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Andrew Chalfen

Process Paper

3/29/12

 

When I heard that I had creative rights to make this project into my own artistic style I knew I was going to have fun with it. I was given the topic of school district funding something that I strongly feel is a large issue in modern day education systems around the world but especially in the Philadelphia public school district. I’ve had other opportunities to learn about school district funding so when this project was assigned I was actually quite prepared as far as ideas went. As far as actually creating the project I knew the things I wanted to avoid were a long written paper, or something that involves a lot of technical work. I don’t very often enjoy writing and I’ts hard for me to incorporate any type of visual component into a paper. I also get easily frustrated with computers so any advanced website or “prezzi” would have to be left for my other group members. The way I was best at contributing was through social media.

 

I brainstormed my favorite social media ideas and decided to go with the one that stuck out as the most interesting. I have a lot of connections to high school students from schools all across Philadelphia. I used these connections by asking a diverse variety of students a sequence of questions. I chose students from all different ethnicities and cultures in over fifteen different Philadelphia public and charter schools. The point of these questions was to ask the students how school district funding directly affects them and their school communities. Its not often students are given a voice in the decisions that affects their everyday lives so this project means more to me then just a grade. I honestly intend to keep up with this research and at some point submit my data and finished product to the school district itself. I will outline what data has been collected, what the data says about our school systems, and what positive suggestions students have contributed.

 

A major challenge I was faced with was identity. Many of the students I interviewed did not want to be identified given that their candid responses could be considered disrespectful. I opted to include pictures of the students but keep names out. This way I can show what exterior appearance the students choose to personify without giving anyone the opportunity to find out more about these students.

 

My group and I have worked together well. At the beginning of the project we all outlined goals for ourselves and for the group. Each member has contributed in their own way and had a positive impact on this project. I really enjoyed the idea and process of this project and would highly recommend Ms Pahomov to continue it in future years. One suggestion I would make however would be to mandate some sort of outside sources. Kind of like how I got information from students at other schools, any of the projects in the class could have used a source outside of SLA, I don’t know how many others took advantage of that. Overall I would say great project and I feel strong about what I contributed.

                                    

    For the project I was assigned to work with jesús, Taylor and Steven. The group was good for me because they were people I easily got along with. Although we all had things that made it so we couldn’t work we addressed those thing and the project went through very smoothly. None of us argued or complained about where the project was headed which made things easy on everyone. I was left in charge of the video and website. I did the best I could for the website which was a slight bit difficult based off of what we had, but the video went great. Jesús was a great help making the script for the video and finding some other components for it. I handled the rest of the video and although I wasn’t in class some days I made sure I got what I had to do done while out of class so we could have all of our components done on time. I worked on the production of our video component, which meant I had to film, act and edit the footage we got. Taylor and Steven helped me with acting and Jesús gave me stuff that would further help me edit. In the end I would love to work with this group again because we worked together very well and all made sure we got out work done on time. Everyone did what he or she had to do and no one even began to argue during the course of the project. I feel that we worked as a good team and everyone got done what they had to get done.

I choose the topic child abuse because I thought it an issue that is important but pushed aside. So for this project my group divided the work process and we decided to make a website. I was assign to do the statistics. First I started to do my research on child abuse. As I start the was a lot of information on child abuse and I wasn’t sure where to start digging for information that would make our project stand out and would have fact that was collected by reliable sources.

 I went through and I checked the different websites that I thought would be useful. I came upon one website that was called U.S Department of Heath and Human Service   Administrator for Children and & Family. The website have a lot of database that was very useful. For example the have pie chart PDF. They also had information on adoption, how many cases where reported. These database and research dates back to 1995. This website provide national data on adoption, foster care, child abuse and neglect and child welfare. I would recommend this website to and one who wants information on child abuse. I have went trough most the PDF and information on this website to find information on our topic. So I choose to do child abuse in the last four years. Researching on the statics of child abuse helped to bring cross our topic and give more meaning to the presentation.

