5c The Grand Finale

In the beginning of the class, the focus was more basic. It took the form of steps to create a blog, to introduce oneself, to compare and contrast and read other peoples work. The first assignments were to compare cities and beaches and then to view another person's take on the same place. I felt that the reflection on the book Train Go Sorry was more personal than the stories written about cities/beaches etc.

I found it interesting to read someone elses work about the same topic that I chose and found them to focus on an aspect entirely different than mine. That raises questions, as to why they choose that point of view or the importance of their focus.

One of Freire's ideas in his work was the emphasis on dialogue. Each of us kept up our dialogue separately and we looked at things differently, which could be because we are different in many aspects, such as age, and culture. It would have been interesting to comment on each others work and dialogue with each other. However, Freire also thought that we can learn from each others experiences and build on those - scaffolding. By reading others work and bringing their thoughts to mind, let us reflect on the different outcomes that each of us may take from a situation or reading.

Overall, it was an interesting way to learn. With the general topics, I felt that I was able to get more out of it, however, with Train Go Sorry, the book was wonderful and it was a more personal experience for the reader and that was difficult to express.

5b-Reflections

Kendra wrote that American Sign Language is the third most used language in the United States. I asked several people the question - what do you think the three most popular languages in the Unites States are and no one answered sign language.

Liz mentioned the deaf olympics which is a prestigious event that brings athletes from all over the world together. I don't remember ever hearing about the deaf olympics or a mention of them on channels such as ESPN - maybe if this event had more publicity, it would bring more awareness to the Deaf Culture.

I feel that Granville summed it up perfectly when he says "The most important thing I learned is that despite all of our differences most of us want the same things out of life and the lottery of life hands out disadvantages to the hearning and non-hearing equally - In other words we're all born into what we got and each of us has to make do with what we have"