The pictures above are the cakes I made by myself in the past weekend. I asked my parents, Sofia and Maggie to taste them and they thought my 25 hours challenge was a success. My original goal from the first week was to make an Orange Chiffon Cake. However, surprisingly, I have also made a Chocolate Chiffon Cake and a Three-color Chiffon Cake. Recalling the process of making the cakes, there was a period of time that I felt frustrated especially on the proportion of the ingredients, which was the biggest obstacle for me. By looking the recipes again and again, practicing over and over, and getting help from the social media, Sofia and Maggie, I was able to overcome the problems and develop my creativity to accomplish my goal with the result that was over my expectation. I appreciated this assignment for giving me the opportunity to actually become a learner and tried to explore the content that I have never touched before. I really learned a lot through the process of making those cakes. I realized that the thing/challenge was not as difficult as I imagined from the beginning if I could stay positive and active. After I started making the cake, I always encouraged myself by saying “I can do it” and tried my best to find all the possible solutions when encountering problems. With my strong self-confidence, I was willing to take the challenges and take the risk to try something new. I also appreciated all the resources and people that supported my learning. I think the most important thing for me was to always have an open-mind to accept all the different sources and voices. I was benefited by the websites/blogs I visited. By exploring on the social media, I was able to learn many great experiences, skills and perspectives from the sharing by people around the world. I was able to create my own way by using their information and avoid the problems they have experienced. This blog (from a Chinese author) is a good Q&A space for all the Chiffon Cake makers. http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5d218dd10100ixdz.html In addition, the supports and collaborations from Maggie and Sofia made my learning process more effective than I thought. We worked as a team by always communicating and exchanging different opinions. Without their help, I probably needed twice or more of the time to reach my goal, and the outcome might not be as good as what we have accomplished. The process of this challenge was still so vivid and I can reflect it to my own teaching. There are many skills, ideas and strategies for me to apply to my own classroom. First of all, change the way of thinking and the way talking to students I believe is a way to motivate students. I have shared a similar idea in my IMMOOC week 5 that we can simply encourage and motivate students to take the challenge if they feel confident and supportive. This can also develop the good relationship between teacher and students. Technology is an amazing tool that we should effectively utilize and give the opportunity to students to use as resources for doing challenging work. “Sharing” is one of the most significant advantages of using technology. We can always learn from others or share our great work by using social media anywhere, anytime and with anyone. Lastly is the importance of collaboration. Students are able to develop their strength, communication skill, critical thinking, problem-solving abilities and relationship through different group activities and assessments. In my perspective, the most important key of participatory learning is to have an open mind. As a foreign language teacher, I designed my curriculum by including culture-related topics and activities for students to experience the different ways of learning and thinking. I also provided many group projects with challenging content that students are able to use technology to develop the skills mentioned in previous paragraph. The thing I can work on now is to provide the opportunity for students to share their work and give feedback to others. In the 21st century, learning is not just happening by reading the books or listening to teacher; as an educator, we must make sure we create the learning environment where creative and all the possibilities can be happened.
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Moving to week 4 of the challenge, I am now feeling more confident and experienced. In addition, Nathan James, my EDCS480 classmate, greatly inspired me through our conversation on the blog. This helped and motived me to try another new thing: The three-color Chiffon Cake. After talking to Nathan, I also felt that the technology could really help people in many ways. Although we are not doing the same dessert, the experience and information he shared with me let me create some good ideas on my own, and felt more confident to try something challenging. In This week, I tried to do everything on my own, and I also found other authentic resources. http://www.yummly.com/recipes/orange-chiffon-cake#! “Yummly” is a very creative blog site that everyone is able to share the desert he/she made and post the picture of each step with the written description. This is a good example of how sharing is helpful for others. People from all over the world can simply gather in a digital blog that benefits the other people like me. I can compare their step to mine, and I can also get many different creative ideas of making different desserts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MgZx34vfrQ This is the video from YouTube I found to help me with my three-color Chiffon Cake. YouTube is a social media that I have been using all the time. Every time when I want to do something I don’t know, I go on YouTube and type “How to make a ____”. There are always people/experts to help you by sharing their instructional videos. In this video, the author use cocoa and dark chocolate powder to make the chiffon cake that has three different flavors. I followed her step and used orange juice, green tea powder, and chocolate powder to make my own three-flavor chiffon cake. In addition, many people left comments or asked questions below the video that also helped me a lot. Reflecting on what I have done so far, I felt really satisfy, and also felt that the technology was a really good tool/accelerator of learning. Now I am able to use it in more effective ways. My digital identity before was maybe just watching the authentic video, searching for information, typing out the document and making Power Point. According to George Courus in “Innovator’s Mindset”, this is the stage of “adaptive”. By experiencing so many different things throughout the challenging, for example, keeping my learning to a digital blog, communicating with others, and continually challenging myself, I believe that I am gradually moving forward to “transformative”, as now I can use the digital resources to change my perspective and create new different things. I am looking forward to the final week that I will be well prepared and perhaps having some successful pictures to show.
