Journal #16: Christmas :)

Christmas time again. Its such a wonderful holiday, with many different traditions. There is Santa Claus and his reindeer and baby Jesus in a manger. Christmas is a time to celebrate family. It its the time to give and receive gifts. I love everything about Christmas. I love the colors, music, movies, and the overall feeling of Christmas. When I was younger, it used to be all about what my mom had gotten me and whether or not it was on the list I had given her.

I remember one year when all I really wanted was these Airwalk shoes. On Christmas eve, my mom allowed us to open one present and I remember choosing the one that I thought was going to be the shoes. When I started tearing the paper off, I could see the Airwalk symbol and I was really happy, until I opened the box and in it was puzzle pieces. All I wanted to do was cry. But instead I told my mother that I loved the present. Later that night, my mom surprised me with the shoes that I had asked for.

Every year I love watching all the Christmas movies and shows that they play on television. I love all the old classic Christmas programs, they are my favourite. But in general I just love the Christmas shows. I like watching them with my family and drinking some hot chocolate.
Another thing that I really enjoy is the music. All the songs are so cheerful and fun to sing along to.

Christmas is such a great time of year and I am always excited when it comes around. :)

Journal #15: Digital Education

How do you feel about blogging now that you have had an opportunity to develop a history with it over the past two and a half months? Do you feel that you are more or less organized and productive than you would be "the old fashioned way?" What are some of the advantages? What are some of the drawbacks? What advice might you give to students starting the course next semester about how to get the most out of their blogging experience?

Before this class, I would have probably never started using a blog. I had always heard of people using them and writing down their opinions on issues and sometimes to just rant about something. But I never gave a thought to using a blog of my own. At this beginning of this class, when using a blog for our journals was mentioned, I wasn't too thrilled. I am not a huge fan of computers because I can barely work them and I just don't like spending to much time on them. I don't have a computer at home and I think that its good. I think that kids spend far to much time on them. But back to the whole blogging situation after two and a half months, I now know how to fully operate this website although I am still confused about the whole diigo thing. Ha ha.

I find that I am a very organized person, so using this blog as opposed to a pen and paper hasn't changed my organizational skills. I keep a journal at home and I enjoy writing in it, but this blogging thing has had its advantages. It has saved many trees that this class would have other wise killed by printing and writing on paper that would have ended up in the garbage. So for our poor trees, this blogging has been great. Also another advantage to this whole blogging class, I don't actually have to carry my heavy bag around because I don't need my binder. Some disadvantages of blogging would be that I don't have a computer so when I go home, I cant work on my blogs or anything unless I go to my aunts and use the computer. Another disadvantage would be that this blogging stop doesn't have spell check or anything, so there are times when I have to go back and edit my blogs after publishing because I notice spelling and grammar mistakes.

To the kids that are taking this class next semester, I would tell them that this a great class for creativity and in order to develop your writing and helps computer challenged people like me figure out how to create blogs. ha ha.

Journal #14: Nurturing Your Inner Writer

To what extent are people born writers? How much are they able to cultivate the writer within through education and experience?
What activities and experiences can you engage in in order to develop your inner writer? What part of your past has best helped you become the writer you are now? How motivated are you to continue developing your writing ability over a lifetime?



I think that if everyone put the effort into that they could write. Some people say that they are not creative and they cant write because of that. But as we have learned in writer's craft, the first thing that a writer is taught is to write what they know. So really anyone could write something. I mean yes there are people that are just born to write it seems. But to a certain extent we could all write if we really wanted to. I think that with education people can learn proper sentence structuring, literary devices, and spelling which would definitely improve a persons quality of writing. I also think that a lot of people use their personal experiences as something to write about and most of time they make interesting stories.
To develop your writing, I think you can explore other people's work and that will give you different views on topics and it will help you create your own opinion base.