Gabby driessnack
The week before spring break is finally here! Usually, people have no motivation this week and teachers don't want to start anything new or have a lot of work due because so many people leave early. In this class, my group started and finished our website this week. Grace and I filmed interviews, which I edited and put into our website. We also went down to the library and figured out how to do screen casting, which is recording your computer screen. We then took cool recordings of Afghanistan and San Jose, California on Google Earth. These are also on our website to give viewers a good look at how far they had to travel to America and where they came from. I liked working as a team for this project because when one of us didn't know how to do something, someone else did. We really leaned on each other as a team and made sure that everything we were working on individually connected to what everyone else was talking about. I am really proud of our finished project. Our website is called Gabydracyn because it's a mix of the names Gabby, Lydia, Grace, and Lauryn. I think we did a good job of making sure it would make sense to people that haven't read the book. At first I had no clue how we were going to make something like snowfall for our book, but it looks super good and as soon as we started adding elements to the page, it started to make sense in my mind. This is a link to our website: www.gabydracyn.weebly.com xoxo, Gabby
0 Comments
This week was mostly spent reading our books, since we need to finish them before we can start our project. I still don't know how we are supposed to make this project. We had a sub for two days this week, so no one really got anything done those days. I don't think anyone in our class has started their actual project because a lot of people are still working on their books. The people that are done with their books don't know what they're doing now, so they aren't doing much either. I am getting through my book pretty quickly. Surprisingly, I actually kind of like it. I don't remember the last time I read a book and it didn't feel like a chore. They use a lot of Afghan language and names in it, which are hard to understand and remember, but I can usually figure out what they mean by what context they are used in. Amir makes me so mad because he is such an awful friend and person. He feels so guilty all the time, but in all honestly I am glad he does. I don't really feel bad for him at all. This is a link to a character analysis of Amir: https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/k/the-kite-runner/character-analysis xoxo, Gabby I can't even believe I am already on my last trimester of high school. It feels like yesterday I was a freshman on the first day getting lost trying to find the green pod. As we begin our last trimester, we were given a big task, to get in groups and recreate Snow Fall, but using a different book. When I saw the animation, I have no clue how we are going to do this. The task seems difficult, but I think my group will do a good job. Our book is The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. It's actually a very good book, and I'm enjoying it so far. Some of the names are hard to pronounce and I've noticed that they have lots of cultural nick names for people. These make it hard to keep track of people, but doing the picture notes helps a lot because we can look back at different parts of the book that stood out to us. I was gone on Friday because we left for BPA states on Thursday. It was a really fun weekend, but I am so tired. These next two weeks are going to be very rough because I just want to go on spring break already. This is a link to Snow Fall: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek xoxo, Gabby This week, we watched a few videos to prepare ourselves about how to make Pecha Kucha presentations and common mistakes to avoid. Before starting my presentation, I tackled my one page paper. I picked two outside sources, a painting and a movie that corresponded to my topic. I found many similarities and differences between my books and my outside sources. There are five questions we are supposed to answer in the paper, and I am using those questions to guide my speech during my actual pecha kucha presentation. I finished my slideshow of 10 slides and got pictures that will captivate my audience while I am speaking. The only thing left to do is figure out what I want to say and how I can be prepared for the slides switching, so I am not racing my presentation. I am not really nervous to present because I don't get scared with public speaking, but I just want to be prepared for the slides switching automatically. I have never done a presentation like this before, so I am interested to see how it compares to other presentations I have done. This is a link showing how to make a pecha kucha style presentation: http://www.pechakucha.org/presentations/how-to-create-slides xoxo, Gabby I loved getting to see others' videos and hear their stories. I thought it was so cool because there are things about my classmates that I never knew. It made me feel like I didn't really know anyone. Everyone has a story that deserves to be heard. It was a little weird watching my own because I didn't know what others thought of it and I hate the way my voice sounds in recordings. After watching other peoples' videos, I realized that I wasn't judging their videos at all and I didn't think their voices sounded weird, so I figured other people wouldn't be judging mine either. There wasn't a single video that I didn't like. I just loved seeing everyones pictures and videos, along with what they believed in. I was gone on friday because I had stomach flu and was at home dying, but I wish I would have seen the rest of everyone's videos. This project helped me get to know the people around me better. I thought that the videos with personal pictures and videos were the easiest to connect with, so I really tried to incorporate that into my video along with some stock footage. This is a link to some of the nature / stock footage I used in my video: https://www.shutterstock.com/video/ xoxo, Gabby Since I