Jamie's Reflection

Well, our DEV project is now behind us, just like the school year of 2007-08. This is starting to sound like some kind of speech or something, but I don’t intend it to be. I just need to emphasize that it’s behind me…and Nelsa too. COOL BEANS. We’re done, we’re ka-blamo! We developed our expert voice, alright. Don’t get me wrong though, I loved the project, it’s just the stress that was involved with it, just like any other job or assignment. The time given was fair, it’s just coming up with a creative idea that was challenging. On a scale of 1 to 10, I think that our little creative concept was 7.5 maybe. Kudos to team LRJ’s team by the way; XBOXs aren’t just used for gaming and I have to say, that they seemed to have a lot of time on their hands. Good job, indeed.

Our concept wasn’t totally from scratch like theirs, but it was innovative and something enjoyable— at least for me. I’m practically obsessed with The Beatles and Across The Universe and musicals right now. I’m just weird like that. It’s a little naïve teenage phase that will probably come to an end soon. But in the meantime…it’s pure genius! Classic songs mixed with a story and a little math. Although I sort of got caught up inside the whole idea that I think I might’ve shut some of my partner’s ideas. I’m sorry… The funny story is, that my original idea, when I was going to solo my DEV, that I was going to base it on SAW and the Jigsaw killer. Sure, it might’ve been violent, but with a little magic, gore isn’t deemed necessary for a math project. Why make that weird choice? Well, I almost stuck with that decision because of how I felt about the Jigsaw character. He tested people’s will to live with a lot of premeditated logic in the games he played with people, and I guess I could’ve made some of these games mathematical. There’s a certain element missing in most of the horror movies that are being released in the recent years. They’re missing the realism and something unique. Everything seems to be a remake or a carbon copy of something else. But what makes this different is that there is sense to it, it’s the kind of movie that makes people think, much like I should be doing in my reflection right now.

I lost my train of thought for a minute. But once I get started with SAW, I rarely ever stop. Perhaps, I should get through my bitter feelings first. There were a few things I personally did not appreciate about the project. The main reason why I didn't like these things was that they were specifically there to slow down the process. Just when I felt we were close to completion, there was always a slight problem that derailed my encouragement, at least. Firstly, it took us merely minutes to find possible types of problems that we could use for the project, because we had guidance. But now doing this assignment, I realize how hard it is to teach someone when you yourself have to understand every aspect of the question you're asking because it wasn't conjured up from a magic hat with bunnies, but rather made by the person themselves or someone who took the time to make work problems. It was generally easy to form questions, but as we read them over, it was hard to accept them as questions since they hardly made sense. That meant we had to edit, revise until it sounded right and asked the right question along with the given information. We had to construct the question specifically assuming that people do not know what we were talking about.

I think this assignment was a really good way to prove that our marks do not represent how much we've actually learned. We may have not learned material in time for a test, but we find out way. We chose problems that we specifically had trouble with before and reflected back on our mistakes. We also took advantage of the fact that we were in groups, so we consulted with each other and helped each other in areas that we didn't understand. This was also an innovative way to express what we've learned and learn new things in the process.

Labels: reflection

Nelsa's Reflection

1. Why did you choose the concepts you did to create your problem set?

The theme that Jamie and I decided to base our questions on was 'Across The Universe'. It's a movie that she seemed really enthusiastic about, and it was a movie that I've wanted to see anyways, so I was more than happy to agree with that suggestion. The questions can each be related to a scene in the movie. Basically, we chose problems that would make the most sense when fitted into the storyline. Though to be perfectly honest, Jamie was the one who wrote the storyline, so when I was making up questions, I was kind of at a loss with how to word the problems. Since I didn't know how the story went or which scene it would fit with. But it all worked out in the end, I'm not going to say it was easy to put the proper words with the questions, because it wasn't.



2. How do these problems provide an overview of your best mathematical understanding of what you have learned so far?

The questions that I chose, at least, were the ones that I needed help with, or the things that I needed to be refreshed on. By choosing these questions, and working with Jamie to solve them, I proved to myself (nevermind all of you guys) that I can do it. I don't really have a lot of confidence with math, so whatever achievements I make in the subject, I'm proud of.

There's concepts here, that was like, 'what is this alien language' to me BEFORE, and although I'm not an expert or anything on it now, it's no longer 'alien language', if you know what I'm saying.



3. Did you learn anything from this assignment? Was it educationally valuable to you?

I learned a lot of things from doing this project, not all of them math-related. I learned how to use the internet/computer to create a whole project. That's really big for me sine I usually do projects by hand. In fact, if Mr. Kuropatwa had given us a choice, I probably would've done it in a magazine format, or some other thing that included paper, glue and scissors. Aside from things like that, this really helped me with the actual math. It's one thing to ANSWER questions, but to be able to make one and solve it too? It's harder than it sounds. Mostly because of the wording. Jamie made up half of the questions, and she knew exactly what she was saying because she wrote it. But when I went to look it over and attempt at solving it, I went, 'what', or I answered a different thing than what the question was asking. There's just so many things that can confuse you if you don't say exactly what you want to be done.

But honestly, when DEV was first introduced I was thinking, "Man I don't need this, I have so many other projects and assignments to do." But it did prove to be valuable to me in the end. Sometime at the beginning/middle-ish period of class Mr. K was talking about this pyramid looking thing about a person's learning. I don't remember it exactly, but I do remember that somewhere at the top was 'teaching' or something like that. I know why now, to teach you have to know what you're doing. So if you can teach someone, that means you know the topic really well, so to be able to do something like this. I think that's pretty cool. I didn't only teach you guys, I taught myself, and that's probably the best part.

Labels: reflection