After reading up on all the different ideas and posts in my personal learning network regarding my independent learning plan, I realized that I have had a poor diet in recent months. Not only have I been eating boat loads of cooked and red meats, I have been consuming much too much sugar. Soda pop, candy bars, etc. are items that especially have hindered me from having a remotely healthy diet. This week, none of that changed! I focused more on learning about how to eat healthy and what a healthy diet looks like as opposed to putting a healthy diet into place. While I did eat less cheeseburgers, and I saved myself some money by cooking 90 percent of my meals, I did not lay off the candy or soda. At this point, if I am learning about nutrition and can keep those things to a consumption moderation, I will be happy. One food group that I did eat more of this week is healthy fats. Each day while reading blogs and twitter posts, I read how important healthy fats can be for a diet. They can be found in avocados and nuts primarily. This week, with every lunch from Monday to Thursday, I ate a handful of almonds as “dessert”. I ran out of the salted ones, and will now turn to the can of unsalted almonds that I have in the cupboard. I know that I rely heavily on salt to season my food, so this will be good to attempt to lower my reliance on salt to enjoy my food. Overall, I am happy with what I learned and accomplished this week. For every lunch meal, I ate a very balanced dish of eggs, english muffins, and peanut butter. It was satisfying, filling, and easy to make. The worst part about cooking for every meal is having to wash so many dishes! Even though it takes a while to wash all the dishes, I do not mind it that much. I can put on some music and have a little dance party in the kitchen while getting the dishes clean! I look forward to improving my diet in the coming weeks. I do like to make sure I eat enough food because I do not want to lose weight. However, it is important to eat the right types of food so I do not gain the wrong type of weight.
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Interestingly enough, I decided to base my PLN on my ILP. In English, this means I decided to base my Personal Learning Network on my Independent Learning Plan, which is cooking and nutrition. Nutrition is a topic that is hit on by so many people and experts on a daily basis. It is not difficult to find experienced individuals in this field to learn from via exploration on blogs and on twitter. One expert that I found that is particularly interesting is Lindsay at The Lean Green Bean. She is a mother, and similar to my mom, searches to find unique ways to entice her children into eating healthy foods. Luckily, or unluckily, for her kids, she is a professional, and knows how to make nutritious foods taste delicious. The blog of hers that I found most intriguing is called “Salad Topping Ideas”. It is a simple title, but it describes the bulk of the blog perfectly. So many people struggle to eat salads because they can be very bland and tasteless. Most of us drench our lettuce and vegetables with salad dressing such as Ranch, Dorothy Lynch, and Italian vinaigrettes. However, when we do so, we nearly defeat the purpose of eating the salad in the first place by adding multiple sugars and fats to our meal. Lindsay proposes foods that go well as toppings on salads in order to leave off the fattening dressings while promoting an enjoyable taste. Of course, she mentions things like fresh vegetables, fruits, and the occasional hard-boiled egg. However, the options that struck me were seafood options! These include tuna, salmon, crab cakes, shrimp, etc. These options struck me for a few different reasons. The first reason is that I completely disagree with the option of tuna. Tuna is not good, and do not let anyone else tell you differently! The second reason is that shrimp is amazing! Shrimp is very good and while it may seem like a weird texture on a salad, it works. It especially works when mixed with citrus fruits such as pineapple and mandarin oranges. Overall, I like the idea of an Independent Learning Plan. It gives me the chance to gain knowledge and explore information from a variety of different experts on health and nutrition. Plenty of different views on nutrition are out there, so I look forward to checking them all out, and seeing what works for me! Growing up, my mother would always say, "Eat your vegetables!" or "How about you have a salad?" Most of the time, I would ignore her in the kindest way possible, and proceed to grab a bowl of sugary cereal for a snack. At the time, I did not care much for health, and I certainly did not want to cook or prepare food for 30 minutes just to sit and eat it in 5 minutes! However, now, I have the patience and the will to prepare a meal that is tasty, delicious, and nutritious. For that reason, cooking, along with nutrition, is the topic of my Independent Learning Plan. For the past year, I have become a master of throwing chicken breasts and frozen pizzas in the oven and hoping for the best. Of course I season the chicken, and usually it tastes okay. Some of the time, I totally fail, and the chicken is dry and gross. I also have burnt a couple pizzas, which is very disappointing. I want to take my cooking skills to the next level, especially as my interest in health and nutrition increases. Back to chicken. As I said, I traditionally bake my chicken in the oven. When I am not feeling baked chicken, I choose to searing it in a frying pan. I have also resorted to cooking ground beef over the stove top, and it is quick and easy! Normally, I use salt, pepper, and Lawry salt to season the meats that I cook. It usually does the trick, but sometimes I add a little too much seasoning. Currently, my daily diet consists of breakfast shakes, eggs, bagels, ground beef, chicken, rice, potatoes, and fast food. Runza is the place I normally go to eat out, and I usually order the same meal every time: Double Spicy Jack Burger, add Lettuce and Tomato, in a meal with a tea to drink. It probaby pushes 1000 calories, and is greasy, delicious, and satisfying. In a perfect world, this type of meal would not raise my cholesterol, or force my body to store extra calories as fat. Sadly, this is not a perfect world, and it is time to start making healthier choices more often than not. Do not get me wrong, I will still be eating my fair share of cheeseburgers, but the meals I eat in between the burgers will be healthy and home-cooked. Passion-based learning, to me, is finding something that you love to do, and investing yourself in it. Passion-based learning can occur in the classroom, work-force, and free time. Sadly, there is a big divide between what we want to learn and what we “have” to learn. Schools today are focused on teaching from the book. Students become disinterested in learning the “boring” material in textbooks, and develop interests for their own personal goals and activities. It is in these cases where curriculum must be changed. For example, a student who is passionate about building and shooting off rockets needs to have learning based on his love for rockets. In a math class, it is possible that this student would be bored because he feels the numbers and the problems have no relevance