Blog Post #8 - Project Sharing and Reflection
This is my final board for the courage project. This board showcases the majority of the work I did for my courage project. Along with my tri-fold, in this picture is my short story and my essay. My short story was what my whole courage project was based on and my essay was a huge part of the research I did for my project.
This is the infographic from Blog Post #2. Even though the idea I used for this infographic wasn't the idea that I used for my tri-fold, the infographic really helped structure my courage project and gave me more of an idea on what I should've done for my courage project.
Another visual from my courage project was my website, the one this blog is on right now. On this website, I recorded all my steps and wrote all about my project here.
Some interesting things I learned about my project were that just how long stories have been told, all the types of writing our ancestors used, and how writing was kept throughout history. For instance, stories have been told since the beginning of humanity. People have been telling stories since they have been alive. They have also used all types of writing like cuneiform, rocks with holes to keep track of products, and pictography. Humans have even used a language where drawings communicated a word that sounds similar to another word to communicate messages (ex. drawing a person kneeling to communicate the name "Neil"). People have also been using materials like rocks, clay, papyrus, and paper to keep track of their writing.
Some challenges I faced were...
Writer's Block - I spent months of my project looking for ideas for my short story. No ideas really seemed to jump out at me and even if I found an idea I liked, I didn't know how to develop it into a story.
Procrastination - I'm not the best at time management and especially since this was such a long-term project I was worried from the beginning that I would do everything last minute. However, I managed to start and finish the short story in about five days and the board took another two days.
Speaking - I think of myself as a horrible public speaker and I don't like doing it. People have always told me that I'm quiet or that I have a soft voice, which I agree with, but I do talk a lot more than people think I do. This project really took me out of comfort zone in presenting, and presenting 7-8 times was really tiring.
Reflection:
The Genius Hour experience was very exciting, interesting, and like nothing I've ever done before. Even though I struggled with a few aspects of it (as noted before) it was really fun to develop my project and at the end, see what all my hard work produced. I thought it was a little vague on what we were supposed to include on our tri-folds but the overall experience was something I would do again.
The exhibit was a lot more successful than I thought it would be. I had multiple bad scenarios going through my head of what could happen while I was presenting (I would talk too quietly and the audience wouldn't be able to hear me, I would forget what I was supposed to say, etc.) but even though I was quiet at the beginning of presenting, I would like to think that I improved a lot over the duration of the presentations. The most successful part of my exhibition was the fact that I didn't talk overly fast, as I tend to do when I'm nervous. I think I spoke at a normal pace. For next time, I would definitely try to speak louder, and since I've done it twice now, be more confident with my presentation.
Some ideas I got from other students was to give out food to the audience for trivia because that could be motivation for them to pay attention to my presentation. I could also run a presentation on a laptop with the presentation to give extra information on my topic.
Blog Post #7 - T.e.d. talks
The Five Qualities of a Great Presenter are being confident - know what you're saying and show your confidence, being organized - not be overly organized (don't be boring) but just enough that you know what to say, authentic - being yourself; sharing your passion; being more meaningful, generous - give to the audience to help your audience connect to you, and engaging - be engaging to connect with your audience. Five Quick Tips for presenting are to let your passion show, to make your audience laugh, to optimize your slides - have a plan, use good visuals, and simplify your messages.
My strengths as a presenter are that I'm nearly always prepared with note cards or I've practiced at least a few times beforehand. I try to write enough notes so that I remember what I'm doing/saying, but not too much that I'm directly reading off the notes. Also, I try to organize my presentation in a way that makes sense to me, and hopefully also makes sense to the viewers.
I think it'll be challenging to talk for such a long period of time (30-40 minutes to 7-8 groups of five people) and that it'll be hard to remember what to say without just reading off note cards like a statue. Not only that, but I tend to talk faster and stumble over what I'm saying when I try to memorize what I'm saying or even just by using note cards.
To overcome these challenges, I'm going to time myself practicing the presentation so I can make sure beforehand that I'm not taking too short or long of a time on my presentation. I can also practice reading off note cards that have only a few notes (just enough to remind me of what I'm supposed to say) and improvising the parts that I haven't written down to practice looking up from my notes, memorizing parts of my presentation, and being more authentic not boring.
Blog Post #6 - M.L.A. CITATIONS
After playing around with some citation sites, I now prefer EasyBib because while EasyBib and Citation Machine are really similar, EasyBib doesn't appear to require you to watch a sponsored video every 48 hours as Citation Machine does. Also, for me, EasyBib works faster and smoother on my computer. However, Citation Machine and EasyBib have little to no differences so I'll continue to use both of them alternatively.
Citation sites I compared were...
