learn more about this site and find out all I can learn from it. The first thing I typed into the search box on the site was "future technology" and the first entry that popped up with exactly what I had been looking for as an article to use for my paper all week. I wish I would have looked at the discussion board earlier because it would have made the researching process that much easier. I am relieved to realize that I never have to worry about looking up an academic-worthy website on Google very often anymore.
Even after two minutes of being on the site, checking out how to do everything and finding the search icon I was able to find a really reliable and interesting article that would really help my paper. This is the website of what I found (http://ezinearticles.com/?Future-Concepts-and-Modern-Advances-in-Technology;-Good-or-Bad?&id=96962). I would urge ever one of my classmates to at least attempt to look at this website a little. Trust me; it will be worth your while.