Besides the online recipe from “Joy of Baking”, my mentors/assistants of making the Chiffon Cake are my girlfriend Maggie and her friend Sofia. They really inspired me and gave me many advices and suggestions. Sofia is an experienced cake maker. She taught me step-by-step with detail process this week. For example, she reminded me the importance of how the egg whites being mixed, and the quality of it. She also told me that I needed to be extremely careful to mix things together well with flour, and to avoid letting the flour became small pieces of lumps. Over-mixed can also lower the quality of taste. The process of mixing ingredients together was a step that sounds easy but actually challenging. By practicing with Sofia, I have better understanding of the quote “Practice makes perfect”. Being a student (in baking) was fun and I could reflect what I have done to my teaching in school. Patience is one of the most important characters that all the teachers should possess. We follow and assist students with students’ progress and give them advises. We also share our own experience to them and motivate them to monitor their own learning with confidence. Maggie is a person with creativity who always tries putting something new in her cakes and creates her own recipes. She encouraged me to try making a chocolate-flavor Chiffon cake and I accepted the challenge. Although the steps were similar, it took me a long time to find out the best proportion of the chocolate. The result was good (I think) and I really enjoyed doing something new. This try built my confidence and made me to think that once I am more familiarized with all the steps, I am going to design my own dessert plate, like putting a scoop of villain ice cream and put a piece of milk chocolate on the top of my chocolate Chiffon cake. Creativity is a key word for innovation that is usually mentioned in the Innovator’s Mindset. Teachers should provide students the opportunities to develop their creativities and encourage them to try something new and challenging. Of course, there were times that we had different opinions. We were all very open-minded and willing to accept different voices. Since they have more experience than me, I learned many things through their discussion, and reflected the problems to my own process. There were also several times that they were not available when I got stuck, but I always tried to reflect on each step and all advices I received from them. Of course I mess up or fail many times and I felt frustrating, but I always told myself to keep trying. My girlfriend can do it, why can’t I?
The conflict between people is a process that happened in education. Students or teachers in a group might have different perspectives or ideas. Be open-minded and willing to listen to different thoughts is important and useful. Like I mentioned in my IMMOOC blog #3, learning from one another is so crucial and always have better outcome than working alone. I always believe that collaboration promotes better learning and produce better achievement. Although I always follow the step and recipe from “Joy of Baking”, without working with Maggie and Sofia, I think I will not be as successful. They always encouraged me and helped me to solve my problems. We always discussed what we have done and what we can improve after each practice. With their supports, I was able to take the challenge and try each step with confidence. This concept can definitely connect to teachers’ and students’ collaboration. We can always share our own idea and create the strategies that are effective to our students. We can always discuss the problem and find a better solution. We can also support each other so we have more confidence to take the risk. It is excited that I am going to start making my first Orange Chiffon Cake this week. Besides the suggestions from Maggie and Sofia, it is very useful for me to get the recipe and examples in my online resources, as well as the experiences shared by other people from the social media and blogs. The materials for Orange Chiffon Cake are eggs, flour, olive oil, orange juice and granulated sugar. Making a healthier cake is one of my goals; therefore, I decide to use the real oranges instead of juice. According to Sofia, using the real orange might not have the strong sweet smell, so one thing I am thinking of is to try to grind the orange peels and put them into my cake. Connection to learning: Set up a goal that produce better outcome, make changes to the traditional process, and take the risk to try something new. It is almost impossible to be successful at the first time, but it is important to keep trying and not giving up. My plan is to carefully practice one or two steps several times per week, and do all the steps together in the final week of the challenge. The