Another trimester, another project. This project I find particularly interesting. I really like the whole using multimedia to tell a story. It is a good way to teach us not just about how to write a story, but to get the mood of the piece across as well. This project opens our minds to the different ways of storytelling and how the elements have to tie in with what we want the readers to get out of the piece. A project like this forces us not to just use our English skills, but to also our designing skills as well. This class is not just an English class, it is kinda a technology class as well. I am learning a lot about presentations and yada yada. Very useful information that can give me the edge in the future. That is a really nice thing; having a class that teaches you a multitude of skills, not just the ones you need to pass the class.
This week, we finally got to watch everyone's This I Believe videos. It's really interesting to see everyone's beliefs and how it makes them who they are. I thought that every single video reflect who the person was and I found that fascinating. Now that we have an insight of that person's belief, we can look past the obvious and see them with a different angle. This is an important lesson to learn because humans can be so narrow minded. When we have a certain idea implanted into our brain, we tend to think that that is the end all idea. By opening our minds to look at things through another's eyes, we can get a better understanding of the subject. The This I Believe Project is a good way to look at things in another light as well as to see and understand the beliefs of the people in the class. This is an important project to do and I feel that I learned a lot about myself as well as my classmates through this project. This week we continued on with our This I Believe project. We worked on the video aspect which is kinda harder than I expected. I still haven't found music and finding pictures is harder and taking longer than expected. But I still really like this project. It forces us to tell our beliefs and in a conventional way. The video will really help hit home on what our belief is. Reading an essay is nice but when you hear the author's voice and how they tell their story. It forces you to really put thought in and not just half-assing it. You really have to put thought into what music you pick and what pictures you want to pick. They have to help create the mood of your belief. I've been working hard on this project because I am putting a lot of thought into the details. Even though I am only 45% done, I feel what I have is very solid. This week, we continued on our This I Believe project. We transitioned from writing these essays to making the video. I have a little knowledge of video editing so that part isn't hard at all. Honestly, the hardest part of this project is putting myself out there. I like to think that I am a really open. But I do have a problem with being vulnerable. I hate being vulnerable and would much rather be confident in everything I do. With this project and the Social Excellence talk, I realized that being vulnerable doesn't mean showing weakness. Being vulnerable is showing the quieter side. It means showing the things that you aren't exactly proud of, but understand and accept because they make you you. This is exactly what my essay is about and I think through this project, I have learned more about vulnerability. I may not feel completely comfortable with being vulnerable, but isn't that the point of vulnerability? If we weren't afraid of showing the ugliness of ourselves, we wouldn't be human. This week was an interesting one. We started the "This I Believe" essay this week. I find it a very cool and interesting idea, an essay with a conversational tone with something that you believe in. Sounds easy? Well I had no problem figuring out what I wanted to write. I had a problem with making easy-going. As soon as you say essay, I go hard core MLA format with tons of big fancy words that I know but don't use in my everyday conversations. But I have the weekend to look over it and change it to what I see as less formal. I think that this is a really cool project for more than one reason, like the easy-going less formal tone. I am excited to see everyone's beliefs. I want to see how they came to believe that and have a conversation about it. This project is basically a huge conversation starter about an array of topics. I think that is wonderful. I also really like that we have to make this a video. The videos will really enhance what we want to get across. The more senses we involve in a presentation, the more people will understand what you wanted them to see. Until next time! After our lovely winter break, we were forced back into real life aka school. I am kinda glad we are back but I'd much rather be sleeping. This week we continued our Shakespeare project. I feel that I really understand what this project is all about. I was very confused in the beginning of what exactly what we were doing, but this week really helped me focus in on what this project is about. I understand why we have to do each element and how it helps us with our critical lens. For example, the songs are very helpful to help with the feel of the character and their motivation. It helps to see and hear from different sources what exactly the point we are trying to get across. I really like listening to Dr. McDermott and what she had to say about Shakespeare. It was a very helpful tool to help me better understand the plays. Her insight was very interesting to listen to and made me want to take a Shakespeare class. This week was basically a week with light bulb moments with me truly understand what our theory is really about. This week's focus was to watch our respected Shakespeare play. My group choose to watch Macbeth and what a ride that was. It was very good, and I really enjoyed it. I could see some of our critical theory elements throughout so that will most definitely help out with brain storming our ideas for the project.I think that my group and I will have a good time dissecting the myths and archetypes around Macbeth and its characters. We feel like we have a good idea brewing so we will see where that goes. There are a lot of things to work with for myths and archetypes, so I'm glad that we picked this theory with this Shakespearean play. We feel like we have a good idea brewing so we will see where that goes. I am pretty excited for our project. I have a good feeling about it. I hope that break doesn't totally make me forget all my ideas that I have. But, I think that so far our group and the project is pretty solid. Happy Holidays! Schoenborn is back! Yay! With him being here, it is nice to really get back in the groove of things. He left as soon as a routine felt normal and that really screwed with my head. But, with him back we can have nice long discussions about the Poem of the Week which really helps me think deeper into the poem. When I can get more out of the poem, I feel that my Poem of the Week essay is a lot better, which makes sense. I'm really glad he is back. With him being back, he explained what exactly the Shakespeare project was, which really helped me focus on what needs to be focused on. I know I learn better when I see things, and he showed us some examples of this project which was really nice. I understand what is needed to be done and I feel a lot more confident about this project now. We also started our plays and I am really excited to see what happens in Macbeth and how it relates to the critical theory of Mythological. What were the main ideas we learned this week? This week we started our new project, the King Lear/Macbeth critical theory project. I've really wanted to read Macbeth for the longest time and I'm really excited that I get to. I am a huge Shakespeare buff and reading either of the plays would be great. The critical theory my group picked was Mythical/Archetypal, which sounds very interesting and fits in with Macbeth very well. I’m interested to read the play and find the connections between it and our critical theory. This should be a fun unit to really dive into. We also read two PoWs, both were very interesting. They dealt with the idea of how to be remembered after death. Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 146” thought that it is your soul that will be remembered and Shelley thought it is the physical things in his poem “Ozymandias”. I personally believe that it depends on who you are in order to argue which one is better. I can see the points for both so I really don’t have my own opinion. This was a good interesting week. What were the main ideas we learned this week? The main idea this week was catch up for the majority of the class. I am really proud that the most I have been behind is two tragedy blog posts. Everyone else is freaking out and I'm sitting here like "Yup, I'm good". I really don't know what I am going to write for the Tragedy Essay, so we will see how that goes. I looked at the rubric and I think that this paper will be very different than any other paper I've written before. I like that though; I like writing papers that are the usual five paragraph essay with lots of analyzing and what not. I have liked this unit so I'm actually kinda pumped for this paper (jk who likes writing papers). I am really happy we are done with the tragedy blogs. As much as they are going to help with writing my paper, they were a pain to write. Everything was really interesting to read or watch, but relating it back to tragedy was not very or fun. Hopefully this weekend I will get even more stuff done so that I will not be stressed to the max. |
Chloe MastersonSenior at MHPS Archives
March 2015
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