Final Project

This project that our Emerging Technologies class is doing is about our families, where they originated from, and information I didn't know about my family.

Family Echo is my family tree as far back as I could get it.

This is my Email to my grandma about helping me out with some information for this project.  I did get an answer, and two days later I received a package of pictures from the early 1900s.

This is the interview of my grandma about my family.  Her answers were very in depth and her answers filled up three pages with only 20 questions.

This is the interview of my mom about my family.  Her answers weren't as in depth, but she went straight to the point.

In my Prezi, I focused more on family member that I am closest to.  I did not know my great grandparents well, but my grandma helped me out with information and pictures about them when they were living.

4/28/15

What are your thoughts on the article?

I have never really thought about school in the way that this teacher pointed it out.  I always thought school was getting us ready for the real world by giving us education.  I can relate to the students when they say that some of the education isn't worth trying for, but this makes me look at an insignificant geometry problem with a purpose.  I always thought the education was the main event, but essentially it's how you learn to deal with problems that you face everyday.  It's about how you stiffen your roots in the ground and not let the tornado rip you out of the ground.  Staying in the fight is the most important part of school, and although the education is important, it's not as important as learning to grow up and face the problem and not run away from it.

4/22/15

Tell me about your group's stop motion video.

Jay, Boyd, I are having an empty coke bottle roll itself to the trashcan in the hallways of Blue Valley.  We are about halfway done with it and we will finish with the 200 pictures today probably.  We were going to do a soup can like in the chef boy ardee commercials, but nobody brought a soup can so we improvised with a coke bottle.

4/17/15

GIANT blog post of the day:

Answer the following questions thoroughly on your blog. 

1. What was your stop motion animation about? Why did you choose your video to be about this? Was it because it was easy, because it would be fun, or it would be challenging? Explain your reasoning behind your project (and be honest).
2. If you could rate your stop motion on a 1-10 scale. 1 being low effort and no very good and 10 being out of this world/mindblowing, how would you rate your project? Explain why.
3. In hindsight, what would you do differently the second time around? Better lighting? Time management? Explain yourself.
4. Explain what makes your stop motion animation unique. How do you believe you thought "outside of the box" on this project? 
5. What grade do you feel you deserve on this project? Explain your reasoning.

My stop motion was about stick figures fighting with explosives and trying to beat each other.  I remember making these pictures as a kid and this was an opportunity to bring my pictures to life.  I thought it wouldn't be super hard, but drawing and redrawing the pictures took a long time, and I also had to keep my pictures consistent.  I would rate my project a 9/10 on effort and trying to make it the best as possible,  but with my bad artistic skills and camera management I would rate myself a 7/10.  I would try to keep my camera as still as possible and also adjust the lighting so it would be the same on every scene.  My stop motion is unique because nobody else thought to make anything with a whiteboard, especially having stick figures coming to life to fight each other.  I think I deserve a B+ on this because my effort was high; however, my output wasn't as high as I had hoped because of the camera movement and the lighting.

4/14/15

3 day weekend... how was it? Give me a good story or something funny that happened this weekend. Go

I went to see Furious 7 on Sunday.  Twice.  One time I saw it with my family and right after my friends showed up and I saw it again.  But before that, we had a fast and the furious marathon on Saturday.  We watched all 6 of the movies in one sitting.  It was a total of 13 hours and we didn't finish them until 2:30 AM.  And any time not spent watching movies, I watched the Royals win.

4/7/15

Tell me ALL about what your idea is for your stop-motion animation. I need detail. Who is going to help you take photos? What props do you need? Where do you plan on shooting? EXPLAIN everything

I plan on doing a stick figure fight on a white board.  I use to draw these scenes as a kid and now is the opportunity to make it come to life.  I will draw them using explosives and other things to try and hurt the other stick figure.  I only need a marker and a whiteboard.  I can shoot pretty much anywhere as long as I have a marker and a whiteboard.  Since my drawing skills are not up to par, having stick figures fight is what I can actually draw.  I don't think I need any help on this project this time.

