Digital Portfolio Francisco Leรณn Yachay Tech University English Language Program Yachay, Ecuador
Credits Digital Portfolio Francisco Leรณn English Language Program Yachay Tech University Level 6-005 Matthew Mackey July 25, 2016 Urcuqui
Contents 1. Portfolio letter 2. Response essay 3. Exploration/Investigation essay 4. Interpretation essay 5. Argumentation essay 6. Final research project essay 7. Additional materials (pictures/videos/other works) 8. Thank you letter
Portfolio Letter Francisco Leรณn University Yachay Tech July 14, 2016 Dear Portfolio Reader, Through my experiences I want to show you my growth as a student of English. Like all to do something for the first time, I was nervous about meeting my new classmates and teacher, because I am unsociable with new people, but when I recognized five friends from my previous semester I felt more comfortable and confident, but not I could say the same for my teacher because he was totally new to me. At the beginning of class I realized that his method was fun and not boring as in other subjects, but Matthew has high fluidity and I could not understand what he meant me, after several weeks of being in classes with him I could improve my listening, but also I had to practice in my free time, repeating the videos watched in class, listening to music and watching series in English, that also improved my vocabulary. One of the most interesting qualities of these classes were the questions that Matthew wrote down at the beginning, always used open questions that made you a little debate with yourself about the meaning of many things and how different we are. One of the questions that was made was: What does education for you? Almost all had a different answer, some saw it as a tool to govern, others as a source of money and as a tool of progress. Throughout the course we conducted five essays and three presentations. The first was the Response Essay with which I had to face another of my main problems, shyness and nerves. Matthew always called us individually to discuss our topic and how it would develop, but when it was my turn I was very nervous and my mind went blank, but Matthew always helped us, especially creating our outline that is the primary part of an essay, since it is the basis of everything. Throughout the course taught us the most important parts of an essay, and
they are: Thesis Statement, Support ideas, Body paragraphs, topic sentences, transition, support the thesis and conclusion. When we finished our Response Essay we prepare for the presentation, which was very hard for me the first time, because I still did not lose the fear of public speaking, so as I expected was something wrong because I forgot a lot part of the presentation. But presentation help us to lose fear and have more self-confidence. With the experiences of Response Essay and presentation, make the Exploration /Investigation essay was a little easier, because I already knew the structure to be followed, however I made some mistakes. But at the moment of the presentation of that work already I had more confidence and I was able to speak more fluently. The next job was the Interpretation essay where we work in groups, it was one of the best experiences as each member had a different idea for that job, after organizing we chose to talk about the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost, where were represented our choices in life. My recommendation for those who pass level 6 is not missing classes and organize their time to take every day to the fullest, be responsible and practice a lot in their free time to always keep improving.
Sincerely,
Francisco León
Response Essay
The influence of Responsibility in Education Francisco Leรณn Yachay Tech 29-04-2016
The influence of Responsibility in Education
The main goal in our society is to win a lot money to have a comfortable life, but not everyone is born in a millionaire family or wins the lottery´s brig price. For that all people start to study with the wish to get a degree and have a good job. However a little part of young graduates can obtain a good job, for that reason, young people stopped going to schools or universities, and they prefer self-education and find regular jobs to survive in this cruel world. A reason for that is the lack of responsibility actually. The most part of people stopped realizing basic activities, because technology has made us lazy and uncomfortable in all aspects.
The principal causes that young people and parents not want to invest in education, or cant access it, it is for the high price it represents. In the exterior one year of education can cost up to $50.000. People with low economic resources recur to public education, but the most of the time professors are not demanding and students don’t care about being responsible. In the other hand, places that the professors are demanding, most students are lazy and don’t care to graduate. However this is not the only case, since most of the students that got their degrees, got them in a mediocre way. This can influence on their professional life, because they won’t be able to face the challenges of life outside the university, losing their jobs or getting ones that are meaningless.
If you want to take advantage of the benefits of education, you need to be responsible and have a clear objective (or goal). The first advantage is that you can understand and not just memorize all the information. Also, how you understand the information, you can realize new studies easier. Passion is other thing really important because there we can doing two important ideas: try to provide value to society doing something you are passionate, or not you like a bit and just tolerate; against, trying to provide value to society by doing something you might enjoy doing. If we talking about the second idea, if you add the knowledge of your education, the quality of your work will be better, and you have more opportunities to get a good job. To have even more opportunities, you can join different clubs University (sports, social or cultural), where you will get new experiences and learn new ways to seeing the world. Also you can make friends, which it is important, because they can help you get a job, if you still do not have it and they did. Finally, education is also important because you learn values, and how to deal with people, which is beneficial in a job interview.
