This week we worked a lot on our websites to go along with the book that we've been reading. The book we have is The Kite Runner. Each person in our group contributes with a different role in creating the website. I am the graphic designer, so I did the layout of the website and entered in the information. Grace was the videographer so she recorded the interviews and screen casts we used on our website. Here is a link that describes how to do screen casts: https://www.howtogeek.com/183231/how-to-record-your-desktop-and-create-a-screencast-on-windows/ . For the interviews, we decided to "interview" the main characters from the book. Gabby acted like she was the characters and asked questions to her. She answered them as if she was the character. Lauryn was the writer so she wrote all of the information that is on the website. Gabby was the wildcard, so she worked on a little bit of everything. I really enjoyed being able to use my creativity and finding interesting pictures and graphics to use on our website. I liked being able to format everything to make it look good. I tried to choose pictures that went along with the overall theme and environment of the book. We wanted to include pictures from the movie that was made about the book along with images not from the movie so readers would be able to picture it better in their minds. Overall, I think we did a really good job on creating our website and working as a team to make sure we had all of the requirements present on it. Here is a link to our final website: http://gabydracyn.weebly.com/
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Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I was at States for BPA so I didn't have too much time to read. On Monday, I had to volunteer at the blood drive so I wasn't able to use class time that day either. Besides those days, I've been trying really hard to get the book finished so I'll be able to start on my part of the project. I play the role of graphic designer, so I would say I have a pretty critical part in getting the project started. So far, I am really enjoying the book our group chose to read which is The Kite Runner. I have attempted to read this book in the past, sophomore year I think, but I never got around to finishing it. I also don't remember very much of it so, re-reading doesn't seem to be too much of a problem so far. I am hoping to get the book finished this week. Doing this project has taught me how to manage my time management skills because we don't have very long to get the book read. We received it last week and have to have it done this week. Having such a short timeline will help me in the future when doing work in college and on future projects. This article lists different types of time management strategies: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/time-management-strategies/ We have reached a critical time in the year for everyone in this class. It is the last trimester of our high school careers, which makes me both nervous and excited. As we entered class on the first day, we were given a brand new project for this trimester. We will be creating a very unique type of piece to reflect on what we read. Our reflection will be based on http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek . The book my group chose to read was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I had begun to read this book a few years ago but never finished it. I am glad that now I will have the opportunity to finish reading it along with doing a cool project along with it. I am anxious to see how the recreation of Snowfall will go since it seems very intense, but I think it will turn out well with all of the group's help. Lauryn is the writer, Grace is the videographer, Gabby is the wildcard, and I am the graphic designer. So far I am really enjoying the book. It is not a hard read and is very easy to get sucked into. I don't think it will take very long at all to read. I enjoy being able to do the picture notes about the book because it is easier to visualize for me and I like to be able to see what my partners think about certain parts of the book as well. Going into this week, I really had no idea what a pecha kucha presentation was. We were able to watch some people's presentations from years past to get a feel for what we would be beginning to work on. There were five main points we had to answer in our paper and in our presentation. Those main points were: what was my subject and why did I want to explore it?, what did these authors say about this subject?, what interesting similarities and differences did I notice?, how do these authors’ ideas about this subject compare with my own?, what did I realize, or learn, that surprised me most about this subject after exploring it for a trimester? I have finished the paper part of the project and am now focusing on the actually presentations and choosing pictures that fit the mood I am trying to portray. It is important to match pictures with the tone of your presentation because people will assume certain things when first looking at the pictures, without hearing what you have say. You want them to be assuming things that go along with the theme and not something way far off. I am excited to learn this new form of presentation and see how everyone else in the class deals with it and how they take advantage of the material we are learning as well. This link includes some frequently asked questions about pecha kucha and what it really is http://www.pechakucha.org/faq At the beginning of this week we began by two extra days of workshops to work on our videos. I had already finished mine the week before so, I didn't really have much to do for those first few days. After additional days of working on our videos and making sure they were uploaded to YouTube, we all sat down as a class to watch everyone's final This I Believe videos. We were able to watch videos from people in both hours of the class and I liked that because I was able to hear from people that I don't see everyday and I was able to learn a little bit more about them. Seeing the direction everyone went with their videos was very interesting because everyone's was a little different. Personally, I liked the videos that had personal pictures in it so it was more intimate with the presenter. In my video, I tried to change the pictures often and use a variety of stock footage to make sure the audience didn't get bored while watching. I tried to use pictures that the class would find entertaining and funny from my past. I wasn't here when the class watched my video, but I like to think that everyone enjoyed it and liked hearing my story. The website I used the most to collect my free stock footage was https://videos.pexels.com/ . I found it was really easy to navigate and had a really good variety of videos. This week we worked on putting the finishing touches on our This I Believe projects. personally, I recorded my voice, collected images and videos to use in my