Project Proposal!

This is the updated version: Link to the Google Doc with the Project Proposal

Interviewing Mrs. Burns about the Big Ideas Project

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, Matthew Krawczyk, 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.

Picture with Mrs. Burns:

Rhetorical Precis about the article "Controlled Chaos: Project-Based Learning"

Mrs. Meredith Licht in her article, "Controlled Chaos: Project-Based Learning" suggests that project based learning is very good for students because this allows students to think outside the box and develop critical thinking skills, communication skills, and creativity. She develops her claim by first narrating her own classroom experiences, then defines what project based learning is, then defines the positives and negatives about project based learning, and finally discusses how the positives override the negatives and how project based learning should be integrated into students' curriculum. Licht's purpose is to persuade the readers on the idea that project based learning is beneficial to all students in order give other students the opportunity to develop the skills needed for their future through project based learning. She adopts an informative tone for the readers of the article especially teachers.

Link to Annotated Article

Research 4

At Half Moon Bay High School, students and Mrs. Alyssa Neilson have made some drastic changes to the school by adding a Journalism class and creating a newspaper. They have decided to bring back the print newspaper because it helps reflect those problems that news corporations face in the real world. Given that the school already has a radio broadcast and mass media classes, these classes were a warm welcome to the students. This class has been widely supported by the students at the school as many students have asked Mrs. Neilson about ways to help the class. Given that we have the excellent expertise of Mr. Skillings and the professionalism of the students in the Hatchet, I feel we have an excellent opportunity to make a great paper.

Article: Mrs. Neilson's Journalism Revamp

Research 3

At Virginia State University, students have organized programs that help students get more involved in community service projects. The link to their document is here. In this project they believe in the rewarding sensations of publishing articles in the newspaper because they say that their ideas will become more wide spread. As stated in Example 2, the group responsible for cleaning up the river have devised a project that will help the other students gain awareness about the effect of pollution on the river. This in turn would make the students feel better about themselves and at the same time raise awareness about the problems some students worked on. By spreading out ideas, students will not only be able to feel good about themselves but they would also help bring awareness of the problem to other people.

The UPDATED Research 2

In the article, "Review: WeVideo is a cloud based video editor that makes editing in your browser fun and simple," on PCWorld, Mr. Zuckerman indicates that WeVideo is a great video editing platform for those who don't have a Mac and have very little experience with video editing. He states, "Once your footage is in the editor, the editing experience is simple and pleasant... and the whole system felt responsive and would be familiar to anyone with experience with desktop video applications." This program allows anyone to be able to create fantastic video clips for anyone to watch. This editor would be greatly applicable for use during the edits of the Big Ideas Video portion.  The video editing portion is must add in for the project because it will allow students to develop the creativity skills needed to show off their work and effort.  WeVideo is also free to use for 5 minute videos which is definitely more than enough time to explain work with the Big Ideas Project. With such easy to use software and with professional like qualities, WeVideo will help the students in Mr. Skillings' English 11 class to make very interesting videos about their project.

The UPDATED Research 1

In the article, "The Six Best Video Editing Applications," iMovie was one of the major six best Video Editing platforms in the market. Based on the article, "iMovie is a consumer-level movie editing tool ... It features professional touches like frame stabilization for smoother movie playback, has drag and drop editing, easy to configure transitions, and even easier special effects for headache-free movie editing." It makes the software extremely user friendly but at the same time allows high quality products to be made. This video editing software will not only benefit the students using the software but also the people watching the video because they feel more inclined to watching high-quality material than low-quality material. iMovie software has given many people the opportunity to work on high quality evoking messages that have not only made themselves feel happy, but has also brought a major difference in the world. Overall, I see that this software will be a direct solution to the major problem (video-editing) students will have in the project.

The Importance of the Newspaper

For the Big Ideas Project, I have decided to form a group with Matthew and have decided to work on the Big Ideas Newspaper for our project. This project is an important project because it will undoubtably help our class spread awareness about the work the students in Mr. Skillings's English class.
The need is to create a newspaper that will describe the efforts of students in our Big Ideas project. Our project needs a newspaper because it will facilitate with the process of spreading awareness about community problems and will eventually bring other students to create a difference with the world by developing similar projects. This will also help the community because this effort might bring funding to the specific areas the students worked on, helping out the people with even more efforts than this limited time period students worked on this project.
Overall, I think this project will be a great benefit to our community.

Research 2

In the article, "We Must Help Our Nation's Homeless Children Get and Education", Meek discusses the drawbacks that homeless children face over their housed counterparts. 

In the article, Meek states,
 "The statistics stacked against homeless students are staggering:

• More than 20 percent of homeless children do not attend school.
• Homeless children are -- on average -- four grade levels below their housed peers.
• Homeless children are nine times more likely to drop out of school altogether."

It's always been that homeless children have a lower chance at success because they aren't able to receive the help that other students get. Overall, by not having sufficient opportunities at success, our homeless students are unable to cope up with the intense studies.

Research 1

I have an intense zeal to work as editor or webmaster of the newspaper but I have decided to work on educating the homeless children.

In the article, Helping Homeless Students, Mrs. Mizerek and Hinz discuss the impacts a weak education on homeless children.  

In the article, it says, "Overall, the academic achievement of homeless students is poor. Research indicates that 43% of homeless students repeat a grade, 25% are placed in special education, and 50% are failing academically (Bassuk & Rubin, 1987)."  

The article goes further and describes the negative impact of the student's performance going so to state that they are more likely to drop out of school. By not having a strong education, these students don't have as a great opportunity of success as other students do.

Inspiration for my Big Ideas Project

For my project I would like to do direct service to the community by editing the paper for the Big Ideas Project. Since the project involves a newspaper portion, I found that it appealed my interests and I immediately decided to make my Big Ideas project on the newspaper portion. I really look forward to working on the project and can't wait to get started!