The Final Course

Here's the link to my Adobe Spark Video!

https://spark.adobe.com/video/Jc7cxUG9wxcAX

I truly enjoyed this process..how could I not?  Making something delicious and eating it is something I love.  And I was successful, at least I think so!  I made decent, edible ravioli three times. Start to finish once, that is dough from scratch, filling from scratch and sauce from scratch.  We ate it, and we liked it!  It could have been better, I still need more practice, but it wasn't terrible.  Next time I hope to make burned butter and sage sauce for pumpkin ravioli.

As a learner, I loved this process.  I chose something I love--cooking, eating, and making food people I like.  I was motivated to make good food, and to be a little bit challenged, but not too much. What frustrated me mainly was how much time it took to make it.  You can get decent to delicious ravioli at the grocery store.  No mess, no work, just boil some water.  While I enjoyed the process and the mess, I couldn't help thinking of how much time it took.

The implications for the classroom are that I need to continue providing opportunities for choice in what and how kids learn.  Besides choice, kids need lots of chances to seek quality support and feedback from adults and peers.  Along with that, they need to learn skills for being good self-directed learners, for giving, getting, and using feedback.

Ideally, I think students should have a choice of topics within or leading to a standard from which to choose, and they could choose, with guidance, the paths the choose toward studying their topics with the ultimate goal of mastering that standard.  For now, I will continue to offer choice as much as possible, encourage students to have different ideas, different ways of solving problems, and independent, critical thinking.  In this way, I can lay the groundwork for more independent learning in the future.

The implications for 21st-century literacy is that students still need strong skills in reading and writing and communication in general.  They need to be critical consumers of what they discover online, and clear communicators. They will need guidance, practice, and scaffolding as they learn to be able to critically analyze information they find.

Ravioli Reflections

I think my digital identity helped me in my learning a little since I was able to get encouragement, tips, and a sort of overarching umbrella of ideas which I was able to narrow down to a good starting place.  I’m not sure my digital identity has changed because of this process, but maybe a little.  People now know that I am taking this class and that I am trying to learn a new skill. Friends and family ask me about it when I see them.  I already blogged, but more people may now be aware of this. Facebook and Twitter are not too concerned at the current moment with cooking.  Maybe if this had happened at a different, less historical, moment, more attention would have been paid to my posts about food.  Also, there are many, many cooking blogs, websites, and resources.  Perhaps if I had chosen a skill within an area that was less popular or ubiquitous (we gotta eat…) then maybe the community would have been smaller and more responsive and interactive.  My own personal digital community helped and supported me, but I have not become a member of a new one.  

I suppose I am focused more on the actual making of the ravioli than on the sharing of the process with my digital community.  This is partly because I am a “digital immigrant,” and it isn’t second nature to be documenting my every move on social media, and partly because I like to create an actual, tactile, edible, product more than I like producing posts to share on social media. (And I like to eat…) So maybe sharing more of the process on social media, not only questions but final products, would get me more support as a member of a “ravioli community.”

I do feel supported by my digital, and by extension, real, community.  The ideas they gave, and continue to give, help me keep working toward my goal.  Now that people know what I’m up to , they check in, give suggestions, ask questions.  Also, it serves to give me ideas I probably wouldn’t have come up with on my own.  By using the digital community, it helps me be more creative.  Also, in some ways it keeps me going.  People ask and wonder how it’s going, and help keep this process in the fore of my mind.

Ravioli,Take Two

This week, I looked for an online cooking community to connect with. I need to find out how to make the dough better. I found a discussion board, but haven’t yet found out how to ask questions:

https://forums.egullet.org/search/?&q=ravioli%20from%20scratch

Here is another one I haven’t asked anything of yet,

http://italianchef.com/

And a few more options I am following in hopes of finding some tips.

https://www.pinterest.com/italianchef/

https://twitter.com/povitalian

http://www.povitaliancooking.com/blog

https://twitter.com/search?q=italian%20cooking&src=typd

I also perused my facebook post and the “advice” my friends gave me…

Though visiting Tuscany and drinking wine all sound fine, I think I might try some of the yummy recipes people shared, but after I perfect the dough and the pasta creation techniques.

My son helped me the first time, using his high school chemistry skills to give me ideas about how to get the consistency of the dough right.  He was also fascinated by the pasta maker.  He would love to learn more, but he had to take the SAT...SO, Ethan, my better half, stepped up to be my mentee.  

