Family Tree Project

When I was first told that we were doing a project on our  family's history and heritage, I was excited. The first thing that I did was interview my mom and dad. Even though my parents had a lot of information on my family's history, they didn't have any pictures. So I sent an email to my grandfather asking for information and pictures. He responded to my email, and told me that he was sending me information in the mail. After a couple of days, I received the information and got lots of pictures. With all of the information I was able to gather, I made a family echo. I was able to make three other interesting projects with the information that I found on my family. You can see those below.

May 5, 2014

I think that this video had some very good points. One of these points was that we can spend hours together, but not really together. We only are together through technology devices. I liked how he had one situation where the guy wasn't using his phone, and he asked his future wife for directions, and it showed how happy their life ended up being. This really made you feel  like you should put down your phone because you never know what will happen when you interact face-to-face with other people. I liked how he went back to the same situation where the two people met, and how it showed him on his phone and because he was on his phone he never had the interaction with the lady. I think that this video shows some of the truths that we try and hide from ourselves because you don't want it to be true. I also think that it is biased because it doesn't show all of the good things that could happen on social media. Overall, I like this video and pretty much agree with it.

April 24, 2014

Read THIS blog post by a teacher. I mean actually read it. Take it in. Think about it. And then, write about it. What do you think about it? What is the teacher trying to say? In your own words explain what "the main event" is.

I think that this teacher's blog post is encouraging and interesting. It is encouraging because you can see that teachers actually care about all their students as people, not just their grades. It is also encouraging because it shows that teachers all willing to do whatever it takes to help you not quit on school. It is interesting because it is written from a teacher's point of view. The "main event" is learning how to deal with what life throws at you without giving up or being negative about the situation. During high school, this means dealing with people tha annoy you and classes that push you to your breaking point.

April 21, 2014

Reflect on your stop motion animation project. How did it go? What worked? What didn't work? If you're not finished - why? If you are finished go in to detail about the project and what you learned. Give as much detail and information as possible.

I felt like my stop motion animation project was really good. I think it went very well because there were a lot of really good stop motion videos. What worked for me was being able to have a lot of freedom on what we were going to do and when we were going to do it. I think one thing that didn't work was letting people have so much freedom. I think the freedom was both something that didn't work and something that did because some people didn't use their time wisely, but a lot of people did use their time wisely. This has been my favorite project so far because I thought how my video turned out was really cool and I really liked it.

April 10, 2014

What is your idea for your stop-motion animation? Explain yourself. Have you started taking photos? If not, when do you plan to take your photos? What is your action plan for today? What is your plan to GET SOMETHING DONE?

My idea for a stop motion animation is to draw an outdoor scene on a piece of paper. I'm going to slowly draw grass, draw a tree with a swing, the sun, flowers, and a girl swinging on a swing. I have not started taking photos yet, but I plan on starting today. My plan is to get most if not all of my pictures done today.

April 7, 2014

What is stop motion animation? If you don't know, look it up! Explain.

Stop motion animation is where you make an inanimate object look like it is moving. You make it look like it is moving by taking a lot of pictures, but in each picture the object is slightly moved. In the end when you put all of the pictures are played continuously the inanimate object should look like it is moving.

April 4, 2014

Tell me about your 5 frame storyboard. What did you like about the project? What did you dislike? Was it hard to fit a story in to 5 images? Do you think you tell a clear story? What would you do differently if you could? Explain.

My 5 frame storyboard is about a boy shooting a basketball. It shows the steps he takes to make a basket. I enjoyed taking the pictures for my storyboard. I used my digital camera that has a sports action mode that continuously takes pictures while you are holding the button. It provided me with a variety of photos for my project. I disliked how long it took some of the websites to load my photos. It was inconvenient and slowed the editing process down. I didn't think it was hard to fit my story into 5 frames, but I feel like some stories would be hard to fit into 5 frames. I think my storyboard tells a clear story. One thing I would do differently if I could is not take as many photos. I ended up with over 300 photos so it was hard to choose the best ones for my story. I think that if I took less photos it would be easier to choose between photos and then I could start editing sooner.