Week 2 Reflection

Last week was a good week. By that, I mean that I was able to complete my research and I have learned so much from it, more than I had expected. Before this project, I hadn't thought too much about how diverse the ideas on apathy and society were. I went into this project with a pre-existing idea of why I thought apathy existed, how affected people, what to do etc. I honestly thought that most of the research that I was going to do would just confirm or reinforce the ideas that I had already thought of myself. I was shocked when I heard or read some of the completely different ideas were out there. Not to say that I completely agree with all of them, but I think that this research has helped me to remember to have an open mind of the different ideas and theories of other people. Hearing some of these ideas that were contrasting to mine also helped me to rethink why I believed in what I believed in and to consider different points of view.

My main task for this week has been to work on the video. Upon my first look at after effects, I was a little bit intimidated by all of the different buttons and gadgets that were available to me. I tried a number of different methods when it came to learning how to use it, but I found that the best way for me was to simply practice and try things out. My main "teacher" for this editor (After Effects) was assorted Youtube clips with step by step instructions on how to do things as well as different variations and approaches to different techniques. I found that as I learned new things, I had a lot more fun doing my video.

     I think that the hardest part of making the video is just figuring out what to put in the video itself. I used cue cards to map out all of the possible scenes and then organized, added, and deleted cards as I saw the need to. I tried to incorporate all of my research on apathy and leadership into the video, but it was pretty difficult! I had some challenges deciding what was best to keep and what I shouldn't. I think that my indecisiveness came mostly from my desire to make the video the best that it can possible be. While it isn't a bad thing to take your time to make decisions, I think that there is a certain point when you need to draw the line and decide. In the end, I came up with a video outline that I think delivers my message well, even if it is a little bit cheesy ;)

Now, I am working on the animating of the video. While it has not been too difficult, it is very time consuming. I think that I need to be careful to manage my time wisely so that I will have time to complete it well.

Week 1 Reflection

I have decided to write this out as a post on the blog, despite the fact that my proposal stated that I would be using a journal. I do have a journal with my reflections in it, but with all of my scribbles and arrows, it isn't very easy to read. If you would like, I can post pictures for you to see, but for now I am just planning to write out my "good copy", here.

     I would like to start with the fact that I am very excited about this project. I know this will be our last one, and I am hoping to do something with my project that will make it a good ending to this course. As I mentioned in my proposal, my project is on the apathetic mentality of our society.

      For our proposals, I really enjoyed the new format that we tried, where we were able to pitch our project to a mini group. This more formal setting helped me to take the pitch more seriously and to put some preparation and thought into my pitch. Not to say that our proposal conference didn't require any planning, but the it did seem less formal. However, one of my favourite parts about the conference was the question and comment period after. Admittedly, I was a little bit nervous about this as I wasn't sure what questions would be asked or how I should answer them. Also, Ms Morrisette was in my group, which is pretty intimidating in itself ;). I didn't end up presenting due to an appointment that I had that day, but I learned a lot from watching other people answer questions. Some of the questions that my classmates were asked were difficult, and what I learned by watching people answer them was how to remain calm and take some time to think out a logical answer instead of scrambling for words and filling pauses with "um" and "uh".

     When it came time for my own presentation, I was less nervous than I had been the other day because I had an idea of how it would be. Nonetheless, there were certain questions that made me think for a little bit. I found that my challenge was not necessarily not having an answer, but not knowing how to fully articulate it. Ultimately, it is something that I still struggle with a little bit today. I think that the solution (or something that helps at least) is just practice and as I mentioned before, to just try and think through your thoughts a moment before you say them.

     This week I have started with research component of my project. I have seen a numerous amount of TED talks (eg. Simon Sinek: Start with Why, Dave Meslin: Antidote to Apathy), as well as read multiple articles in books and online. I was a little bit surprised at how many new things that I got from the things that I had already read or seen before. As an example, I have seen this particular Simon Sinek talk multiple times before (both in class and at home) and wasn't expecting too much out of it. However, I ended up noticing many things that I hadn't necessarily payed close attention to before. I was curious as to why this was. Did I just not pay too much attention before or was there another reason? Admittedly, as I repeatedly watched this video throughout my school year, I began to lose interest in it, so this could have been part of the reason. I think that the main reason though, was because I had a different mindset when I was watching the video this time. When I was doing my research, I was specifically looking for ways to make my video more persuasive, inspiring, interesting etc. So when I saw all of the different ways that Simon Sinek's ideas could apply directly to my video, I looked deeper and more intensely into the video than I had previously.

