Week 1 Review

I was looking at the announcements for this week and there is a lot of interesting content. My favorite graphic is the one for The Book of Were-Wolves by Sabine Baring-Gould. Were-wolves have always fascinated me. I like reading about stories of mythical creatures in general. A lot of TV shows are based off of transformations that take place under a full moon. A few that come to mind are Dragonball Z and a show that is currently very popular on MTV called Teen Wolf. I will read more about this book if I get time this week!

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Famous Last Words Week 1

Writing has never been one of my major strengths. It is something I have always struggled with in school. Whenever I write for an assignment I have to put a lot of time into it. I am currently applying for medical school and I think my best writing for this week has been on my secondary applications. I talked to a friend who is also going through the application process and he gave me some good tips when approaching the essays that I will have to write. Some of the tips he gave me were to submit the application as soon as possible, use my experiences and fit it into the school’s philosophy of teaching medicine, and to elaborate on everything I say so my writing is truly unique. I kept all of these tips in mind while I was writing my essays this week. I think I did a good job of employing the tips. I felt like I never had trouble figuring out what to say because these tips gave me so many different ideas. Although there is a million other things I would rather be doing than writing these tedious essays I stay positive and focused. To get into the writer’s groove I set several goals for the day the night before. When I have my goals in mind I have a clear idea of the steps I have to take to accomplish them. Hopefully my hard work will pay off.

On a completely unrelated note I watched the Video Music Awards this weekend. I really enjoy music. My favorite performances were by The Weeknd and Justin Bieber. It was interesting to see Taylor Swift present the lifetime-achievement award to Kanye West towards the end of the show. His speech was awesome and I thought it was crazy how he announced that he is going to run for president in 2020.

Tech Tip: Blogger Template

Today I decided to customize my blog a little bit more. I chose this design for the blog because I thought it matched the class. The major colors of the Indian flag are orange, green, and white. this background had all of those colors. I also liked the way it looked.

Week 1 Curation

The modern world gives us access to endless amounts of information so curation is an idea that everyone should implement into to their lives. I use curation in my life in several ways and think I am doing a good job of using it so far. One of the main ways I uses curation is through bookmarks. Whenever I have a class that requires me to keep track of a lot of online resources I always create a bookmark folder for that class. In my Modern Medicine class last year I had to write several papers. Creating a bookmark folder for each separate paper helped me have easy access to the sources I was going to use in the paper when I needed them. I also use twitter as a curation tool. If I see something interesting or funny on Twitter, I will “favorite” it so then I can go back and read it again if I want to. I think that blogging is a good way to share and keep track of interesting topics we as a class find online. Maybe we could have a class post on one blog that everyone can comment to with interesting things they find online.

How I use curation for this class.

Growth Mindset

This weekend I watched some videos to get acquainted with Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset idea. Growth Mindset is rewarding the process of becoming successful rather than rewarding the result. I feel like we as a generation have been developed by rewarding the result. I agree with her ideas that rewarding the process of development will keep people wanting to improve. As I observed my college environment I realize that we are more concerned about getting good grades because that is what employers and graduate schools reward us for. I will try to focus on my goal of improving my process of learning this semester and see if this this a better approach to life. I am interested to learn more about Growth Mindset.

This picture shows Dweck's Growth Mindset idea. The cat is having a positive view on failure or work rather than being negative and giving up. This view will allow the cat to keep pushing forward.

http://growthmindsetmemes.blogspot.com/2015/07/english-cha-cha.html

Storybook Favorites

The first story I chose is “Stories of an Elephant-headed God.” I remember a little bit of the story from when my uncle told it to me when I was a child. The title is very effective at letting me know what the Storybook about because this whole Storybook revolves around Ganesha. I like the idea of writing a poem for the introduction. I thought this was an extremely effective way of getting the readers familiar with the story of Ganesha. It is a creative way of setting the stage for the remainder of the Storybook. I also enjoyed reading the poem. I have glanced at the other parts of the storybook and they are all in poem form. The layout of this Storybook is a poem telling a story about Ganesha accompanied by an illustration of the story. The layout of this storybook is very easy to navigate. I might draw ideas from this Storybook such as the poetic style and the layout.

https://sites.google.com/site/storiesofanelephantheadgod/home

The next story I chose is “A Calendar of Enchantment.” I think the image of the festival of colors drew my attention to the Storybook. I am familiar with many of these festivals because my family and I celebrate some of them. I thought it would be interesting to learn more about these festivals. When I read the title I knew that the Storybook was going to be about several holidays celebrated in India. The introduction does a good job of explaining what the story will be about. It gives a general overview of all the events that will be covered in the Storybook. I like the graphic included which is a calendar of all of the holidays. I have glanced at the rest of the Storybook and I like how the author tells the significance of each holiday with several interesting images. The design of the Storybook is very easy to navigate.  I might draw ideas from this Storybook such as the layout and the use of images.

https://sites.google.com/site/epicfestivalsofindia/home

The next story I chose is “Shadows of the Ishvara.” The image used on the cover of this storybook gave me the idea that this story was going to be about a quest a hero goes on. I posted this picture because it is very captivating and attention grabbing. I thought it would be interesting so I checked it out. The title does not tell me much about what the book is going to be about but that might be because I have not read the whole storybook. My favorite part of this Storybook so far is the introduction. It is very well written and makes me want to read the rest of the story. I like the color schemes and the unique images the author uses in each part of the story. The design of the Storybook is very easy to navigate.  I might draw ideas from this Storybook such as the layout and the use of images.

https://sites.google.com/site/shadowsoftheishvara2/home