68 Learning Reflections
Learning Reflection 1: How I learn
I have learned how to be a good friend. When I was little, I was not very nice to most kids or adults. I would scream, hit, and just overall say bad things to them. This was probably up until 4th grade. I learned over time that there are many people that care about me and want to support me. My parents taught me a lot about how to be a nice person and to help the people that I care about. I feel like over the years, I’ve done better listening to my friends and giving them advice. I try my best to be there for them if they’re going through a hard time. I think I have learned most things from my parents and being exposed to different situations and experiences where I could use what they have taught me. There’s always ways to improve friendships, and I think being in college and being surrounded by great people have influenced me to want to become a better person and friend.
Learning Reflection 2: Active Listening
Active listening is being able to show someone that you are engaged in a conversation with them. Many people will come up and talk to you about a situation they’re having or they just want to talk about their day. It’s important to listen and understand them so you can offer advice if needed. It’s always good to know that someone is listening when you’re trying to tell them something. It shows the person that you care and want to help. You can show active listening by nodding your head, looking them in the eyes, and offer advice if/when needed. Although it can be hard to fully engaged, being able to be an active listener opens up the opportunity for a good conversation now and in the future. Sometimes I get distracted a lot and will play with my hands or look around the room but active listening has helped me to better engage with the person I’m talking to and to show them that I care.
Learning Reflection 3: Visual Thinking Strategies
I have experienced visual thinking strategies before in an art class that I took in high school. We were presented an image and we at first just had to look at it and write down the things that we first notice. We had to take what we noticed and try to understand the meaning behind it. There wasn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to how we interpreted it. A lot of the class noticed very similar things as me but we had different answers as to what the meaning behind it was. It made me realize that everyone views things in a different way and there could be multiple answers to one thing. Just like in humanities class, we looked at a picture and tried to understand exactly what was going on. Many people had different ideas. The purpose of visual thinking strategies is to really think outside of the box and go into a more deeper understanding of something. There could be a lot more than what meets the eye. When I went to the MERF building, I had been there many times because I have two classes in that building three times a week. However, I never really payed close attention to the building itself and the interior of it. I noticed how welcoming the building really is with the countless number of windows, the artwork, and the pods where people could come and collaborate with one another. For what seems like a really intense building, it actually feels like a fun and collaborate space. I never really noticed it before but I’m glad that I got to take a deeper look into the building itself.
Learning Reflection 4: What I know about AI
I started using AI last semester and I have been using it ever since then. There are many ways that you can use AI and I think that it can be a very helpful tool as long as you aren’t using it to cheat. When I look back, AI has helped me very much academically for different reasons. Last year I took a nursing class online and there were some units I was a little bit more confused on. I asked AI on chat gpt to give me a detailed run down of this topic and to explain it to me like I’m 5 years old. I find that this helps me a lot because they explain it in a way that I can understand it and it gives me a different perspective on the topic.
In addition, I have been taking anatomy this semester which has been a pretty hard class for me. I needed to find new ways to study so I have been using notebook lm to conduct podcasts that explain the units to me. In addition, I use it to create practice exams so that I can apply my learning. I find this to be very helpful as it’s a way for me to broaden my understanding on different topics. As a result, I notice that I do much better on my exams. It’s such a cool tool to use and I think that it’s very beneficial for learning.
What I did in this class and how I learned it
There were many experiences that I had with art, music, film, and social media. I watched a film that showed the struggles of living with a disability and also the struggles with being a caregiver. This film gave me insight to what life is like dealing with something like that. The film portrayed many different emotions and feelings such as anger, sadness, happiness, shame, guilt, and depression. The emotions tied in with the dialog really opened my eyes and allowed me to put myself into someone’s shoes who has a disability.
I knew about AI things such as grammerly and chatGPT but I never really used it that much until this semester. I learned that AI isn’t always academic dishonesty. There are many benefits to using it and there are so many different tools. I use notebook LM to create podcasts for topics that are more difficult to understand. AI is good to get a broader understanding of topics and I now have a better understanding of how I can use it, and to what extent I can use it through practice in this class and outside of class.
