Monday, June 1, 2009

31st of May,

I was finally able to complete my essay and everything worked according to plan although I struggled at the last minutes. On thursday i was making some changes or improvements to the essay and complete the bibliography. I wasn't able to complete the bibliography because for some reasons the books I used all disappeared. The changes I made gave me about 20 extra words. I also deleted any repeated sentences or any ones with the same idea. I tried to use the way of saying something and then give evidence or a proof. I tried to be specific and general at the same time to keep it not too simple or too complicated. I think my essay is brief and to the point,well that is atleast what the students commented about or agreed. I also had to organise the bibliography in alphabetical order. Some of the bibliography didn't provide a name of the author or any other information so I tried to be as clear as I can. I think that my plan was a big help for me to complete my essay and try to make it as good as I can. I most of the time worked without distraction which was good and productively and pre-plannned. But I still think that I could've done better on my essay by making the organisation better. Most of the essay depended on the planning and whether or not I followed the steps of the plan. I also learned that in plan you need a solution for any twists or turns you might face while planning which I think that is very important, it is manly meant to be a backup plan, then you also need to have a backup for the backup plan, just to make sure and If you think that I am being sarcastic, well I'm not, I am serious, because of a lot students not having a backup plan, a lot of them needed extra days, almost 90% of the class, including me, and we all learned that the hard way. I am looking forward to get my essay back becaus eI didn't do my best but, I did good, I mean I could've done better but just a little more on organisation bur overall, the whole class did well.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Saturday, May 30, 2009

28th of May,

Today i got a little carried away and distracted most of the lesson. This caused me to complete very little today. And I was unable to follow my plan I devloped in the previous reflection because of me getting distracted. The main reason was some one asked me to read their essay and he/she was despert so I thought it was pity and I helped him/her. What i'm planning to do over the weekeneds is to finish the website bibliographies, then at school I can finish typing the bibliography from my note cards on sunday.I proofread my essay today, made changes and even asked some of the people in the class to read the essay breifly and give me their feedback on how to improve my essay. Some of them said I had unneccary words, which helped me take down my word limit. They tolde me that I had a very good structure and transition between characteristics however, there was a few grammer mistakes but, other than that, they all agreed that I have good organizition. I changed the structure and put in the Point, Evidence and the Analysis. I tried to put it in the important parts of the essay Once I did all these improvements, my essay looked pretty solid. I think the bibliography I'm going to make will need to be alphabetical and in the correct form because the bibliography is one of the important parts of the project so incase I have wrong information, I can always have something to back me up and defend my self, beside I think that I learned another thing from the essay apart of the organizition which is the bibliography, it is very important so you show to your reader that: you worked hard, you did not plagerize and incase he wants to write something it will be much easier for him. Sunday will be the day which I will try my best to put everything in and make a good essay for a good grade. (F.Y.I the person who asked me is unknown and it is a secret so yes, it s a he/she)

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

26th of may,

I worked well today and tried to put all my effort. But the information in my essay does not refer to the concept of time. Although my essay consists of plenty of useful information, I need to try to refer it to the concept of time as the essay is based on it. My essay on thursday will be printed out as a draft so I can read it over, discard and improve information. This should take me about 15-20 minutes if I work diligently. Since I lost the bibloigraphy, I emailed my self the links and did the bibliogarphy at home. This way my work amount is reduced and I just need to worry about finishing my essay and improving the information that needs improvement. Sometimes my information are explaining too much about the topic and ignore the time concept which I think is the main point of the whole essay so I have to really get the hang of it. Then I can type the improvements and look for transitions about how Time refers to the information. To make it easier for me to look for transitions refering to time, I think that I should come up with a guiding question because this will allow me to narrow down my search on any topic. That's what I learned about guiding questions, they narrow down your research and only allow you to take only the information important to you. The time concopt is really easy to use and I don't have to research it as long as I remmber the information in my text, I just hope that I don't mess it up and then stay on editing which will make me behind and maybe decrease my mark so, I will print it out, make the changes and then open a new word so incase I don't finish at time, I still have the old version and If I did finish on time then I would type it in. I think my plan was very easy to follow and I'm not regreted becasue, I'm with the schdule we were timed to. Another thing I used in this project is the method of ignoring the idea of writing unnecesary information which is a waste of time and also too complicated to understand so I wrote a few bullet points with the right information,to make it easier for me to wrote it down. I put in the right information and made it very brief, yes I did have a little bit amount of cards but, it was expand able so I had a lot or fairly good amount of information to talk about. I had a brief plan which also helped me to finish my essay.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