4/6/15

Tell me all about your weekend and please share photos

On Saturday night, we went to McCormick and Schmicks at the plaza and it was delicious.  On Easter, my family went to my grandparents house to eat dinner.  We had ham, potato casserole, green bean casserole, and corn casserole as sides and it was delicious.  At my dads, we had gourmet hot dogs and hamburgers.  I apologize but I didn't take any pictures as I do not like to take pictures in my free time so here's a picture of  a ham.  

Photo Story

4/1/15

What do you love most about this time of year? Explain why you love it.

Well, first, it's my birthday month.  Also, I absolutely love the weather and the trees with the white flowers.  This is definitely my favorite season of the year because it's warm and everything is colorful and in a happier mood.  And it's baseball season again.  Nice weather mixed with baseball equals happiness.  Everybody is nicer to other people and people, the flowers are blooming, people are walking their dogs, kids are outside playing, and baseball is the reason this is my favorite season of the year.

3/30/15

Did you complete the photo scavenger hunt? What kind of fun pictures were you able to capture? Did you do all your photos at school or did you do some at home over the weekend? Share one of your favorites.

We finished the scavenger hunt in school on Friday, so there wasn't any pictures we had to take at home.  My favorite is our birds eye view of a trashcan.  I think we can edit it to make something frowned upon in our society and make it look cool.  It will be hard to make trash look cool though.

Photoshop

3/27/15

What do you know about photography and/or photo editing? Do you take photos? How do you take photos? Do you edit photos before posting them on social media? How do you edit them? Explain any background or knowledge you have about photography and photo editing. Do you like it? Do you have any interest?

The only thing I know how to do is edit on Instagram because it gives you the option right before you post it, but I never post any picture on social media anymore.  I just never found the need to.  I would like to learn how to Photoshop pictures though; it sounds fun to combine two unlike things.  I  think you can tell from my other blog posts that I don't take a lot of pictures of my own.  Taking photos doesn't really interest me.

3/23/15

Welcome back! Go ahead. Tell me all about your Spring Break. Include photos!

For the first part of my Spring Break, my family and I went to Chicago for a vacation.  We visited the city and all of the huge buildings such as the Sears Tower and the Hancock Tower.   We went to Chicago because that is where my dad grew up and we have family there, so we visited them as well.  When we returned it was a lot of sleeping until 1 P.M.  I enjoyed this Spring Break and I'm not going to lie, but coming back sucks.  I apologize for no pictures, but I couldn't figure out Google Drive.

Israeli Arab Conflict Prezi

3/10/15

Who do you look up to in your life? Why do you look up to them? Tell me about them and some of their characteristics that you admire.

I look up to mom.  She is an amazing woman, hard worker, and super laid back.  She is a single mom with two boys to take care of and we always come first. Her personality shows she loves us, but she isn't too strict about the things we do, as long as it isn't illegal.  

3/9/15

Tell me about your weekend.

My family and I went out to eat a lot this weekend.  For my mom's friend's birthday, we went to Kyoto, the Japanese Steakhouse.  After that, I stayed up until 3:00 AM on Friday night and Saturday night.  On Sunday, we went to that new place that replaced Wil Jenny's.  I think it's called the Tilted Kilt.

3/6/15

If you were the Principal for a week at BVHS, what would that look like? What changes would you make? Why?

I would change the schedule requirements.  I do not understand why we need art credits if we know that art doesn't appeal to us.  The school lunches need to change.  I don't like eating flavorless cardboard and microwaved paper.  School lunches all around the world are way better compared to American school lunches.  

3/4/15

If you were to give somebody advice about presenting, what are the top 10 things you would tell them?