In conclusion education is important in our future, because you obtain: knowledge, values, friends, a lot experiences. With these elements you can increases your human capital, as long as you do your activities with responsibility and passion. Also you can achieve the main objective of study, obtain an excellent job easier.
Exploration Essay
The Role of Technology in Education Francisco Leรณn Yachay Tech 20-05-2016
The Role of Technology in Education
Internet has changed the meaning of many of our daily activities, each of them to facilitate our life’s, but, education is a complicated topic since there are many ways in which it can be changed and not all of them are useful to its advancement and development.
One of the most relevant factors is that kids and teenagers tend to get distracted a lot and prefer more entertained activities than studying. In the past people didn’t know social media or smartphones, for that they studied more since it was a way to spend their time; but now teenagers can’t live without a smartphone, it is a necessity both in young people and adults (adults being less dependent). This can be a big problem too and not only in education, has it also diminished family bonds, cutting family communication. Young people only want to hang out with their friends or simply chat with new people, leaving education aside – possibly developing a fear for responsibilities-. We don’t want teenagers to become antisocial, but they need to have a schedule and be organized so they don’t consume study time in useless things.
To this, we can add the numerous online games that have increasingly become more popular, they can be a big influence in them even getting perturbed by the violence shown in
video games. Since most teenagers or kids are unrestricted in that matter, they get influenced negatively, since violent games increase violent sentiments and thinking and create patterns of aggression within society; this can be a huge problem in educational institutes since kids prefer to recreate the violence with each other, rather than playing other games, harming themselves in the process. But it doesn’t have to be violent games necessarily to attract their attention, everyone appeals to different styles of games, and the market has a wide variety of them, reaching everyone, and it is just as simple as downloading a game from the commodity of your home.
Technology and internet are not necessarily negative factors in education, since they facilitate getting data for us. Internet is the most extensive source of information that has ever existed, we can obtain information very easy, but not every source can be trusted; because of that we need to know which pages or sites are trusted. Technological advancement is very useful since it makes our lives more comfortable and easy, it saves us time (which is the most important thing), and it saves us time so we can focus on the creation of new things, new ideas, new research and a wide gamma of opportunities to get to know the unknown. Our knowledge is limited, we can focus on expanding it.
Technology can be a double edged weapon when it comes to education, but it is all based in how we take advantage of it. One of the best ways to do so is to organize our time, and parents should keep more informed in the activities of their children, to guide them to a better path.
Interpretation Essay
Interpretation of: The Road not Taken David Carrion, Roberto Andrade, Esteban Orozco, and Francisco Leรณn Yachay Tech June, 2016
Interpretation of: The Road not Taken
Have you ever asked yourself what should have happened if you would have taken another decision?. Life sometimes puts us in hard situations, and the actions that we choose to deal with such problems, defines our destiny. Sometimes we spend more time worried about our problems, then trying to solve it easy and faster. In this poem we can see how the author use some literary figures for explain his main point. Robert Frost tells us in the poem, “The Road Not Taken” that the decisions we make define our destiny and shape our future.
In the first paragraph uses words like "forest" to show that life is a path not defined and asymmetrical, not as a road that is symmetrical and has a fixed final destination; also shows us that we are alone when making our decisions, especially those that will define our future as what career follow or what work accept, because no one will decide for us. In the second line explains that we only have one chance to choose because we can not choose two paths at the same time, so in the end, using the "And Looked down one as far as I could. To where it bent in the undergrowth ", it shows that a person analyzes each decision which can more, since we can never know exactly what will happen to take one or another decision, all decisions have hidden and unexpected things we fail to see.
The poem through metaphors tries to explain how humans confronted in your life difficult decisions. From the first line Robert Frost used metaphors like a: “ Two roads
diverged in a yellow wood “ , with this metaphor we can relate the two roads with difficult
decisions and the yellow forest with our life. Maybe the author chose a forest, because it is easier for the reader to relate life with a natural space instead of an artificial one. Other metaphor that we can analyze is: (Frost, 1920) “ Because it was grassy and wanted wear ” With this metaphor the author shows, how the decision that we choose can be have a lot of obstacles , but we can't come back.
