Technology in Education

This post has nothing to do with our reading. It is instead about our presentations and what I learned. I had a lot of fun during our presentations and thank you to all that brought all the goodies-I was wired all week. I must admit that when I realized that we had to maintain a blog I was apprehensive, to say the least, because I did not feel confident in using technology. And then when we were given our presentation assignment and had to use technology I became more afraid. But when Gina presented and she did her video I felt sort of relaxed; it was short, to the point and was interesting and much more important, it seemed easy. Well, I went home and decided to make a film (thanks for the inspiration Gina). I learned how to use my webcam (but unfortunately did not learn how to use the audio) and got to work. I had a lot of fun making the video and kept wanting to add more stuff to it but that would have been to wild; to much MELUS to handle.

The journal itself was very eye opening. Like mentioned in my presentation I had never considered Anzaldua's borderland theory to apply to anything but Chicano/a culture, even though her definition addresses that blending of cultures. And so while reading the articles I was surprised by how much her work was cited in article after article. One article that was eye opening was “Charting the Past and Present: Iranian Immigrant and Ethnic Experience through Poetry” by Peris M. Karim.

This article is about Iranian poetry and how it relates to Iranian identity in the United States. It is a perfect example of living on the border. The author describes how the Iranian community felt they had to change their identity after the hostage event of 1978 (I think). They went from being proud of being Iranian to calling themselves Persian and then having to deal with the consequences.

Using the webcam and learning about border identity applied to different cultures, made the presentation easier.


I have attached the puppet presentation that started it all.