Building My Foundation

Throughout my Cornerstones experience some of the competencies that have grown are:

• Values
• Global Understanding
• Group Interaction

Values

Valuing is the capability to articulate, support and revisit one’s own values through self-knowledge and reflective practice. Valuing includes the ability to:

• Understand how actions are shaped by values.
• Recognize the moral dimensions of decisions and accept responsibility for the consequences.
• Understand and appreciate that there are multiple value systems and analyze the underlying beliefs that inform them

My research paper helped me with the value competency by helping to better understand how actions are shaped by values. It would have been impossible for me to understand the lens that Hemingway used in his books without having looked up the time period that he grew in and understanding that the actions that he took and how the actions of others affected him.

Global Understanding

Global Understanding is the respect for and appreciation of the interconnections among systems on the planet. Global understanding includes the ability to:

• Respect different perspectives and ways of knowing that are based on cultural, ethnic, religious, and geographical differences.
• Comprehend the way in which technology has treated a small world, politically, socially, economically and culturally.
• Appreciate the interconnectedness of the local and global communities.
• Understand various life forms and the environment.

Through the Food Book assignment, I have seen a great example of how food travels between countries and at the same time, how we can no longer grow our food without the help of technology.

Some examples include:

• GMO’S
• Pesticides
• Genetic Breeding

Information Technology

In the information technology competency students will understand, know how to use, and make choices regarding new and existing information and information technology. Because the use of information, computer, and Internet is throughout professional and civic life, competence in information technology and literacy is essential to success. A student skilled in the use of information technology will be able to:

• Choose technology appropriate to an activity.
• Master the use of common computer and Internet technology.
• Learn new technologies confidently and independently.
• Locate, evaluate and use information.Understand the ethical policy and accessibility issues associated with information technology

This entire assignment of the Foundations of Learning should be evidence enough that I have definitely improved in the IT area. Making a blog before taking this class would have been more than enough torture. Thanks to prior interaction with other onMason blogs, I was able to use them as a sort of appearance reference. I would think, if they got their page to look like that, then so can I. I had to use a wiki, websites, PrimoPDF (a PDF converter), and my delicious bookmarks in order to make my blog what it is. This program definitely does well in showing us different methods of technology to allow interaction with a large group of people.