1. Maintain eye contact- It shows confidence
2. Don't talk too fast- People will be overwhelmed
3. Don't talk too slow- People will lose interest
4. Use your hands when you speak- It will help the flow
5. Dress to the occasion- if it's for a job, wear a suit
6. Do not wing the presentation- preparation is important
7. Don't have a bunch of words on your slides- pictures are more appealing
8. Posture is important- It looks more professional
9. Include your audience- It keeps them more interested in your presentation
10. Have some comedy- people will actually enjoy being there

3/2/15

Tell me about your weekend.

My weekend was just getting prepped for baseball tryouts this week.  I had a hitting and pitching lesson on Sunday.  We were also dog sitting a Beagle named Daisy and a Boston Terrier named Oreo this weekend.  Our family had an entire pack of dogs in our house, so I guess you could say it was a fun weekend.

Israeli Arab infographic

2/24/15

Use the internet to find an infographic about infographics. Place it in to your blog post. Read it and then give me the top 5 things you learned from it that will help you make a better infographic.



1) An infographic is a great way to reach out to people; potentially 15 million people
2) Most infographics are about business or health
3) Graphs are a great way to get peoples attention
4) It is important to make the information pop
5) Make the important things really big in comparison to everything else

2/23/15

Tell me about your weekend. Give me a story, something funny that happened, an experiencing you had, the way you felt, etc. Include photos!

I didn't really have a "funny story" weekend.  I played a lot of Playstation and watched a lot of Friends on Netflix.  I did have a hitting lesson for baseball, though.  I think that was the only time I left the house this weekend.  I just like to enjoy my time off of school by relaxing.

2/20/15

Well I want to be a veterinarian so my classes would consist of a lot of science like chemistry, anatomy, and biology.  I wouldn't have to take any art classes, which for me don't mean anything and they are a waste of classes I could take.  I think then I would actually care about school and want to come if I only took the classes that interested me and is what I want to do in life.  I would also want to learn about how to survive, like how to buy my groceries or balance my checkbook.  We don't do that in school, but boy am I glad I can find the focus of a hyperbola.

2/18/15

Copy and past these over to your blog and tell me a little about yourself. If you have a picture or two that might represent one of your answers make sure to include it.

My favorite food: Any type of pasta with white sauce

Foods I'd like to avoid: Brussel Sprouts
My favorite things to learn: Science
My favorite color: Red or Green
My best friends are: Adam, Asim, Danny, Dawson
My favorite games to play: Baseball 

My favorite books: N/A
My favorite movies or TV shows:Arrow or the Walking Dead
My favorite holiday: Christmas
Things I do well: Baseball, Math, and Science
Things I need to practice more: giving my 100% effort in all of my classes
My favorite place to go: the beach
My favorite family activities: going out to eat
My favorite thing to do outside: Play baseball or basketball
My favorite chore: Who has a favorite chore?
My least favorite chore: yard work
What I want to be when I grow up: Veterinarian
A place I want to visit: Anywhere in Italy or Greece
My favorite part of the year:Summer
My favorite part of each day: going home from school

2/17/15

Tell me what you believe this cartoon is trying to say. Do you agree or disagree with this idea? Try and look at this from two different perspectives. What is your perspective? What would be an adult/teacher's perspective?

I believe this cartoon is trying to say that American's don't care about school and what happens in there life.  I will admit it happens sometimes, but those people aren't the majority. This only relates to about 5% of the population so this stereotype isn't fair.  It is sad that the people only pay attention to those who don't.  I'm one of those kids that works hard in school, so this cartoon is false in my case.  All of my friends work hard, so again, it's not true.  I'm almost positive that China has those students, but not a lot of them.

2/10/15

Think about the quote above. What does this mean to you? How could this apply to your life? How could this apply to your school work?  I would love to give you less work in class if it meant you were going to focus harder on the work. Do you think you would get more out of it? Would that work for you? Why or why not?

