Afrodite's Blog

It's almost over!!

2005-12-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

Hi all!! So class is just about finished, huh? Can't say I'm not relieved for it to be over, even though I really enjoyed the class and feel like I learned a lot!

My website is totally done! All projects are up and ready to go. Check it out at http://www.neiu.edu/~adskaour/. All that I have to do now is my final paper and then FREEDOM! I don't usually make it a habit of channeling Mel Gibson in Braveheart, but I had to do it. You know I had to!

It was fun working with everyone and maybe I'll see you all in some of my other courses. Good luck all, and goonight!

Err, good afternoon, I guess.

~ Afrodite Skaouris

Discovering Ourselves in Literature and Life (#8)

2005-11-27T21:15:00.000-08:00

The question is "Who am I?" To be honest, I have always hated that question, because I find it very difficult to describe who I am. Who I think I am is different from who others think that I am. Of course, that is the case with probably anyone, but nonetheless, I hate that question.

Having said that though, it is relatively easy for me to connect with characters in different literary works or movies. The character that I am finding myself connecting more and more to as of late would be Dorothy from the "Wizard of Oz." I know it's cliche, but due to some family health problems over the past year, I realized that really, there is no place like home. And so, the stars of my powerpoint presentation and movie are my family and Dorothy with her gang.

We, I, used to spend a lot of time dreaming about going far away from home...finding those places over the rainbow with no troubles (the same places that Dorothy sings about in the beginning of the film), only to discover now that there is no place I'd rather be than home.

Like Dorothy said, "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look further than my own back yard. Becasue if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with." That's how I feel at this moment in time.

Later,
Afrodite

Another check-in...

2005-11-22T02:10:00.000-08:00

Hello all. The past week has pretty much been devoted to completing the newsletter and finishing up that whole project. Luckily, I finished without many glitches. Thank you to Heather for those reminders via email.

I also played around with making a free web site for one of the assignments. I chose freewebs.com, and it was too much fun to do. I created in the span of about 45 minutes an outline of a website about my favorite things, and now all I have to do is kind of fill things in. The only thing I had problems with was uploading pictures, but after some time, I finally figured it out and all is well. The link to my website is available at http://www.neiu.edu/~adskaour.

There was also some work done on the movie maker project and the powerpoint presentation, but not too much.

That's all for today...Have a great Thanksgiving, and see you all next week!!

Just a check-in post...

2005-11-14T19:03:00.000-08:00

After spending some time trying to log into Blogger after receiving several messages of some sort of "cookie" error, here I am ready to post. (All I had to do was delete my cookies. Those cookies, always up to something nefarious, aren't they?)

Anyway, I am currently working on my newsletter, my powerpoint and my movie. I should really work on these one at a time, but sometimes, I get tired and or frustrated with one project and move on to the other one for a break.

My newsletter is focused on the changing face of literacy and literacy instruction in the midst of the technological changes our society continues to face. My movie and powerpoint are joined together by a Wizard of Oz theme. I am, as someone would expect, the Tin man...no, no, just joking. I'm Dorothy. I know, I know, original. But I really do connect with her...because while sometimes we dream of what's over the rainbow, the reality is that there is no place like home...with Auntie Em.

Let's see, what else? My website is pretty much done, except for the links to the various projects that we have not completeed yet. I'm having a great time utilizing my server space to store some files that I have wanted to have hosted online for some time.

All in all, I'm benefitting a lot from this class, and hope to continue to do so.

Later,
Dorothy, ah, I mean, Afrodite

Discovering Ourselves in Literature and Life #3 and #4

2005-11-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

Number 3: Digital image of self, and discussion of potential self-portrait

(The above picture of me was taken at a wedding a couple of weeks ago.)

Obviously, the above picture of me was taken with a camera and uploaded in this blog for the purpose of this assignment. The above picture does not show much from the inside of my Paint portrait. It's just one of those generic pictures where you're smiling and you look like all is right with your world.

I think of fine art portraits (or photographic self-portraits) as indicating a subject's personal depth. If I actually had the artistic talent to create an actual self-portrait of myself either through photography or fine art, I would definitely want to communicate something for my inside which most people don't get to see. I would actually probably focus on my eyes. Since I believe that the eyes are the windows to one's soul, I think the most telling self-portraits are those which include close-ups of the eyes.

With such a portrait, I would like to communicate the love I have for my family, the sadness that I feel because of various life situations, and my passion for my studies and work.

Number 4: Artist self-portraits and discussion

The above artist is Andy Warhol. Mr. Warhol created his self-portrait by taking a close-up photograph of his face. The photograph is in red, perhaps indicating passion or anger, which is is what the color red traditionally stands for. He also looks confused, or dejected. Perhaps he was trying to say more with the coloring that with his face, and it succeeds in giving a mysterious and powerful aura to himself.

