General responses to our project
Thank you for being our audience in this project! This site will continue to be online (and a few more podcasts will be posted) so we hope you’ll visit it again and listen to more speeches. Today is Friday, March 30 and it’s our official last day of speech class. While we won’t be meeting as a class, many of our contributors plan to read and respond to comments after the class. Some may not have as many opportunities to respond, so we appreciate your patience with replies.
Many people have also asked for a place to leave general responses to our project. Please feel free to comment to this post to do so. We’re thrilled by the support of our readers and we’d like to hear more of what you think about our beliefs, podcasting in speech and our whole project.
With appreciation,
Mrs. Dawn Reed
March 30th, 2007 at 5:06 am
These are all powerful essays. I think it’s especially wonderful for the kids to be able to podcast them as well. It’s likely going to be a major communications tool for their generation. But tools are worthless without careful thought, self-examination and passion. I found elements of each of these in all of the essays. Very impressive, and congratulations to all of you. Best of luck as you pursue your dreams.
April 2nd, 2007 at 8:50 am
Dear Ms. Reed–
I found your class podcasts to be thought-provoking and informative. I’m pleased to see your students experimenting with new forms of publication. Increasing numbers of our first-year writing courses here at MSU are also relying on newer technologies for expanded publication opportunities. I wish you and your students continued writing and publication success.
Janet Swenson
Associate Dean
MSU College of Arts & Letters
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
i will come to this more often so i can read what the past has posted and what i have posted. i love how you have set this up.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
After listening to some of these podcasts, I am at a loss of words. I am a senior at CHS right now, and a former speech class student myself. I took speech class in the spring of last year, thinking I would become a better public speaker from taking the class. That was only one of the many gifts I got out of taking this class. When Mrs. Reed told us about podcasting and doing a “This I Believe” Essay, I was a little bit sceptical. I didn’t quite understand what it had to do with public speaking. But i started writing my essay anyway and struggled a lot with it. Mrs. Reed was amazing at helping me. She cite read it, gave me her opinion on certain paragraphs and sentences and really truly helped me. When I was done with my essay and podcast, I was relieved. Not relieved because it was done, relieved because it was the best work I had ever done. To this day, My This I Believe Essay is my most prized work I have ever written. I took a topic that meant so much to me and just wrote what I felt. It was about how I believe in being the best big sister I possibly could be. I struggled a little at first trying to find the right topic but then it hit me. Being a big sister is my favorite title and I feel more pride in that than anything else. Doing this podcast project was amazing. To be a part of something so rare and new felt so cool. Using technology in a actual high school class the way we did brought new pride in being a part of something so big. We weren’t sitting around being lectured to and reading text books and writing with paper and pencils. We were writing about what influences us the most and moves us the most and learning in a brand new way.
I will remember doing this project forever and how much I learned about technology and about myself and continue to pride myself in the work that I did. Being a part of something this big really makes you take a step back and realize how truly special we are to have such a wonderful teacher like Mrs. Reed and to be able to have been part of such a great team and to get our voices out to any one in the entire world and tell them what is important to us.
Thank you for such an outstanding opportunity Mrs. Reed!
I will never forget what I learned in your class, from you and from myself, and our friendship that grew out of that class and will continue through the years.
Sincerely,
Madi Ferguson