In the life you must not have to look back and turn around. “And both roads, that morning equally lay” said Robert Frost. With this statement, hes is explaining that when you take the hardest way to solve the problems, you maybe can be tented to go back and go for the easy way. “In leaves no step had trodden black” in this verse we can understand that one of the road was never taken, because there was not signs of steps. We you took the less easy road, you maybe can realize that almost anyone has passed through the things that you are experiencing. “Yet knowing how way leads on to way”, said the author to explain the courage you must have to take the difficult road despite of knowing it is going to put harder in the future. And finally “I doubted if I should ever come back”, author explain that you must not retire in your life, because when you doubt, you are doubting about yourself capacity.
Your decisions in life can have a considerable change to your life. Robert tries to say and compare about the two different ways, that in any part of your, life have to choose. When you chose the “a” option, and after that you see what was the results, you think and say “What should have happened if I chose the ‘b’ option?” This is an issue that everyone has to deal with in his life. The consequence of each way maybe is very different to the other, but you never know how should have been the other results. When you see the results that you
have after a case, maybe you have bad results, so then you think the other option would be better.
With a variety of literary figures the author presents how humans always is facing different decisions, that will build your future. In each paragraph Robert Frost shows clearly the different factors that exist in the moment to choose a decision. For example when to take one road to can not come back. This poem helps to emphasize how important decisions make differences in the life.
Argumentation Essay Francisco LeĂłn Matthew Mackey Level 6-004 Should censorship be practiced in schools?
Explicit things are around us all the time, in public spaces, television, internet and schools. But if we can stop the damage of different ideas that are shown in books or others study tools, we won’t have to censure these things. Is better to explain very clearly why people use these words, because children feel attracted by the forbidden things, and when they tried to search by himself they probably will find a wrong meaning.
One of the problem that the censorship is used is racism that is shown in different books. That problem born especially in a misunderstanding of history classes and in families, where continue having a close mind and continue living in the past. So in classes the professor have to teach and explain so clear these ideas, because if a child don’t understand good, he will go to ask at her parents or search by himself and could change the idea. Humans are very curious in all the fields, but if one of these fields is forbidden, we focus on that thing and often children do the same thing. For that the best way is not censure some study tools and train professors, so that can change the wrong perception of some issues, because we are in a new age, where people work together. Censorship is not only focused in racism, schools want to censure other things like sex and abuse, but now a days children can access to information very easy, so if we can put restrictions they will go to search by himself and on the internet there exists a lot bad sources. Correct and Explain wrong ideas and wrong things like having sex at early age or abuse others could prevent misunderstandings in the future, but a pervert mind not depend
only by a bad education, exist a lot factors as problems in house, bad friends, explain information in TV and internet. Is better that teachers talk about things like safe sex in classes to prevent problems. So we have to take advantages of school to correct misunderstandings now, because actually the world is very perverted and in the school we can to our children are affected for this facts, and using the communication, the teacher’s guide children to a good way, where they have a clear meaning of the world and don’t believe in the wrong information, because they received good explanations of the wrong things.
Final Research Project Essay
Internet in Higher Education Francisco Leรณn Matthew Mackey English Level 6 July 08, 2016
Internet in Higher Education “Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them”. (Steve Jobs). The advent of internet brought high expectations of progress, which has generated more expectations is education, especially in higher education since the potential to communicate, store and reconfigure information provided is perfect for development. So the main point is: how does internet help us to have advantages in education? Internet offers a variety of tools that help us improve the daily education, each with a specific purpose, but it depends on us making good use. How does it facilitates education? Internet has several tools to offer to facilitate study methods, one of the most used is institutional email, through which tasks are sent or reported events that will be performed throughout the semester that benefit the students. The most important tool is the ability to access an unimaginable amount of information, which is used for most jobs sent to students. But this is not the main advantage, the most important is self-learning, as most students rely on this information to better understand the issues they did not understand in class, because not everyone understands the methods of teachers, but in places as YouTube students find video explanations of the same subject, but using different methods with various teachers so students can choose the one that seems easier to understand, and thus filling the gaps they had. “Quikktutor uses a proprietary system that creates a “virtual classroom” and matches student members with tutors who can conduct sessions with chat and white boards on the Web in real time. The membership price cost is $39.99 a month for up to 30 hours of tutoring a month”. (Simon, 2001).
