Reflection Take Three

For this project each student was supposed to incorporate something they learned from internship and morph it into something that could be put into the magazine we were to make. Students were to do photo essays, interviews, or editorials. I had my internship at Cherokee Point Elementary chosen for me so I chose to write an article about the risk I took having my internship chosen for me since it wasn't an issue that was being addressed in others writing.

When I think about my writing in this project what I think I learned is how to cut the useless information in my writing, make it a concert not a pancake, an intro can capture or lose the reader and to always keep it simple.

In my first draft of my writing I had a lot of useless information that wasn’t even necessary.

To graduate in the High Tech High Village you are required to have completed an internship. We do our internship in 11th grade. Internships are required because they give you a little preview of what its like in the real world doing something you possibly would like to pursue in the future. The internship coordinator sets you up with an internship, or you find your own. I was constantly told to get your own internship because you know yourself better than the internship coordinator and you know what you yourself like.

This was a whole paragraph that I had dedicated to talking about how internship works. With more and more critiques I took the whole paragraph out.

Another rule that I learned ,that I think was the coolest, was ‘Concerts not Pancakes’ which basically means Start the writing good have it good through out the writing and end it good, just like a concert. Don't make it like a pancake, having it start good and having it end bad. I tried my best to make my writing like a concert and I think that I succeeded in doing so.

The final but most important thing that I learned with my writing is that the intro can capture or lose the reader. I’ve known this for a while but with this article I was much more aware of it. I was more aware due to the fact that there was going to be about 50 other articles that were about their internship and I wanted my writing to capture the reader and not just have them flip past it.

I learned to keep it simple when it came to my writing in the sense that I should keep the words simple because big words can sometimes confuse people, I know they confuse me sometimes. There’s also no such thing as too much editing and when it comes to the layouts keep it simple .

How I learned these different techniques were through the different critiques that we had and listening to the different podcasts that Randy recommended.

Learning all of this was important because I learned new techniques that I can use in my senior year when it comes to writing and using InDesign.

What I think that I can still improve on is working on the structuring of my writing. I think that the paragraphs could be moved around a little bit more so that I can make it flow smoother and better. I think what will help me improve next time is having someone who wouldn't even know about the writing thats assigned read it and just give me some feedback as to what they like and what they don’t like. I think this because the feedback would be more helpful because I don't think that they would hold back.

Magazine Reflection Take Two

Overall, when you think about the big picture of your writing, what improved? How did it get better? Why?
When I think about the big picture of my writing and what improved I think about all the useless information that I cut out. There was so much useless information that I cut, an example would be when I talked about what internship was and how its done. I realized that it was useless considering that whoever is reading this magazine knows our school, and at least knows about what internship is. How it got better was through critiques with different people and getting information back on what was good what should be moved, added or even taken out.

Overall, when you think about the big picture of your writing, what still needs work? What do you think will help you improve? Why?
What I think could be improved is probably the writing structure. I think that the paragraphs could be moved around a little bit more so that I can make it flow better. I think what will help me improve is having someone who doesn’t even know about the magazine read it and just give me some feedback as to what they like and what they don’t like.

Specifically, show us something that improved and describe the path it took to get better. You can quote your article, your drafts, link to evidence, etc.
Something that I improved on was my writing structure. With the help of my teacher he told me what worked and what didn’t and he was more honest than my peers were which was what I needed. I also improved on removing the useless, unnecessary information. An example my first draft started like this

To graduate in the High Tech High Village you are required to have completed an internship. We do our internship in 11th grade. Internships are required because they give you a little preview of what its like in the real world doing something you possibly would like to pursue in the future. The internship coordinator sets you up with an internship, or you find your own. I was constantly told to get your own internship because you know yourself better than the internship coordinator and you know what you yourself like.

With a few critiques i realized that I needed to take this out. Other classmates were sure to refer to the process of internship. I didn't need to repeat it.

Describe something specific (or a few things!) that you learned about writing. Theres a lot of things that I learned about writing through this project

• Concerts not pancakes- Start the writing good and end it good. Don't be like pancakes having it start good and ending disgusting.
• Intro- I learned how to make my intro start interesting and to capture the reader. In my case I started with telling a story about how i didn't get
  
• Audience- I learned that when writing I should keep in mind who will be reading this. Take in to mind that the reader might or might not know what an internship is.
• Too much copy editing- There's no such thing.
• Keep it simple- Keep it simple with your words, big words confuse people sometimes. Most likely those big words can be replaced with smaller simpler words.
  

