Spring Fever?

This week has been a long week, I had to remember back to class what we even talked about. I first thought it was the twitter class with Brandon and Chelsee, I guess you could call it spring fever or something like that. The facilitation class Silas and Allison did was really interesting because I saw some of the things that help me learn in class or studying. I also realized the importance of different teaching styles, just because we learn one way doesn’t mean we all learn that way. While looking through intelligences, I can see parts of most of them that I relate to. Some of my major ones would be Bodily/Kinesthetic or Logical/Mathematical because I learn best while working with my hands and converting what I am learning into tables, charts, etc. Not everyone learns best these ways, so next year when planning my lesson plans I need to learn incorporate different learning styles. As the semester goes on and I get to know my mentees I can incorporate the main learning styles that my mentees will best learn from.

In class we did an activity where we named off a bunch of problems freshmen might come across. Then we picked out our top learning styles and talked with others with like learning styles in how know what our learning style is like can help solve some of their problems. For example, Logical/Mathematical people like perform calculations and recognize abstract patterns. Using this we can find a way to relate things to our real life to study or fix any other problems. The Logical/Mathematical people like tables, charts, graphs, and working in groups, knowing this we can make tables, charts, or graphs to help us study the material. We can also get a study group together with others of the same learning style. Knowing these things I can farther expand my knowledge and help me study more. Then next year I can pass of these qualities so the incoming freshmen can get a start of on the right foot.

SPRING BREAK!!!!!

I hope all you guys and gals are having a good break so far, I know I am! There is nothing like waking up at 6 in the morning to stand out in 20 degree weather to build a house. If I would have been thinking, I would have wrote this earlier this week so I wouldn’t have to do it on my spring break trip in good old Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I will apologize for the shortness of this blog but we are heading out to eat soon then playing some games with my fellow ConE’s. See you all in Tuesday after spring break!

• What is your favorite way to communicate? What is a common communication tool that you don't like to use?
  I personally enjoy Skype as a communication tool because with the video chats, you can use sarcastic or tone of voice instead of a text or IM. If you don't want to see someone Skype allows to IM or just voice chat. One communication tool I despise is Web-CT
  "email" probably because I never check it.
• How has your communication style or mediums in which you communicate changed since coming to college?

Something I never would catch on is Twitter! I am not sure why I thought that but Twitter is becoming more popular. One that is very useful in professional world is Linked In, for those of you that don’t know that this is. It is a facebook site for businesses, you can find jobs, interviews, employers, or other colleagues

• How did you honestly feel about the Twitter activity or just Twitter in general?

I thought the Twitter activity was good, although the thought of sitting in class “Twittering” sounds a bit ridiculous. I was actually fun just tweeting back in forth about random stuff and then answering questions although it is hard to type on my phone as fast as people could on the computers.

Diversity/ ISCORE

This week was diversity week, which we all know is a touchy subject that we sometime joke around with. This can be bad because if we around someone of the diversity that we are joking about, we can hurt some people’s feelings. I personally don’t usually get offended by these types of jokes because I feel that I am a joking, laid back guy. Although, I learned from Tuesday’s class that just because I am not offended doesn’t mean no one else is (I apologize if I offended anyone in class with my actions during the activity). As a peer mentor I should work on this for next year, watching my joking behavior and being careful not to say anything that will offend anybody, especially during any diversity topic. This isn’t possible to never ever say anything that will offend someone but keeping an eye on myself will minimize offending some individuals.

Even though it stirred up some feeling Tuesday, I enjoyed Cory and Jenna’s activity they got from David Coleman. It showed me that diversity isn’t just race and sex, that these are just two of the major ones. The activity even opened my eyes to how I can treat some people different just because of a stereotype that I have in my head. Being aware of this will help me greatly in the future to treat everyone as equal. Like the golden rule that Cory mentioned, “Treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”

On Friday, I attended the ISCORE event, "Minority Student Athlete Experiences at a Predominately White Institution" along with Beth and Karan. They had a couple football and basketball players and a gymnast come talk about their struggles as a minority in a predominately white college. Most of them talked about coming from high schools with about 1000 students and having a lot of their minority at their school. Once at Iowa State there wasn’t as much as their race here, but one way they all handle the change was hanging out with there teammate. While one individual I remember came from a small town in Texas where his race was the majority. He said that everyone knew each other and were friendly in his hometown. As for Iowa State, he talked about people being stuck up while walking on campus because he would say hello to someone and they just stare at him like why are you talking to me. That hit home with me personally, we shouldn’t out someone because of race, sex, or etc. We are all humans and it doesn’t matter if we are white, black, yellow, green, or anything a lot those lines. We are all equals!