The above is Van Gogh. Mr. Van Gogh has painted himself using one of his trademark background colors, swirly blie. The textured, swirly blue color add a dose of melancholy to his surrounding world. Van Gogh has also drawn himself holding artist's equipment expressing perhaps the fact that he is first and foremost an artist. As sad artist, but an artist, nonethelss.

The above monstrosity is, who else, but Picasso. This seems to be a pencil drawing or the cubist variety. Picasso uses a lot of recognizable shapes to outlines some of his features. More prominately are the eyes, outlined with a diamond shape. Also, one of his eyes has a large pupil and one has a "normal" pupil. I'm not sure why he would have drawn only one of his pupils dialated, but the attention that he immediately draws to the eyes is indicative perhaps of the weight that he, himself, places on the eyes as being windows to the soul. There's also some red used and green. Overall, the image is one of confusion for me.

That's all for this week! :)

Discovering Ourselves in Literature and Life #2

2005-10-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

The following image is my final digital self-portrait:

Here I am. I happen to be wearing my favorite U2 shirt in this picture, and black pants and shoes, which is my normal attire.

Let me start off by saying that I really don't like talking about myself. The act of finding words to describe myself I find to be taxing on my psyche, to be honest. But alas, I have done so, and my analysis of myself (which is perhaps more painful) will follow.

The first word that I wrote next to myself was "Greek." The word is located on the outside, even though someone looking at me won't be able to guess that I am Greek, because I think it's something that is such a part of me that it becomes obvious. It's not a trait that I internalize very much, whereas some of the ones inside are ones that I do internalize a lot of the time.

Some of the common links between the outside words, aside from some cultural distinctions, such as "Greek," "Greek-Orthodox," and "U2 Fan," are mostly physical characteristics, like my fat nose (which is totally inhereted from my father), and tonal characteristics, like my loudness. I never quite learned the knack of speaking quietly.

On the inside, I'm much more introverted, if that makes sense. I give the appearance of an extrovert, but I am a private person, and some of the things that are written inside of me are not some that I would share openly, which is probably why I don't feel comfortable talking about myself. I tend to be extremely neurotic, especially about my work. According to those who know me intimately, I am a little too sensitive. I take everything to heart and when my feelings are hurt, I can't hide it.

I am also a why person, my family is very important to me, my culture is very important to the realization of my sense of self, and finally, I think parts of myself are polar opposites of each other. For example, I am a positive person, but I am also very cynical. I'm loud, but I am also very private, and not many people know me from the inside.

I guess the above is me in a nutshell.

It's done!

2005-10-23T23:49:00.000-07:00

Finally, my HQ links are finally complete!! What a relief!! Now it's time to do more searching for the newsletter assignment. Oy, will the searching ever be done??? Probably not, but at least this searching practice is developing my lifelong Internet searching skills. (That was me looking on the bright side of not having any time to do anything but search!) At times I felt like this:

My paint portrait is complete. I uploaded it into last week's blog and it has not changed since. I also tweaked my webpage a little bit. Take a look at http://www.neiu.edu/~adskaour. The following is a picture of myself that I scanned and uploaded on to my website. This was taken at an Indian/Pakistani wedding about two weeks ago. It was fun.

The real reason I uploaded my picture here is to take up some space in my blog, because I really don't have too much to say this week. Things are going okay. I'm spending time completing the assignments and that's just about it. Isn't uploading pictures just grand?

Oh, and I'm sure once our group is done with the "Discovering Ourselved in Art" project, we'll be doing this:

Talk to you all later,

Afrodite

Oy!

2005-10-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

If I never have to do an online search ever again....it would be too soon. After spending an extraordinary amount of time searching for my HQ links last week, I still need two more to go and I'm about ready to start banging my head against the wall. Correction: I am ready to bang my head against the wall. I mean, just when I think I found some links for specific categories, then I found others that made me doubt my original categorizations, and this sort of process continued for longer than it was anticipated.

And I know, I know, that once my searching skills improve, this kind of searching will take less time, and yada-yada, but it's certainly not going to give me my ten hours back or make the coomputer head ache subside. But to look on the bright side of the meadow, at least I found some interesting sites that I will be able to use in the future...given that they remain online, that is.

