Blogging Around 2

I commented on Margot's best of week because her topic of group collaboration utilized a concept that our class needs to work on. I really liked how she explained what she did that helped her have fun while studying. Margot's overall theme was that working with groups can be fun and it gives many perspectives on a problem/prompt (essay in this case).

Margot, I really liked this blog post of yours. It was especially great to read because of your truthfulness. Along with your appreciation for studying with friends, you also admitted that we all get distracted. I find it hard to get quality work done while working with my friends. It’s wonderful that you find the right balance of fun, food, and focus. I think it helped me to go somewhere other than someone’s house. By going to Panera, the group of students I collaborated with was forced to focus because we had a limited amount of time and we couldn’t disrupt the people around us. Also, I found it really smart of you to realize that group collaboration can be used for other events in life other than our King Lear project. Overall, I thought your post was very truthful and insightful. Great Piece!

Next, I decided to comment on Marika's best of week about heroes and villains. It seemed very important and current because we just finished King Lear, which had a lot of villain hero mix-ups. Marika questioned how villains become the way they are and why we choose heroes to be the good people. Her observations and questions really interested me.

Marika, this post was very insightful. It raised so many intriguing questions, some of with depend on opinions or on the plot of the story. I really like when authors are able to make the “good” protagonist do horrible things but people still root for him or her over the villain. I find that situation to be more interesting than when the people prefer the villain over the hero.
Your questions at the end of were the best of the entire post because they question the reader and the intentions of the author, especially Shakespeare. I think the underlying question at the end is not what is a hero or a villain but how did they become that way, especially if you believe that they weren’t born innately evil. This was a very thoughtful piece. Great writing.

From all the posts I've read: Interesting topics and truthful writing!

Metacognition: Poem

As I was revising my poem I realized that most of the verses I wrote were really overdone, so my goal was to refine the content form of the poem. My poem was centered around two main subjects, music and my cousin. At first, it seemed to start out as two seperate poems because the beginning was devoted to a portrait of my cousin while the later half of the poem was only focused on the music aspect of the story. My main goal was to infuse the music aspect into the poem sooner and gradually make the turn occur.

To eliminate the cliché pieces throughout my poem I changed words so that they became more descriptive. By altering the ambiguous words and making each line original I was able to successfully, I hope, fix all those parts. I found that some actually fixed themselves once I started to shift the direction/focus of the poem. When I started to talk more about the music, the predictable pieces disappeared because I began to fill the places that lacked information. When only talking about my cousin's picture lacked detail and cliches began to form, the music subject would take their places.

I actually ended up erasing the entire first two stanzas of my poem because I felt, although they were detailed and fluid, they didn't fit in with the entire mood of the poem. Those few lines were too solemn while the rest of the poem was more about curiosity and disappointment. Instead of a long introduction, I cut to the chase and the poem was more interesting. This relates to the idea of avoiding starting essays with quotes because the reader is confused. I originally opened with a ton of detail and unnecessary information. Once it was cut out, the poem was more precise and less confusing.

Overall, I think my edits and revisions improved my poem. However, my worst fear is that all the changes that I just explained really impared the poem. I hope that all the changes were for the better.

Best of Week: Indirect Reciprocity

My favorite lesson of the week was Mr. Allen's story about the woman that bought his coffee for him at Starbucks. The entire pay it forward idea is not only important to english class, but also important to everyday courtesy. I thought it was really kind that the woman would do something so selfless (Even if it's just coffee).

What really baffled me were the reasons why she decided to pay for some stranger's coffee. She could've been having a bad day and wanted to give someone else some hope for the day because she didn't have a great day. I find that possible but not probable due to human nature. Even though this good deed was great and the world needs more of things like this, I find that people don't usually do this type of thing on a whim, especially when they are angry. When I'm angry, I accidentally take my anger out on people for no reason at all. Maybe it's because I want them to feel my difficulty. Therefore, I don't think her doing it to help someone else on her bad day is probable. My next idea was that the entire thing was an accident. But I don't think that's possible because Mr. Allen said that the cashier told him that the woman paid for his coffee and food. My last theory was that she was having a good day and wanted to share the wealth. This would be the most plausible and probable.

The other thing about indirect reciprocity that makes it difficult to actually reciprocate is the fact that it has to be spontaneous. Mr. Allen said that he didn't buy the next person's drink. He knew that he had to come up with his own good thing to do for a total stranger. I've been searching for the perfect time to help someone as well,but because I've been trying so hard, and I don't think the right time will come because it won't be spontaneous. If I let time pass, I hope that I don't forget to use indirect reciprocity, and I hope that my time, to help someone, will come.

