Edited by Ellen-Arwen Tristram, Thursday, 16 Nov 2017, 10:16
REFLECTION ON POETRY UNIT ONLINE
Is it just me or is this going by really quickly at the moment? I've been loving doing poetry so much; I'd forgotten how much fun it is to study as well as read poetry. In the time I've been doing this unit, we've bought a new bookcase to house all our poetry books, so in sorting them out I've rediscovered old favourites - it's been wonderful. It's also freed up about six foot of space on our bookshelves in the main room for all the books that were currently waiting in piles for a space. Unfortunately, in my bedroom, I STILL have a lot of books that there's no space for... We worked out that if each foot of bookshelf space holds approximately ten books, we have a thousand books or so in our downstairs room alone! That was a surprise! And I've got another 500-600 in my bedroom, more on the landing, the poetry in the spare room, cookbooks in the kitchen, craft books in the dining room, and a small bookcase in my parents' room! I think we might need to start donating some more... But it's so hard to give them away!
Anyway. Let's return to the point.
(a) How did you feel about going online to complete this unit? Not particularly keen as I really like working from real books (hence by random spiel about books above), rather than the rather personality lacking way of reading things online
(b) What obstacles did you face, and how were these overcome? I think my main obstacle was getting side-tracked, for example just listening to lots of poems on The Poetry Station (great website), and finding out lots more about the poets and their lives. I had to be quite strict with myself. I also have had a lot less time and became very stressed and just couldn't work at all at one point. I need to remind myself that I am still slightly ahead of schedule, and I can always work over the Christmas period to catch up if I fall behind.
(c) What did you enjoy or dislike about studying online? I loved The Poetry Station! Such a great website. And I really enjoyed the fact that more people were getting involved on the forums and bouncing ideas off each other, particularly for the 'Beasley Street' activity. I actually didn't miss having a textbook, but I did waste a lot of time being pedantic: writing it up in the boxes for the online activities and then copying it down by hand into my (physical) notebook. The main component of this that I enjoyed was the interaction with other OU students. I haven't posted much on my tutor group's forum as I don't want people to worry if they haven't got to this stage yet, but I think I'll post the same comments about 'Beasley Street' in a new thread to see if anyone is up for discussion.
(d) What ICT skills have you acquired this week that will be particularly useful to your studies, and which areas would you like to develop further? I don't think I learnt anything new ICT-wise; I'm fairly computer-savvy. Similarly, there's nothing I really want to develop further as I can't see anything that I don't know (yet). We'll see...
So, onto TMA02! (And hopefully a better grade). So sad to be leaving poetry behind after this.
Reflection on learning via ICT
REFLECTION ON POETRY UNIT ONLINE
Is it just me or is this going by really quickly at the moment? I've been loving doing poetry so much; I'd forgotten how much fun it is to study as well as read poetry. In the time I've been doing this unit, we've bought a new bookcase to house all our poetry books, so in sorting them out I've rediscovered old favourites - it's been wonderful. It's also freed up about six foot of space on our bookshelves in the main room for all the books that were currently waiting in piles for a space. Unfortunately, in my bedroom, I STILL have a lot of books that there's no space for... We worked out that if each foot of bookshelf space holds approximately ten books, we have a thousand books or so in our downstairs room alone! That was a surprise! And I've got another 500-600 in my bedroom, more on the landing, the poetry in the spare room, cookbooks in the kitchen, craft books in the dining room, and a small bookcase in my parents' room! I think we might need to start donating some more... But it's so hard to give them away!
Anyway. Let's return to the point.
(a) How did you feel about going online to complete this unit? Not particularly keen as I really like working from real books (hence by random spiel about books above), rather than the rather personality lacking way of reading things online
(b) What obstacles did you face, and how were these overcome? I think my main obstacle was getting side-tracked, for example just listening to lots of poems on The Poetry Station (great website), and finding out lots more about the poets and their lives. I had to be quite strict with myself. I also have had a lot less time and became very stressed and just couldn't work at all at one point. I need to remind myself that I am still slightly ahead of schedule, and I can always work over the Christmas period to catch up if I fall behind.
(c) What did you enjoy or dislike about studying online? I loved The Poetry Station! Such a great website. And I really enjoyed the fact that more people were getting involved on the forums and bouncing ideas off each other, particularly for the 'Beasley Street' activity. I actually didn't miss having a textbook, but I did waste a lot of time being pedantic: writing it up in the boxes for the online activities and then copying it down by hand into my (physical) notebook. The main component of this that I enjoyed was the interaction with other OU students. I haven't posted much on my tutor group's forum as I don't want people to worry if they haven't got to this stage yet, but I think I'll post the same comments about 'Beasley Street' in a new thread to see if anyone is up for discussion.
(d) What ICT skills have you acquired this week that will be particularly useful to your studies, and which areas would you like to develop further? I don't think I learnt anything new ICT-wise; I'm fairly computer-savvy. Similarly, there's nothing I really want to develop further as I can't see anything that I don't know (yet). We'll see...
So, onto TMA02! (And hopefully a better grade). So sad to be leaving poetry behind after this.