    I haven't yet started with the actual making of my video, but I plan to start later in the week. I am excited, though a bit anxious, to see how it will turn out.

Project 2 Presentation

As I have mentioned before, I had decided to try a new method of presentation called kinetic typography. I hope that you enjoy and feel free to leave questions and comments. Thank you!

PS. Sorry about the minute of blank video at the end :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH5he4fdaw8&feature=youtu.be

Project 2 Process

Project Proposal

http://talissasprojectdesignblog.blogspot.ca/2014/06/project-proposal-2.html

Research
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NPiDVfvCEYMH0PBmj2QmBm1XAp8j4yAamOy-o4Mv1Js/edit?usp=sharing

Rubric
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b9VOduRbK-KiHFlzXFLFno4RIs8FQo8xp-Qlpkaq_Hg/edit?usp=sharing

Pictures From Process

These photos show the video layout plan. There are 3 different versions that I came up with. I ended up choosing the middle one.

Final Weekly Reflection

1. My first big "take away" was keeping calm when things go wrong. I've mentioned this multiple times in previous posts, but I am what you would call a perfectionist. When issues came up in the editing of our video, I'm not going to lie- I was pretty panicked. Thankfully, Andrew was very calm in all of these situations and his attitude encouraged me to stop worrying and focus on coming up with solutions. Being stressed when things go wrong doesn't help me to come up with solutions, and likely doesn't help the people that you are working with either (haha, sorry Andrew). This lesson will hopefully improve my collaboration skills, so that I can more effectively work with others (and on my own) to problem solve in the future.

     My second biggest learning was in my communication skills. We both had some miscommunications during our time working with each other. One example was when Andrew thought that we were presenting our project to only our class, while I was under the impression that we were presenting to another class as well. Thankfully, we caught it in time, otherwise this could have lead to other issues down the road. I think that we were both a little bit surprised that we had had such a miscommunication. We talked quite a bit, and thought that we were both on the same page. So how had we ended up having such different ideas of what we were doing? I think that this happened because when we talked, we would discuss what we were doing or where we were going without double checking to make sure that we had both come to the same conclusion or that we had heard everything correctly. This mistake helped us both to remember to clarify and confirm our plans in the future. I think that this will not just help me in future projects, but whenever I am talking with other people in general.

2.One of our biggest challenges was definitely during the editing of our video. We were using a new editor that neither of us were familiar with, so we didn't anticipate some of the little "quirks" that it had. To name a couple examples, it wouldn't accept certain images and it had a very large watermark that appeared in the middle of the published video. The second issue was pretty easy to solve. We were able to find a solution relatively easily. However, the first issue required a little bit more thinking. We had to consider all of our options (eg. changing the format, not including the images at all etc) and try and choose the one that would be best for our project. In the end, we decided that the images were essential to the video and Andrew used another software to convert the file into one that would be acceptable to our editor. I learned a bit about how to convert files and what to do in this sort of situation, but beyond that I learned about finding creative solutions to issues instead of just "googling" what to do. Although it was a bit nerve wracking at the time, I am very glad that we got to work through all of our issues together because it will be a great help in future problem solving.

3.

a) During our "Dream it" stage, I think that we worked fairly well. We came up with our proposal very efficiently and collaborated equally throughout. When it comes to the quality of our proposal, I think that it was pretty good for the most part. We were missing a couple of small things (eg. how we were going to document our process),but once it was pointed out, it was easily added. Other than that, our proposal was fairly detailed and had some good thought and depth in it.

b) For the "Do it" stage, we had both good and bad moments. We got our research done ahead of schedule and we found it to be thorough and complete as well. However, after that we did get a little bit distracted and didn't make as much progress as we should have in the next few days, but we did get back on track once we realized how much time we were wasting. During this process, we did have a few communication errors (mainly regarding the method of presentation), but thankfully they were caught before any major setbacks occurred. I found that we worked very well together as partners and I learned a lot from working with Andrew!

c) As I mentioned in my last post, I have looked back to find that a lot of my reflections are more a description of what I did with some reflections mixed into it. Although I don't necessarily think that it's a bad think to recount what you did, I would have liked to see more reflection involved. Something that I have also noticed about my reflections is the length. Again, this isn't a bad thing as long as I remember quality over quantity (which I don't always, but I'm working on it :)) However, the length has allowed for most of my reflections to be very detailed and thorough. The "reflection" parts of my reflections were generally pretty thoughtful. I know I put my best effort in all of my reflections.

