Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Albert Bandura: Psychologist

Bandura Post

In a few sentences, list any and all specific media or cultural items that your parents or grandparents think are bad influences on you, and explain the impact that these items have had on you if any (i.e. specific types of music, video games, TV, movies, celebrities, specific sites on the internet, etc.)

TV: how teenagers, actresses/actors, famous people dress and act on TV. Has no effect on me.

Internet: We get attach to the internet and learn things just by researching it and communicating with other people, including strangers. Has very little effect on me.

Technology: Growing rapidly, especially among teenagers and not being good for our health. Technology has effect how I do work, learn, and play games. I rarely go outside and play or excersie.
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One of the people I mostly imitate is my mother because she is a single mom, I never had the chance to imitate anyone else. She was the only adult that raised and took care of me as a child. My mother is kind and cares about people and she is a good person. She has taught me that everyone is equal and no one is different because of how he/she looks. I will never forget the one time we went to Shoprite in town and someone working there was a Muslim. My mother talked to her with a smile and talked about the heavy rain outside. Before leaving, the lady told my mother, “be safe out there,”. After that, my mother taught me that there are many ideas out there, but none of them are correct or number one, despite what people say. Even our religion is something that we believe in, but it doesn't make it right to say it is the number one religion, only because it works for us and no one else.

Believe it or not, I will say my “attitudes” are from my teachers, not my mother. I see how my teacher's attitudes are and I feel like I copy that. If I am in a room with a really nice and excited teacher, I will be excited too. I could be excited for the whole day. If a teacher is upset or angry, I will be upset or angry by the time I am out of the class.

Everything else I have like the way I speak, thinking, behavior, and habits are things that are me. I had trouble speaking as a child, so my speaking is unique and people say my thinking is very strange and thought provoking. My mother doesn't even know where my “process thinking” came from, I think it something I grew from myself. My behavior and habits are similar, like twirling a pencil or sucking on my tongue when I'm bored. My habits and behavior are also things that are my own because no one I know do them, just me. It's nothing I picked up on TV or from any living person. So a lot of things are actually things that I never saw imitating.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

My Learning Styles

I took three different learning style tests to see which learning style fits me. Here are the results:

Self: You have a very good sense of self. You like to spend time by yourself and think things over. You will often take in
information from another person, mull it over by yourself, and come back to that person later to discuss it. You like working on projects on your own. You often prefer to learn by trial and error. Effective techniques to enhance your learning include keeping a journal and giving yourself time to reflect on new ideas and information. More ideas: Go on "guided imagery" tours. Set aside time to reflect on new ideas and information. Encourage journal writing. Work on the computer. Practice breathing for relaxation. Use brainstorming methods before reading. Listen to and read "how to" tapes and books. Read cookbooks.

You learn best when physically engaged in a "hands on" activity. In the classroom, you benefit from a
lab setting where you can manipulate materials to learn new information. You learn best when you
can be physically active in the learning environment. You benefit from instructors who encourage
in-class demonstrations, "hands on" student learning experiences, and field work outside the
classroom.
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My results say that I learn better when I do "hands on" activities and working alone. I do feel that learning through hands on is better for me because I can easily lose interest in a lesson when I have to listen to a lecture or write meaningless things down. If I want to understand something I have to do it. I can't just imagine it, I have to see it and feel it myself. I often do like to learn things on my own or by myself, although I often think a bit too much and need to discuss it with someone.

I did do hands on activities when I took science courses during the first three years of high school. The first two years I learned a lot because we used a program on the computer where I was able to see what was happening and have control over it with my laptop. I loved having labs that including getting up and doing experiments. But in junior year, I mostly had to take notes and re-read power points, but it was pointless and I didn't learn and ended up getting a bad grade. Math was hard too because numbers don't make sense to me and the results of most of my tests explained that math logic was my weakest point in learning.

In psychology we did an activity where I had a partner and she was blind folded. We both had to work together to tie a shoe. While she was blind folded, I was the only one who could speak. We tied one hand behind our backs and got to work. This helped me learn the difference between the left and right hemisphere of the human brain. We also did an activity where my teacher gave us some powder in a cup. While reading us a story, every time he said the character's name, we had to dip our finger in the powder and lick it. After the lesson I learned how classical conditioning worked on humans and if we didn't do that hands on activity first, I don't think I would had been able to grasp the concept.

I do believe the tests were accurate because it really describe my learning style. I was extremely surprised to see how accurate it really was, though I will admit I do not believe it is 100% accurate, but maybe more like 90% accurate.

Monday, April 11, 2011

"Born Rich"

Born Rich is a documentary video about kids who are born rich and don't need to worry about money and getting a job. The film was made by Jamie Johnson, a rich kid himself through the Johnson and Johnson's company.

In the film almost all of the kids were different from me. They don't have to worry about money, going poor, getting what they want, doing what they want, ect. They get everything by the time they are born. They can buy anything they want, can ride helicopters, ect. I believe that is the main differences because everyday I wonder if I will have enough money to buy this or buy that or how much money loan I'll need for college. The kids in the film don't need to worry about that.

The similarity I found was the information about not sharing money. I grew up with my mother telling me that money is a discussion only in the house and with the family. The kids on the video were very wary about sharing information about their wealth and money, but every family has that issues about sharing that type of information. Also one of the kids is going to college and living the life of a regular college kid, he chose living on campus over living in a mansion that could be close by. I was surprise at this because I never knew a rich kid wanted to be so much like a regular college kid. That part was very interesting.

While watching the film I noticed that many of the kids get their motivation from the same thing. They are motivated to not make an embarrassment on their family. They know that if they do something wrong, their families will go down with them and they may lose their rights to their family's money. All the kids try to be good children for their parents so they don't get in trouble with the public and to get some of that, if not, all of that money. There are even some kids who said that their parents told them that if they don't work, they will get nothing. So from what I've seen it's their family's money that drives them or motivates them to be good people. I believe my motivation is different because I have to motivate myself, I try not to be motivate by any other way. I motivate myself to get up, go to school, and do my work. Many of my teachers have taught me that I work hard and I know that if I do good in high school and college that my dream of becoming a teacher is one step closer.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Motivation

If you won 319 million dollars, what would you be motivated to do if money was never going to be a concern????

If I won all that money, I believe my life would change very little. I would motivated myself to use the money only for emergencies and for college. I would also motivated myself to use the money for when my mother got older and she would need a new place to live, like in a senior citizen home or something and I would also use the money for insurance for my family. But even though I had money, I would still motivate myself to go to college and get a job because it's my dream to become a teacher. Even though I would have money, I would motivate myself to use the money to go to college and get a job. I would motivated myself to becoming a teacher because it is my dream to teach the younger generation in the area of English and of course there are other reasons, but those are personal. So my life might not be any different because cool cars, new technology, awesome house, don't really appeal to me, I love where I live and I love what I have.