Lipy Begum

How Did I Get Here?

How do you expect your English class to be? Well, it involves a lot of reading writing, taking exams etc. right? How much of your English work involves the computer?

English at Information Technology! ALL of the work that we do in our English class is posted on the webpages that we have created.

It was difficult creating a webpage, especially when I wasn't there for the first week of school. The very first assignment we were given was the "iam.html". For this assignment, we were to describe ourselves using the twelve "Qualities of genius". The first word I did was "Curiosity". Every time I decided to add a new ward to my page, I would go through all the qualities and choose the one that was easy to do. (We are expected to add a word every three weeks).

We all need to learn vocabulary words in English. In the past, I learned the definitions for individual words. Now I am learning VETY words (prefixes and suffixes). At first, I was confused by those "unusual" words, but then I realized how important they are. It was really great to hear that we can use the online dictionary to find the definitions of these words. Also I have been using the VETY disks that are provided by Mr. Nellen to study, and have been doing well on these quizzes.

As I was creating more files and writing more essays, I was developing more and more skills on doing the work in this class. Let's go to my "Book Review" file. I don't like to read a lot, though I know that I should. So the idea of reading a book every month and writing about it wasn't really a pleasing news for me. The first book review was pretty simple to do because, we chose our favorite books to write about. Well, it's not exactly a book review. We are to relate ourselves to the characters of the books that we read for each month. We have to do that as we talk about the characters and the problems they face.

After I thought I had finished the first book review, we were told that two thirds of that essay has to be about ourselves. I had to go back to it and edit my essay to write more about me and less about the character. To get the books for each month, I try to go to the library within the first one or two weeks of the months. Every time I go to the library with the list of the books, I try to find books that might be about a specific problems that the teenagers like us face. I always have a problem finding a book that interest me. The book that I enjoyed most so far is the book I read for January. The title of this book is "The Only Alien On The Planet" by Kristen D. Randle. I haven't written the review yet, but I have finished the book. It was really interesting because I can relate a lot with one of the characters (not necessarily the main character).

Then I started on the "Emperor's New Clothes" poem. I really like poems and like to write them but I found it a little difficult to write that poem than I had expected. I had to answer questions as I was writing this poem. After I had finished, I didn't want go back to it for I was afraid that I would find it too simple and would make it even worse trying to fix it.

I have created links for the other subjects but barely have any notes written. I would write notes but I just didn't get the time. If I sit down to write the notes for some classes, there are so much notes that I don't even know where to start. Especially from my Science class, there are so much to write that every time I take out my notes I would say "I will do it when I have vacation." For Spanish, I didn't write the notes because I would be unable to provide all the required accents and symbols.

Another project! Opin01.html was one of the essays that I had to spend a lot of time on. We had to read about ten articles and write an essay on how they all relate to xenophobia. Also find relationships between the events of the articles. I printed the articles out and read each one. As I was reading them, I highlighted the important information that I needed for the essay. Then I used that information to write the essay. I had one paragraph for each article but then I combined the paragraphs that deal with the same topic.

We are going to have a journal one our page. On this journal, we will write about our thoughts on our work and ideas. This journal will be very important and helpful to us. Later, by looking at the journal we be able to see how we have improved on our work. Also we will add the archives that we make to that journal.

"It's time to start another file" harrison.html. For this assignment, we had to read a story called Harrison Bergeron. Then write an essay about that story and relate it to ourselves. That story really gave me a picture of what would have happened if we were "equal" in each and every way.

My quest! My title for this page is "My Quest To Earn A True 90". That is because I don't want have a 90 that I don't deserve but I definitely want a 90 that is defended by my work on my page. And as I have wrote in the essay, I won't hesitate to do what it takes to get that 90.

Even for this file, we were given readings to read and see how they relate to our quest for the 90. I read the pieces of literatures and related them after I had written the essay. Mr. Nellen added the last reading later so I had to go back to my essay and link that. This reading was confusing so I had to read it more than once to actually understand it completely.

All this time, we have read "Quote of the day" on Mr. Nellen's page but now we are going to have quotes on our page. We are going to have a quote on our page. We have to create a file called quote.html where we would analyze the quote and explain our reasons for choosing certain quotes. This is one of my favorite files because I find quotes very interesting. They say a lot in few words.

We are to replace the quotes often. In order to keep all the quotes that put up on my page in one place, I have created another file to go with "quote.html". This file is called "quotes.html". On that page I have all the quotes and the explanations that I have used so far.

I want to put a lot of work on my page such as poems and quotes, but I don't have time. And when I am free I feel too lazy to start on anything that I don't have to do for school. Finally, I created a file and put some of my quote collection on my page. That's the only extra work that I have done so far.

I can see a lot of improvement in the work that I have done so far in my CyberEnglish class. As I look at each archive from September until now, I see at least one thing different from the archive before. I can also see improvement in my way of writing. I haven't been in this country for a long time, so my grammar and the ways of writing may not be as good as I would like them to be. That is why I think peer-review and having telementors are great. If someone else reads my work and doesn't understand the point that I am trying to make, I know that I definitely need to go over my work. Every time I write an essay I ask my classmates to read them and give an opinion because, their opinion is really important to me. They might see a mistake that I don't see or they might have a suggestion that may improve my writing. I think peer-review plays a role in the improvement of my work. There is a negative part to telementoring and peer-reviewing especially, with telementoring. I don't know about others, but my telementors don't write to me very often and they write very little about my work. I don't know the exact reason for that but I think it might be that they are too busy to read our work and give us their suggestions or opinions.

At the beginning of this class, my problem wasn't that I didn't know what to do. It was that I didn't know how to work with the editor and the codes. From the time I came to this class until now I am still learning new things about them. Now I see many different benefits of putting my work on a WebPage. First of all, we can go back to our work any time and edit it. Once we do a project or an essay for other classes and hand it in, we usually forget about it. We wouldn't be able to go back to it and improve it even if we want to. Second, I will know what is going on in the English class without having to come to school. Third, I can look at my classmates' work to get an example of how to do something.