Free access to most of the information is another major advantage of internet as it not only benefits the student's family not to increase the cost of education, but helps teachers to be able to use several teaching methods without cost, one of the most used resources are videos as they facilitate understanding. Students can also access online books and other free information and of quality. It also allows teachers to communicate directly with representatives of students to keep them informed about the performance of their children, and in the case of not being able to communicate, parents can access the grades of their children through the platform the institution. The advantages are very spacious but then explain in more detail only two of them, communication and information. Communication As previously mentioned, communication between student-teacher and teacherrepresentative is one of the advantages of Internet, but communication with teachers is not the only thing that matters in student development. Social networks also come into play as it facilitates communication between students to organize themselves with homework and extra errands of the teacher that students sometimes forget. Through this, students can ask tasks they may not remember and that many are uncomfortable directly asking the teacher. In the case of students who suffer some illness or family problems and have to be absent several days, you can keep abreast of activities through communication with peers, and thus can send their homework to mail their teacher, this tool develops teamwork and facilitates the socialization of students.
Information The information that Internet offers is always available, which allows students and teachers to work without drawbacks. Since the information is updated every time, students can keep abreast of the latest news in case they cannot see them on television, because every company has its own platform. Another benefit, most widely used by college students is that they can publish their research instantly and start contributing to society at no cost,
furthermore, anyone can share their knowledge, but in order to be published in important journals these have to be of good quality and therefore students have to try and get valid data. “One-third (34%) of all online teens have downloaded online study aids, with 41% of each group saying that they have downloaded Cliff's Notes, Monarch Notes or other study guides from the Internet”. (Simon, 2001).
No age restriction Adults that did not manage to get their professional title and wish to obtain one to get better jobs, since nowadays companies value more papers than knowledge. Thanks to internet these persons can access many instructional sites that offer services of online education, this is very productive; they can study whatever they like from the commodity of their houses, but if these courses have higher costs people with low economic resources will be affected. The best tool that internet has to offer appears here: Self-learning. Internet offers free information from which we can learn any subject without the necessity of going out of home or spending money. This ability appears to be difficult to improve since there is a lot of information that can lead to confusion; but internet helps us to check what sites can be trusted or not (regarding information), helping us filter information and facilitate our domain of it for our benefit. According with Simon (2001). “Eighty percent of all Internet users have done an Internet search to find the answer to a specific question that they have, and 16% of adult Internet users go online on a typical day to get an answer to a question” Every tool has weaknesses, and the case of internet is that you can upload all kind of information without restrictions, which affect students in several ways. When seeking for information they can find websites that are not reliable, this information is unreliable or can contain computer viruses that can affect the student. Without restrictions young people can easily get distracted in social networks, online games and pornography. This is not the worst thing, social networks have fake profiles looking to take advantage of young people that have no knowledge of this can easily fall, in addition to everything else, and they also run the risk of becoming addicted to social networks, wasting their study time. Not only they become addicted to social networks, there are a variety of online games that can become addictive,
and being a funnier activity that studying, students easily fall into an addiction. But the worst part is that young people become prey cheats and other information for their own benefit. “About a fifth of online youth (18%) say they know of someone who has used the Internet to cheat on a paper or test. While 9% of those who have been online for a year or less know someone who has cheated, 19% of those who have been online for 2 to 3 years and 28% of those who have been online for more than three years know people who have used the Net to cheat.� (Simon, 2001). In life there will always be temptations, but it depends on us to say no. To get the most benefits from something, we have to try and not easily give up, internet is one of the biggest obstacles to a student, and it is difficult to control something of this magnitude, but if we are responsible and we are clear about our goal we can meet our goal of making a lot of research, without falling into the hands of temptation offered by the internet. The best way to take advantage of internet is to organize our time to use all of its tools in a good way, for this we must prioritize our education and then our distractions. Other form to approach our time at the moment to study is improving our concentration and the best way is working in our Time Management, Motivation, Knowledge of Self, Study Habits, and Self-Esteem. Finally I can conclude that the internet is one of the best tool currently studying the variety of tools with counts are essential in today's education and in our lives. But we need to be responsible to not be distracted and lose our focus, the best way to achieve this is to organize our time and not give up until the end of our work. Take advantage of the Internet depends on our attitude and our desire to learn, because otherwise, we would be hypocrites only people who would be dedicated to copy and paste the work of others for their own benefits.
References Breivik, P.S, & Gee, G. E. (2006). Higher Education in the Internet Age. Connecticut, Unites States of America. American Council on Education. Pittinsky, M. S. (2003). The Wired Tower: Perspectives on the impact of the internet on higher education. Seattle, United States of America. Prentice Hall. Simon, M. Graziano, M, & Lenhart, A. (2001). The Internet and Education. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/2001/09/01/the-internet-and-education.
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