November 20th - SDA Reflection

To be blunt, I am not super pleased with the SDA I turned in for November, and my thoughts on it are majorly negative. Although I conveyed why I was focusing on the brain, with its relation to my broader focus on eyes, I did not portray the significance of such issues. The point was to take a second approach to vision issues I had not thought of previously, so it would have been helpful to name the second SDA Take 2 to relate it to the previous SDA and create meaning for it. Although I was on task for the last SDA, I fell behind on this one for numerous reasons, and although the excuses for my lack of time management were understandable, I felt like it was my job to plan accordingly, as I knew before that I would not have time. Given my disorganization, when I did sit down to do the SDA, I put my effort into it and tried.

I feel like I hit 3 of the 5Cs. My work for this month was creative, as it shed light on a new topic I never would have thought I would be looking into when I first chose my topic. It was new to me and my audience, as it was the first time I introduced it to them. Also, I had to search/dig for answers and research, meaning that the brain's role in vision is not commonly thought/talked about. I was also curious and passionate about the topic, as I put the effort in. In addition, this SDA was built off and started from questions I posed from my last SDA, showing that I was asking questions and thinking curiously about the topic. Another C I did solid on was communication, as my presentation followed a logical organization, and one thing led to the next in a balanced, orderly sequence. 

The 2C's that I have to work on are collaboration and critical thinking. Although I had critical thinking done from past journal posts, those details were not in my SDA. Although I had evidence and connections, and the entire assignment was a supposition in and of itself, I was lacking in showing the significance and perspective of my SDA, even if I knew it in my head. For collaboration, although I know I can be working on partnering up with a classmate researching glaucoma, even this project, I could have asked someone to look at it instead of blindly submitting it, which is something I would change next time. 

The most important thing I learned was that the field of vision can be lost, not just eyesight clarity. This factor mattered as glaucoma is also related to field vision loss, which I did not include in my SDA but did find, which could bridge a connection to future collaboration with my fellow researcher. My second SDA was harder to craft because, although the first one was hand-drawn and written, I was more used to the program, whereas Prezi was more of a process for me to figure out how to work. I am proud that I used a new website for the project, but I must work on engaging the audience. I felt like it lacked an eye-catching element to drag the audience in. Again, I plan on using this new information to relate to glaucoma. I might go back to my original starting point of eye exercises and debunk/learn more about them, as they go hand in hand with muscles in the brain. The HOTQs were great sentence starters for when I was stuck creating a question, so I'm grateful to have that resource whenever, but I do not think they are necessary. I do not have much experience searching for scholarly articles. I generally move away from .coms and head towards .orgs and .edus because I know those websites are more reliable and secure. I want to incorporate my voice into my next SDA.