d) The video in our presentation was not as good as we would have hoped. It had multiple issues with it that resulted in it not being as convincing as we had planned (eg. watermark, mismatched speech). Once the video was done, we did a better job with the prezi portion. Our prezi looked pretty good and for the most part we had our presentation memorized. We looked pretty at ease while we were presenting, though I think that a few of our points were a little bit confusing and could have been made clearer. However, I think that the best part of presentation was the discussion afterwards. I liked how we both had equal opportunity to answer questions. I find that it is sometimes hard to equally divide an unplanned portion of a presentation, but I think that we did it pretty well. Thinking about the answers that we gave, for the most part we answered the questions well. Although not every answer was perfect, I know that we tried to the best of our abilities to give complete and detailed answers for each question. I also liked how we kept the focus on our project instead of trailing off ( though not all tangents are bad) because it helped us to be able to answer as many questions about our project as possible.

e) When I think about our original purpose for the project, which was to bring awareness to the influence in media, I feel that we accomplished what we set out to do. Did everything turn out exactly the way we had planned? No, but I think that the details of what we did matter less (though not unimportant) as long as we fulfilled our intention. All of the challenges that we had along the way helped us to learn and grow from our mistakes so that we could do better in the future. 

Maker Faire?

Hi Talissa
Hope you get to the Maker Faire and if you do take pictures so I can see what it is all about!

Have a great weekend!

Ms Lees

Project Proposal #2

What:

      The topic of my project is the  "I don't care" or apathetic mentality of today's society. For the first part, I plan to do some research on what it is, why it exists, and how it affects today's society. I already have a few books in minds that would help me with my research (eg. Free the Children by Craig and Marc Kielburger) as well as a handful of TED talks and videos.

    I am trying a new method of presenting my research to the class. Thinking back to last semester's English class, I remember one student doing their genius hour project on kinetic typography. This is essentially the coordination of animated words to an audio of a  preset presentation. When I saw the result of his project, it looked very professional and clean, as well as interesting to watch. I plan to use Adobe After Effects to create this video, which I have already downloaded.

Why:

       I am passionate about this topic because I think that this mentality is at the root of a lot of the issues within today's society. Issues such as the environment (just as an example) are worsened because people don't think that it will affect them of they don't think that they can make a difference. Therefore, if we were to try and change this, it would help improve a lot of different aspects of our community and society.

I chose to do a kinetic typography video because it is something that is new and it's something that I am interested in trying. I think that it is something that is creative and has the ability to engage people in a way that is different to typical presentation methods.

Documentation
     I am going to record my process in a journal/scrapbook. I will do my weekly reflections inside it and post pictures of it on my blog. 

Timeline:

Research will be done in the first 2-3 days. In the remaining days, I will work on my presentation.

Project #1 Process

Original Project Proposal: 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L0mn_4w6j0wOoJA74Dkuu7BgR6vKI42dV0nXr_W6kyw/edit

Research:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DMGPiYM-XPq2kkbPnCDEh7q4eMefbNv6MHSV8r8jmBY/edit?usp=sharing

Video Outline
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f_aYZhJ59pFwHBeB0eN4WhV4U5ILrsEg-Sa_4McKCas/edit?usp=sharing

Prezi:
http://prezi.com/7dnewc5x2wer/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Peer Review
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Lj2jc0fFnT_uvj4msQP2ZIhBLU5tcmAXVpG4Nx3lI1o/edit?usp=sharing


I don't think that I'm missing anything, but if I am then let me know :)

Creativity in Education

     What is creativity? I would define creativity as producing ideas that are new and different from what already exists or making new connections between pre-existing ideas. Creativity is something that I feel is essential to education, in order for it to be effective. In traditional schooling, assessments for students are more content based. Although the content is important, it doesn't always apply to life outside school; where the ability to think sets you apart from the many other people who got straight A's in school. Therefore, if we want school to really do what it was meant to do, then being creative is something that should not just be encouraged, but should be made a priority.