Connection: Incerementalism

The idea of slowly undermining someone else’s authority can be found in family and in schools. We learned this concept through Lear, who is growing old, loosing rule over his kingdom, and is being mistreated by his daughters. All of these factors gradually become more effective. He must be taken care of by his servants (Fool) and his greedy daughters who often beguile him.

As people get old, we discussed that their children have to strip away their freedom and power for their safety. I have seen that happening through my family. My great grandmother is still alive. She’s 96 and still vivacious, but she has a horrible memory. So I’ve seen my grandparents as well as great aunts and uncles move her out of her house in Florida. However, now my grandparents and all others listed go to Arizona for half the year so my mom and her brothers are forced to take care of her. I make it sound awful, but grandma-ma is a really funny great person to be with, but she’s a bit of a handful. My family jokes around that once my grandparents get old enough where they need constant looking after, I will have to take care of them instead of my parents. As we learned in class, this sort of incrementalism can affect marriages, but I understand that it can also affect parent child relationships as well, much like Lear and his three daughters.

My other example of incrementalism can be found within our school. Most everyone has had some experiences with student teachers. Some of my peers have even said that they don't learn very much from their student teacher. So, I've known students who try to make class as difficult as possible for the student teacher. They are disruptive and overall, not courteous to the teacher. I think that the reason these kids act up is because they are intimidated and they feel that, because the age difference can be so small, that the student teacher has no right to demand attention or make disciplinary judgments. My cousin is actually a student teacher at an elementary school, and she said that her job is very difficult, but she is making progress with the students. Her hardships helped me understand the pressure being put on student teachers as well as Lear (taking away his authority), and it forced me to rethink my mistreatment of teachers. Age difference doesn't matter, the taking away of someones power can be stressful to the victim and the perpetrator(s).

TED Presentation

Overall, I thought TED project was more successful this year than it was last year. The day of the presentations was more organized, especially because the three groups were in seperate rooms. This helped improve the quality of listening; the audience was more focused on the people presenting than on other things happening around the room.

Another thing that I liked about this year's presentations, was the guidelines. They provided an easy way to divide the work without forcing all the questions to be answered. One issue with this were the questions about how each presenter's idea relates to the Academy and how the Academy prepairs us for the future. Because these topics were listed under guidelines, they are don't necessarily have to be answered. After all, the guidelines were only their to inspire ideas and to get the projects started off. If this topic was in the guidelines, the teachers should've told everyone that it was needed in the presentation. It was unfairly one of the topics on the rubric. I know my group planned to include this, but a few groups failed to address this relationship; therefore, I don't think they should've been docked points. Although unfair, I think that this question was very important to the presentation, so each group should've included it without being told to do so.

One suggestion for next year is that we should be required to give a brief biography of the presenter. This woul heop determine why and how their organizations/causes got started. It's also nice to have the credentials of the presenter to prove that they are reliable people that actually know and have researched what they are talking about.

Throughout this project, I have realized that google sites is a much faster and easier program to use than wikispaces. My group, Open Source Architecture, had a really organized site. We were even able to embed a powerpoint from Google Docs onto our homepage. The only problem we had with our page was lack of visuals. I tried to add some pictures to represent things we talked about, but there was little effort from everyone elso to do the same. I wish we had some more time so that we could use other web 2.0 tools such as graphs on bubbl.us, imeem to add songs, and animoto to make picture slide shows.

Although the google site for my group was really well done, I thought our presentation could've run smoother with the video clips. We were unable to put specific parts of the video onto our powerpoint; so, we waisted time during our presentation trying to find the clips. I wish that our sites would've been due a week before the presentation so that the people that didn't work until the last minute would still have to get their work done, but the entire group wouldn't be pressured to also finish the presentation at the same time. This would give us time to work out some of the technical problems we had.

TED project was much more successful this year than last year, with a few minor technical difficulties.

Captured Thought: Memorization

Since Mr. Allen explained his method for memorization, I have been searching for a place to use it. I thought about using it for the social studies quiz, but that didn't seem to work because that was just memorizing facts instead of remembering people or big concepts. I tried to apply it to spanish; however, it didn't work in my brain with the translating. Also, vocabulary and grammar doesn't seem to apply to the whole "landscape visual" theme. I pretty much figured that math and science wouldn't work because its numbers and you don't need to memorize anything, all you have to do is apply values to an equation. I couldn't find any use, yet, for this new trick for memorization.