We chose a different recipe the second time, this time from a website:

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/homemade-ravioli

The dough looks a little better this time.  My mentee also used his high school chemistry skills to convince me to add water to hold the dough together better.

After letting the dough rest, we rolled it out and made the ravioli.  This time, the dough was easier to work with, and rolled out more easily.  We used the ravioli press, though I’m not sure if we used it right.  We will have to look that one up!

But they did look better..

They also tasted better; thinner dough.  I didn’t make the sauce this time, preferring to focus on the ravioli.  I will work on a more flavorful filling next time.

Collaboration, all in all, was a net positive.  My mentee was helpful in giving me ideas and supporting me.  Also, there was lots of advice online, but by reading widely and reading the comments, I was able to make my own decisions.  Ultimately, I am ready to be more creative after using online forums to guide and support me.  However, though I have never made pasta, I am an okay cook, and not afraid to try new things and to improvise.  I am not sure if I would have been as successful if I were a novice cook.  I might have needed more guidance and more of true mentor, instead of just guidance from the hivemind.

Learning to cook ravioli, however, is a low-stakes endeavor.  Worst case, I order a pizza.  Best case, I have good, homemade dinner.  I think learning more technical and less familiar tasks would be much more challenging, but not impossible, in this way.  There are many resources for say, learning algebra, but it’s harder to know if you aren’t doing it right.

Ravioli, Take One

Well, I just erased my whole blog post somehow.  That is pretty much representative of this evening's pasta experience.  I started out gung-ho, with good intentions, and instead of taking small, measured steps, I flailed around a lot.  But, in all, it was a productive evening.  And it's the way my mind works.

Up until today, I have only been exploring websites, cookbooks, blogs, and videos.  I also bought a pasta maker, a pastry cutter and a ravioli mold. I haven't really engaged with any groups outside of blogs, websites, and friends.  I had lots of advice when I posted my blog on FaceBook, though it mostly involved drinking wine and listening to opera.  Today, though, I had a reasonable chunk of time, so I decided to jump in.  In my head, I had planned to only try making spaghetti the first time, just to get the hang of rolling the pasta and making the dough.  After viewing a video on HandletheHeat.com, though, that made the ravioli process seem not too difficult, I thought I'd stop on the way home from work and buy some filling ingredients.  Once I was at the store, I figured I'd buy some tomatoes and onions, and just make sauce, too, as long as I was making stuff.  A jar of sauce didn't seem right on handmade ravioli.

I procrastinated a bit once home, but finally got started.  Remembering the advice from the video, I made the cheese filling first. 

Then I decided I better start the dough.  It seemed simple enough.  I played the video in my head, while using the Joy of Cooking as a guide.  

Once the dough was done, I left it for a while, as I learned I should do.

Then, I decided I needed some better music, and spent time looking up songs.  This made me think of the students, and how easy it is for them (for all of us) to get off task.  I refocused and looked up a marinara recipe, which called for peeled tomatoes, so I had to look that up.

 By the time I got that process started, it was after 7:00, and I figured my kids would be emerging soon to forage, so despite the many other things happening, I popped a frozen Trader Joe's item in the oven, and got back to my task.   After putting the marinara on, it was time to roll out the pasta.  I was nervous.  But I got started.  It seemed easy at first, but the dough wasn't cooperating as well as the video I had watched.  I kept rolling it through, and had a tiny piece of dough to try to fill, nothing like the video.  But I made two cute raviolis.

I kept at it.  It started getting easier about the time the dough started getting too dry to work with.  One of the teens wandered in and helped me try to make it work.  Finally, the funny shaped, cheese-oozing raviolis were ready for the water.

I cooked them, we ate them, we liked them.  The weren't as easy, or as good, as the ones I get at the grocery, but they were edible!  That's the first step of my goal.  I feel accomplished (and full!) even if the process was messy and not exactly perfect.

Thinking about how this experience connects to this week's learning on creativity and innovation, there are several connections.  First, this experience was totally my own.  Though I had guides, I really decided how I was going to proceed, for example, I decided to fill the raviol and make the sauce from scratch all in one day.  While I sort of knew that was too much, I wanted to try.  I probably would have made better pasta if I had proceeded the way I had planned...First, master the pasta.  Next, move on to the ravioli, then, worry about the sauce.  But, the type of learner I am likes to just go for it, make mistakes, then go back and fix them.  Maybe it's messy, but so am I, and now I have a holistic experience to work from and build on.