Reflection Entry #41 May 31 ,2009

I was finally able to complete my essay and everything worked according to plan. The plan was to complete the essay on thursday without making any changes or improvements and complete the bibliography. I wasn't able to complete the bibliography completely on thursday so i did part of it at school. This gave me enough time today to change, discard and improve the text in my essay. I was able to reduce my essay with a special technique I hought of earlier. The technique was simply to get rid off all the adjectives such as: using the adj "ancient" again and agin to describe Greece. This helped me reduce a great deal of words as well as deleting repeated sentences. I changed the structure of many senetnces to make their form similiar to the P.E.A. For the sturcture, i would tell them the point, the main info. Then i'd present some evidence which showed and proved the point and then I'd give an analysis; an explanantion of the point with the given evidence. I used this strucuture because I was giving a whole barrage of explnations which made it really complicated and it was hard to figure out wich explanation belonged to which point. That'swhy I moved the text around so my work became organised and easy to understand and most importantly it was to the point with a brief but useful analysis. The evidence would be used as proof or as an example to represent the point. I also had to organise the bibliography in alphabetical order. For each bibliography I also decided to write the time and date I used the source. Some of the sources did not present information of the author. So i decided it would be sensible to write: N/A on the bibliography. I think throughout my work time on the essay i worked productively, pre-planned my steps which helped me think a head of time and get through any twists and turns I'll face in the future which i planned for. I most of the time worked without distraction which was good. But I could've done a better job on being organised and not losing my essay three times. Most of the essay depended on the planning and whether or not I followed the steps of the plan. The plan needed to be good. It had to allow you to complete your task. Get you through any twists and turns in the way. Those are the main things a plan should have and they must be planned a head of time and every essay should have them.

Reflection Entry #40 May 28 ,2009

Today i got a little carried away and distracted and talekd my way through 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. I completed my essay, just need to complete the bibiliography. 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. What I did well today was I proofread my essay made changes and even asked some of my class amtes to read the essay 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 told me to stop using the word: "Ancient" again and again when referring to my civilization. Or they'd tell me to change the order I put information should be rearranged to make it more organised. Some even said that I had to improve my P.E.A. Which I did by going over the important sentences in the essay. 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. Since I don't have the links for all the sites I've been to, I'm going to try to find them at home, and get proper bibliographies for the websites, for the books I'll have to do them next lesson, because that's all I'll be doing, working on the bibliography. Also if I finish with my essay and bibliography, I'm going to find some pictures for the powerpoint presentation.

Reflection Entry #39 May 26 ,2009

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. I've decided that I'll complete my essay on thursday, print it out as a draft, read it over, discard and improve information, if my words are over the limit, reduce them by taking out unneccesary words. This should take me about 15-20 minutes if I work diligently. Since I didn't have enough time to do my bibliography because i was so busy with my essay I emailed my self the lnks and did the bibliogarphy at home and I printed it out. This way my work amount is reduced and I just need to worry about finishing my essay and improving the information that needs improvement. The information I need to improve is that some times I explain too much about a topic, I need to delete the unneeded and try to put in information that is breif explains everyting and follows PEA. Then I can type the improvements and look for transitions about how Time refers to the information I have. To make it easier for me to look for transitions refering to time, I came up with a guiding question: How did Time influence these characterisitcs? this G.Q. allows 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. I'm not going to research this information on the web but in my note cards which have plenty of information and I'm sure that they have some transitions that refer to time. What I did well today was that I concentrated well on my work and for the first time I wasn't panicked and didn't rush. I calmly went over my notecards selecting the information i needed. and then typed it. I still regret that I could've improved my plan and made it more organised and easy to follow. My plan is a complete mess because I was in a rush. The diagram I drew has too much information in it. So another thing I learned in this project is that writing unnecesary information is a waste of time and too complicated to undertsnad but if you write a few bullet points with the right information, you can drive home the message. I learned that the hard way from my note cards. I put in every piece of information when researching and now I'm struggling to choose the right information from the massive amount of information I have in my note cards. If I made the notes mor simpler and only had the important information I would've been able to easily complete my essay.