I agree 100% with this quote.  I believe if you have less on your plate, you can be happier and do better work.  Instead of taking 7 classes in high school, we could take 4 and I would bet a million dollars the grades would rise tremendously.  The only thing holding us back from that is graduation requirements and college resumes.  If there was more time to finish big projects, the outcome would be 1000x better.  I would love to do less work, but put more effort into each and every worksheet or project.  

2/9/15

Tell me all about your weekend! I sure hope you have photos to share

The only eventful thing this weekend was my friend, Dawson Gardner, became an Eagle Scout.  That is the highest rank in boy scouts.  Other than that though, nothing happened.  I sat around and played Destiny all weekend and then went outside to enjoy the really nice weather.

2/6/15

Tell me about some interesting things you have learned about your global issue so far. What have you learned that you didn't know before? Include a couple images from the internet if possible. (Make sure to cite images that are not your own.)

I learned about why Israel is a country and why there is so much conflict in the Middle East.  I also learned that there isn't a solution to end the violence yet.  There is two solutions but neither side will agree to both.  I also learned that a terrorist group is in charge of Palestine, their name is Hamas.

2/4/15

You haven't had a chance to tell me about your Sweetheart weekend yet - tell me about it now! Include photos if you have them. Even if you just laid around on the couch and watched Netflix, tell me all about it.

My sweetheart weekend was pretty epic.  First, I went to my friend's house, Cooper May, and he bought me Winsteads.  We ate pizza and played with his insane dog Mo.  After I returned home, I got on PS4 with my other friends; Dawson, Adam, Danny, and Asim.  We played Grand Theft Auto until 3:30 in the morning.  My night was much better than going to a dance.

2/2/15

What is email? When do you use email in your own personal life? List reasons and ways that people use email. What do you know about "email etiquette"? EXPLAIN

Email is a way to communicate.  I personally don't use email except when I need to get a document from school to my house to do for homework.  Business uses email to send chain information to many people and some people use email to get accounts for websites.  Email etiquette is using proper grammar as you are writing a letter, and also is being nice to people you send an email to.  No matter who you write to, people will always be judging you on how you write. 

1/28/15

Finish this sentence "10 years from now I will be...." (explain)

...graduated from college and have a job and family of my own.  Everyday I will go into the office and help animals.  I have my mind set on my life goals so I try as hard as I can to get what I want.  But who knows where I will be? That is just where I want to be.

1/27/15

Yesterday I had you choose a global issue and you wrote about it on your blog. Today on your blog I want you to tell me about two different perspectives of your global issue. Are there people for an against your issue? Do people disagree on your issue? Is it a topic that can cause controversy? Look at the issue for two different perspectives. Tell me about those perspectives.

My issue is Israel and its neighboring countries.  One side of the story is the Jewish people have never been accepted for all of their existence and blamed for everything such as the black plague.  They were just looking for a place to call home and where  they will not be harassed.  The other side of the story is Israel is stolen land that the Jews need to return to the Arabs.  The Arabs use to have the land for themselves but the Jews were just looking for refuge from the rest of the world.  There is controversy everyday in the Middle East over this topic. 

Israel Conflict

Without doing any research, what background do you currently have on this issue?
      I know that other countries are not satisfied that Israel is only a state for Jewish people, and they will go to war over it.   This causes Israel to be hostile.

What do you want to know about this issue? 
       I want to know why the other countries in the Middle East keep attacking Israel and why Israel keeps attacking the other countries.  I want to know the source of all the conflict.

Why did you choose this issue? Had it effected your life? Is it something you are passionate about? Explain.
       I chose this issue because because I took Area Studies Middle East last year and it was something I found very interesting and wanted to learn more about.  When I heard about the conflict on the news, I was curious on why it started and what causes Israel to be so hostile.

1/26/15

Last week I asked your to "think differently" and push yourself to be uncommon with your PSA project using Google Slides. Why do you think I asked you to do that? What is the point? Why not just use bullets and headers? Explain.

