Thursday, April 26, 2012

Jordan's Presentation: Music

I learned a lot from Jordan's Facebook page and I think that by him setting up a page for people to all come together to talk about music and to learn about it is a great thing.  I also like that he is being a DJ and how he is incorporating introductions and conclusions to songs and adding his own touch to music.  I also thought that it was great to hear that music had been a part of his life for a very long time and I could tell that music was a great passions of Jordan's.

I agree that CD's have become a lot less common since many people can go online on sites like iTunes and get their music.  I feel like this is just because our world is changing everyday and that it is a more convenient way for many to just get their music from online and they don't even have to leave their own home to get the new music.  I also agree that our music world is changing and that artists and musicians have to also change along with it.  I feel like that it is true that slowly but surely it seems like more and more music products such as t-shirts, autographs, and much more is being given away for free and that it will continue to change with the years.

I felt like Jordan had spent time creating a page for his multimodal project and that he had put it together very well and that it was neat, organized, and professional.  I hope that people visit this page and that they join in and that people learn from each other about different music topics and different genres.  I also feel like it was a very smart idea for Jordan to use Facebook because it seems like the majority of today's people have a Facebook or have access to it, so I believe it will allow him to get his music and information out into this world.  Great job Jordan!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

English Reflection: Project Experiment and Class

My reflection visual is meant to show people how as a class we formed a small community and we used resources and data and brainstormed together to all come up with ideas and to give each support through our own personal experiences and experiments.  This is my reflection visual and I also had text which included the following:
          
            I feel as though overall I have learned a lot and been able to build on my knowledge in English 104, Section 41.  I have also been able to meet a lot of new friends through my classmates and I have enjoyed working on projects and tasks with my classmates.  I feel as though my classmates and I have become more than just that and that we have actually formed more of a community.  We have been able to give each other ideas and work together to accomplish tasks and figure out information.
            During English 104 I have been able to keep a blog about all of my information, thoughts, and experiment and I feel as though it has really helped me to stay not only on task and caught up in the class, but I felt as though it helped to keep the information available for everyone and it allowed my classmates and I to give each other feedback.  I think the blog also allowed me to have a better thought process during the class and to help to come up with greater ideas by being able to express my thoughts and opinions online and so others can help me and give me advice.
            The project defiantly had a huge impact on me and I loved being able to get the opportunity to help others for thirty days and it really allowed me to grow as a person.  I feel like having been able to experience that has taught me to be more caring and helping towards others and it also allowed me to gain more self-confidence in myself and I also feel as though I am now more outgoing and willing to lend a hand to others.  I also feel as though it will help me in my future career as a nurse by it helped to improve my people and communication skills.  After I was able to have my own personal experiences with helping others it was really neat to be able to research and find others and information that related to things that I had done and experienced.  I loved being able to tie others research with my own and compare and contrast it.  I learned that not everyone’s experiences are the exact same and that sometimes having opposing views can be a good thing because it allows people to learn from each other and be able to keep an open mind and view things differently.  Also it allowed me to feel a connection to people that I didn’t know but that had experienced what I did and we were able to relate to things and be able to use information to build upon each other’s experiences.
            I have all the above positive experiences, but I did have a bad experience during the project experiment.  I started volunteering at Miller’s Merry Manor to be able to help people there and while I was there the agency lost two residents.  This was hard and upsetting.  I was able to help others cope and we were able to get through it together and it taught me to not take days for granted and to enjoy life more.
            If I was going to explain this project to someone who is unfamiliar with this class I would tell them to think about themselves and the world around them and to think about something that they want to fix or change.  Then once they decide on something to go out and try to fix it or change it by changing your habits or to do some action towards making a difference.  I also would tell them to give it their all and to really keep an open mind because it will allow them to learn from their experiences and to maybe make a change that could last a lifetime.  I also would tell them to make sure that they do something for thirty days that means something to them and that they are interested in and this will help make them involved and they will want to give 100% to the project.  The project held a lot of significance towards my learning process and I know it would for others as well because it allows one to get involved personally and to experience things. This helps keep people involved and allows them to get the full experience of not only learning, but also doing.