       On the bell curve, I would personally put myself somewhere between the early and late majority. I feel that I am not the first to catch on to these new ideas, but tend to hear about and catch on to these new ideas once they have already been tried out by others. In regards to Fraser Heights, I would also put them somewhere in between the early and late majority, but leaning slightly towards the early. There are definitely teachers in Fraser Heights that are ahead on the curve and always looking for new and creative ideas on how to teach students, however there are other teachers that prefer to stick with the more traditional ways of teaching. Also, I think that sometimes even the teachers that are trying these new ways of teaching are, in some ways, still stuck on the traditional ways of teaching. To clarify, I mean that they encourage creativity, but within certain boundaries. In most classes, all students are instructed to do their project using one certain method. Although the vessel for the project may be considered "creative", it doesn't always get students to be creative if it is forced upon them. Another factor that contributes to the placement of our school is that Fraser Heights seems to be willing to try new things to improve and update the learning of their students (eg. As a district, I would probably also put it in between the early and late majority, but leaning towards the late. From the little bits and pieces that I have heard of from friends at other schools, I feel that there is some effort made by certain schools to make strides towards a creative learning style. However, there are still many schools where it is mainly curriculum based learning. Finally, I would put Ms Lees as an early adapter. She is always looking for new ways to improve, update and encourage creativity in our learning. Granted, these ideas are mainly from others, which is why I would put her here as opposed to an innovator. Of course not all of the ideas succeed, but Ms Lees is constantly learning from her mistakes to improve her decisions in the future.

Weekly Reflection #4

     As one of the last reflections for this project, I would like to start off by reflecting on my reflections. Doing these reflections on the blogs remind me of the ones that I did for grade 8 Humanities. A few days ago, I found one of my old posts. As I was reading it, I remember myself thinking that the more I write, the better my post will be. Looking back on what I have written in the past, the first thing I notice is that I write a lot. This can be good, or it can just be long and wordy. The majority of my past entries for this project have been more updates on our progress, with some reflection. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, as I feel that details are important. However, I would like to incorporate some more reflection into these updates for my next project.

     Last week, we did our peer review. I will admit, I was a little bit skeptical about it to begin with because many peer reviews that I've experienced mainly consist of people saying "Good job", with not a lot of real feedback. This time, I was pleasantly surprised by it. At first, our peer review started off as more of an interview than as a discussion, but as we got more comfortable, the discussion came more naturally. We gained a lot of valuable feedback from the peer review. Although obviously won't use all of it, it was great to hear what other people had to say. If you would like to see the notes that we collected, here is a link to it.

     For the past few days, Andrew and I have focused on the video to get it done and to make it the best it can be. When it comes to editing, as I have mentioned before, it has been challenging. We have encountered multiple different issues in terms of effects, images, and the flow of our video. For these reasons, we decided that it would be best top postpone the date of our presentation so that we could have time to try and improve it. Looking at our video now, I am a bit concerned because currently,  it isn't as good as I had hoped. However, there is still time to improve it. We have been working on the video as much as we can to make it the best it can be.

     When I think about our project as a whole, I am proud of all of the things that I have learned along the way. Some things may not have turned out exactly the way that we had planned, as we changed our plans multiple times along the way, but I think that I have learned more from this project than from a lot of other projects that have gone according to plan. Not to say that it isn't a lot easier when things work out the way they were planned to, but I think that when you make mistakes, it allows for unexpected learning.

      I am excited to finish this project and start my next one!

Weekly Reflection #3

    Last week, we got quite a bit done. We were able to complete our filming, as planned. However, we decided that instead of using Mr Milross for the interview in our video, we chose to use my dad instead. I think that the reason for our change was mostly for convenience of both ourselves and  the person that we were interviewing. As a teacher, Mr Milross likely has a very busy schedule. Although he was willing to help us, we knew that filming can be a lengthy process and difficult to fit into a busy schedule. Therefore, we thought that a good alternative was to use my dad for the interview instead. My dad was very happy to do it and we had a lot of fun filming. For the purposes of our video and in the interest of making the interviewee seem more believable, we had my dad pretend to have a PhD.Thankfully, filming went very well for all of the elements of our video and we were able to finish all of it by Wednesday.

     The efficient filming allowed us to focus our remaining time on our presentation and the editing of our video. We decided to try a presentation format called Keynote because it was something that was new to both of us. On Thursday, we started making our Keynote presentation. Upon looking at it, I was a bit concerned, as it seemed to be a bit dry.  However, we planned to edit and embellish it more at home. Once I got home though, I found out that  keynote costs $9.99; which is a little more than I wanted to spend on this app. I'm not sure why it costed money for me, as  it was free for Andrew. Either way, we decided that we had to take our presentation in yet another direction. We decided to use prezi, as it is something that I have never used before. Our goal was to try and avoid platforms that we were both already comfortable with (eg. PowerPoint) and to push ourselves to try new things.

     While we worked out our issues with the presentation fairly quickly, we had a few more issues when it came to the editing of our video.  The editor that we're using is called AVS Editor. Andrew thought that this would be the best method, as it is free to download, so that we could both have it. Andrew started off the editing and quickly ran into some issues. Admittedly, I was concerned when Andrew said that he had run into some stumbling blocks. Obviously, the video is a very important part of our project and we wanted it to be as professional as possible. However, I have found that worrying and panicking over the challenges that we may have prevents me from moving to find a solution. It can be hard not to be stressed over these things, but spending time stressing more often adds to the problem than it creates a solution.