to the real world. However, it would be simple and effective to integrate rockets and math. Simple word questions could be altered to help the student gain more interest in math and become passionate about the math within the problems about rockets. Disclaimer: There is absolutely nothing wrong with having interest outside of school. It just seems that most students have very little interest INSIDE of school. So, it is essential that the two become mixed together to bolster the students’ learning potential and experiences. I happen to be one of those students who is much more passionate outside of the classroom. It seems that I have constant passions, and other passions that change every month! The new monthly passions surprise me in a way. Currently, I have a great interest in playing cards, particularly shuffling them in cool and fancy ways. I am sure this topic of my attention will be replaced in the next couple weeks, but for now, it is something I spend a lot of time practicing. The more passionate I am about something, the more time I spend on it. Because passion is so contagious, the things I choose to be passionate about are very important. The more passionate I become about a topic, the more my friends around me do the same. It is important to be passionate about things that are uplifting and encouraging to the people in my life. Luckily for me, and everyone, the things we are passionate about usually are positive. To sum it up, passion is a near must in life. Without feeling passionate about something, a person truly does not feel consumed with interest and desire. When we think of education, we think of children. We think of these children starting in kindergarten, pre-kindergarten even, and growing through the grades until they graduate high school. In some cases, these children continue their "education" in college and tech school. This is what we think of education. However, maybe our minds needs to shift to thinking: what happens at the schools and in each classroom that shapes the "education" that our children grow through. As of right now, the majority of the schools follow a very strict, "teach to the test" policy. Students in public and private schools are taught to focus on getting a good grade as opposed to learning something. By simply trying to get a letter grade, the student lose out on potential learning experiences in the form of hacking, making, and playing. I want to focus on making and playing primarily. In the early days of my education, in kindergarten, I remember spending most of my days buidling with legos and buidling blocks. I had no sense of getting a good grade, doing a good job in front of the teacher, or trying to impress authority to make sure I passed the class. Instead, I was "Making" something. I was creating a magic kingdom where all the people of the land came to see the king. I was creating my future house, with a pool in the backyard and a trampline next to it! My imagination was running at such a level that every new creation I made sparked a new interest. I loved making projects in school at this time. It not only helped me in the categories of imagination and interests, but it taught me manners and how to play well with others, all without the structure of an actual classroom. lego.com As far as playing goes, playing is what most everybody wants to do! So it just makes sense to incorporate playing into our education and our work environments. A few years back, I was working at the restaurant Chilis. At times, the company would set up initiatives for servers to reach to earn a free meal, gift certificate, etc. It seemed that every time the company would do this, work became more fun for all the employees. They saw it as a competition and a game, and certain team members worked together to reach the goals. This form of playing, or teamwork to reach a type of goal, is beneficial in any work or education environment. Playing gives people a sense of purpose and a reason to put forth effort if they lack that reason in the first place. It is important to have good team participation while "playing" in the work environment. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kYjqtLCNqSA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> embedded video Overall, hacking, making, and playing our education can be very helpful. Instead of focusing on getting a grade or teaching for test scores, incoporating fun, alternative ways to share knowledge can benefit young people in the education system and older people in the work force. It can be very powerful. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-power-of-play-at-work_b_12011462 According to Renaissance.com, and The American Library Association (ALA), digital literacy is "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills."
www.renaissance.com/2019/02/08/blog-digital-literacy-why-does-it-matter/ The part that sticks out to me about this definition is part of the second half: "to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information." It seems that many people confuse the term digital literacy with reading information through a screen. However, it is much more than that. A person must use the technology at their fingertips to seek out information that interests them and develop an opinion on that information. Once an opinion is formed, the person can then go on to create new ideas about the subject, and communicate that information in a professional manner. This aspect of digital literacy is something I think I do very well, particularly the find, evaluate, and create portions. When I am interested in a topic, I do quick research using the tools that I have (i.e computer, cellphone). Then, I am able to think about what I have learned from the information on the topic, and create my own ideas and thoughts about it. The communicate information, however, is where I lack. Even though I have created an opinion, I rarely share it. While it is good for me to go through the first three steps, unless I communicate the information and knowledge that I have gained, it does not help those around me become digitally literate through knowledge acquisition. Similar to digital literacy is digital fluency. I feel that I am strong in digital fluency, with the exception of sharing and communicating information. According to region10.org, "Digital Fluency is the aptitude to effectively and ethically interpret information, discover meaning, design content, construct knowledge, and communicate ideas in a digitally connected world." In order to become effective digital learners and leaders, we need to understand the ethics behind digital communicating, as well as the magnitude of what is transferred online. We should expect, and aspire, to learn to be professional and uplifting while using digital forms of communication. I, personally, also aspire to learn how to effectively share created information. As previously stated, that is a must if I am to be truly digitally literate and fluent. By sharing information that I create, I can help others to read, think, and do the same. Sources American Library Association (ALA) Digital Literacy Task Force (2013). Renaissance.com Region 10 ESC (2020). region10.org |
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March 2020
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