I wanted to start off with something simple to put into my landscape, so that I wouldn't have to get too out of the box for my first attempt. The perfect opportunity came to me when my little brother asked me if I could help him study for his social studies test. He needed to learn different regions of the U.S. and what the environment was so that he could apply it to how the Native Americans utilized the resources.

He was having difficulties remembering which region had certain climates and what the natural resources were for each region. This information seemed pretty obvious to me because I know that in the Southwest it is dry and irrigation is needed to farm, and I know that in the Plains region there are rolling praries (good for farming) and there are many buffalo. He couldn't grasp his mind around the fact that the climate then is very similar to what it is now. I can't blame him, he's only in elementary school.

I figured that this would be a great opportunity to share Mr. Allen's landscape technique. I didn't mention to my brother that I had just learned about this in english class; I thought it would ruin the spontinaity of the entire moment. I told him that we were going to relate all the regions to the places around our house, which represented the great plains region because of out wide open backyard.

One of the most creative places we came up with was the far north region. Our neighbors to the North are sometimes rude, so I told him to remember that it's cold in the North, just like their personalities; therefore, they couldn't farm. Those same neighbors are Greek, and in Greece they depend on fishing in the sea for nutrition. So the indiginous tribes of the Far North also depended on the ocean for food. Lastly, they were able to hunt small animals in the North; so those small animals represented our neighbors' little yippy dog.

It seemed that the funnier and stranger I got with my connections, the more he remembered them. When he got home after school, my brother said that they got to choose two regions to talk about. He told me he picked the ones that I personally thought were rediculous due to their lack of clarity. This proves the point that the more creative I was with coming up with connections, the more he remembered.

In class, my first idea of this memorization method was that it would be hard to incorporate into my studies, it would take a long time, and it would be boring. I realized, after this experience with my brother, that the landscape idea was quick and fun because the faster you came up with something, the stranger it was, so we remembered the idea from its new unique quality.

Captured Thought: Time and Living in the Now

While generating widowed images I immediatly thought about space and time (continuum). My dad loves astronomy and photography, so we have numerous pictures of the moon and galaxies lying around our house.The concept of the light year has always baffled me. I find it really strange that we are seeing things that have happened in the past. I understand the idea that because we are so far away from the objects in space, light must travel to our eyes and that takes several light years to reach Earth. But, what happens if a star "burns out"? We won't realize that it has stopped producing light until after the fact. Can scientists predict when things like this will occur?

Moving away from the scientific questions, today in my voice lesson, my teacher and I recorded myself singing. During the proccess, I heard myself singing. I know this seems pretty normal, but it is very strange to feel the production of the sound and to hear it projected back at you all at the same time. It was startling to actually hear myself singing while I was singing. Most people don't get opportunities like this to live in the moment, literally.

I also thought that the collaboration for the TED project today reflects some of the same ideas. It's one thing to go online, do some of your own research, and then browse around to see what others have posted. It was a real learning experience to discuss what we wanted to see in the finished presentation and then actually see it show up on our webpage. It seemed magical (here's Lauren getting loopy). When people truly collaborate, things get done, quickly. I think this occurs because the people that are working together feel that they are letting the group down and holding back/preventing others from working if they themselves don't complete tasks. By having time to discuss and work on the TED project today, we could each monitor what was being put on the websites. If there was an issue, we didn't have to post a comment, wait for a response, and then make alterations. Today we got to tell people criticism face to face which forced people to work, which in turn relieved some stress from the people wanting the changes to be made. There is comfort in knowing that things are getting done, and because we could see the manipulations while they were occuring, we, as the owners of the presentation websites, felt relieved because we knew that the sites would have the correct improvements made. (I feel like that was really wordy... I can't fix it)

Time is a really difficult concept for me to understand because everything is related to time. It is happening around us, but we don't feel the direct effects of it until more time has passed. We are falling behind. Will we ever live in the now?

By the way, there is a really cool documentary about time, including our perception of time and its effects on us mentally as well as physically. I can't remember who the presenter of the video is, but the experiments he did and researched were really intriguing.

Blogging Around

I chose to comment on Melanie's 360 Degree blog post about chocolate. She focused on the importance and influence that chocolate has in the world today, and what it would be like if chocolatle didn't exist.