 We used the statics to emphasize that the child abuse is still happening. We hoped this caught the audience’s attention. First our audience was supposed to be the DHS but we didn’t know how to create the project that it wouldn’t be offensive. There is a chance it would be a big issue if we take on the DHS and say they aren’t doing their work, after we are teenagers. So we change our audience to the parents and the public in general. Toni put the website together with the information we all had put in. I found a website counter that worked so we could see how many people viewed our website. Then for the promoting part of our picture we all went on Twitter and promoted our website. Now over a thousand people view our website. I went on Facebook and promoted some more and there was a lot of responses form a lot of people. So the website counter one of the way that we used to measured our success. Our website was published this we and has more that a thousand views. Also the comment I got from the people on Facebook was great, they appreciate the information that was produce and the think that child abuse is important. One challenge that a few times there was a couple absences and we did get to use the time wisely, the rest of the group that was there came together and worked to finished the project. I think our campaign was successful. 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2270958/Mdonzo%20MBK.mov.zip

In the beginning when we first had started this I already knew that personally my strong factor was to get all of the statistics. I work best with numbers so when my group and I decided that that I could do the statistics I was actually really ecstatic.

Personally when I did my research I was looking for the wow factor, I needed like information about how many kids were really getting abused. Also I took out information about like what types of children were being abused. I also found one of those statistics that is like every minute a child is being reported for child abuse.

I feel as if my strengths in this project had to be like getting my statistics to Toni, who was our collector in our group, fast. Like I had already gotten most of my information within the third class period and I had sent her all of it.

In my group we’re making a iWeb, personally I saw it being put together but probably not going to be ale to see the finished product. Last class we talked about adding some more things to it, just to make it like more flashy like a counter that says how many people have been on the website.

I feel as if I liked my group, we all had different strengths but altogether we worked pretty well at getting this benchmark done.

 

For the campaign, I was responsible for a number of things. One, I was in charge in dividing the work for people so everyone gets a fair share of the work. I helped keep my group members in line and keep constant contact with them to make sure they were being productive. I helped create the proposal, which was also part of the division of the work aspect of it. Sometimes it was hard to do this since some group members often didn’t show up to class to help work on it, leaving some of us to do most of the work.

I also made the keynote component of the campaign. The keynote consisted of statistics and images that I had to search for on the Internet. One major challenge of doing this was finding the stats itself. It was difficult enough trying to find specific statistics on our topic, but having to do it for a particular city resulted in multitudes of useless sources. I had to dig through and read almost every source in order to find meaningful enough information. Then I had to make sure these statistics were accurate by searching for more sources that mentions said information in order to validate its accuracy. I then got the idea that a timeline element would help the audience see how Philadelphia has progressed with our topic, which I implemented.

Event though I was only able to find only a handful of information, I’m optimistic in the way I have set up the presentation, that it is enough to leave an impression. Also, I’m confident that having the video, keynote, website, and posters put together will result in an engaging and effective presentation for the audience. And the fact that our other components are also able to cover the outside audience assures me that we did a swell job as a group. 

Callie Monroe

Air Stream

Quarter 3 Benchmark

Process Paper

 

My initial assignment within my group was to make a short PSA that addressed all of the issues surrounding school district funding in Philadelphia. Such an honest assignment turned into something with many problems and difficulties that were not initially though of. The largest of these problems was that I do not have very many good technical skills. I know my way around the computer and can do most teenager things like facebook and ichat but crafting a video was a whole other story. I fooled around with imovie for a bit but all of my attempts seemed terrible. I then remembered a website that Ms Pahomov shared with my English class called Prezi. On this site I could pretty much just plug in all of my information and a good video/slideshow was sure to be produced. It is also much more user friendly than most video creating applications so I was able to use my limited computer skills more affectively. Another great thing about making a Prezi is that they are more interactive because the viewer has to physically change the slide. This brings me to another challenge that I had with the video.

I have seen lots of PSA’s in my life and some have stuck with me while most have not. I knew that in order for this multimedia aspect of my groups campaign to work it needed to be very visually appealing and not too boring. To overcome this challenge I decided to make my Prezi quite short. If it had been long people would either get incredibly bored and forget everything or stop watching in general. I also needed to pick key and important facts to represent and not try and tackle the whole issue of school district budget cuts. I think that I did a good job of this and that the Prezi turned out well.  Something that really helped with this was having my group members peer edit my Prezi before I published it.

