Crae's ENG-235 Blog

Blogs and Podcasting are two ways for people to share their thoughts, ideas, or opinions to a wide audience with little effort. I do not personally have any other experience with blogging, outside of this blog here, but I have really been enjoying this assignment. With podcasting, I watch one called "The OpTic Podcast" which follows a gaming organization usually during the Call of Duty tournament season. It isn't super informational, but it follows something I enjoy.  The first reading deals with what this whole assignment is about: BLOGS! Throughout the creation of my blog, I have really enjoyed the process of taking the readings and implementing my own thoughts into them. It gives the assignment/readings a more personal feeling. In  Amplifying Student Voice in Secondary Language Arts,  by Christina Melly, she talks about how blogs can open new horizons for student writing. In the article, she states, "Blogs expand opportunities for class discussion, opening a wider...

Video games, virtual reality, and other online spaces are not only beneficial for entertainment, but if used in the right way, can be extremely beneficial for educational purposes as well. Implementing this into the classroom can open new accessibility options, improve student engagement, and amplify student voices. To begin, an online space that I was/am really unfamiliar with is Book-Tok. I really only see Tik Tok as an entertainment platform, which could be caused by my toxic sludge FYP, but I was extremely hesitant when beginning to read. In the class reading, Book Tok 101 , I was really surprised to see an educator named Trevor including TikTok within his classroom since 2018. Not only has he seen TikTok allow students to actively engage in variations of creative writing, visual storytelling, and culture sharing, but it also built numerous skills such as communication, digital, social, and emotional (Jerasa and Boffone 224). All of these skills are beneficial especially for studen...

 As time moves on how will we, as future educators, combat unstoppable, evolving technology? With Unit 3 revolving around social media, it was an eye-opening lesson that introduced how this emerging literature composition will inevitably be implemented into the classroom, but also highlights the negative impacts it will have/currently has on students worldwide. In the reading, Unearthing the Problem: Social Emotional Learning in the High School English Classroom  by Julie Harding, she provides her student's electronic usage, but also introduces the negative impacts it brings. To begin, Harding allowed her students to set their own goals for lowering their electronic usage, and eventually, reflected on their findings over the course of two weeks. At first, they were seeing near 100+ pickups per day with the average being 47. The students were in agreement that their usage should be brought down, and they did bring it down for other important tasks. To see that  Hardin...

  For Unit 2, we had covered Multimodal Composition. I think that this is such an eye-opening way, as a Secondary Education English major, to new teaching horizons. Even though literature was the "dominant" mode of teaching, it surprises me that no educators took advantage of teaching through technology and different modes while I was in high school. To begin, I want to focus on the article "Modernizing Shakespeare with Multimodal Learning Stations", and in particular the Immersion section. Shakespeare, when I was learning it, was not something I particularly enjoyed. In the article, Virtual Reality was used in one of the stations. After only two days of this station, some students were saying "If there was a Shakespeare game, I'd play it" and "I heard we'll be performing scenes later. It would be fun to do them in VR". Taking things that students are already familiar with, or interested in, is a perfect way to spike engagement. I really ...

Hi, my name is Crae Ruiz, and I am a first semester junior! I went to high school in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, but was originally from Round Rock, Texas. Although I am a junior this is only my second semester within the Secondary Education English major (I was in Computer Science beforehand). This blog is for Writing for Non-Print Media and will allow me to effectively share my reflections and analysis over the course of the semester! (My girlfriend Madi and I 😊) Outside of class, though, I really enjoy playing video games and listening to music/making it. I have been currently playing Minecraft, Elden Ring, Call of Duty: Cold War, and am eagerly awaiting Mortal Kombat 1. When it comes to music, I really love anything electronic (a more specific genre name would be "glitchpop"). Brakence is my #1 favorite artist and has been since 2018-2019! If you were to look him up, I recommend Caffeine, Ginger Tea, and Introvert . I am looking forward to the rest of the semester with eve...