Melanie, I really enjoyed this piece because you utilized your knowledge of chocolate, through experience and research from the Columbian Exchange project, to debate the pro's and con's of chocolate. I found it powerful how you used historical names (allusion) to support your ideas; it gave you credibility. Lastly, my favorite thing about your post was the contemplation of a world without chocolate. While reading that portion, I realized that chocolate is more than a confectionary delight. It's a symbol of love, color, sweetness, and much more. You made it clear that chocolate, whether viewed as positive or negative, has several influences on the world.

I picked Dylan's post because of his alluding to pop culture. His post was about the benefits and reasons for painting one of his walls with chalkboard paint so he can draw on them.

Dylan, I found this post very intriguing. First of all, the allusion to "Across the Universe" was very clever because I feel that, in academy, more people can relate to movie than to your passion for drawing. When I was young I had a "Don't draw on the walls experience" with orange markers and a white couch. If I had a giant wall to draw on I definitely think it could have been prevented. I also feel that because of my getting in trouble for drawing on the furniture, I began to slowly loose interest in visual art. I think it is very profound of you to realize that you need something more than paper in order to explore your brain. I hope you like your new wall; I know people that have chalkboard walls and they love them. There was one thing I thought you should consider. When writing on paper, you can save that piece forever and then move onto a new one. However, on the wall, once you run out of room you have to erase something else. Maybe it will turn out for the better and you'll be able to grow from and add onto the things you draw. But if you do decide to erase something, take lots of pictures first. Great post!

360 Degrees: The Glenbrook Musical

This topic is of great importance to me because I am a huge fan of musical theater. I though this would be the perfect topic for this week because the schools recently found out that we would be preforming Guys and Dolls.

I think that the Glenbrook Musical is a good way to collaborate and meet students from the opposite school. However, it creates a problem that both schools are involved. Every year the musical switches location between GBN and GBS, which creates issues with transportation to the opposite school. If each school had their own musical then the students would only have to stay after school instead of traveling to the other school. This would benefit the preformers' parents because they wouldn't have to drive all over the place.

I can imagine that participating in the musical allows one to see old friends from the opposite school and to make new friends. But when the musical is over, it may be difficult to get together with those friends.

One positive for the schools about going together for the musical is that both schools split the cost. Buying the royals to the show and buying the rights to use the score is very expensive; therefore, if both schools participate then each school will spend less money.

When auditioning for the musical last year, when the production was at North, I realized that the GBN teachers had more of a say in who made it in. This can be used to discriminate against students of a certain school. Last year, there were more north kids that made it into the musical. I'm going to assume that the same idea will be true this year now that the musical is at south. Also, it is known that you have a better chance of making it into the musical as an upperclassman. When I am a senior, the muscial will be at South, so I will have a great chance of getting a good role because I will be an upperclassman and the teachers at south will be choosing the cast. However, when the class of 2011 becomes seniors, the North students may miss out on being in the musical.

Although there are several problems with the musical, I think it is important to continue the tradition because it gives us a chance to meet new people and to mix different talents of acting, singing, and dancing.

Metacognition: Kite Runner Essay

As I worked on my Kite Runner essay, I had difficulty choosing a claim statement for the thesis. I tried to think of both contrasting sides of the argument and tried to reconcile both ideas by...

My original thesis was as follow: Although Amir’s birthplace is Afghanistan, he exhibits less touristic qualities in America than in his native land; therefore, it can be speculated that Amir is, in fact, more American than Afghani.

Then I began to debate whether or not I believed my thesis was true. I explored several perspectives of the claim and realized that the problem was the choice between quantitative or qualitative. Some actions/traits of a tourist include sightseeing, being ignorant to hardships of the native, being wealthy, and being treated well. I realized that out of majority, Amir is more of a tourist in Afghanistan; however, I knew that Hosseini wanted the readers to realize that Amir was actually more culturally Afghani. I knew I could write a more concrete essay about why Amir is more American, but it wouldn't be as meaningful or as important to the main plot of the story as Amir realizing his tie to Afghanistan. By viewing the pro's and con's of contrasting ideas, I found that the idea was not that he was more of one culture than the other, but that Amir needed to reunite his two ways of life to reach redemption. In class we talked of how Amir divided into many fragments, and once he reached redemption he would be whole again; this relates perfectly to the idea of piecing together both cultures to reach redemption and be one again.

