The End of ALES204 but the Beginning of New Opportunities

After writing my blog post about blogging yesterday I spent a lot of time reading other ALES204 students' blogs and thinking about what I learned this year. These students helped to give me a more positive view on blogging for this class. In particular, while reading Laura Adam's reflective blog post, I realized that I hadn't totally grasped the concept of blogging for this class. Although it may have seemed redundant to write about the same things as everyone else in the class, everyone was able to let their own personalities shine through each blog post and each student was able to connect to their classmates in a unique way. Thank you Laura for enlightening me!

On that note, we had our last lecture this morning. The CSL students presented Pecha Kucha presentations about their placements. It was really great to see students applying their newly acquired public speaking and presentation knowledge and to hear about their CSL experiences. My favourite part of the class however had to be when Kelsey MacDonald, Annalise Young and I shared our class summary video that we had produced. What an honour it was to end the entire semester with our creation. A special thank you to our professor Jessica Laccetti for giving us that opportunity. We had a great time and it was a perfect way to review all the new tools we learned about throughout the semester. And of course, we got to use our favourite video site - YouTube!

Here's the video: 

And, here's a screen shot from our video of me having troubles with notebooks and papers. One huge benefit of all the tools we learned about in ALES204 was that they didn't require paper! Not only is it much easier just to carry a laptop, smart phone and/or tablet but it's also more sustainable than printing thousands of papers per year. 

This class might be over, but I believe that students will be able to continue applying their newly acquired knowledge well into their future endeavours. I know I will. During the Christmas break, I plan to revamp my Facebook page and my LinkedIn, two of my favourite new tools to help me in my future career. I also plan on using Google Docs more often. It's such a great way to work with people on projects without the inconvenience of sending each other a million emails. I'm very thankful to have been shown and taught how to use all these tools and more. Us Fall 2011 ALES204 students were extremely lucky to have had this privilege.

Here are links to 5 of my comments on other student's blogs:
Kylie McLean
Laura Adam
Alice Sech
Jamie Desautels
Michelle Letourneau 

A special thank you to Dr. Laccetti for doing such a great job teaching us how to use all these wonderful and useful tools and thanks to all the TAs who helped us practice using these tools in our labs. I cannot wait to see how the next ALES204 class goes!

Try blogging!

My favourite fashion blogger, Andy Tores of Style Scrapbook presented a TED talk last week about how to create a successful blog. I wanted to share it with you (especially ALES204 students) because she is the perfect example of someone who succeeded in achieving many of her dreams after starting her blog. One truly important thing to consider when blogging is to be yourself and be genuine. That's when people begin to relate to you and they want to come back to read what you have to say and see the photos you've been taking.

In ALES204 we were asked to blog about our thoughts on the class and to blog about some of the projects we worked on for the class. I think that some students may have been discouraged by this daunting task. Even for me who had been blogging for over a year before the class began, it was really difficult to keep updating my blog. Discussing topics that every other student was also blogging about and that we had already discussed thoroughly in class just did not serve much purpose for me. In spite of this, I did learn a few things through this blogging project. One of the most obvious is that I have to love what I'm blogging about to write genuinely and update frequently.

I hope that students will see the potential fun and rewards that come of blogging and try their own after this class. Students in any area of study in the ALES department can start up a blog pertaining to their passions. Like Andy Tores, you will start small. You might not have the highest quality photos or the most interesting discussions but the more you work on it the better it will get. And the better you get, the more people will come visit your site and that's when you'll start receiving interesting comments and you might even get some opportunities that you'd never dreamed of having. I can say this with assurance as even with my small fashion and lifestyle blog, I have received invites to cover fashion events in Edmonton.

To finish, I want to leave you with this motivational quote with which Andy Tores finished her TED presentation.

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go" - T.S. Eliot

What do you guys think of Andy Tores' TED talk? Are you inspired to blog more like I am?

Also have a look at ALES204's blogger Alice Sech who has used her blog as a way to promote her new club. Good work Alice!