     Going back to our video, we found out that we couldn't insert some of our videos or add any charts, graphs, or diagrams as we had hoped to. Since these are elements that are essential to our project, we had to come up with some creative solutions to this. Andrew came up with the solution to use Windows Movie Maker to convert these files into something that would be compatible with AVS.

     As of now, we are finished with our prezi (YAY) and are about halfway done with the editing of the video. We are practicing our presentation in class and working on the video at home. I think that we've both learned a lot from using this new editor, though I don't think that it is my favourite to use. However, it is good to be able to adapt to new ways of doing things. I have learned a lot about video- making and the different medias that are involved in this process- which is part of my goal for the project. My movie making skills still aren't great, but I have a basic understanding of it to use for future projects or jobs.

      This week, we are also preparing for our peer review. Since our video is not ready and we would like to keep it from the class, our goal for the peer review is to get specific feedback and suggestions regarding our video and presentation.  We plan to show our reviewers our presentation and give them a rough idea of what our video is about.

Weekly Reflection #2

     This past week, I was away in Ottawa for a program called Encounters with Canada. Although it was an amazing experience, it meant that I was not in class to work on my project with Andrew. Obviously, the separation can present an issue when it comes to the progress that is made, as it is a group project. Before I left, Andrew and I did make some plans as to how we would communicate. We stayed in touch via Facebook during the week. As mentioned in my previous reflection, we decided that Andrew would work on the Powerpoint for our presentation and we would then start filming once I got back.

      During the week, I tried my best to stay in touch and get updates on whatever was going on. My week was pretty busy, so our conversations were rather brief and didn't happen often. Because we didn't talk to often, I think that we should've made the conversations more efficient, as I feel that the updates were a little bit vague and too general. I think that this is partially to do with the fact that I often didn't think about talking to Andrew until I had minimal free time left, thus making our conversations rushed with not too much thought put into it. 

       Our conversations mainly consisted of a rough status update on our project and a list of what needed to be done from that point. Over the week, Andrew gathered and organised points for our presentation. He had planned to put it on a Powerpoint, but didn't have time to do it. Unfortunately, we haven't made as much progress as we thought we would last week. Thankfully, because we were ahead of schedule before, we aren't behind schedule from this setback. However, I would have rather seen our extra time spent on putting extra details into our project rather than making up missed work. 

      Another thing that we encountered upon our conversation when I came back to school was a miscommunication. I was under the impression that we were planning to present our project to another class as well as our own, while Andrew thought that we were just presenting to our class. I think that the source of error was not really from a lack of communication, but more of an unclear communication of details. I am glad that we caught this mix up early rather than later, as it could have lead to bigger issues down the road. In the end, we decided that presenting to our class only wouldn't be the best idea because they already have a rough idea of the topic of our project- which would make trying to convince them that our video is legitimate more difficult. We also decided that it may be too much of a disruption to present to another class, as it would take up class time and interrupt the class. So, we would like to ask Ms Lees if she could send out a link to our project via twitter and then have the recipients fill out a brief survey that would give us an idea of how much the audience believed. 

     Upon seeing the previous miscommunication, it made us wonder if any other details had been missed or confused. So we went through our plan again, to make sure that we were both on the same page (which we were) . In the future, I will be sure to confirm what I am understanding with Andrew and not just make assumptions that what I think is right. This issue something that has occured in previous projects, though not too often. This situation has made me more aware of it and will help me in the future; not only in school projects, but in other situations when I am talking with groups as well. 

     Our plan for this week is to start filming, as previously discussed. I am excited about some of the details that we have added into our video, which will make our video more fun to create, but also more believable. Of course, I am a little bit anxious to see how the video turns out and to see how the audience will react to it, as it is not something that I've done before. However, I think that trying new things and stepping out of your comfort zone is how you can learn more about yourself and how you can grow yourself in different areas. Once we are done the project, I am curious to see what other unexpected things that I will have gained from doing this project and working with Andrew. 

Weekly Reflection #1

     I am very excited that we are now starting our personal projects! As we have begun to make progress in our project, we have already had to make some changes and adjustments to our original proposal idea. Very early on in the project, Andrew and I realized that presenting our video to our class may not be too effective, as many people in the class know the topic of our project. This awareness might bring some bias while we are showing the video to the class. We made the decision to present to another class instead, as they will not have the previous knowledge that may make them more easily aware that the video is a propaganda. To recap on our progress thus far, we have completed our research and have moved on to the planning stage of the video that we will be creating.
   