video, and began putting the video together. I used the program Adobe Premier Pro to work on my video because that is the program that I am most comfortable with for working with it in my digital media class. I collected various stock footage from different websites and looked through my old pictures to figure out which ones I wanted to use. The most difficult part was finding footage that made sense with what I was saying but also looked good and matched the tone of the video that I was intending. I found the website called Pexels the most helpful, as they had a variety of categories and endless videos you could browse through and download. After finishing putting my video together, I showed it to my mom and she ended up crying while watching it. I also had many of friends look over it before I called it finished so I could get constructive criticism from them and make sure the video was to the standard that I wanted it to be. I am really happy with how it turned out and it was just as I imagined it to be. I really enjoyed this project because I was able to release my creativity as well as share a personal story of mine to the whole class. This is the link to the final video that I created: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJkNz_jrU_A We began the week by talking about a new project we will be taking on. This I Believe. We were able to chose from a selection of TED talks to listen to that gave tips about telling a story to your audience effectively. The one I watched was about using media to appeal to all senses and the speaker focused mostly on comic books because he was a comic book artist. I believe watching these and hearing about the other TED talks from the class provided me with really good tips I can incorporate into my project and telling my story. Choosing the story I was going to tell and the belief I feel strongly about was hard for me at first. I couldn't think of a story from my life that was significant enough to share or something that people would actually care about. It was also to think of a belief to talk about just because there are so many to choose from. Eventually, after talking to my mom I figured out exactly what to do. I will be writing the story about when I moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Mt. Pleasant. It was a big change for me and I'm not a huge fan of change. For this reason, the belief I incorporated into it was that change is good and van lead to a happier life. If you don't know what This I Believe really is, this link provides great examples of some essays: http://www.hasd.org/faculty/KristineCompton/This%20I%20Believe%20Sample%20Essays.pdf This week we focused a lot on a new topic that brought some thought and concern to a lot of the class considering most people our age spend a lot of time on the internet. We close read two articles about how websites are able to take the information you enter into their website, analyze it, and follow your actions on the internet with it. They can even have access to medical and financial information that you might not even know that they have. This has become a concern with many people because the websites are most of the time doing this without the customer even knowing, which can be considered an invasion of privacy. In class we were to pick a side of the argument, if we thought the government should be doing a better job of making sure citizens are getting the privacy they deserve. We read the articles, close read them and took notes, and discussed with partners in order to get a handle on which side of the argument we wanted to take. The internet is a scary place and is never as private as you think. Pretty much anyone can see anything you put up online and nothing is ever really permanently deleted. This also makes the internet a scary place and everyone should make sure to think twice before posting something online. This article tells about how you can help protect your online privacy: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052813/3-essential-techniques-to-protect-your-online-privacy.html In the recent weeks, we have been writing our critical theory essays and working on our presentations to go along with those essays. This week were able to sit and listen to each presentation about the chosen critical theory topic and either the play Macbeth or King Lear. Something I found very interesting about listening to the presentations was the fact that multiple theories were able to go with each play and even the same theories were able to match both plays in an accurate way. I enjoyed being able to listen to everyone's different interpretations of the different theories and listen to how the group thought it was incorporated into the play. In our presentation, we focused on Edmund and how he grew and who he became throughout the play while also focusing on the philosophical aspects of the play. This link includes the character analysis of Edmund throughout King Lear: http://www.shmoop.com/king-lear/edmund.html I think being able to listen to the songs people matched up with the play gave a really good idea of the parts they were talking about. It made it easier to connect and understand what the play was really about and it also made explaining it a little easier. As this was our first week back from winter break, we were able to use it to remember what we have been working on and what was happening in the class before we left. Before break, we were mainly working on our Shakespearean Drama Project. When we came back, we began to actually work on our presentations and started to write our paper. We were able to do this by going off of our proposal that we starts before break and the Cornell Notes we took about King Lear. I think we chose a good theory that goes well with the play because there is a lot of good information and examples from the play that we are able to look at to incorporate into our paper. We had a Shakespeare professor come in to talk to us and she shared some really good ideas with our group about what we can include. She pointed out key scenes and characters that would help us develop our ideas. I think hearing her input was really helpful along with the fact that we were reassured by her that what we had so far was good and correct. This link contains information about what Shakespeare's central philosophy is http://lithub.com/what-was-shakespeares-central-philosophy/ A final thing we did this week was the Poem of the Week. The poems this week were about spring and differing attitudes about the coming of the season. Personally, the poems were a little hard to think about and understand at first but after hearing other people's ideas and interpretations of the poem, I was able to better understand what they were about and create my own interpretation of them. I think it's interesting how different authors can have such different ways about writing about the same subject. |
Lydia MillerArchives
April 2017
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