This is a reflection and self-assessment on my progress in developing and growing skills over the course of this blog in the areas of critical thinking skills, metacognitive skills, communication skills, technology skills, creative engagement with the material, an adventurous “tinkering” outlook, and sense of contributing to the community of learners.
This was my first blog dedicated to anything remotely intellectual. I’ve had a private blog, which I ended right before I started this blog. My old blog seemed to frivolous and self-indulgent. This blog has been different. I realize calculus is probably not the most sought-after blog to read for fun, but my goal in this blog project was to make sure it was readable, and that there were moments where it was actually entertaining. I feel like I did well in some areas, and not so well in others as far as my progress went throughout the semester. Certainly my attitude improved after naming my blog. Calculus has not been the end of me, nor has it even been close to the end of me. I’ve actually enjoyed how much I’ve learned.
Critical Thinking Skill Growth
I do feel my critical thinking skills have grown. It seems as the semester has gone by, I’ve found myself more and more adept at solving math problems, not just in calculus but also in Chemistry, and have even found myself doing better with small things like calculating tax on a grocery bill, or calculating a tip for a waiter much more quickly. My math skills haven’t just improved as far as math alone is concerned, I actually think better overall. I find my mind is sharper, my logic skills are sharper, due to the way calculus exercises my brain. I’d like to share a few examples of progress as far as my critical thinking skills improved on my blog. This first example is one of my earlier posts, called Chemistry & Calculus. Though not a terrible post, it was just the beginning of how much calculus would help me in chemistry. I find the next example a far better example of critical thinking, this post is called You Know Math’s Taking Over Your Life When… In this post, I started seeing math problems on street signs, I started deriving numbers every time I saw them. I’m not kidding, I do weird things when I see numbers. This post explains it in better detail. But it’s still not my best critical thinking post, I think this particular post was one of my all-time best critical thinking moments: Chemistry Equation Post. In this post, I actually created new equations for my Chemistry exam using my math knowledge. It’s one of my personal favorite posts, simply because I was able to make my life so much easier. Finally, my most recent, and possibly a personal best for me, was this post on Optimization. I’m proud of myself because I was the only person (at least in my group of calculus buddies) who actually solved the distance equation on the worksheet before the Professor helped us. I did have to look in the book, but I got it. Then I created my own equation! If that isn’t critical thinking, it’s definitely creative thinking, and I am proud of it.
Metacognitive Skill Growth
Metacognitive growth, as I understand it, would entail my ability to take what I learn in Calculus and apply it to other aspects of my life. I feel I already covered some of this growth with my critical thinking section (ie applying calculus to chemistry and creating my own equations for chemistry). I do feel I grew, however, when I was finally able to relate calculus to philosophy. This is when I hit my personal metacognitive high point. One of my earlier posts, My Brain on Math highlights my starting point. Soon, I felt I finally understood the point of the blog, in this post. I then took it a bit further by studying how calculus even came to be, trying to figure out why it exists at all in the post History Lesson. And finally, my best metacognitive post: Calculus and Philosophy. Here I am able to explain how calculus and philosophy aren’t so different, and how each can be useful in other aspects of life, outside of school.
Communication Skill Growth
I’ve always felt I was a decent communicator. I have a mother with a Master’s degree in Psychology who was a Licensed Professional Councilor, and a father who has a PhD in Psychology who practices as a Clinical Psychologist. Communication was huge in our family. However, I have much room to improve, and I see that in this blog. I’ve kept the wording in these blogs casual. It’s better that I do it this way, formal speech makes me feel too robotic, with a subject that can come across as stiff and uninteresting as it is. I didn’t want this blog to be stiff and boring. I am not sure if I improved with communication skills. It seems my last few posts got less wordy and more to the point, which might not be a good thing. However, I want to show a progression of my communication skills. My post on Limits of Rational Functions is, in my opinion, well written. I spent a lot of time making sure I broke it down both in word and equation form. My writing style does not change much from this point. I also felt I did a good job communicating finding the limit of h in this post. My post Optimization (which we looked at earlier) also has a similar writing style. The one post I feel I could have done better on was one of my last posts, Calculus with Trig Functions. I suppose most of the reason I did not explain it more verbosely is because I was hoping that by this point in the semester, those who read my blog will know exactly how to take a derivative using the limit as h approaches zero. I wrote it so close to the end of the year, I hoped I wouldn’t have to explain it, but rather allow them to go back to earlier posts if they have questions. This is why I ended up going back and linking it to one of my derivative posts in case they needed further assistance.