mostly have my video finished, this week I focused on revising and editing. I had some more people watch my video and give me tips on what I could do better and tried to fix some little things. I tried to make it so there wasn't so much black on the vertical videos, but none of the backgrounds seemed to fit the vibe I was going for. The only ones that may work were a starry sky or a black and grey industrial one. The starry sky one was way too distracting, while the industrial one looked like it would fit a robot or technology themed video. I think the plain black background fits better than any of the imovie backgrounds. I'm actually really proud of how my video turned out, and I know I worked really hard on it. I've also been watching other peoples' videos, which are also really good. Lydia's is super cute! It's about change, and it has pictures of her with all her friends in it, including me! I know what a few other people are doing their videos on, but I haven't seen them yet. I'm actually really excited to see everyone else's videos and hear what they believe in. This is a link to my video: https://youtu.be/6C8Pc4cqgWo xoxo, Gabby This week, we talked about starting our This I Believe projects. I already knew what I wanted to do ahead of time, so I finished my video already. My video is about how I believe that home is a feeling, not a place. I put one of my favorite songs in it, Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I talk about all the places and things that make me feel like home and it has lots of videos of me and my friends. It was really easy for me because I already knew what I wanted to do and what I wanted the video to look like. I am actually really excited to see everyone else's videos and what they believe in. I thought that this project was so much fun to do. Since I have already finished my project, I have just been chillin in class waiting for everyone else to finish. I have minor changes to make, but for the most part it is completely finished. I'm kind of nervous to show everyone my video because I hate the way my voice sounds in it. I just don't think it even sounds like me, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. It probably doesn't even sound that weird and I'm just being really critical. This is a link to the This I Believe project organization that has lots of video links: http://thisibelieve.org/ xoxo, Gabby This week we talked about tracking and whether or not the government should intervene. We read two articles that gave lots of information about tracking and what the government could do to make it optional for people. Tracking is a marketing strategy that watches what websites people go to and what they are looking at, then conveniently show you advertisements of similar or the same things. We got into three groups, agree with government intervention, disagree with government intervention, and undecided. We got a chance to meet with our groups and talk about why we agree or disagree with government intervention and why. I was a part of the group that agreed with government intervention in tracking, but only to a certain extent. We thought that tracking should be made an option and that people should be more educated about it, since most people don't even know it's happening. Some people might not even care that they are being tracked and might like the pop ups of products they may be interested in, but others are very uncomfortable with it. We just thought that people should be able to have a choice as to if they want their personal information being sold to big companies or not. This link discusses tracking and why it is such a threat to us: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-08-03-internet-tracking-mobile-privacy_n.htm xoxo, Gabby This week we finalized our presentations and presented them at the end of the week. My group was kinda panicking at the last minute because Emmy was gone the day we had to present and we already set up who was going to talk on each slide. I think Lydia and I did a really good job covering the slides that were supposed to be hers. We were kind of laughing during the presentation when our songs played and were kind of awkward at times, but I think that overall we did a good job explaining our theory and how it related to the play. I wasn't here on Friday, so I didn't really get to see a lot of other presentations. In the ones that I did see, people read stuff off of their phones, which I didn't know we were even allowed to do. I'm proud of my group for going off of what we know about our topic and all the research we did. Although I know the presentation could have gone a lot smoother, we still did our best and showed what we knew. This is a link to our presentation: https://docs.google.com/a/mp.edzone.net/presentation/d/1lCtK3dmKSJFbqC31kjEdgCoERCpkx05ZXvJwmDqxeS4/edit?usp=sharing xoxo, Gabby This week, we talked a lot about Shakespeare and how he fits into everyday life. We listened to the poem, My Shakespeare, in which a girl described what Shakespeare meant to her. I really liked when she said "he is in every girl who uses her wit to go against the status quo" because it made me think. We had a guest speaker come in that teaches Shakespeare in unique ways, such as comics. I never really thought that much about Shakespeare and how he impacts life now a days, but what she said really made me think about it, and I think it's true that life would be very different without him. We also got into our groups and began to form our King Lear essay, which looks at the philosophical theory and how the characters fall apart and cry out, asking "why". We are looking at how they got there and what the significance of that is. As they cry out to the heavens and ask questions, some get answers and some don't. We are deciphering who gets answers, and what they are. The ending of the movie can either be described as a resolution or a downer, and we are going to discuss in our essay which ending describes the movie better and why we believe this. here is a link to the My Shakespeare poem: https://youtu.be/LfgPJPd5wMQ xoxo, Gabby |
Gabby DriessnackSenior at MPHS. Archives
March 2017
Categories |