Honestly this week shocked me. Looking back at how stressed I was last week, I expected to be freaking out until the very last minute before our Snowfall presentations, but I ended up having a very calm week. Even though we had to deal with the obstacle of Jess being gone, I think Lauren, David and I worked really well together to make sure everything was covered. We all took our separate tasks and handled them to the best of our ability, and then came together for a nicely finished product. The usual stress of group projects was absent as we could all pretty much work at our own pace, and didn’t need to wait for approval from the others. If I wasn’t the speaker on Friday when we presented, I don’t think I would have understood this project. While in the process of making it, I thought the whole thing was a waste of time as we were just throwing stuff about the book together and putting it on a website. After I was forced to present all of the pieces together it made more sense though. I was able to see how the different aspects of media worked together, and had to think of the best way to show off what we did. I had read the book a couple years ago and loved it, but the presentation allowed me to look at it in a new light, and appreciate it that much more. Overall, I think this was the calmest and the most prepared I have ever been for a project, even if I had difficulties understanding it in the beginning. http://52899.weebly.com/
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If I am being honest, I felt pretty unproductive and very confused for most of this week. In the beginning, my group still had a couple of people who needed to finish the book, but Lauren and I had finished, so we began working on the Google picture notes presentation. The question that our group chose was “How does socialization affect our outlook?” This is a very broad idea that has a lot of different things we could cover. Since we all have different perspectives and were in different spots in the reading, coming together to take notes was a little bit difficult. Right now, our notes are pretty scattered and random, but I think it will be okay as they are just there to supplement the writing. We began thinking about the website as well, but there is still a lot that needs to be done. We don’t have a solid plan yet and are still a little confused as to what we are trying to accomplish. Many questions will be asked, but hopefully we will have it done by Friday. I know we lose Jessica halfway through the week too so that will be another obstacle that we have to face. This week I have been reminded how important it is to trust the process and be patient. I know my next blog post will explain just how nicely everything came together, it just doesn’t feel like that right now. The Kite Runner is a great book, and there are many wonderful things that we will want to highlight in our project. https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/how-to-work-well-in-a-group.html I have been wishing for a week like this for the whole year. Not that I wanted to have a sub four out of the five days, but I loved that the only thing I really did all week was read. I often wish we had more time in class to read as we usually only get forty five minutes a week, while this time I read about forty five minutes a day. We were able to read so much because we need to complete our books before we can start working on our next unit. While I don’t really understand the Snowfall project, I know that my group and I will figure it out and get it done. Until then, I get to read one of my favorite books ever - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I really don’t have one single favorite book. There are so many books that I appreciate and adore for different reasons, but I can easily say that Khaled Hosseini is my favorite author. All of his stories are meaningful and thought-provoking, which is why I’m glad we chose this book for our project. I think the two will go together well as Hosseini's writing has so much for us to work with. Right now my biggest concern going forward is seeing how well our group will work together. I know that designing the website and making everything flow nicely will probably be our biggest issue as nobody in our group is great with technology, but if I’ve learned anything from this class, it’s that we can complete what feels impossible. http://khaledhosseini.com/ The main focus of the week has been working on our Pecha Kucha presentations. I spent the beginning of my week finishing my second book as I didn’t finish it as early as I thought I would. The rest of the time was spent finding my outside sources and trying to organize all of my thoughts. For the base of my project, I knew that I wanted to talk about race and identity, but other than that I really didn’t know what I was going to do. After reading both of my books, some ideas came to mind, but I was still struggling with how to put everything together. I’ve realized that all of the past projects we’ve done have been group based. Though we wrote individual papers for the Tragedy unit, we spent weeks collaborating and sharing our thoughts with each other. The I Believe video was very personal, but required less literary thought than usual. It has been difficult for me to do such an individualized project this time as I am so used to bouncing my thoughts and ideas off of other people. It wasn’t until around Thursday or Friday that I started feeling a little bit better about my project. I was beginning to find some sources, and was starting to put things together. I was able to talk a little bit with the people at my table which helped me a ton. I think simply saying things out loud helps me process ideas a lot better. I found an amazing Ted Talk that talks about Imposter Syndrome, which is something I have felt and seen, but never knew had a name. I didn’t learn about this until the end of my project but it has really shifted my perspective and it fits well with both of my books. I am excited to see how everything turns out as I’m really invested in my topic, I just hope I can do it justice. http://www.ted.com/talks/dena_simmons_how_students_of_color_confront_impostor_syndrome/transcript?language=en I finally finished my This I Believe video this week, and it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I think I’ve always known this, but this week really taught me that I will accomplish whatever task I’m given, you just have to give me a deadline. Going into this project, we were told that we’d have about a week to finish it, which I thought wasn’t even close to enough time. This is a reoccurring theme for me. Almost every time I’m given a big project, I become instantly overwhelmed and question my ability to complete it in the time given, especially with any sort of quality. I stress, panic and procrastinate until the night or two before the deadline. This is when I become extremely focused and actually get my work done. I know this is a bad habit, and I need to break it before college, but so far it has worked. After finishing the video, I missed a day of school due to sickness. This was a bummer because I was excited to see everyone else’s beliefs, but I got to watch a few on Thursday when I came back, and I know I could always go on Youtube and see them if I wanted. Next week we will start working on our Pecha Kucha presentations. Right now I know what the main theme of my presentation will be, but I’m not quite sure what my guiding questions are or how I’m going to organize my thoughts. I’m extremely interested in my topic though, and both of books were so eye-opening, so it’ll be interesting to see how everything comes together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5vzOZ9vpHs This week we focused mainly on making our videos. I feel like I am below average when it comes to working with technology, so