Technology Skill Growth
Technology is a beautiful thing. As I explained before, I did have a blog before this one. However, my old blog was at blogspot.com, not WordPress. So learning to use WordPress was a new experience for me. I also had a lot of “fun” learning LaTex. I’ve grown so much better at it, thanks to all the practice I’ve had using it. Here are a few blog posts that demonstrate my path to learning LaTex. My very first post mentions it. It also displays my starting point on many of the other topics I’m covering in this Portfolio. The most difficult part about learning LaTex was making sure I put the coding in right and didn’t get an error message. That error message has been the bane of my blogging existence. By the time I got to my last few posts (for example this one), I was using LaTex without ever having to look up the codes, and no error messages. I consider that growth. I have to admit, technology isn’t too hard for me. I’ve been putting photos in most of my posts, and spent several hours changing my blog up a few times until I settled on the awesome chandelier and fun cat memes in the corner. I have grown as far as coding goes, and sharpened the rest of my technology skills through playing with my blog photos and layout.
Creative Engagement with the Material Growth
I happen to think I did quite well in this area. I never did make a video. I just couldn’t get it to look right and didn’t have the right programs to make something that anyone else would be able to follow. However, I did upload dozens of hilarious math jokes, funny pictures, even a math SONG. My goal was to add a visual aide to each post, but I didn’t quite make it. Here are a few of my favorite “visual aides”:
I made this one myself
I made this one too 🙂 with my meme maker
This pretty much sums up my math life
This is my cat, Puppy, and he doesn't actually help me with math, he likes to sit on my math papers and make my life that much harder.
my favorite of all the photos I've posted
And of course, I have to showcase the awesome math song I found:
I even dedicated an entire post to math memes. I think a few of the posts I shared in the other categories could fall into this one as well. For example, the post where I created my own Optimization problem. I don’t know if I improved necessarily, but I think I stayed consistent if nothing else, creativity-wise.
Growth Toward an Adventurous “Tinkering” Outlook
The creativity category sort of covered this. I tried my best to make sure I had a wide range of post types. Sometimes they were more humorous, other times they were more of a math lesson. I posted deep thoughts on occasion, and also my personal advice on doing better in math. I think, however, that the most “tinkering” I did was taking math problems, and making my own. I did this on several posts, even taking them further than they needed to go. I do think I improved on this, an early post shows an early attempt at “tinkering” with the concept of chemistry equations, which then evolved into better chemistry equations. And finally, I created my best “tinker” when I created my own Distance Equation. Can you tell I’m proud of that one? I’m pleased with the scenario. Most of the equations I work in my math posts are ones I made up myself, but these were my most creative ones. I wish I had branched out more, tinkered a bit more, but I feel I did an adequate job.
A Sense of Contributing to the World of Learners
I often worry that some of my posts make me come across as a know-it-all. That isn’t my intention. I am simply trying to give myself advice, and share it with others, especially since I have had terrible study habits, and found a much better way since then. I have improved since my first pre-exam post. In this post, I made an attempt to plan my studying, but it gets better with the next two exams. However, my follow-up post to Exam 1 was a lot better as far as helping me grasp what I missed, and convey a lesson to blog readers. I was not necessarily better prepared for Exam 2. I wrote this less than stellar post before the exam. It was only after the exam that I wrote this masterpiece: Caitlin’s Tips on How to Make an A in Math Class. I finally learned (and got the grade to prove it) how to write a proper pre-exam post when I wrote Exam 3 Study Tips A’ La Caitlin before the exam. I think the teacher’s comments aided with the helpfulness of the post, but it was progress making a study plan before I actually took the exam. I think that’s why I got a 92, rather than an 87 or 88 like the first 2 exams.
Many of my posts contribute to learning. I try to explain concepts in the simplest, most understandable way possible, modeling a lot of my posts after posts I’ve seen in professional math blogs. Some of my best posts are the following:
We’ve Finally Arrived at REAL Calculus (Feb)
Derivatives Post (Feb)
Logarithmic functions and derivatives of Logarithmic functions (Feb)
Absolute Extrema (Mar)
Optimization (April) – I use this one a lot, it’s probably one of my favorites
Calculus with Trig Functions (April)
Though February had more lengthy and in-depth explanations, I felt that these all built upon each other, so I am happy with my academic progress, as well as the progress of my blog, and my own personal growth due to the blog.
There is nothing like teaching through a blog to help yourself really learn and understand concepts to an advanced level. I feel very grateful to my Professor for allowing me this opportunity to learn in a totally unique but very helpful way. I do feel I’ve grown in this class. I feel smarter, and I feel more confident in my ability to learn and also to teach. It has been a joy being in this class, I’ve made some great friends and learned a lot. If you’d met me 5 years ago, you would be shocked to read these words. I never cared about learning, and now I can’t get enough of it. I hope this blog brought about some entertainment and learning opportunities to those who read it.
Calculus Will Be The End of Me 