Ryan's Presentation: Experimental Films

I really enjoyed Ryan's presentation and I felt like he had obviously taken a lot of time to do this video and he had a lot of great points and information throughout the video.  I loved that he did the main voice during the video because then it was like he was presenting the information to us, not just showing it to use through the video.  I also really enjoyed all the pictures and amazing photography.  I really loved also hearing the good music and I think that Ryan did a very good job at piecing together different photos and making a really great movie.

I just started getting into images and videos and I am starting to learn somethings about directing and creating videos.  I am trying to learn because I really enjoy to see videos complete and well done and to me it is just a wonderful piece of art and every video is put together differently and that is what I love.  I love that through videos you can express different ideas and capture different moments in people's lives.

I think that Ryan had a great presentation and the length of it was great and he did a great job at answering all of the questions that he was asked at the end of his presentation.  I also could tell that he had put a lot of hard work into his video and it really showed because it looked very professional.  Great job Ryan!

Maui's Presentation: Exercise

Maui had a Prezi made to present to the class today and at first I was worried that it would be really hard on my eyes or even make me feel motion sick, but she did a great job and it wasn't overwhelming and it was very well put together.  She started off by explaining how she had put together a calendar of exercises and different activities that she would do during our thirty day experiment and I could tell that she was very organized and that she was well planned out.  Some of the types of workouts that she included into her personal experiences were:  soccer, yoga, weights, cardio (biking, running), and meditation.  Maui showed a video from the movie Legally Blonde that expresses how exercising releases endorphins and it makes people happy.

I felt like Maui's overall presentation was very lively and she did a great job with including the audience and she really expressed a great love and passion for exercising, especially for soccer.  I thought that she had a lot of detail information and it was great that she included definitions for some of the words that she explained in her presentation because it helped to make her information clearer and easier for us as the audience to understand.  I really enjoyed also hearing how yoga was able to be a source of anxiety reducer and that it can help improve one's mood.  I didn't know though that yoga could actually slow one's biological clock.  I think that this is huge and that it shows just how strong yoga can have an impact on your life.

I took a lot away from the presentation and it really made me realize that I should try to find an activity that I enjoy and then it will help me find motivation in exercising and trying to make myself healthier.  I know that I currently don't exercise enough and I usually take a nap instead of exercising, but I feel like I might actually find more energy if I start exercising and that I won't be as tired all the time.  I am hoping to start incorporating exercise into my daily life and I think that this presentation helped to give me the motivation to do so.  Great job Maui!

Friday, April 20, 2012

Ashley's Presentation: Soda

Ashley Peterson's website was very well put together and I could tell that she had spent a great amount of time working on it.  I also thought that it was great that she had benefited a lot from not drinking soda and it seems like her personal experiences through project experiment have really made an impact on her.  She said that she had lost 7 lbs during the project experiment and that is great and I defiantly think that I am going to try and cut down on the amount of soda I consume daily.  I also was shocked when she explained how the average person is suppose to only drink like 3 cans of soda a week and I know that I can easily drink 3 cans of soda in one day.  I was shocked by this number because I feel probably 80% of us drink more than this a week.  I also was not shocked to hear that many people are addicted to soda or have a mind set that they have to have it.  I feel like I drink soda a lot just because it taste good, is around me everywhere, or that it is just a habit that I have.  Soda is literary what helps me stay awake all day at work and during classes.  I am going to start trying to pick a water or juice over my normal Mt. Dew, I know this is going to be hard but I think that my body could really benefit from lowering the amount of sugar intact and the amount of calories that I consume in a day.

