1st semester reflection

    Coronavirus changed our way of living drastically so at the beginning of the semester, we had to do our lessons at home using our computers. I think the online lessons were OK. This is because firstly, I was able to do the assignments like normal lessons. Also, I didn't have any issues with Microsoft Teams. Secondly, I could concentrate better on live online video lessons.  Other subjects only had recorded video lessons or lessons without videos so I tended to do the assignments for these subjects slowly. Thirdly, live online video lessons gave me an incentive to wake up early. 

    From June, school started but with only half of the class. I think this was inefficient because we could do the same work at home using computers, but we had to go to school to do it. Two weeks later, everyone came back to school. At first, teachers were wearing face shields and students were cautious about social distance. However, soon people didn't really care about social distancing. I think it was lucky that nobody caught coronavirus. However, I was able to learn a lot more than the online lesson/half class lesson period. I learned more about presentations, writing book reviews and useful web apps.

For the book review, I thought it was difficult but it felt easier than last year's topic. I think this might be because I learned so many things last year or because I was familiar with the movie of the book. I've never done a 3Bs research or written an academic book review, so the topic was difficult but I learned a lot of things in the lessons. For example, we learned about presentation styles (Pechakucha presentation and Ignite presentation), academic websites (Cliffsnotes, Sparknotes and Thug notes) and writing tools (Turnitin, word counter etc.). I learned about plagiarism too. The most surprising thing was that even if it was unintentional, having a single plagiarised phrase would give the essay an F. I felt horrified that all the effort put in for writing the essay would come to nothing. I can use these websites in the future for other cases, so learning that there are these useful websites was very helpful. Moreover, trying to increase the academic words used in the essay was very tiring. This is because I only knew some of the academic words, and finding the right words to replace took a long time.

    For the slides, I struggled to find royalty-free hobbit images. Also, I had to explain the appearances of other races such as dwarves and elves that match the atmosphere of Middle Earth without violating copyrights. Only poor quality images came up, so my slides lack uniformity but I can't do anything about it because there aren't enough good quality images.

In conclusion, in this semester, I learned how to write an academic book review using useful writing tools and high-quality academic websites. Also, I realized how using digital tools for the lesson would make learning at home so much efficient and easy during difficult times like this coronavirus pandemic.