part I felt satisfied was the process to divide the yolk and the egg white. I used to work in a Japanese restaurant, so I am very good at this particular skill. The thing that surprised me was that I could change the flavor by adding different fruit. Although the proportion would be slightly different, I was able to adjust the taste through practice and my slowly growing experience. One time I tried to put pineapple and passion fruit instead of orange, and I was able to make the flavor of “Hawaii”. Connection to learning: Help students to find out and elaborate their strength. They can always contribute their strong abilities, and can learn from one another. Taking the risk to do something new sometimes can amaze oneself and others. I can run the same curriculum but provide different activities to have better student engagement. The difficulty I found for this week was the process of whipping the egg white. I was using the whisk; however, it was hard to control the speed of my hand and the time. The quality of my egg white seemed unfavorable by doing it manually (Maybe I need more exercise…ha ha). I then went online to see the advices from other people; most of them suggested that the electronic mixer would be a better tool to solve this problem. Therefore, I borrow an electronic mixer from my aunt. Now I can easily adjust the speed and whip the better egg white. Connection to learning: Always reflect on the failure and bounce back by seeking the solution. Technology is a useful tool for sharing idea and we can always learn from looking at the sharing by other people. Besides the advices from Maggie and Sofia, my main supports and resources are the Facebook and blog of “Joy of baking”. Every time when Joy of baking complete making a dessert, the pictures, recipe and short video will be posted, and I can choose the one I am interested to click on and learn. In addition, I also look at a website created by a Taiwanese blogger named Carol. She is a baking expert who always shares her work and detailed steps in her blog. She is open to any questions, so the audience can ask the question for certain steps and suggestions. I always look at the Q&A posted by other people first so I can be more careful on certain steps. I am really inspired by all the pictures of her finished items.
Connection to learning: The benefits of blogging and effective learning by social media. The interaction happened on the blog and social media are so crucial that we are able to learn more knowledge, information and good ideas than reading the textbook along. There is not limitation for the Internet so we can learn things all around the world. Resources: Joy of Baking Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyofbaking/?fref=ts Blog: http://www.joyofbaking.com/cakes.html Coral's blog: http://caroleasylife.blogspot.com/ There are many new and fresh things in my mind that I would like to try, and I eventually decided to take the challenge of how to make a Chiffon Cake. There are several reasons that motivate me to learn this new skill. First and the most important reason is I am a dessert lover. I usually go to the bakery stores to buy sweets, and I often order dessert when I go out to eat at the restaurants. I know that most of the desserts are delicious, but I am unsure whether the ingredients they used are in good qualities or healthy. If I can learn how to make my own, I can choose the high quality ingredients and adjust the taste that I think is the best. The other reason is I just moved into a new apartment that has an appropriate size of oven. I used to rent a small room and there was no kitchen. Now I have my own place and would like to try something by using the oven. Last reason is my girlfriend recently just made an Orange Chiffon Cake for me; it tasted really good and I would like to learn from her. My goal is to successfully make my own Orange Chiffon Cake with high quality of appearance and taste. I will ask my parents and my friends to taste it and I hope they will all like it. My resource will be my girlfriend Maggie and her friend Sofia along with the website (listed below) they recommended. Sofia, who has been making the cake as her hobby for 3 years, told me that Chiffon Cake is one of the basic item for the beginner; you can change the flavor with easy steps, and once you can successfully make the Chiffon Cake, you have a strong foundation to try some desserts that are harder to make. After this challenging assignment, I hope I can become the person who love both eating and making the desserts! Resources:
Joy of Baking .com by Stephanie Jaworski http://www.joyofbaking.com/OrangeChiffonCake.html & her Facebook & Twitter pages https://www.facebook.com/joyofbaking https://twitter.com/joyofbaking |
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