Kendra Moser's Blog

• manage a blog
• create a blog
• insert media into a blog
• manage my finances
• use screencasts
• become a better teacher through learning myself

Questions about this term:

• What did you learn that you weren’t expecting?

When coming into this class, I had no idea what to expect. Therefore, all of the things that I learned were a bit of a surprise.  have to say though, learning how to manage my finances in order to achieve my dream, as well as learning how to use screencasts were the two things that I said, “Hey, this is neat. I didn’t imagine that I’d actually learn how to do this.”

• Did you meet the course objectives?

I believe that for the most part, yes. I did learn a lot about technology, feminist pedagogy, history of women in science, and how technology is affected by gender. I also made a blog in which I communicated all of the information that I have learned. I believe that responding weekly to 3+ people’s opinions about the subject at hand was very influential in my learning process this term. Usually I would write a couple paragraphs and post a link, and doing this helped me learn more. I have been able to see how certain things that go unnoticed are affected by gender, and how this affects my lifestyle.

• How will you apply the new knowledge in your education/career/home?

In terms of screencasts, I will definitely be using those to explain anything through the web because they are so handy and relatively easy to create. In terms of viewing things through a gender lens,  I can now recognize certain aspects of the technological world and decide if I want to be a part of it. I have a greater appreciation for Adobe Illustrator now that I have taught it, and the fact that Illustrator is so crucial to my future (hopefully) career in the fashion industry.

• Does this course exemplify feminist pedagogy?

Yes! I believe that all teachers should have the attitude of mentoring, demonstrating and sharing methods as opposed to just lecturing or doing something for the student. I’ve found that the latter just doesn’t work! Having a course where one gets to be independent and seek information rather than having information presented to them in a steady stream of boring, is crucial to committing new information to long term memory, rather than short term memorization for a test. Also, in feminist pedagogy, there is a shared learning experience and so the teacher can become a student and the student can become a teacher. I hope that this class has had an influence on the teacher as well as all of the students, and therefore, succeeds at demonstrating feminist pedagogy.

some ideas I’m throwing around:

using adobe illustrator
making a swatch pattern in illustrator
photoshop walk throughs
itunes walkthrough
programming a universal remote
troubleshooting printer issues

Woo hoo! Man, the other night I was so frustrated with making a .pdf and .gif file for the project, I must’ve just been tired. I’m pretty sure I did them correctly this time. In terms of using excell, I enjoyed it because it was relatively easy, especially when I didn’t have to do any math in my head! Well, it’s my birthday tmrw so I’m going to do some celebrating after I check out the teaching project. Peace!

Although I think I just have some few minor tweaks to my culture site, I’m pretty sure I gave it my all. Uploading pictures into my pages was a breeze. The simple add media button and insert into post button made things pretty easy. Not to mention that there are loads of pictures of DH on google! So scarcity was not an issue. I’m also getting pretty good at those embedded links, I think. I might add more pictures to my pages but at this point it kind of seems unnecessary and might come off to be too much.

For the financial analysis project, I’m scared. Straight up. I am not good with numbers, I’m good with words! Oh well, seeing a dream financial act out might be pretty interesting. Ideas:
Fashion Design: Own Boutique, Hemp Textile Company,  Major brand name with hemp incorporation…
Others: Living in France for a year, Traveling to beautiful beaches, Backpacking the pacific northwest…

until next time…

This was a very lengthly process for me, but I’m pretty sure I did Dorothy Hodgkin justice. I went to the library and found a lot of books about her and her work, and actually some of her writings as well. I really wanted to portray that DH was an incredible human being. Even with severe rheumatoid arthritis, she never gave up her studies. I also read that she found combining two careers, a marriage, and three children was relatively easy! Sheesh, she makes the rest of us look like slobs.

In terms of blog posting, I wrote a normal paper, and then posted it into my pages. I separated by paragraph so it would be easy to read. I didn’t use embedded links, as I only used a couple online sources, and they weren’t too substantial in terms of information. I would suggest to anyone, however, that they look up the books I listed.

I met with Jane Nichols this past Tuesday and she shared more information in 20 minutes with me than I could have hoped for! I found four books about Dorothy Hodgkin, not to mention other female scientists of that time, and other female scientists that won the Nobel Prize as Dorothy did. I even found way detailed information about her x-ray crystallography, which I hope to articulate correctly (science was never a field that interested me!). Well, we’ll see how this paper goes, I should be done and posting it later this evening. Till then…

After I thought I was so smart in choosing Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, because I was sure nobody had heard of her… I’m just a copycat, as it turns out. It was brought to my attention that Amy Carson and I have the same topic and same blog layout. What are the chances?? Anyway, I hope Ms. Carson and I can conduct our research and present Dorothy Hodgkin in different ways.

I e-mailed Jane Nichols, and for how many e-mails I’m sure she gets per day, she answered back very quickly. She gave me general advice for online article searching and told be about the databases and search strategies for finding literature about women in Hodgkin’s field during her time and for locating statistics. I believe we are meeting this coming Tuesday to discuss the project and ways I can get information.

Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin (or just Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin for short ) was the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1964 for her advanced work in chemistry. She was also a wife to Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, with whom she shared 3 children (and 3 grandchildren) with. She began college at 18, studying at Somerville College, and then later moving to the University of Oxford (the women’s college) and then the University of Cambridge.

Hodgkin was born in Cairo in 1910, and because of her fathers job (he was involved with the Egyptian Education Service), visited Sudan often. Her father was also greatly invested in archaeology. Her mother supported her father’s work greatly, but had a passion for botany. This greatly influenced her fascination with chemistry and botany. Hodgkin died in July of 1994.

When she was studying at the University of Cambridge, she discovered the potential of X-ray crystallography to view the structure of proteins. This led to using X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of Insulin. Her advanced work in chemistry, along side her male colleagues, is was what I believe makes her a great choice for the Culture Site Project!

hello again
a little late, I’m afraid,  to be posting this blog, but very necessary. Had some things come up this week and blogging just got postponed! I was just reading over the culture project site again and I am fascinated and excited to start. Who will I choose? What will it be about? I suppose I better choose soon…

Hello!
I’m new to blogging, and am doing this for a women’s studies class. Everything seems to be going smooth so far… we’ll see