I was really worried when I learned we had to make a video. This is something that I’ve never done, but it turns out that it’s not difficult. Once we were given a brief overview of how to edit and work with the website, it turned out to be much easier than I imagined. In my opinion, this project is like a big puzzle. We are putting together many different pieces, so that they can all come together and make something awesome. It allows us to pull in many different forms of media as we use images, our voices and music. Many could argue that this project doesn’t really fit or make sense for this class, but I think it definitely does. Literature is about stories and we have been analyzing them all year; it makes sense that we should have the opportunity to share our story too. I missed Friday and was on vacation this weekend so I am feeling a little bit behind, but I’m sure I will be able to catch up and be ready for Tuesday. I am a perfectionist, so there have been many times when I have just forced myself to let little imperfections go, but overall I am really enjoy and learning from this project. I’m not saying I’m the next Steven Spielberg, but if I were to continue doing projects like these, I definitely could be. https://www.wevideo.com/academy I have been hearing about the ‘This I Believe’ project for the last few years, and have always wondered what I would say. Though we all have our beliefs and values, it’s harder than I thought to sit and write why we believe them. We watched multiple videos in the beginning of this week to learn tips on how to tell our stories, which I really enjoyed and found very helpful. I watched a video called “The Clues to a Great Story” and it had many good points. The biggest thing I took away from it was this idea of 2+2. Andrew Stanton explained that the best stories tell you enough information to come to a conclusion, without actually spelling it out for you. This made me think about all of my favorite books and stories, as they do this exact thing. Allowing a little bit of room for the audience to come to their own conclusions makes for different interpretations and takeaways for each person who hears the story. When thinking about my story, I hope to find the happy medium between details and inferences. My belief is something that was different than I imagined over the last few years, but I’m still happy and proud of it. The last part of of the week was spent writing our essay. Even though it is much shorter than most of our pieces, it seems harder to write because you want to do justice to your belief. Looking at the other videos people have made, and reading examples from the This I Believe website was very helpful. I’m not very good with technology and I’ve never made a video before but I’m excited to learn how as we continue this project next week. http://thisibelieve.org/essay/11562/ This week was all about learning how to make a claim and back it up using evidence from a text. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t really love this project. It felt like the basic persuasive essay stuff we did in middle school so I admit that I wasn’t trying my hardest when writing and researching for this piece. We used our illustrating, authorizing and extending idea and applied it to our claims which I guess made it a little more interesting, but overall it was kind of boring for me. While I didn’t love the fact that we were writing persuasive essays, I did enjoy learning about our topic. I knew that it was very easy to hack into private information using today’s technology. The news is always talking about celebrities and important people who were hacked, but it was scary to see it on such a personal level. Companies can track my information just because I logged into Amazon or searched something on Google. I guess I knew it had to be happening because I see the ads that are tailored to my interests, but it’s not very comforting to see just how much they know. Not only do they see the things I search and buy, but they can potentially know my ethnicity and preferred keystrokes. It was very eye open to research and understand why they track us, but also to see the statistics of what they do with the information. Though I didn’t love writing this research essay, there are definitely things I took away from it. I learned to make a claim as a group, how to add countering into my essays, and of course the danger of tracking. http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-do-advertisers-track-you-online-we-found-out/ The last three weeks have been a bit overwhelming just due to the fact that we can’t control the weather. I spent a good majority of my time in my bed or on my couch, instead of in class working on our project. This lead to a big mix of “Sweet, I can sleep” and “Oh no, I have so much work to do.” We went to school for a full week this time, so we have had the opportunity to wrap things up which has been nice. I learned many different things from this project, as I feel like I always do when working in a group. I am very used to having to be the leader and doing most of the work in my less advanced classes, but that wasn’t the case this time. When writing this Macbeth paper, and making the presentation, I learned to work with people who do things very differently than I do. This wasn’t a negative thing, I have known the people in my group since middle school and really like them. It was just difficult to go from being friends, to working together as intellectuals trying to portray everyone's individual ideas. I often had my own thoughts about how something would go, but would have to readjust to fit the brainwaves of my peer. Again, this wasn’t a bad thing, usually it made me see a new perspective or greatened my understanding of the text, but sometimes it became frustrating to try and get us all on the same page. Overall, our presentation went very well. We focused more on being simplistic and minimal, and we relied heavily on our own knowledge instead of words on the screen. We all brought different things to the table, and I know I wouldn’t have been able to do as well without the other ladies, so I really appreciate them. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/instructionalstrategies/groupprojects/benefits.html After the wonderful week of relaxation, reading and cookies known as Christmas break, we have started up again and are back into the rhythm of AP Literature. This week our focus was mainly on our two poems, and our critical theory papers. Before break, and for a good majority of this week, I was very worried about writing this critical theory paper and doing a presentation on it. When we watched the movie of Macbeth, I really didn’t understand what was happening and felt very unprepared to write a well thought out essay on it. Having Dr. McDermott come in and speak to us completely changed my perspective. She explained some of the history from the time period and gave us some great insight on the piece. Hearing her perspective made me much more confident in our project, and I know our work will be much better because of her. The two poems we looked at this week both had themes of spring. I really enjoyed them but the second one “For Jane Meyers” by Louise Gluck, was the most interesting for me. It has multiple contradictory lines and at first, I didn’t get the meaning behind this poem at all. After debating and analyzing, we realized that the poem was from the flowers perspective, completely changing what we believed the poem to be. This unexpected twist brought a whole new side to the idea of spring, something that most people don’t think about. While I often find this class challenging, these moments of gaining a new perspective often make the work worth it in my eyes. |
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April 2017
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