A second aspect of the project that I worked on was the actual website that we decided to host all of our different components. Initially my group and I were going to put each component of our project up on different mediums but the problem with this was that they then wouldn’t mesh together very well. Creating a website allowed for all of our work to be hosted together.

In the end I think that my groups campaign turned out very well because we did a good job of collaborating together. Each of us had a skill that we were good at and it was really great that we were all able to bring them together to make a final product that we can all be proud of.

 

 

Of the time I was present with my group, I was able to do a few things with them regarding the project regarding government corruption. Over the weekend, I started thinking of ideas, and writing the script for the video the rest of the group is going to create. I was aiming for something that would put the viewer to think, to ponder about who they are really voting for. I took a real serious approach to the project, but then figured it wasn't going to captivate people. The group wanted a video that would be both fun to make and fun to show. After the rough draft was done, Monday I spend time with the rest of the group, throwing ideas back and forth and seeing example ads politicians use to get themselves out there (some of the ads we saw were pretty bizzare). The newer script started to be written at that point. We all had an input into the script and contained some essance of each of its group members. On Tuesday, I wrote with Dylan once more and we made a final design for the video, which we also decided wasn't going to specifically be and ad. We just want to inform people about who they're voting for, and also to keep in mind that voting also requires a little research. Corrupt polititcians are there because we put them there. They didn't magically appear. Unfortunately, I had to leave my group a few days early. But I feel assured that with the basic plan we made with the script and our time together, our campaign video is going to fall into place nicely. 

For my groups project we created a campaign targeting the problem of littering within the community of SLA. SLA has a huge problem with litter around the school and we really want to see this change. For this campaign we spilt up rolls so we could have many things all supporting the same idea and hit people in ever-possible angle.

My part of this project was to create a pledge that students of SLA could take. This pledge consisted of how students of SLA should be acting and treating their school, for example throwing away their trash and encouraging others to also throw away trash. The pledge was to get people to promise they will try to keep the school clean. After people pledged they signed a large piece of paper that is now hanging in front of class so other students can see that their fellow students are working towards a better and clean school and to also remind the people that did sign it that they should remain true to the pledge they promised to follow.

I also created a twitter account. This account was created to help reach out to the SLA community even more. Many students have twitter and use twitter to stay connected. It is also used as a place to go when they need an escape during class, so why not fill their feed with facts about littering. I followed many students at SLA and also asked students to follow back. On this account students have hash tagged us a few times as well as a teacher. I plan to keep this twitter going and sending tweets out so people know how things in the school are looking.

The most challenging part of this project was trying to discover what exactly would help make this campaign a success. We didn't want to pick just anything, we wanted it to speak to people and make people care and that is why I directly spoke to students here at SLA and also through a common social media site that is highly used during school hours. 

   My piece is showing how Macbeth went from doing killing people himself, to having people do it for him. Also form the regret he felt after killing Duncan to having murders kill Banquo for him. 

So in my part of the project i was asked to gather information on government corruption if Philadelphia. Although it was not the easiest task because philadelphia has been in a way not very corrupted by the government but then i found a site talking about  Corey Kemp who was the Philadelphia's treasure. He was the youngest person to be appointed a treasurer, but then he was charged with 27 different charges of corruption all ranging form wire fraud, mail fraud, tax fraud, and extortion. He was brought to trail and the judge had said that he only had himself to blame and that he had so much promise. After that the judge sent Cory Kemp  jail for 10 years. Other than that small corruption there has not been any other corruption since so it has been had to find any more information. Then I found a web site that was talking about what political corruption was and if you need a lawyer to defend you and if you were accused of political corruption then you should call the lawyer William Spade. All of his information was on the website. It also said that he was the lawyer that represented Corey Kemp when he was put on trial.

The producing part was very simple beside all of the information that I was asked to gather I was supposed to help dylan with the website if he ad started it but he never mentioned it so I don’t think that we are doing the website. The summaries of all of the websites that I gathered are going onto the poster. Also the information form the poster is going onto the website when we start working on it. The design I have not seen yet because I did not see the website or the poster yet. The difficult thing was finding other government corruption stories that did not all involve Corey Kemp or was just political corruption. Although it was very easy to find information on Corey Kemp and exactly on what he did. 