     We are currently ahead of schedule, as the research on propaganda did not take the 7 days that we had planned for. We did allow seven days to leave room for error as well as to make sure our research is thorough and extensive. However, I think that the main reason why we are ahead is mostly because of the overestimation of how long it would take for us to research rather than our own efficiency. In the future, I will take more care to make more realistic projections of a timeline for my projects. Nonetheless, we do have more time than we had thought we would. This is allowing us to put further care and details into the planning of our video.
   
     When Andrew and I first started planning our video, we didn't have many concrete ideas as to what we were going to do. The ideas that we had were pretty vague and broad.  We had ideas such as "make a commercial" or "make a documentary", so although we did have ideas, they weren't very concrete or complete. In retrospect though, I am glad that we got some ideas down instead of waiting for the perfect one to come, as I have done in the past. My frame of mind that tells me that everything needs to be perfect is something that I have been working on overcoming. Not to say that having high standards is a bad thing, but not progressing because I am too focused on the tiny details can hinder my performance in the long run.
   
     During the brainstorming days, some lack of focus occurred for various reasons. Sometimes, I find that I can be easily distracted, especially when I have other things going on in my life (eg. tests, clubs etc.) . It can be difficult to focus when I have other things to think about, but I need to remember to remind myself that thinking about upcoming things too much can keep me from getting things done in the present.

     Once we had a little bit more time to think about what we wanted to do with the video, we were able to narrow it down some more. We have decided to do a documentary-style video based on a fake news article that we read. We plan to utilize some of the techniques that are used in propaganda in our video. One of these techniques is getting a testimony fro a "trustworthy" source. In today's media, these sources are generally celebrities, but we are planning on using a teacher for our video. This will hopefully help us to demonstrate that even the things that "trustworthy" people say aren't always completely true.

      Our current plans are to finalize the details of the video, such as the software that we will use to create it and finding appropriate places to film. We have already talked to some teachers about being in our video and presenting to their class when the video is finished. So far, the teachers have been very willing to help.  We have discussed the fact that I will not be in class next week and have decided that Andrew will work on our presentation after the video and we will start filming when I get back. We have found ways to communicate while I am away as well so that I can be updated on the progress of the project and I can have some input as well.

     In general, I am pleased with how our project is going. There were some challenges that we had to overcome, but they help us to not make the same mistakes in the future. I am looking forward to filming our video and am excited to see the outcome of it.

     

Comments On Mr Solarz' Class Projects

1. Jack and Justin's Slot Machine
http://psolarz.weebly.com/156/post/2014/03/can-we-research-the-history-of-slot-machine-and-build-one.html#comments

2.Sam and Luke's John Hancock Building
http://psolarz.weebly.com/156/post/2014/02/can-we-create-the-john-hancock-and-make-a-google-presentation-with-facts-luke-d-and-sam-k.html#comments

Problem Based Project Reflection

     For my problem based project, I , like the majority of the class, decided to work on promoting the course in an effort to get its numbers up for next year.  At the beginning of the project, the team was a little bit unfocused, which lead to not a lot of work being done before spring break. However, once the tight timeline caught up to us after spring break, we began to work more efficiently on the project.

     I was mainly involved in 2 components of the  project: poster making and presenting to classes. During the poster making project, I am proud to say that the drafting of the poster went quite smoothly and efficiently. The efficiency was something that I feel was important, especially given our timeline, though the posters did feel unfinished to me. Had we been given more time, then I would have done them differently, but again with the time we had they turned out okay. I enjoyed being able to work well with someone that I didn't know too well, as I have occasionally found this to be a struggle for me in the past. I was happy to see that a lot of other people came in on their lunch time to help colour posters and hang them up later. The willingness for our class to go above and beyond what was expected of them is something that I think to be crucial for the project to have a chance at being successful.

    However, there were a few complications and mis-communications that occurred during the hanging of the posters. The first complication was the course change deadline. As the course promotion happened "last minute", the deadline for changing courses came at an earlier date than we had hoped. Due to this, we had to change the date of our lunchtime info-session to an earlier date to accommodate this. Unfortunately, the posters had already been printed with the original date on them. We came up with the solution to simply manually change all of the dates on the posters. However, due to a mis-communication on my part, some of the posters ended up being changed to the wrong date. This reminded me to be very clear about what I am saying when I am giving out information in the future. Once this mistake was discovered, we went back and double checked all the posters for the right date and changed the dates that were incorrect. Although this part of the project didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped, we had the benefit of being able to see the mistakes that we made and to learn from them in the future. This series of challenges also helped us to develop skills in problem solving, particularly when we had to decide how to fix our information session.