I thought that Ashley really had done a lot of research and she had some great pictures and videos on her website.  I also enjoyed seeing how much of an impact her project experiment had on her because it really gave me the drive to want to cut soda out of my life and try to help myself become healthier.  I also agree with her that soda, fast food restaurants, and lack of exercise are all factors in adding people to become overweight or obese and it worries me because I feel like I have all of these factors against me.  I am hoping that I can slowly start to change some of my lifestyles so that I do start to become a regular exerciser (Katie's presentation helped me to want to exercise more and on a regular basis), start eating at home and eating healthier foods, and to cut out soda and try to substitute it for water.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Katie's Presentation: Exercise

I learned a lot from Katie's presentation (PowerPoint) and some of it was that:  one needs to be a regular exerciser, not a sporadic one, exercise can make one less angry and make them feel happier and healthier, if one is a regular exerciser and they take a lot of time off it can have negative impacts on their mind and body (sadness, depression, mood swings, etc), and overall that exercising can help one to be in a better mind state and to help and make positive changes to one's mood.  I felt like Katie's PowerPoint was very well put together and organized and I could tell that she had worked really hard on her presentation.  I also loved her own personal videos that she made of herself and it was nice to see and hear her own reflection on information and material and it really made the PowerPoint strong and informational.

I also really like how prepared Katie was and she seemed to have known her material before the presentation and she did a good job of not reading from her PowerPoint and instead she kept great eye contact with the class and it showed that she truly knew the material that she was presenting.  I think that she did a very good job and that she really worked hard on her project.  Great job Katie!

Vinnie's Presentation: Lucid Dreaming

I had never really thought about lucid dreaming until now and I have defiantly experienced lucid dreaming before.  Vinnie's poster/collage was very well organized and looked very professional.  He presented all of his information very clearly and I loved doing the writing exercise and he gave us the two options of either writing about free will or to make a dream journal about the dream(s) we had the night before.  I decided to write about the dream I had the other night because it was a bit of a scary one.  I wrote about my dream where I was a mother to 20 children and they all were named Sarah and I was a teacher at a school where only my kids were the students and lets just say I was very busy and stressed out.  I woke up from this dream in a panic state and I was very glad to soon realize that it was in fact a dream and not real.

I also loved how Vinnie explained his own personal experiences with lucid dreaming and he defiantly had done a great job on his project.  He answered all the questions that the class had for him and he did a great job at presenting all of his material and information.  I felt like he had been prepared for the presentation and that he had really done his research on lucid dreaming.  Great job Vinnie!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Multimodal Project

For my multimodal project I am planning on doing a PowerPoint as the main way of getting my information and idea out of helping others.  I am going to include within the PowerPoint things such as:  videos, public service announcements, photos, comic strips, and text to illustrate main points and information.  I feel as though having a PowerPoint is a great way to bring a bunch of different forms of media together in one display.  I am going to embed the videos and others media into one and make it an amazing presentation.  I also feel the most comfortable with working with PowerPoint because I am honestly not very good with technology, but over the years I have been able to learn a lot about how to work with PowerPoint and how to make some very professional and informative presentations.  I am excited to be able to share my multimodal project with my classmates because I am hoping to get them interested in helping others and to get them to see how it just takes one person to start a chain reaction and that together we can make not only a better community to live in, but we could impact the world as a whole.  I know that sometimes PowerPoint's can be very dull and boring and that is why I am going to make sure that I can keep the audiences attention and make slides that are informative, yet are ones that will draw my audience in and keep their attention.


I feel that by engaging my audience in many different forms of media and things such as videos, photos, text, comic strips, etc. that I will be able to really show my idea as well as explain it in depth.  I am hoping that by showing others helping people and showing how one can impact another just by simply showing them you care or by giving them even just a little bit of your time to help them can truly make a huge difference and that it will encourage them to start a new habit in their lives.  I am hoping to impact my audience and to get them to see all the truly amazing benefits of helping others and to see that it doesn't take much to do a good deed for someone else and to hopefully get them to start doing good deeds for others.

www.google.com/helpothers