Microsoft Word
Perfectly formatted Works Cited ------->
Blog Post #5 - C.R.A.P. Test
No, it's not what it seems. The C.R.A.P. test is a way to evaluate the sources you use to find their currency (how recent is the information?), reliability (Is the information opinionated?), authority (who's the author?), and P.O.V. (Is it biased?). We're supposed to use this test on two of our sources for the courage project. The subject I'm going to research for my courage project is the history of short stories. One source I found was titled Short Story and I also found another source called A short history of the short story for my research. To start my evaluation using the C.R.A.P test, I looked at the currency of each website. The page, short story, was last updated February 6th, 2019 which is certainly very recent. The other page, A short history of the short story, was written on July 10th, 2006. The first source was definitely more recent but that's not it. You also have to analyze whether your source is current for your topic. Since my topic is the history of the short story, I first thought that maybe the second source could be more current for my topic because it was written at a closer time to when the first short story was written (around 2000 BCE) and information could have forgotten in those 12-13 years between the two dates of the sources. However, even if the second source has a close date to the start of short story history, it's not close enough to be considered current to that time and we, as humans, may have found out more about the history from new artifacts since 2006, so I would say the first source is the most current and relevant to the subject. Next, looking at the reliability of my sources, I saw that source one's information wasn't opinionated and so wasn't trying to convince the reader in any way. Source one also included multiple references on the subject. Source two, on the other hand, didn't provide any other references. Nonetheless, source two wasn't opinionated. Overall, for this section, I would say that source one was much more reliable than source two because it provided references. After that, I looked at the authority, or, the information about the author and/or sponsor. For this one, source one won with no doubt because the author, Arlen J. Hansen, was a professor at the University of the Pacific in California while the other author, William Boyd, had no information on him. They both lacked experience, however, as they were both listed as having only written one article each. Last but not least, is P.O.V., or point of view. This section evaluates if the source is biased or not, the domain of the website (.net, .com, .gov, .org.), and if the author cited their sources. Source one was not biased (the author didn't take sides), the author listed their sources, and the domain was .com which means the website was for commercial use. Source two was not biased, the author didn't list their sources, and the domain was .co.uk meaning that the website is a United Kingdom domain. In conclusion, source one most met the criteria and therefore is the better source to use.
The sources were:
Source #1 - short story
Source #2 - A short history of the short story
Blog Post #4 - Feedback
After getting some feedback on my project, I'm planning to change a lot about it. First of all, I'm rethinking my action plan and how I'm going to get the food to others to try. Maybe I could bring the food to a professional chef and get their feedback or just simply bring it to school on the day we present out projects so others can get a chance to taste it. I've also been considering a change in project too. Even if I'm several months into this project, I've still been looking for other project ideas that could be more to my taste, and I thought of a project where I could write a short story about a genre I really enjoy and enter it into a competition (maybe on Scholastic). Of course, this project would be difficult to put into action as well, because of the time limit (only three months left), but I haven't made much progress on my current project either so it wouldn't make a huge difference. No matter what I do though, I can still use the feedback I've gotten and explain more about my plan of action and how I'm going to accomplish my project in time for the deadline.
Blog Post #3 - Databases V.S. Search Engines
When is it appropriate to use Wikipedia?
It's appropriate to use Wikipedia when you're just starting out on your research. Wikipedia's a great source to find out some basic info about your topic. However, Wikipedia's not very reliable so it should never be your only source.
What is a database? How is it different from a search engine?
A database is a bunch of information organized and made so it can be easily navigated through. It's usually very easy to filter through your results and most of your results are very reliable and written by professionals like professors or writers. A search engine, however, is just a general search through mounds and mounds of information which may or may not be reliable. The majority of the time it's not a good source to use because anyone can upload anything onto a search engine like Google. There's so much information on Google and only a very small percent is actually factual information that can be used for your needs. While databases are very dependable, search engines are not as authentic or reliable.
Three databases I think I'll use are...
-Britannica Online (an encyclopedia)
-eLibrary (information on varying topics)
-Proquest (more general information on many topics)
Blog Post #2 - Infographic
Blog Post #1 - Genius Hour
The premise behind Genius Hour is that 20% of our class time for the whole year will be fully devoted to our own 'passion project' where we focus on our own projects. This allows our creativity to grow throughout the year. Even some professional companies use this method too. Google gives its employees 20% of their time to work on any pet projects that they have. The idea is that as people work on something that interests them, their productivity levels increase And now, about 50% of Googles projects have been created solely from this time period. I'm very excited about having a lot of freedom to do any project I want. Some challenges I see in the future for this kind of project is that I like to procrastinate a lot so I'll have to work on dividing my work throughout the year so I'm able to finish my project by the end of the year. Also, I may have many issues like time, money, and materials needed to complete the project. I'm also thinking about working in a group. The pros and cons of working by myself would be: I would have the freedom to make my own decisions and I wouldn't have to check if everyone could meet at a place at a certain time to work on our project. However, some cons would be: I could have less motivation to work on my project and I would have fewer opinions to listen to as feedback. Whereas, some pros of working in a group would be: more feedback and helpful suggestions and more motivation to work on my project regularly. Some cons of having a group would be having to figure out times we can and can't meet and having more disagreements about the project. Some ideas I have for my project is to try pizza-making where I learn all the steps of making a pizza or meeting with a couple of my friends to play a musical quartet or musical group for people like the elderly, or even in front of strangers.