RLJ 9/10/12

Today's lesson started later than usual, so this afternoon's lesson wasn't too hard.

Today we had to review over what we have learned about the RLJs, and fill out a short and simple quiz sheet about them, such as what is a reflective learning journal, what you write in there, what is reflective writing etc. The class gave out quite a lot of good answers, and a lot of relevant points were made, such as the D.A.T.A cycle (Describe, analyse, theorise, act) helps with reflective writing, how we need to keep the journals relevant to our learning, and that we should update them regularly.

We then had to work in groups (I was with the first year New Media students) to comment and judge on other students previous RLJs, and say what we thought about the content (writing, images structure) write down a way to improve it, write down good things about it and say how it would influence our current RLJs. To be honest this drove me mad, because at this point I felt I was the only one doing what I was supposed to be doing. One guy kept the RLJ we were supposed to be looking at to himself pretty much, without really discussing what was in the journal, another was doing nothing but drawing, and another was watching/distracting/talking to the guy who spent all his time drawing, so it was very difficult to actually discuss what we were supposed to be doing as a group. At the end, the journal we were given to look through was quite poor, lacked any images explaining what it is he was writing about, and we noticed that he hadn't updated his RLJ as regularly as he's supposed to.

Afterwards we were asked as a group to grade the journal on our table, as well as the ones the other groups in the class were looking at, and then discussed with the rest of the class.

Afterwards, we briefly spoke about the PowerPoint presentations we will need to present to the rest of the class soon, in two weeks, and advice that could potentially help us in creating and presenting the PowerPoint, such as planning, practicing, keeping it simple, as we won't have long to present these presentations, only about 4-5 minutes, breaking it down and not getting too stressed about it. All very good things to remember when doing these presentations, or really, any work.

I think after today I have learned a lot more about keeping on track with my RLJ, as well as things that we are and are not supposed to write in them, and I feel myself from working in that group that I have learned how to be more assertive and I've learned I need to try and improve my leadership skills, and these are skills I want to work on. I also felt I was very patient with the group I was in, because at times, because they were mostly messing around, and this did really annoy me. I still want to try and make some close friends at college, whether they're people from my course/classes or not, and whether I know them or not, because I feel if I did have some close friends who I could see during my college breaks, I would be a lot happier at college. Jane, my support, was also a very big help today in helping me keep calm and coping with today's lesson.