     The second part of the project that I was involved in was presenting our course to classes in the school. I am not going to lie, I was definitely nervous. This was mostly because I had to present in front of so many people, but I felt that it was important to take part in this aspect of the project and to push myself when I'm uncomfortable. During group discussion, I felt that I was definitely quieter than I should have been. I feel that this was mainly because I wasn't 100% confident in my ideas and the perfectionist in me made me feel that I needed to be absolutely sure of what I was saying. As the project continued, I did speak more, but not to the level that I would have hoped. This experience encourages me to try and speak more in the future and helps to remind me to let my ideas out without always having all the details worked out. It is something that I am working on and will continue to work on in the future.

     In terms of the actual presentation, I think that it went better than I had expected. When I say this, I mean that I ended up being less nervous than I had felt in the previous days. During our first presentation, I was nervous, but as we progressed in our presentation and had done it a few times, I felt that I had a better idea of what to say and I felt more comfortable doing it. Perhaps if I were to practice my presentation more, then the nervousness would be lessened even more. I found that not all of the classes were interested in the course, as was expected, but I was glad to see that some classes took the opportunity to ask questions and found an interest in what the course had to offer. I noticed that there seemed to be more interest in the younger grades than the older grades.
   

PDD Project Rubric

Here is a link to the google doc with our rubric.


https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ynvIrXb-qXKxCMYIaft0Puq9wqMf13wbN-bR2dC645w/edit?usp=sharing

Me and Andrew's Project Design Proposal

What:

    We want to do a project on propagandas: how images, videos, and the media give you biased information that affects how you think and behave. We want to find out how much we can be influenced on both a conscious and subconscious level. Our project would consist of us creating a documentary-style video that gives biased information, but will hopefully persuade the audience to believe it's true. Once we have finished, we will reveal that the whole thing was a propaganda and explain what propagandas are and how they work.
 
We want to do this project because we want to reveal how the media is constantly influencing us and how we blindly believe the things that we are told or shown without any research or evidence to support it. This project helps us develop new skills in video-making and this project falls into the “social” category, as we are educating our peers about today's media. Our target audience will be our peers. We hope to present the video to other classes as well because they don’t know about our project topic whereas the students in the Project Design class might.

How:

    We gave our project a good amount of time to allow for mistakes and changes.

- making the video: 7 days

- research: 7 days

- making video explanation: 1 day

- making/practicing  presentation: 3 days

- making prezi: 2 days

Total: 20 days

Video: false/biased scientific fact

Recording: We plan to record our process in a written format.

Redesigning the Gift Giving Process Reflection

*DUE TO TECHNICAL ISSUES, I HAD TO MAKE THE VOLUME OF THE ACTUAL VIDEO LOWER. YOU MAY NEED TO TURN UP YOUR VOLUME TO BE ABLE TO HEAR. THANKS!*

     At first, I wasn't excited about doing an audio visual presentation because it was something that I didn't do that often.  Doing this project helped me to push myself to learn more about different apps (iMovie). It also made me try something new instead of just staying with what I know and am comfortable with. I still don't necessarily think that it's my favourite method to present with, however I appreciate the new experience with a method that may help me in the future.
.

Concentric Circles Reflection

     One if my favourite activities that we did last week was the concentric circles exercise. In this activity, we got a partner and set ourselves up so that on partner was standing in an outer circle and the second partner was standing in a circle inside the outer circle. We were set up similar to a doughnut. Ms Lees gave us a topic to discuss with the partner that we were standing with and a time limit of 2 minutes. These topics covered things such as our fears, secret activities, and aspirations. Once the time was up, the inner circle rotated one partner to the right ( I think ) and started a conversation with their new partner on a new topic. We repeated these steps around 10 times.

     I liked this activity the most because it helped me to get to know some of the people in the class a little bit better. It also helped me because it made talk and speak up, something that I sometimes don't do to much of. Only talking to one other person made the situation seem more approachable and easier to do. It made me open up to people a little bit more because the questions were more personal, which I think was good for me. Coming up with answers to the questions helped me to think more about who I am and it was interesting to hear everyone else's answers too.

