Follow Up Post

Now that we have finished the major parts of our project, we can look back on the entirety and reflect on our performance. I would say that we have done an excellent job considering the last minute complications with editing and compiling the newspaper. For future endeavors into magazine creation, we would set deadlines further in advance to the publication of the paper to give more time to edit and refine it. I personally feel that while I did my fair share of the work, it would have benefited me and the group as a whole to complete the work earlier. Overall I am satisfied with how everything went down, and am proud of being a part of it.

Big Ideas Project Summary

As the remainder of the groups began winding down and completing the final bits of their project, our project was just beginning. We had to provide all of the groups with a website to which they could publish their videos and photos. We also had to make a newspaper to publish the articles of the other groups. At the time of writing this these things were only barebones, skeletal framework. Now all of the content for the newspaper is finished and the videos will be put onto the site soon.

What I did:

As an individual, I contributed what knowledge I had of computers and technology to help in the effort to prepare for the reception and publication online of the projects form all of the other groups. At the outset, I was assigned to with the managing and uploading of project videos onto a website. To that end, I familiarized myself with several website design platforms, including Wordpress and Weebly. In addition, I gave myself a few sample papers and video clips to practice what would be needed for when the stories came in. In addition, I familiarized myself with video editors, at first WeVideo, and later iMovie after we decided that it was simpler. I made a few test clips to test my editing skills. In addition, I checked all of the videos that were sent to the email set up for the purpose to confirm that they were the appropriate type and playable. Alongside that I checked the news article to ensure it could be opened. I also performed the extremely important task of putting together pages of the newspaper, even coming to school on a Saturday to push through the final hurdles.

Reflection:

So far, every aspect of our project is going well. All of the other groups have at least a basic understanding of shooting and editing video, and the custom domain is up and running ready to accept the content that will be put on it. Hopefully the rest of the execution of our project goes as smoothly as how it is going currently. Throughout the course of this project I learned several useful life skills. One was the use of technology to transmit information, in the form of text and video. Another was the creation of videos for release to the public.

Effects:

Our project has made a profound impact on the other groups and hopefully on future classes of students. We have provided the basic structure for each group to obtain video that is an integral part of the project. In addition, we provided a platform upon which all of the students can upload this video as well as the news story, another integral part of the project. These basic parts will allow the students to prepare for much larger thing in life, such as creating full-blown movie projects and news stories. The greatest impact, however, is setting a template for future classes who do this project can follow. It is this base structure of the media aspect of the project that will prevail most clearly for quite some time.

January Update

Our project to teach the rest of the class how to do video editing and the uploading of the projects is going quite well. Overall, we have began preparations to teach video editing to the class.

For this project, I have prepared to to teach the class by personally editing videos with WeVideo as well as learning to use the equipment that will be potentially used to record the video segments. In addition, I have been learning how to utilize web page design platforms so as to be able to put together the website when it comes time to activate the website.

So far I see no major issues with our project. I am on track and doing what is necessary to fulfill my role on time.

Project Proposal

Project Proposal Document

Mentor Report

As our group began our ventures into the real world of digital videography and web hosting, we had realized we had some questions needed to be answered in order to truly extract the best fruit out of our efforts. We realized that we needed a mentor to lead us through the project, to guide us through the maze of inhibitors. We looked no further than Mrs. Burns, the Web Design teacher at Washington High School. Our team scheduled a meeting with her on Thursday November 12th during Husky Period in her classroom at Washington : F245. (She can be reached via email at lburns@fremont.k12.ca.us). At the meeting, my fellow team members: Jaison Selvajothi, Cliff Liu, Taj Shaik, and Randall Wood were present. First, we thanked her for all of her valuable time and proceeded to start the meeting. We started our stream of questions with a question about marketing our site to increase views. She stated that, marketing your site will be easy through "social media campaigns" (Burns). She wanted to make sure that before marketing our site, we should have a clear purpose or image so that way viewers can easily find what they are looking for. "Viewers should be greeted with a simple web interface and easy to use UI" (Burns), and with the help of stock images Burns stated that creating an appealing website would be very easy. We continued our interview with another question about getting sponsorship from the district for the website. She stated that the district uses wordpress and "doesn't know the logistics of FUSD sponsorship of websites" (Burns). She said that some of your best options are Weebly, Wordpress, one of the school loop sites the district provides, or GoDaddy (with subscription based fees). She definitely promoted Weebly as it is the platform she uses in her classes. We went on to discuss about web UI and some of the ways to get a good looking UI to attract customers. "So of the best platforms are those provided by Weebly or Wordpress" (Burns), but also to look at designing one through GoDaddy's services. She stated that the place where we can obtain a UI will be dependent on where we find obtain web hosting. As we finished our questions regarding web hosting, we moved the meeting's focus to one about developing content on the website. We asked her specifically about uploading content onto the website and ways to upload video footage onto the site. She stated that the best way to handle about these things is to use the web hosting service features "by using the plugins to external video sites like Youtube provided by the web hosting service" (Burns).  She stated that by using such external plugins, we can run a much cheaper site and not worry about storage issues. As our meeting came to a close, we felt extremely prepared for conducting this project. We thank Mrs. Burns for all the time she spent with us answering our questions! We definitely feel prepared to make the first steps into the world of the Big Ideas Project.

Rhetorical Precis

Original article (EBSCOHOST): http://ezproxy.aclibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,cpid&custid=s8900657&db=muh&AN=98510556&site=ehost-live

Annotated article: https://docs.google.com/a/fusdk12.net/document/d/14DXsELVkmtxKQtm9ApHUWWaiMsdyixkuqQKRV_ALjy0/edit?usp=sharing

Rhetorical Precis: https://docs.google.com/a/fusdk12.net/document/d/1-tjKOyStdSq9RM5aJkJMZdrMybe-wmuT2HuDIgpZkSY/edit?usp=sharing

Research 4

Service learning is a concept that can be applied to all levels of the education system, form kindergarten to college. in this article for UC Denver, they explain how students see service learning as a way to "deepen their understanding of the material [coursework], increase their motivation and to gain greater self-knowledge" (UC Denver). Despite the fact that service learning does have these positive effects on students, not every school has these types of programs. At one point I heard from someone that he heard a schools principal say that "[we] don't keep track of the activities, we merely track the hours" (unknown). It is a sad reality but one that isn't easy to overcome. However soon schools might start warming up more to the subject and we will see far more service based learning projects.