On to other class news, my self-portrait has progressed enough that I now have hair!! Of course, it's not as pretty as some others from class with the flowing dresses, the goregeous shoes and the wands, but here is an updated version of my Paint self:

Granted, I think that my highlights make me look more like a lion than a person, and I have no hands, and my shoes don't quite connect to my legs, and my eyes might be just a little lopsided, but just like in real life, I can't be perfect, nor would I ever want to be, so therefore my portrait can't be perfect and never will be. Did that make sense, or am I starting to babble at this late hour?

Anyway, as I said, this week was a kind of "Oy" week, and I'm sure some more weeks like these are coming. Later, and goodnight.

The Biggie!

2005-10-10T19:05:00.000-07:00

Just in case you can't guess, the picture up above is actually me. Well, me as a bald person with no hands, a pretty large head, and a strange neck, but nonetheless the above is the unfinished "Paint" job of me.

As you can probably tell, I've been reading the "Discovering Ourselves in Literature and Life" and decided to begin the first task, which is to create a drawing of myself in "Paint." Obviously, I'm not done. (A major roadblock was figuring out how to do my hair. Yes, I know, it's just a computerized drawing, but if I airbrushed it, it makes it look like it has gone through a bad perm, which hopefully, is not what my hair really looks like. I'll figure it out.) I am more excited to start writing the words that I think describe me, and hopefully, will learn tons more about myself than I do already.

Even having read the description of the project a few times, I still can't say I am clear on the requirements for this assignment. I am what feels like hopelessly confused, and that's just not good since this is one of the major projects of the class.

For example, do we make a video about ourselves, or about literature that we read and the characters we read about? I'm very confused about that point in particular.

Waiting for class and hopefully some clarification.

Some odds and ends...

2005-10-03T23:40:00.000-07:00

Hi all! I really don't have much to say this week about one subject, so this post will include a cornucopia of topics.

First, I have to say that I am extremely satisfied by the offer of a "why" regarding the screen saving exercise. It makes sense that we will be able to use those in order to more effectively show our students how to go somewhere online when we won't have access to the lab. The following is a screen capture of a free web hosting site. You can upload videos and images and share with friends or collegues at no cost. This can be useful for those of us who want to upload something now and are not sure how to use our own NEIU Webspace yet. The URL is http://rapidshare.de.

I am very excited to begin my research for my literature review. Well, maybe excited isn't exactly the correct term, but at least I feel more comfortable with the search engines, and the library database that I did before. I am also rather overwhelmed by the HQ project, because I'm not sure exactly how to go about finding what I'm looking for, but I guess it's a good thing we have Listserv and each other. And finally, I'm completely ready to start using Windows Movie Maker. As Movie Maker enthusiast, I'm curious to start my movie project. The movies I make (for fun!) are hosted courtesy of http://rapidshare.de.

I had to place one last plug in there. :)

So until next time, happy computing!

Why, why, why, why?

2005-09-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

(Just a quick update from last week: The U2 concert was awesome!)

Okay, last Tuesday's class was so enlightening for me. As I said at the end of class, the exercise we did about what kind of learners we are really gave me a great sense of myself as a learner. I couldn't be more of a "why" person if I tried. My analysis of self is based upon Beatrice McCarthy's 4mat model: (diagram below as shown on www.aboutlearning.com)

I belong to Quadrant 1 and am labeled a "Type One Learner." As quoted on the website, the following are characteristics of Type 1 Learners.

They learn by feeling their experiences, being present to them, trusting in their perceptions, and being open to sensory input.
They take time to reflect and ponder their experience.
They seek meaning and clarity.
They integrate experience with the Self.
They learn primarily in dialogue, by listening and sharing ideas.
They excel in viewing these ideas from many perspectives.
They have highly developed imaginations.
They are insightful, absorbing reality, taking in the climate.
They thrive on lots of reflecting time, especially when pondering new ideas.
They seek commitment.
They work for harmony and clue in to the needs of others with ease.
They are great men-tors.
They nurture others to help them accomplish their goals.
They tackle problems by reflecting alone and then brainstorming with others.
They exercise authority through group participation.
If they are forced into a conflict situation (which is usually difficult for them), they deal with it through dialogue and a great deal of listening.
They build trust through personal interactions.
Their favorite question is "Why?"
They seek to know the underlying values.

I am the type of person who rarely does anything without applying it to my experiences, and my life. I don't like doing work that holds no personal value. I don't particualrly enjoy learning about things that a) don't resonate with my personal experiences, or b) are rooted in some sort of emotional reality. I spend a lot of time in a process of introspection. I feel like I understand myself better than anyone else, because I constantly think about my life, my interactions with others, and what I learn. I'd like to believe that I am a good mentor, and I hope that my future students think I am, as well. My emotions and outlooks are also rooted in reality at all times.

