During the time we had throughout this class week 5 (podcast week) was my favorite yet still my least favorite. I really enjoy the external applications we were able to use (audacity) and how we were able to play around with the audio and edit it. Following this, it was also my least favorite for the simple reason that I do not enjoy hearing my own voice talk. During that week I feel like I could have added intro music or background audio to my podcast. I also feel like I could have expanded it with adding more detail on how slaves were treated and what brought it to an end.
Although I could have made changes in week 5 I feel like I would go back and redo the data analysis blog. The tool/application we used was flourish which was very fun and interesting to mess around with. I ended up using a visual that was very simplistic so the viewer was able to see the information clearly. I would want to redo it because I feel like I could have created a better visual than the one I did even though mine original turned out as planned. Flourish I believe was to get us to be introduced to data analysis incase we have to create another graph in the future. The skill I learned (creating graphs, charts, line graphs) is going to be very useful because I personally never knew about Flourish but now when I need to plot data I know a simple, yet complex website I can go to. This week was very important for future classes or even jobs and can help a lot in the next couple of years.
Above is the graph I created with flourish.
The class was set up and taught very well, everyone had to deal with the covid-19 situation and even with this happening we were able to keep the class rolling and have great discussions during our zoom calls. In each of my blog posts I tried to give my 100% effort because that’s what I received when being taught the class. From week 1 to now I faced no confusion, I was able to access all websites need and gather all information needed. The aspects of this class stepped away from normal, when I say normal I mean the D2L assignments, tests, quizzes, webwork, etc. it made me feel away from school and just simply wanting to learning the material. I believe to point of using external websites was for the purpose of being able to navigate the web when needed. This class will echo on to not only my other classes but for future jobs, it will ripple on to my other classes by being able to work my way around problems and navigate through websites to get to were I need and complete projects or homework. For the job aspect it will help in an upcoming internship that I have because its all computer base and informational. I can graph my sales using flourish as a visual on how well I’m doing and I can practice my calls and what I’m going to say using audacity.
The tools we used were great and will go into great usage throughout my upcoming classes. I really enjoyed being able to learn about slavery again and be taught the none-watered down version of it. I think it was very important to understand the real history instead of the high school and middle school version. After the first class I new I was going to enjoy and have fun with the class. Overall it was an great experience to learn more and more about slavery and just the past. It was also great to view paintings and artifacts that were retrieved years to hundreds of years ago. Being able to speak our thought on what some meant was very entertaining and kept me engaged.
In conclusion, this was one of my favorite classes and one that I will remember. Thank you professor Andrella for teaching the class with such passion even though it was hard to do or the conditions we are living in. I admire how focused you were on getting your point across along with keeping the whole class interested and involved. You were able to make something out of nothing and I appreciate the effort given. I also appreciate the quick response emails, this was able to help me get my work done and I knew if I had any questions I could just ask and I would get a response very quick. For the upcoming classes you get I hope the best and I know they will enjoy the class as much as I and the rest of the class did. Keep doing what your doing! Thank you for everything and I hope you have a great break and rest of your year!
I really enjoyed reading about your reflections about the podcast assignment and your experiences with Flourish. I think Flourish is such a versatile tool that could be used in so many other ways with different information. I encourage you to tinker around with the other features on Flourish to see what else it has to offer! Your extra visualization turned out so well and it conveys the data very clearly.
Thank you so much for all of your contributions this semester, I really appreciated your work and the perspectives that you brought to this course. I am also glad to hear that it was really enjoyable and took online learning in new directions. I am not a fan of D2L at all… so there was no way we were going to deal with that. I felt that the pandemic and switch to online learning actually provided us with a unique opportunity to fully embrace the “digital” and use everything online to our advantage. As for the history of slavery, I appreciate your thoughts about engaging with historical sources to take a “deeper dive” into a single topic like the history of slavery. Thank you so much for the kind words about this course, I learned so much from all of my students and it was truly an honor to teach this course to all of you. I wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors!