final Blog POSt :P

this cluster was a wonderful experinece to learn a lot of things, I improve my writing and research skills! also I met a lot of wonderful people and made a lot of friends! It is a lot hard work, but it helped me to become more responsible and to organize my time properly! ENG 101 was a wonderful class which gave me the opportunity to share my opinions about different issues! the classmates were amazing ! funy and so helpful with each other!!! which I recomend to the people that will take this cluster in the future is just to enjoy it! :) and to work so hard!!!
thanks to all my classmates and the profesor Dragan! thanks for all you patience with us and for teaching us a lot of interesting things that will be so useful for the rest of our college careers!!!! take care every one!

critical Thinking Blog -Assigment #5***

    The Brains, Minds and Consciousness cluster has been a great opportunity for me to learn a lot of things as a student and as a person. Our ENG 101 class represented since the beginning a big challenge for me since English is not my first language and there is not such a long time since I arrived to this country. Every single day in this class was new opportunity to improve my writing and speaking skills. The readings on the course pack were really interesting and easy to understand; also our discussions in class helped me a lot to know which were the main points of each reading and the correct way to use them in my essays and blogs. We had so many important discussions on very controversial issues in our society today like robotics and human cloning which gave to me and my classmates the chance to share our different opinions and differentiate our selves as a humanities or science person. In this class we also used a lot of videos and scenes of movies to make connections with the readings in our course pack and in our research paper projects; which was really useful to learn how to write based on a film.

   One of the readings that was really interesting to me was the essay of Ray Kurzweil The Singularity is Near. This reading talked about robotics, human cloning and genetics and made really good connections between those topics. Thanks to this reading I learn a lot about all the benefits of human and animal cloning the author writes "cloning technologies even offer a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat and other protein sources in a factory without animals by cloning animal tissue" (Kurzweil 124). This means that by ussing this type of cloning we will have the chance to find less expensinve food and to eliminate all the suffering that animals have to go through in the slaughter houses. On the other hand I learn about robotics and artificial intelligence, and how its influence on the development of our society is growing more and more each time. The author says "once strong AI is achieved, it can readily be advanced and its powers, multiplied, as that is the fundamental nature of machine abilities" (Kurzweil 140). This means that the development of AI and its influence in our every day life will get to a point to be unstopable. Over all Kurzweil is very positive about coexistence between humans and robots, how we will help and get alone with each other like with other human beings. He also beliefs that with the development of strong AI  we are going to live longer or been immortal!.

   With the essays that we have been writing I learned to extend my vocabulary and to have better grammar. The reading of the play "A Number" was really useful for me to learn how to find key ideas and to know how to describe a character in formal writing. This play was also useful to study a different point of view about human cloning, a more humanistic view. For example in one of the conversations the clone B2 say to his father "you called them things, I think we'll find out they're people" (Churchill 148). There are a lot of issues that are discussed in this play and that make us think about what is the value of life. Using this play I learned how to write an essay using counterargument sources, how to locate this information on the first body and to defend later on my thesis statement. A Number make us wonder how we would feel if we find out that our life, our dreams and the people that we love has been taked away by someone alse; by a copy of our selves. The author writes "about you sent me away and has this other one made from some part of my body some" (Churchill 162). In this part  of the play B1 is showing all his disconfort and frustration to his father; he felt that his personality and his uniqueness has been taked away but also he felt that the he had lost the love of his father and that's the sadness things of all.

   One of the big challenges for me in this class was the reading about Temple Grandin "The Anthropolist on Mars". It was more formal writing which gave some difficulty to understand some of the words. With this reading I learned a lot about autism. The author writes "autism is often not recognized in the first year of life, but tends to become obvious in the second or third year" (Sacks 2). Temple Grandin showed us that if you believe in your self any thing you dream to do in life is possible. Her work with the slaughter houses show her humanistic side; everything she does is just amazing. She's a scientist and holds a Ph.D, which is not so common for people in her conditions. In general her story is an example to all of us, inviting people to work hard and to be persistent in their beliefs. Writing the essay #1 ussing this source was a very big challenge since I didn't new anything about autism before, but at the same time it was a great opportunity to gain more knowledge about the human mind and its different conditions.

   In conclusion, all of this readings in ENG 101 teached me something. From autism to technology, from human cloning to evolution and altruism. In general it was a wonderful experience with a great profesor and very nice classmates; which made my learning environment much useful and interesting. I learned to identify key points in essays, books, movies and plays but the most important I learned  to make connections between those and my personal experience, which I believe is crucial at the time of realize any kind of writing. THANKS PROF. DRAGAN AND THANKS TO EVERY ONE, IT WAS A GREAT SEMESTER ! I WISH THE BEST TO ALL OF YOU :)