Out of all the things that I’ve learned in this class, one of the most important things I will remember is to stop thinking literacy is all about the hardcore reading and writing. Literacy is just like physics, it’s everything! We tend to exclude so many things that are not academically enough for school but when we think about it, it is the same thing and it teaches us the same thing. I also became more aware of different learning styles. Since my learning style is probably more on the “common” style, I never realize that other people can learn differently. In fact, I probably have an odd learning style too. With these different learning styles, teachers must consider multiple ways of teaching so every child has the opportunity to succeed. Teachers play a really big role in a student’s life so having the right teacher will benefit a child a lot. We must first educate our teachers because our generations are always growing on technology. Teachers are learning to how teach students to fit the appropriate style of teaching.

One thing that really stuck with me is Appropriation in Literacy Learning in Deborah Brandt’s article. We as students learn things inside the classrooms and bring it into use in our outside lives. That is the point of schooling. We take what we learn and arrange it, fix it, modify it, and use it. I never realized before that I do this every day but why is using someone else’s idea in my paper called plagiarism if I don’t cite them? I never cite my teachers for teaching e something. I just do it. My point is that we plagiarize all the time. It might be someone else’s idea but they did not put it together the way we did.

One of the most funniest thing we did this semester was making the trailers for our book club group! I loved it because our trailers was awesome! I also had a lot of fun watching everyone else’s trailer. I learned how to use movie maker so that was exciting! The book was fun to read; it brought back so many memories.

I had a lot of fun in the article group reading about so many things that I’ve never realized before. This is back to the first point I made about children having different learning styles. Some kids aren’t fortunate enough to come from supportive families so as future teachers; we must learn how to incorporate things that they are familiar with. We can teach them the conventions of writing poems or something through having them write their own songs or something. Find motifs, theme, morals, etc. for these songs! Basically all the different article groups represent a different type of learning style but obviously it is limited to just that. One thing we must remember is that we can’t just assume. We can’t assume that certain type of students will learn this kind of way.

The class ended on a very good note. I honestly did learn many ways on how to become an up to date teacher if I ever want to become a teacher. If I do, I will definitely incorporate all of these things that I’ve learned and not be a boring teacher with tests and quizzes! Exams do not test your intelligence level, it tests obedience (I forget who said that).

I had so much fun with every group presentation from first to last. I learn a lot of new things from all of the groups including my own. I really enjoyed writing our own twist to the fairy tales because it was more truthful, and not so perfect like unicorns and rainbows. One of the most important message from changing the story line is we all know that nothing ends up happily ever after and we all understood that. The goal was not to create the perfect ending but to make your own story. The group that had us create a Pinterest taught me how to create my own board and pin things to it. I have a Pinterest already but I only used it to look for DIY ideas and never pinned anything. I like had to relearn technology. The group that made us take the survey was funny. I’ll admit here now that I actually took the survey twice and the second time around I answered “annoying” for all of the questions. I had so much fun playing pictionary as a class activity during the gamer group presentation. It made me think a lot of how I should draw in order for others to be able to interpret it. Just as writing essays when you have to be able to convince your reader to see things the way you do. The last group had a pretty fun activity having us built our own little invention even though our group’s invention didn’t go so well. I was determined to make it work. I was able to find the flaws and mistakes and adjust it so it eventually worked a little towards the end. Doing the activity taught me that even if you fail, try again. Find out what is wrong and fix it. This can fit into any academic situation and is very useful. Overall I had a lot of fun with these activities.

I decided to join the Hip-hop and Literacy group because I wanted to read about how the music world influences the literacy world. What I learned from some of the articles and videos were really interesting. Rapping is like writing a poem; they both show a meaningful deep message that is under the surface even though rapping does not count as academic. Another interesting fact that I never thought about the similarity of memorizing lyrics to a song compared with memorizing a quotes from poems and stories. It is the same thing and in fact, it is a lot easier to memorize lyrics to a song. All of these facts makes me wonder to myself of who gets to decide what is academic and what is not and why? Why do some things count as academics and others don’t?

Reading this book about Jr. High School definitely brings back a ton of memories. I think the traditional school system sort of brainwashed children that literacy is strictly black and white so this book help included the things that were not considered literacy during middle school years. It tells us that passing notes count as literacy, reading magazines, even writing on bathroom walls count as literacy. Even if this book was suppose to be about literacy, it was really sad to see the comparison between poorer and richer girls. This relates back to the issue about access; not everyone is fortunate enough to receive access to up to date materials. In the case, the poorer girls a.k.a. “Tough Cookies” did not get a chance to experience literacy with year books because they could not afford it. It was really sad realizing all these things that I did not realize when I was still in middle school. I think this part about year books was the part that hit our group the most because we went on to talk about our experiences in middle school. We all agreed that this part was really sad because the Tough Cookies couldn’t afford year books and when it came time to yearbook signing, they were excluded. We really enjoyed making our movie trailer for our book because it was a lot of fun. It’s so amazing to see that now we’ve all grown up, we all see how terrible middle school was.

One of the most important thing that I learned so far is about open learning. This course offers me a way to see and to learn literacy in a non-traditional way. This course allowed no limits for learning nor gives me a set of requirements. I think this makes me learn a lot more because I can take in whatever is important to my life without someone forcing it on to me. I learned that literacy is in everything. Just like everything has physics in it and everything has rhetoric in it, etc. So in nutshell, everything is in everything.

The class also brought me a lot of memories from my childhood and also opened the doors for people who can’t read and write in English or even speak it. I say this because some people just assume that people who don’t understand English are not literate. This course proves that nobody is illiterate even if it’s not in English. This brings me to an experience that I once had. In my college connection class in 2013, we were discussing about voting rights and I remember mentioning to a few people around my table that ballots should be offered in multiple languages so those who can’t understand English can have a chance to participate in the voting process. A girl sitting near me stated that if people cannot read and write in English they should not be able to vote because they won’t understand. I was really shock at what she had said because just because some people cannot read and write in English, it does not mean that they are stupid. Societal issues still matters to them if it was provided for them in a way where they can understand it. This leads me to the sad truth about access. Not everyone can get access to the same thing so we, those who understand the importance of access, should make small changes for these less fortunate people at a chance of having their voices heard.

Another thing that we learned in the course which I thought was interesting was about sponsorship by Deborah Brandt. The part that my group and I focused on was appropriation with the two case studies about Carol White and Sarah Steele. I just thought that was really interesting because everyone does re-appropriation. We take someone else’s idea and use it for our own good. Then this brings the question among the classroom. Is everything a remix? I really like the guy in the class’s idea that everything is a remix but no one has put it the way you have so it is an original.

I had a lot of fun interviewing my friend for our literacy narratives. I enjoyed because I can relate to her since I came from a home where English wasn’t my first language. It was hard growing up because my parents could not teach me how to read in English when we all can’t read in English. It must have been so difficult for them knowing the fact that they cannot help their children with the English language. Even then, my mom would always tell me the story of how she was help my brothers with their math homework (because math is universal) until she couldn’t understand it anymore. This is an example of literacy as mathematics.

There’s so much that I still have to say but I  know whoever is reading this is probably tired of reading it by now so I’ll stop writing but I do want to mention one thing about technology. We look down on digital technology because we think they are taking over the world but we don’t realize that everything created is technology just in different forms.