Magazine Reflection

The reflection is due by the end of the day on Thursday. Please take your time and look through your own work as well as others classmates'.

Think of the process, which began weeks (or months ago)--you started with an idea or maybe an earlier draft of piece of work. That was edited and revised many times for content, substance and style. You created or re-used artwork or photography. This was edited and resized for our magazine. Finally, all of this was compiled into a layout that was critiqued and revised until you could do the final steps of "file > package."

1. What went well for you during the process of creating this magazine?

• Having people around that know what they are doing was definitely what went well. It went well because I didn’t really have an idea coming into the project if my writing was worth being put in a magazine or what I wanted my layout to be. With the help of my teacher and my peers I made a piece of writing that was really good. What else went really well was just everyone being ok with how the magazine was going to be made and no one really was angry if there choice wasn’t chosen what I’m trying to say is everyone was open to new ideas.

2. What challenges did you face as you moved from an early draft or idea to a final product?

• The challenge I faced was I had two pieces of writing and I didn’t really know which one I wanted to use. I overcame this problem simply by asking opinions of different people and I finally made my decision. Another problem I came into was that my layout was kind of boring to me I fixed this by talking to my teacher who gave me some great ideas.

3. What other examples of work—student and professional—stood out as exemplary and served as a good model for your own work?

• My title was similar to Nyachare’s title. I also used some of the layouts form national geographic magazine and the Atlantic Magazine as my guidelines for my layout.

In the end I'm really proud of this project and I think that it is the coolest one that I have done so far.

Obama's Socialism

Google the phrase "Obama Socialism". What do you get? Try google news... what did you find?
I read that people are bringing up the meeting with the Venezuelas president. Saying that these first 100 days Obama has been called weak and we’re leaning towards Socialism. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-stolz/yes-he-can_b_189361.html

In this article they said that Obama has an agenda to socialism. They say that socialism isn’t as bad as it was twenty or ten years ago that now its not that bad as people think.

This article was about the Texas governor was at a rally speaking about how “Texas wont go gently to Socialism.” And how they don’t like the big spending politians. Also some posters were reading “Stop Obama's Socialism'. I thought that this was interesting that a governor is against our president.

When Googling 'Obama Socialism' I found something interesting The first one was “Why Obama’s Socialism Matters” inside this article there was an interesting link that I found that had a link inside of it.

“June sources released information that during his campaign for the State Senate in Illinois, Barack Obama was endorsed by an organization known as the Chicago "New Party". The 'New Party' was a political party established by the Democratic Socialists of America (the DSA) to push forth the socialist principles of the DSA by focusing on winnable elections at a local level and spreading the Socialist movement upwards.”

There were also updates from the NP from October 1996 coming out saying that new member of theres was Barack Obama.

Do you feel that the label "socialism" is applied appropriately or correctly to Obama, his proposals or his policies?

Socialism is defined as an economy in which the government controls all means of production.

I feel that Obama is doing what he thinks is best for the country.

Do Obama's proposals or policies have historic precedents in America? If so, what happened in the past?

Obama did repeal Bush's policy on limiting funding on Stem Cell Research.

Photo Essay: Internship Photo Essay

What is Cherokee Point?
I intern at Cherokee Point Elementary. Cherokee Point Elementary is about 4 years old and located in City Heights. This new school has a total of 700 students, Kinder through fifth, 32 classrooms and stands on 6.7 acres of land. The new school was approved as Proposition MM November 3, 1998 and started being built March 25, 2004. The name Cherokee Point was given to the school due to the fact that the surrounding streets of the neighborhood area create the shape of an arrowhead. It was built to stop the overcrowding in the elementary schools nearby such as Adams Elementary, Birney Elementary, Carver Elementary, Clay Elementary and Central Elementary. The school officially opened September 6, 2005.


Beginning of my day
My main location , at Cherokee Point , is the library/media room. My job in the library/media room is to check books in and out, put books away, help kids find books, and some other tasks. I find putting the books away quite boring but sometimes fun. I find it boring because I have to put them back. This can take awhile but I do find it fun because I usually end up finding some cool books to look at. My favorite job to do is, to check books in and out. I find checking them in and out fun because I get to use the scanner and I get to interact with the kids more. I also enjoy helping the kids find their books because I, again, get to interact with the kids. When I don’t have anything to do, my mentors busy or I’m done with my work; I usually just grab a book from their large selection.

