1. Miles 1
Adam Miles
Mrs. Lester
Hon World Lit
1 May 2012
Summative Learning Reflections
1. I learned a lot about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the biggest things I learned is
that soldiers cannot forget their traumatic memories, and that they can only learn to cope
with their memories in a different manner. I also learned that the medication that is
available does not cure soldiers of PTSD; instead, it treats the symptoms like nightmares
and anxiety. I do not have any other questions.
2. I worked by myself, so the biggest issue for me was procrastination. Some days, without
a group to motivate me to work, it was easy to put off doing research, writing a
paragraph, or making notecards. I dealt with this challenge by working at home and on
the weekends to get the work done. As for the other mentioned issues, I had a minor
problem with search terms, but Mrs. Hamilton helped me with that.
3. I found that getting enough information and enough sources in a timely fashion. This was
especially difficult for me due to my procrastination issue. The thing that I found most
rewarding was information and research skills that I learned. I found out a lot of things
that I did not know about PTSD. I also learned valuable research skills, such as making a
shaping sheet, which I had not previously done before.
4. The books and fishbowl discussions were a major influence on my choice of topic.
Reading about the horrible things that happened in World War I influenced me to choose
my first research question: How do soldiers develop PTSD? Reading my book and the

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fishbowl discussions influenced me to pick the other two topics: Why is PTSD difficult to
treat? and What is being done to cure soldiers with PTSD?
5. The learning experience that will have the largest impact on me is reading the non-fiction
articles and composing the final project. Like I said earlier, making the final product
taught me many valuable research skills. I am sure that this will help me in American Lit
next year, and in college further down the road. Also, reading the non-fiction articles
taught me things that I will remember for a while. This project has really changed my
view of PTSD and the recovery process that I thought was very easy for soldiers before
now.
6. I believe that I did well on the final product. I am very proud of that. I have spent eight
weeks making this paper, and I think that I did it very well. There are seven pages in
total. I feel that I got a lot of facts into the essay and answered my research questions
very well.
7. The most challenging thing is this project was meeting the deadlines for the various
aspects of the creation process. I handled this challenge by working at home, working on
the weekend, and sometimes coming to school early in the morning to work on the
computers.
8. While doing this project, I believe that I developed many of my literacy skills. A few that
I feel that I really improved in are the 1.1 inquiry skills and the 1.4 Self-assessment
Strategies. I feel that I am a much better researcher, that I have better research skills to
help me find the information that I want, and that I can manage myself much better now
that I know these things.

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9. During the time that I spent creating this project, I learned many things about this unit,
especially about the inquiry process. I learned how to narrow my searches down on
google news to get the information that I wanted. I also learned more about how to refine
my searches on databases, such as turning on boolean searching instead of traditional
searching.
10. For this project, I used Symbaloo for my information dashboard. However, I did not use
it very much. If I needed to go to a specific article, I went to Easybib and copied the web
address. I just did not feel that I needed to take the time to create another tile, and then
have to pull up and sign into my symbaloo account when I already had Easybib opened.
In the future, I might try to use it a little more. I might be more prone to use it once I get
familiar with the interface. I might try to use it for other research assignments in other
classes next. I think that this says that I am a learner that does not like to try new things.
11. I learned how to find better articles on the web, weed out good articles from
untrustworthy ones, and use other online tools such as Google Docs. I will use many of
these tools for my Lit class next year.