Midterm Part 1

Here are my thoughts on what I have achieved thus far.

1.  Know basic literary terms and methods for analyzing and writing about fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.   

Throughout the majority of my blogs I have mentioned various literary devices.  This was the more prominent subject of my posts Prosetry, Found It!, At the neutral milk hotel?, and Little League.  I came into this class feeling a little insecure about my grasp of literary terminology.  Writing about it one a consistent basis has helped my fluency in describing an author's use of these tools.  Now I have a good foundation laid and can expand my discussions more complex terms.


2.   Know basic literary genres and representative texts in fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction.

Although my first Personal Learning Plan post did not include many specifics, my updated personal learning plan discussed focusing my studies specifically on studying closed form poetry and memorizing two poems that are sub-genres of the closed form.  In my post Parallel Lines Touching I compared two James Joyce works of fiction.  My goodreads profile also demonstrates the wide variety of genres I have read.  In future blogs I will put more emphasis on pointing out the specific genre of the literature I discuss.

3. Write literary arguments.

Little League suggests a few possible interpretations of the poem and makes an assertion based on my current knowledge of the poem.  At the neutral milk hotel? argues the merits of the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and a misunderstood poetic mastermind Jeff Mangum.  In This Post Sucks I took a pretty firm stance against the majority of the reviews on the internet, but expressed my appreciation for the critiques on goodreads.  Emerging Tools (my poetry adaptation analysis) provided an opportunity for me to express my disinterest in YouTube's visual poetry collection.  Overall, I feel like I am doing well so far as taking a stand in my posts and will continue to do so.

4. Engage literature creatively and socially

This has been one of my favorite parts of this class.  After Andrew commented on my post Little League he wrote a follow up post.  I was really glad to see that something I said got him thinking and he was able to write a great post detailing his knowledge.  I really appreciated Lindsey's feedback on my Emerging Tools post.  It was great to get her two sense on my thoughts since her spoken word post was the original reason I decided to look into what YouTube had to offer.  Leah always has good insights.  I liked her different perspective on my Personal Literary Narrative.  I had never really thought about applying Sylvia Plath's poem in the way she described.  I do try to respond to people whenever they comment on my post.  When I comment on the posts of others my main purpose is to prove thought in others so they will respond back to me.  Sometimes it is difficult to keep track of all the posts on which I have commented so I have decided to keep track of those in my notes.

5. Use emerging communication tools and pedagogical methods.

I have written three posts on the topic of emerging learning tools.  Doing it the hard way: the easy way discussed the benefit of ebooks and the iPhone, This post sucks  focused on internet reviews and goodreads, and Emerging Tools considered the pros and cons of poetry on YouTube.  I enjoy exploring these new ideas for sharing art and giving my opinion on their merits.  

I have done my best to keep all of the learning objectives in mind as I have written my posts.  I feel like I have come a long way from having never written a blog in my life prior to this semester.  I intend to continue to hone and refine my skills so that the report will be even easier for me to compile at the end of the semester.