My Project
At Cherokee Point they have computer carts, which go between classes in the certain grade levels. The computer carts carry 20 Apple iBooks. Some teachers weren’t really happy with the movement of them because some weren’t getting the computers that often. The solution to this problem was to give two computers to each teacher from grades kinder to 3rd. For this redistributing of computers two computers carts, a total of 40 computers, and had to be distributed to 18 teachers. This was my project; I handled the computers over the two weeks, one computer cart for each week.


Beginning the project
When it came to redistributing the computers it wasn’t just getting them and pass them out. The first day starting my project I had to do software upgrades, Firefox upgrades, and Adobe Reader upgrades. For twenty computers this took me 2:30 hours. After computer upgrades I had to erase student files such as, word documents, Power Points, pictures, music, movies, etc. Erasing took me from about half an hour. After deleting the documents I had to install the printers so that the printer installed on the computer matched the printer in the classroom that it was going to this took me about 45 minutes. After I finished installing the printers I stopped working on them for the rest of the day and helped with other tasks.

End of the Project
The second day, my project involved entering the computer info onto a computer application called Horizon. With Horizon I assigned each computer a specific barcode number. This took me about 3 hours, due to the fact that I had to make sure that all information was right. After I was finished with barcodes I had to clean the computers so that they looked close to brand new. This took me from 11 to about 1. While I cleaned them I had to label them with their barcode so where the green dot is, is where the new barcode was placed. The third day was when I cleaned and labeled the chargers and passed out the chargers. This was the first computer cart on the first week. The next week I did finished in three days but I also did so much more besides this project.



Music Class
The second week I got to do more than just working in the library and with the computers. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I joined in on a music class and I also helped the music teacher out a bit. The days that I went there were different grade levels. Kindergarten, of course, was just simple dancing and singing, 3rd grade was practicing their recorder and some dancing and 5th grade was doing rehearsals for a program they have coming up. I enjoyed going to help out, observe and participate in music class especially with the kindergartens because they taught me some songs and dances. In the picture above I was sitting in on the third grade class taking pictures of them practicing their recorders, this is one of the pictures that I took. I also observed a first/second grade class in which I am basing my next project on. My next project is a combination of my honors project and my internship project. I will be creating a children’s book for this class.

What I'm bringing to the Magazine

What are you bringing to the Magazine?!

1. What article(s) would you like to write for the magazine? What photography could you contribute? Art? List three different ideas for your major contribution.

• I would like to do an article about how its not totally bad if Law picks your internship. I would like to do this because I hear so much about how horrible it is if you have your internship picked for you but I had mines picked for me and I love it. I can add some of my photos from my photo essay onto it or I could possibly just take new ones
• My mentor interview or my photoessay.
• If no one else is doing this then I'd like to produce an interview of those who picked their own internship against those who had theirs choosen for them.

2. Suggest at least one (or more) possible title for the magazine. This could be a title with or without a subtitle. For example, I work for UnBoxed: a Journal of Adult Learning in Schools.

• HTHMA: High School Internship Experiences

3. Suggest a topic for an article that you were personally like to read in a magazine inspired by the internship semester.

• I would like to read about different internship experiences and how they dealt with awkward situations, stressful situations and other situations that they've never dealt with before.
• All this semester we've been asked 'What does the world of work mean to you?' so I think that the magazine should answer that question somewhat.

My Economic Advice

At my internship I intern at an elementary school. My internship is basically in the field of education. In California the education budget $11 billion has been cut. In order to compensate for the lack of funding pink slips have been handed out, 20,000 to be exact. My advice to my internship instead of eliminating teachers which will make classroom sizes bigger, do some of these:

1. Eliminate Saturday School

• My internship has Saturday School for any students that want to come. My advice would be, to save money, stop it. The school during Saturday school has to pay for the staff and the food for the kids.

2. Apply for Grants

• My school can apply for grants for computers and other requirements too.
  

3. Promote Attendance

• I think that it would be good for the school to promote attendance.
  

4. Fundraising- Bake Sales, Concerts, Talent Shows, Etc.

• I know that the fund raising wouldn't really pay for a teachers salary or anything big but the money could go towards replacing a broken computer, new playground equipment, new books, etc.