When I first started the lab, I felt like it was a neutral feeling within my comfort zone. Even though circuits are something that I don’t know entirely, I recognized that there is a lot of support coming from my professor and the teaching assistant in class. I also recognized that it’s a learning experience for everyone, and I saw this as an opportunity to collaborate as well as make friendly connections with my peers. I believe that collaboration and friendliness within a classroom create a welcoming learning environment.
At the beginning of the lab, it was a little tough to get the hang of the circuit playground because I didn’t know what to expect. However, as I moved through the lab, I started to get more comfortable in I felt confident with helping my two partners at the table. I felt more confident in my strategies when moving along with the lab, and it also really helped when I was working with other people because I was able to think more critically rather than mindlessly trying multiple attempts until I got the result I wanted. This reflects the metacognition discussion we had at the beginning of the class where my partners and I discussed that, even with simple tasks it's best to take a step back to plan and understand what we need to do because jumping straight into a task can lead to finishing the task longer than expected.
While interacting with the Circuit Playground Express microcontroller, I didn’t notice any self-talk during the process. More so, I noticed that I was in active communication with my peers where we not only shared and explained our thought processes but also collaboratively addressed each other's questions and concerns. There were certain issues that we faced such as trying to download Arduino IDE, setting up the Circuit Playground Express, and code errors where “the programmer is not responding”. However, we were able to push through and figure out solutions with the help of each other.