Reflection Entry #38 May 25 ,2009

Today I was able to greatly reduce my word limit and I almost made it toward the end of the essay with 989 words. 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 typed really fast today from the beggining of the essay till the end. When we were getting close to the end I decided it would be good if I take out the uneeded words from my essay like ancient, and other adjectives. This helped me to greatly reduce my word limit by 400 0r 500. I think another reason i had trouble with rising word limit was that in my notecards my information is not summarized enough and I've put in every single piece of information instead of the important one. This causes me troubles plenty of times because I have to choose the information I want to put in to prevent the word limit from going higher. So the strategy I used today was: When I was writing a paragraph for a characteristic, I took all the note cards of that characteristic read them through, and then remember the important information and type it down in the essay. What I realized as we are moving toward the end of the project is that I could've be more organised. For instance my plan: It was a whole barrage of ideas put in one place and in the wrong order which made it really complicated and the plan became no use to me. If i arranged the steps of my plan properly it would've made it easier for me to understand and the same thing: I put in too much information instead of making it simple and precise. Also I was always in a rush when typing my essay, when instead I could've gone over my note cards to decide on what I need and what I don't need. I really need to improve in these parts so I can do better in future projects.

Reflection Entry #37 May 24 ,2009

Today I lost 40 mins of my class time in typing my essay because of computer difficulties and only got 20 minutes to complete my essay. I worked in a rush today in the last 20 minutes and that's why my last paragraph of my 1st characteristic doesn't make sense. I think if I ask Mr. Sparks for the 40 mins I lost earlier today in break or lunch maybe I'll be able to make additions and improvemnets in my essay. I really need to boost up my speed because i have 1089 words and I've only completed my 1st characteristic. I think I should take some time off from typing everything and select the information I want to have in the essay. This is because I'm getting really confused with the information I'm putting in the essay and I'm sure that at this rate I'll exceed the word limit by a lot. Also it cuts down the amount of information I have to write. The other option I have is: Instead of copying every piece of information from each notecard, what I can do is read the whole note card and then summarize it by making it simple and brief. This way I can minimize the amount of word limit so this strategy could be used for shortening the word limit. Also doing this allows me to write only the important bits and not too much information which can get me to finish typing everything in the amount of time. I also have to do something about my bibliography. All the links are messed up. 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 better in the project is that: I could've really summarized the text briefly during the research, because most of the summarzing i did is too complicated with too much unneeded information and I'm having troubles in understanding my sources that's why I'm going to use the pition of only highlighting the text in the notecards I need for each characteristic and then typing the highlighted bits.

Reflection Entry #36 May 21 ,2009

I finally caught up to the rest of the class as my goal was to. I have roughly 1000 words and so does most of the class but I'm far from being done with my essay. The 1000 words are only the intro and my first characetristic. Today once I caught up to the class, I realized that my essay was really jumbled up. My paragraphs were very badly organized. The time periods in which every event happened in the paragraph were in the wrong order. For E.g.: the government form of tyranny was introduced before the form of obligarchy but I was in a hurry so I put it the other way around accidentally. I also accidentaly mixed up the information of Athens with that of Sparta. With all the mixing up going on I copied and pasted the text and moved it around. 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. It' Ok if I did that today but I think it would be better if I concentrate on completing typing my text and then going beck to the text and improving as planned instead of pausing every paragraph or two and going back to the text. I also have to stay aware and not jumble up any information as I did today.

Reflection Entry #35 May 19 ,2009

I was able to find the essay I lost in the previous lesson. It was fortunately on my USB, so I should've saved it onto my drive as well. I needed to catch up today to the rest of the class to make up for lost time. Mostly everybody is round 1000 words but I only have roughly 600 words. The strategy I planned earlier, to type up everything, ignoring the word limit and then improving and discarding info later, seems to work. I think to catch up to the rest of the class I should get to the MM labs earlier than usual so I'll have more time on my hands. Secondly I have to type everything down without getting distracted. Third: i have to follow the strategy of ignoring the word count and typing every important information down and improving the text later. This will get me to catch up to the class fairly quickly. Once I'm done with the typing and have more time left, I'll make sure my text meets the word limit and make sure I have all the important information and not the unneeded info. Making imporvements in the text will take up to 15 minutes or so, therefore it shouldn't take me too long to complete the improvements. Whether or not I can complete my essay properly depends on the deadline. If I have plenty of time like: 4 or 5 days I'll be able to complete my essay. The main point is I must not get distracted at any point, it will cost me my time.