I am very much a fan of dialogue in a classroom setting. The most successful educational experiences for me have come from courses that are rooted in discussion. I learn a lot from what others say, from what others perceive about themselves and from how others analyze texts or concepts. I find the process of discussion enlightening. I always need to know "underlying values." I need a basis of reality to understand.

And of course, my favorite question is why. Not because I enjoy being difficult, but in order for me to be successful, I need to have a reason I can understand and defend with every fiber of my being.

After I know the why, I do want to know the how, and sometimes, if I'm really feeling adventurous, I'll think of the What If.

I brought in the chart to work the next day, and got everyone involved in trying to figure out in which category they fall. It was an exercise that allowed me to learn more about my co-workers than I have before, and I am proud to say that it made me understand the co-workers (who belong to different quadrants) so much better than I did before.

I think the 4mat categorization of learning is going to be very beneficial to me as a teacher in helping me understand my students. Why? Because it allows for plenty more introspection. And that is a good thing.

Till next week. :)

Just a little over a day away!

2005-09-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

Before I write about this course, I just want to share how super-excited I am to go see U2 live in concert on Wednesday evening at the United Center. Since U2 is my favorite band ever, it is a very exciting evebt for me. Plus I get to showcase my "picture and link on blogs" posting skills.

(Picture of Bono and Adam Clayton stolen from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonobaltimore/15949508/)

All right, now on to serious business. I really enjoyed making use of my Northeastern server space, no matter how minimally. Here is the link to my webpage as it stand now: http://www.neiu.edu/~adskaour/ I am sure that in a few weeks, it will look totally different, but how fun to have this online! Plus it has a link to this blog!

Chapter Four of Searching and Researching on the Internet was extremely beneficial for me. I like doing a lot of online research, but I was not previously aware of virtual libraries or online directories. Imagine trying to write a paper by searching for information on google.com. It is not pleasant at all. Okay, I'm exagerrating. I have previously used sources, such as ERIC, through various university libraries, but I was still glad to be shown examples of other sources to use in order to yield more relevant research information.

On that note, I am also happy that we all were given the opportunity to discuss Assignment 15 in class. The feedback between the students and the professor were great. Plus, it does make you feel a little vindicated when so many others experienced similar problems. Unlike Liz, I do feel better knowing others are in the same boat, be it one of happiness or downright misery (as was the case with Assignment 15).

That's all for this week!

BANG!

2005-09-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

That is the sound of me hitting my head against the table as I hit my first roadblock in this class. It was sooner than I expected, but alas, it's here.

Luckily, I guess, I don't think it has anything to do with using technology, but rather the instructions of Assignment #15, which is in fact due on Tuesday. Stupid of me to wait until relatively the last minute to begin it, but the sometimes procrastinator that I am has again risen and here I am on Sunday trying to figure it all out. You see, I know how I can capture the screen, but don't quite understand what it is that I have to capture. Luckily someone on the class Listserv has asked the same question, and so I am awaiting a response from someone who maybe understands even a tad more than I do. And if no one responds, then I hope the Professor P. won't be too harsh.

So far, I am enjoying the class, since I love working with the Internet and computers. I am a little scared, however, despite being comfortable with technology. I look forward to future assignments, which I know now to start a bit in advance. Wish me luck all, and I wish you the same.

Till next week.

Hello classmates and Professor P.!

2005-09-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

I guess I should start by saying that I am a recovering Internet-aholic. Just a couple of years ago, everytime I would go on vacation or anywhere that had minimal Internet access, I would go through major withdrawal. I mean hands shaking, and the whole shebang. I looked like the person to the left. Well, maybe not quite, but hopefully, you'll get the picture.

I have since recoverd slightly. While I can spend an entire an entire day on the Internet and be perfectly content, I no longer have the time, nor in fact do I feel that I must. (Ah, those Internet-aholic Anonymous meetings truly helped!)

The Internet has shaped my personal identity in many ways. I am a die-hard user of various fan forums. I enjoy going online and talking to fans of similar pop culture texts. I suppose I should admit from the get go (since most of you probably already think I'm insane) that I am a big soap opera fan and have gone online discussing my favorite soap for years. I consider some of the other participants close friends...both the ones I have met in person and the ones that I have not.

Aside from that, I use the Internet to keep in contact with those who I probably would not have if there was no such thing as AIM or email. I check all my news online, I shop online (mostly from Amazon.com), pay my bills, and look for directions, amongst other things. I also fostered a relatively expensive eBay habit for a time that brought much dismay to my checking account, but much personal joy to me.

I am excited for this course, because while I consider myself relatively comfortable with technology, I still yearn to be able to talk about it with proper terminology and learn as much as I can.

"See" you next time!