 I would think you asked us to think differently and be uncommon to keep you interested. It also can expand our knowledge on the computer because this is a technology class.  We all ready know how to use bullets and headers, so we don't want to recreate something we all ready know how to do.  In classes, you generally want to learn something new, but doing the old things will not help expand your learning.  

Public Service Announcement

1/23/15

These kids are all so lazy these days. All they do is sit on their little mini computers. They're going to get fat. Back in my day, we had newspapers and jacks. These kids are our future generation and they aren't acting like it.  We used to go outside and interact with people, we didn't have those fancy devices.

1/21/15

What is a public service announcement (PSA)? What do PSA's do? What makes a good PSA? How can you get someone to take action after watching a PSA?  What is you PSA idea? Explain in detail.

A public service announcement is funded usually by a nonprofit organization and it lets people know about problems we face as a community in the nation.  Public service announcements are good when they make you feel something, whether happy or sad.  That feeling will help people make the right decision.  My PSA idea is about texting and driving.  I take statistics and then show people how it compares to the world around them.

1/20/2015

Tell me all about your 3 day weekend. Share photos!

 This weekend was pretty low key. I did a lot of sitting around again, and I just enjoyed the fact that we didn't have school. I did have my friends over for like 3 hours on Sunday, but he left because his sisters got food for him. I stayed up until about 2:30 in the morning every night, and woke up at noon.It was a pretty enjoyable weekend.

1/16/15

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your life here at BVHS. What activities or clubs are you involved in? What year are you in school? What is your favorite class and/or teacher so far this year? What are you looking forward to this school year? Include some original photos from your phone if you can. Here at BVHS, I play baseball in the Spring and run cross country in the Fall. I'm a sophomore so I graduate in 2017. My favorite classes and teacher were the Area Studies Middle East and Area Studies Asia. I think you could guess who my favorite teacher is but it's Mowry. I'm looking forward to the upcoming baseball season, but I don't have any pictures.

All about me presentation

1/14/15

Accept change
Be friendly
Carlos should be your friend
Don't quit
Evade mean people
Forget the past
Get good grades
Happiness
Imaginative
Just try
Kick no donkeys
Lick no penguins
Magical spells work
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let  you down
Obliviousness to the bad
Park where you want to park
Question bad ideas
Restrictions don't mean anything
Stealing is bad
Think before you do something stupid
Understand the alphabet
Victory is always worth it
When in doubt, follow your heart
Xylophone is hard to spell
You is good
Zebras are majestic

1/13/15

What are your thoughts on this class so far? Easy? Hard? Informative? Frustrating? What have you learned so far? What do you want to learn? Explain yourself.

Honestly, we haven't done anything so far so I would say pretty easy.  I've learned the programming to insert pictures into my blog.  I don't really know what to expect going into the rest of the semester.

1/12/15

Tell me about your weekend. What did you do? Upload a photo to your Google Drive and then insert the photo (or photos!) to your blog post to show me what all you did.

My weekend was pretty boring, which is great for me.  I like having nothing to do on the weekends.  Sorry, I didn't take any pictures sitting on the couch watching football so here's a picture of a sloth being more productive than me.

1/9/15

Doing nothing all day: A
Watching Netflix: A
Playing baseball: A
Speaking English: A
Breathing: A
Being a man of my word: A

1/8/15

Read this small newspaper clipping and then write a blog post about it. What are your thoughts? How does it make you feel? Do you agree? Disagree? Explain yourself.

<img src="http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/df/80/94/df8094ce826ee5ea68923eb5793de70a.jpg">

My thoughts on this article are mostly "Then why don't adults treat us like we matter in the world?" Maybe the problem isn't the teenagers being lazy,but its that the adults make it seem like they are nothing in the world. To do something in the world, the teenagers need opportunities from the adults that currently run the world. The sad part is the "cry" from the teenagers is how they have to get permission from a "higher power." Maybe the teenagers aren't the problem, but the adults that don't give us the opportunities.