     The purpose of this activity was for us to "break the ice" and start getting a bit more familiar with each other, but it also helped us to think a little bit more about ourselves and what we think and believe. One of the harder questions for me was something along the lines of "Where do you want to go after high school?" To be honest I had to think to myself a bit because I wasn't too sure. After doing this activity, it helped me to realize a bit more of what I want to do after graduation. 

Meyer's Briggs Personality Test Reflection

Reflection Questions

1. What were your 2 main personality types and what do they reveal about you? What did the test reveal about yourself?
     My main two personality types ISFJ and ISTJ.  My primary personality, ISFJ, means that I am interested in knowledge and experience, especially in regards to family and friends.I am a quiet and serious observer of people, listening intently and getting to know a lot about them. I pay attention to other people's emotions and feelings, and am generally aware of the state of relationships between them and I take my responsibilities to them very seriously. My secondary personality is ISTJ. This means that I am interested in clarity and knowledge, kind of similar to my primary personality. I like to observe and listen, and have a particular interest in facts which help me to develop as clear a knowledge as possible. I like to know where I stand, meaning that I have clear goals that I work towards, and to know that what I are expected to do is achievable. I value my experience, and it plays a large role in my decision making.

2. Were there any surprises?  Or do you agree or disagree with the initial snapshot ?  Explain with examples from your life experience to support.
     To be honest, I wasn't overly surprised by my results. I agree with the result that they gave, I find it almost scary how accurate that it can be. From the start, I knew that I was an introvert. Both in class and outside of school, I tend to be more quiet, preferring to just listen rather than lead the conversation. I like thinking and reflecting in my head and on my own. One thing that stood out to me about my results is that I pay attention to the feelings and emotions of others. I had never really thought about myself like that, but I think that I always try my best to be aware about others because I believe that it is one of the most vital things that helps me to collaborate and work with others.

3. How might the MMDI Personality test be helpful to you in our course? in life?
     During this course, there will be times in the future where we will be collaborating and working with others. Knowing both our own personality types and the personality types of the others in our class can help us to understand each other's personalities, as well as help us find people who we may work well with. This sort of self awareness can help me when I'm dealing with people in the future because I have an idea of who I work best.

4. Look at the picture of the class results.  Make comments or observations – what surprises you? what do you think our collective results reveal about us as a group and how might the results help or hinder us in future projects this term?
     The results show how diverse we are as a class! I will admit that I was a little bit surprised the amount of introverts that there are in the class. There are certain people that I didn't see their primary results in the way that they act, but I noticed their secondary results resembled the way that they act much more. It helped make me aware of how people may change how they act when they are in different settings, such as school. These results will help us because we will be more aware of who we work best with and who we may clash with. However, knowing our results can also help us to work with people who don't work the same way as us. This is because the awareness of ourselves and the awareness of how the other person works can help us to find ways to work together that we might have not previously thought of if we didn't have an idea of the other person's personality.

Inspirational Video

The video that really inspired me when I watched it was a short clip about the Canadian ski coach, Justin Wadsworth. The rest of the post will likely make more sense once you watch the video, which is attached below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9imn3eCDyOU

There were a few things that I found really inspiring about this post. The first thing was the Canadian coach chose to give the Russian skier a new ski when he broke his own. It is often easier to stand back with the crowd and do nothing to solve a problem, even when we have the ability to help. Once the skier broke his ski, no one stepped up to help him. I would guess that Canada wasn't the only team to bring an extra ski, so it's likely that some of the other teams could have helped as well, but chose not to. I personally find that sometimes making the decision to stand out and do something is more difficult than the act of helping itself. Seeing this video encourages me to step out of my comfort zone more to help others in need.

Another thing that stood out was the fact that the Canadian coach was helping out his competition. Although Justin's aid didn't change the outcome of the race, it is still great to see that the fierce competitive spirit didn't get in the way of true sportsmanship. Alhtough competition is fun and being competitive isn't a bad thing, sometimes people can get a bit carried away and let it overshadow the true spirit of the game.

The final thing that I found inspiring about this video was when the Russian skier kept going after he broke his ski. A lot of people might say "Of course he kept going, he's an athlete and an Olympian." While this may be true, I think that it takes a lot of humility, courage and again good sportsmanship to finish with the attitude that he did. Especially since they were in his home country, it had to be embarassing and disappointing when his ski broke. When he fell a second time, he could have walked to the finish line or he could have just left the course. The skier chose to be persistant and to finish his race in spite of his misfortune, putting on a brave face and smiling with a great attitude. He inspires me to have a great attitude and to smile no matter what is going on around you because while it may not change the circumstances of the situation, it pays off personally and helps you to get through it.