Metacognition: Planning the Essay

So here's how my thought process worked while I was laying out the evidence plan for my essay. I had to begin with my subject: a subject tied in directly to the Kite Runner book. So in order to choose this essay topic, I had to start with some brainstorming.

I had four possible topics written down by the time I was finished. One of them was the thought of burying the past. This was a major theme of the book, so i thought it would have been easy subject for my essay.

I still ended discarding that thought because i realized this was a very broad topic and it was almost too "glaringly obvious" within the book for me to write something thoughtful and creative about it. I could do better than simply restate the idea of someone's past. I figured i could be more original about it- maybe more focused on a specific issue?

So I began paying more attention to the book's details. I consumed small pieces at a time- not just big pictures. I quickly learned that when one DOES focus on smaller ideas within a book, it becomes much, much easier to find big ideas. I was finding little tidbits of wisdom within every chapter of the book: wisdom regarding truth, lies, hopes, guilt, friendship, and connections to my everyday life.

So I eventually found a good essay topic. The truth This was the truth. I asked myself: "What does the book tell us about the nature of truth?" (and Mr. Allen really liked this idea).

And with that, i began to work on my heavily-worded evidence plan. I was aware of how heavily-worded it was. I am a wordy person after all (Not to mention a perfectionist who can take hours writing one paragraph). So i found my evidence. It took a few thorough searches through the book to get the evidence i precisely wanted, but it was worth it, and i soon discovered there was more evidence that i could fit on one page!

It almost felt as if the further i delved into this project, the sharper my thinking senses came to be. I realized that again, I am a wordy person.

Best of Week

I would have to choose the TED video (the one we all saw in class) as my favorite classroom activity for the week. This was the video that featured Ted Rives and his amazing "slam-poetry" speech about mockingbirds.

I remember seeing it for the first time and sitting dumfounded at the computer for at least five minutes thinking "WTF??". I remember watching that video and thinking it was just some sort of looney artist with an unusual talent for making these sorts of whimsical, spontaneous speeches.

So I had to admit this guy had some incredible creative abilities. His clever wording, even when it didn't make sense, seemed to flow with a lifelike energy that i have witnessed rarely, if ever, in ordinary speeches. His ideas were thoughtful and inspiring. His elegant style of rhyme; combined with a strange, inconsistent mishmosh of phrases, made the speech even more meaningful. It made the entire speech appear as if it was simply free and unconstrained. Free and flowing just like any mockingbird's song.

It also made me wonder if this man made his speech with the intention of actually reproducing the mockingbird's style. Mockingbirds themselves can learn up to 200 songs by mimicking other sounds and reproducing them (as Ted mentioned), so they will oftentimes create a "mixed bag" of the regular noises that they hear: Owls, songbirds, cats, whistles, car alarms, etc. Ted himself seemed pretty keen on creating this sort of "mishmosh" poem for our lives and ideas, so I'm wondering if he put the whole thing together in a similar style to a real mockingbird.

So I listened to that video several times and realized how rich it was in craft. But it was not just the craft that impressed me. The content in Ted's speech was simply inspiring. I'll admit difficult to understand for the most part, but i believe that Ted's "mockingbird ideology" was akin to the thought of ideas and understanding spread throughout the world. I believed his idea of having "mockingbird cacaphony" was also a representation for the great gathering of ideas that were held at TED.

The way i connect this video to my life comes from a quote where Ted says,"When all the little mockingbirds fly away, they'll sound like the last four days."

Of course, he's refering to the four days in which TED was held, but what he's saying is that all these ideas from TED will hopefully take wing and spread to other parts of the globe. He's saying that these ideas will hopefully be applied someday in the near future. And with that said, i personally hope that my thoughts and ideas will someday spread and take wing just like those from TED. I hope that the thoughts and ideas from Academy will someday spread and influence the world. I remember how Mr. Allen said he could just imagine us presenting all our brilliant ideas at TED sometime in the future. So it's made me think of how WE acadamites, can change the world.

The Wonders of Technology (and a Change of Mind)

If I'm not mistaken, there has been an explosion in commucations, computer technology, online applications, and social networking within the past 17 years of internet. And if I'm also not mistaken, there's been an enormous surge in the amount of internet users.

So what did this mean for me? The internet, once i figured out how to use it properly, quickly became the time-consuming tools in my entire life. It became the enormous black hole i imagined it to be: Every day i would get sucked into it. I'd upload photos, IM my friends, play online games, compulsively check facebook, watch some obscure youtube video, or do whatever i could to waste time on the internet.

With that said, the idea of a school-based webpage simply intrigued to me. I thought it would just be simply amazing to have something like a Ning page or a Blog where all 30 members of Academy were socially interconnected. I thought it would be wonderful to have an online assignment I could access from any computer. No paperwork, no printer problems, and no troublesome gluesticks or sharpie markers. My work would simply appear online, so long as there WAS a reliable internet connection.

And so i had my hopes up for a year of smooth, efficient online homework. I thought the online work would be simple. But my mind changed as soon as i created my Ning account. I acutally needed an INVITATION in order to access the Glenbrook Academy Ning, and while this alone wasn't too difficult to manage, I somehow couldn't request my invitation. I couldn't join the Ning for some reason! Even when i did join and get my confirmation email, the Ning wouldn't recoqnize me as a member unless i accessed it directly from that email. But either way, it was probably just a small glitch (and it fixed itself).

So that was solved and out of the question, but to make matters worse, our homework soley depended on the existence of a web page. This was Mr. Allen's Academy Webpage. It would have been our light and salvation if we somehow glossed over that last bit of homework in our assignment notebooks. It would have been my official homework guide, had i not forgotten the site address and assumed that Mr. Allen would just tell us the assignments in class.

So I failed to check the posted homework. I forgot to check it, and even if i did, the internet on my computer was completely blown out. Dead. The internet had no connection, and that meant I wouldn't be able to even view the website.

So the whole "Ning-thing" just looked pretty dim for me. Even as of today, I have little faith in online-based assignments. Technology, in my opinion, makes things more complicated.

Testing... (W00t!!!)

Ok, sorry, just wanted to experiment with the blogging mechanism. Now for the real stuff.