This way of thinking is very effective because it allows one to compare contrasting ideas, which seems confusing, but is actually helpful. When seeing similarites between opposing ideas, I recognized that both thoughts worked as one to reach the end goal. By reconciling the idea that Amir was both American and Afghani I was able to create a more fascinating thesis. (This is referred to as a dialectic - conversation about contrasting things)

Best of Week: Kite Runner page 231

Although I do not remember who shared the upcoming insight with the class, I give them full credit. On page 231, the passage reads," I was afraid the appeal of my life in America would draw me back, that I would wade back into that great, big river and let myself forget, let the things I had learned these last few days sink to the bottom. I was afraid that I'ld llet the waters carry me away from what I had to do. From Hassan. From the past that had come calling. And from this last chance at redemption. " A parallel to this passage was brought up in class and can be found on page 136. "America was different. America was a river, roaring along, unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins." I thought this was one of the best insights of the week due to the fact that textual and craft simalarities were constrewed.

These pieces show irony because on page 136, Amir was thankful to be able to wash away his memories of the past. America was a new hope for him. However, in the later passage, Amir realizes that he shouldn't wade into the river or indulge in self pity because that will force him to digress from his mission to save what is left of Hassan. His son Sohrab.

These passages were also the best of the week, due to the way they represent our artful sentences lesson about short sentences. The last three sentences from the first quote listed are all relatively short, and they show ... I noted that all three of those sentences begin with from, therefore, they could've been listed in a single sentence. In class we discussed that, by splitting these pieces into short sentences, the idea is more salient and powerful. The length of the sentences gets progressively longer. Opposingingly, the second passage starts with a short sentence which also brings power. I feel that this shows more of a new beginning, whereas the short sentences of the first passage show plans for the near future/foreshadowing.

This was definitely the bests insight of the week because it showed textual connections, important ideas in the plot, and a type of writing craft we used this week.

One extra piece of connections that I came up with, concerns Assef's idea of cultural cleansing. Amir tries to forget, to erase, to cleanse himself of his past and all of this knowledge of his previous life in Afghanistan. He realizes that it is not possible to get rid of old memories completely; and Amir finds that it is important not to forget. Maybe Assef will also realize that it is not possible to cleanse everyone of the culture of the Hazaras when he looses the fight with Amir and Sorhab.

Carry it Forward : Rives: A mockingbird remix of TED2006

Through his idea that mockingbirds, listen, repeat and reveal the truth, Ted Rives describes how everyone, no matter what race, religion, or nationality, is similar in some way. Everyone has faults. When people talk, they often say things that are rude to someone, and they don't realize who they harm because they often don't understand the other side of the argument. Rives believes that the mockingbirds will help to inform people with the problems that others are facing in the world. The mockingbirds provide a way of communicating and witnessing conversations so that everyone can listen to the other point of view. The mockingbirds just repeat, they will say something they heard even if it is hurtful someone that once was oblivious to the information.

One example of different lifestyles colliding is when he mentions towns with a surplus of mocking birds versus places with few. Rives goes on to talk in spanish. This shows the power of words and how there are misunderstandings due to language barries. We don't know necesarily know much about people of different backgrounds, so we judge and assume.

"...the lady at the laudramat who always seems to know what nice is..." represents the ignorant/arrogant person who thinks that they are right and others are wrong. However, that person doesn't realize that they are occasionally bossy. They need to take more time out listen to themselves and to others who might have a more practical perspective.

Rives also mentions the media and how they warp the truth; this teaches us that it is important to find honest sources of information like the mockingbirds who only repeat what has already occured.

From this speech I have learned about the power of words, and how sometimes listening like the mockingbirds is the better option. Instead of blurting out what I feel, I'm going to listen to what others say, process and then speak, so I avoid saying anything hurtful to others.

I can put this lesson to use during class discussions. If everyone listens while others speak, then we may learn something new, a different perspective. I know that I am a listener, and I am amazed when I hear a new insight that I hadn't come up with. I feel that the people who generally talk the most in class should take the time to listen to the quieter people, who should speak up more. Usually the people who generally listen take the time to formulate ideas based off what others have said, rather than diverting the topic to fit with what they want to say (laundramat lady).

The listeners, including myself, need to swap places with the talkers during discussions so that we get a chance to spread our ideas and the talkers get a chance to listen and formulate ideas. I think that I can listen, remix, and voice my thoughts much like the mockingbirds if I hear both sides of the argument. My goal is to speak up once during every social studies, spanish, and english discussion. However, while I am not speaking, I plan to pay close attention and come up with my own insights on the topic so that I am prepared if called on unexpectedly. My hope, after accomplishing this goal, is to be more spontanious and not anticipate every thing I am going to say.