25th of may,

Today I finished the editing inside the computer however, Mr.Sparks sujusted If we print it out, it will be much better so I printed it out and did a second editing where I found about eight mistakes or so which I didn't see in the computer editing. I am in my final stages of handing in the essay, I will have one more editing, maybe two if necessary. Since we are going to finish the essay on Thursday, I decided to do the bibliography as homework today (which I'm going to do after typing my reflection) and so in the other lessons I'll have time to finish, edit and improve my essay. What I did really good today, and I'm surpirsed is that I reviewed my essay and got new ideas of organizing it till the end of the lesson before the bell rings by two seconds I was about to say done. When we were getting close to the end I decided it would be good if I take out the uneeded words from my essay and, other adjectives. This helped me greatly to connect between the paragraphs. I think another reason of me catching up fast is that i had my information was summarized enough and I've put in the important information instead of every single piece of an article just to get a lot of notecards and show off ( yes it is true, I know some people who did it). This let me aviod a lot of troubles plenty of times because . So the strategy I used today was: reading others essay which I really couldn't do it and I will try to do it next lesson. What I realized as we are moving toward the end of the project is that I correct with choosing my strategy which made me organised. For instance my plan: It was to write the first paragraph of each characteristic and edit carefully so it can be easily connected to the second ones and then, after finishing one characteristic I edit it and make a bridge connection between the two characteristics. Also I was always carefu when typing my essay, and I went over my note cards to decide on what I need and what I don't need. I think I've done good which will hep me endure better or deveope in the future becaus ea what I'm doing now is an experience and it is all important in order for me to be succeful.
24th of May,

Today I spent 20 minutes to complete my essay After that I worked on my editing and made sure that my bibliography is in the alphabetical order. I think if I ask Mr. Sparks for to read my essay maybe I'll be able to make additions and improvemnets in it. I really need concetrate carefully so I don't miss any words or misspell them. I think I should take some time off from typing editing and select a format or a structure I want to have in the essay. This is because I'm getting really confused with the information i had put in the essay and I'm sure that at this rate I'll have a hard time organizing it. Also it cuts down the amount of information I have to write. The other option I have is: Instead of reading my own essay, I should read others to get a better idea of how they are doing it. This way I can minimize the amount of time I will use so this strategy could be used for shortening the wasted time. Also doing this allows me to write only the important bits and not too much information which can get me to finish up everything in the amount of time. I also have to do something about my bibliography. Some of the links are missing for some reason, maybe they fell accidentaly when some one was carrying them. I don't think I'll have enough time to do my bibliograohy, so what i can do is go to the library at break, lunch, or after school, go to easy bib and complete my bibliography as the links are already saved on a word document. So I have plenty of work to do and hopefully with these strategies i can complete these tasks in the limited amount of time I have. The good thing is even with limited amount of time I'm still working productively and trying to complete the essay with all the information needed. And for the past few weeks I've avoided being distracted and really focused on my work. What I could've done good in the project is that: I summarized the text briefly during the research and, made it able to be expanded and read the article so actually, each note card wrote about 50 words because as I said previuosly, I used the strategy of reading one page and then summerize it so, in that way I'm not plagerising and I'm not over the word limit like a lot of other people who are having troubles right now and they can't avoid it because they summerizing was either too complicated or have a lot of uneeded information beside, researching isn't about writting down everything, it is writting down about the subjects that you are doing which yet a lot of people don't understand it. I also heard that we hae to do a presentation which is secaring me because I don't really know how to do it.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

21st May,

I finally finished my essay as my goal was to. I have roughly 1385 words and so does most of the class. Today once I finished, I realized that my essay was reallywell done. My paragraphs were fairly organized. The time periods in which every event happened in the paragraph were in the right order as I also doubled check as a backup. For example Hammurabi code was before Shulgi which is the other way and it was the only one I messed up with. I also accidentaly mixed up the information of sumerian with that abylon. I changed some phrases, made them longer, shorter or more specific. I also improved the sentences using more examples and I also tried my best for each paragraph to show how each characteristic interacted with the concept of Time. I tried to show how as time went by what devlopments the civilization made, etc. Pausing every paragraph or two and going back to the text kept me behind at the begining, people had 100 word and I had 500 but, now people are stuck at the word count 1300 and they are trying to rephrase and improve whereas me, I am almost 1400 and I will probably finish checking my essay by monday If we have any more time. I also have to stay aware and not jumble up any information as I did today in changing the orders of the text. I also stayed aware of the idea of writting a sentence andthen giving a proof example: Religion was important, it was used in everything, because the civilization believed that the god won't bless them without their permission. So as you can see I gave a statnment and then proved it.