Enjoy :)

Choosing a topic was fairly easy for us. We made a short list of things we knew about but could find more information on. A few topics that were listed were Martin Luther King Jr. and the Million Man March, Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott and Malcolm X, and his Existence in the Muslim Community. We looked into the one we though were more interesting and essentially found that Malcolm X’s story was the most interesting to look into more in depth. We decided that this topic was also a better idea than the others because in the general Malcolm X story, there was more than one revolution to focus on.

            We went about finding out information by breaking up the project into categories that we were going to focus on. We essentially focus on his voyage to Mecca, his empowerment in the Muslim community, X being sanctioned, and his death. After deciding how we were going to divide the topics, we gather information on those topics separately. After compiling the information and the liable sources into primary and secondary sources categories, we decided that all of the sites we used weren’t necessary and began to disqualify them from our sources. When we had the sources we wanted to use, we found the connection between all the different topics we talked about within our general topic.

Before we started the whole process and everything, first we had a 15-20 minute brainstorm session. We did a 20-minute brainstorm session so we could gather a lot of ideas together. So then my partner said how about we do Malcolm X. Well I said I don’t know too much about him but my partner said she does. I said well this is perfect because I can do a lot of the researching and she can do a lot of the design. Well it turns out we both got a lot of information and we both did a lot of the design. Overall I think our process was pretty good because we did everything on time and a good quality of work.

Our project relates to the NHD theme because our project followed the whole rubric for the Nation History Day Competition. We clearly went back in time and picked an event to research and find a revolution, reaction and reform. We decided to do a website because we could put a lot of different information on it without being timed because we were going to originally do a documentary but we decided to do a website. A website was also a good choice because it allowed us to compile information without having it cluttered or confusing to follow.

 

Bibliography

 

Primary Sources:

Travels to Mecca:

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=539

"A Summing Up: Louis Lomax Interviews Malcolm X by Louis Lomax."TeachingAmericanHistory.org -- Free Seminars and Summer Institutes for Social Studies Teachers. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=539>.

(interview with Malcolm x)

This source is an interview with Malcolm X about his trip to Mecca and how that trip effected him and his views on Islam. He gained so much knowledge about his religion and everything involving that when he returned back to the states that he initially became the spokes person for the Nation of Islam. We’ve decided to use this particular source because, as it is full of information, it also gives a first hand incite on the direct impact of his travels.

 

Going to and coming home from prison:  

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/shabazzs-grand-jury-testimony?page=0

"Shabazz's Grand Jury Testimony | The Smoking Gun." The Smoking Gun: Public Documents, Mug Shots. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/shabazzs-grand-jury-testimony?page=0>.

(His testimony before he went to prison) This is Malcolm X’s testimony before he was sentenced to his time in prison. The testimony gives some sense of how he felt about why he went to prison and how he felt about going to prison for what he was going for. We’ve decided that this a good primary source for this topic because, again, we’re learning about it more or less from his mouth.

 

 

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/malcolms-rap-sheet?page=0

"Malcolm's Rap Sheet | The Smoking Gun." The Smoking Gun: Public Documents, Mug Shots. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/malcolms-rap-sheet?page=0>.

(His rap sheet)

This is Malcolm X’s rap sheet. The reason we decided to use this was to further out knowledge on how many times Malcolm X went to jail and the reasons behind them to strengthen our opinions on what type of man he was and what he really stood for.

 

   His death:

     http://www.criticalreading.com/malcolm.htm

"Malcolm X." Dan Kurland's Www.criticalreading.com -- Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.criticalreading.com/malcolm.htm>.

(news article) This website is just a direct link to a few articles about Malcolm's death. In the articles they talk about who he was and what happen to him. They have a few statements from witnesses that were there. 

 

 

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/malcolm-morgue?page=0

"Malcolm In The Morgue | The Smoking Gun." The Smoking Gun: Public Documents, Mug Shots. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.thesmokinggun.com/file/malcolm-morgue?page=0>.

(his autopsy pic) This is an actual photo of malcolm X's dead body at the morgue. We used this picture for the tension and reality of his death on our website to add effect to that section. 

 

 Secondary Sources:

http://www.malcolm-x.org/bio/timeline.htm

"Malcolm X - Biography Timeline." Welcome to Malcolm-x.org. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.malcolm-x.org/bio/timeline.htm>.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm

"Malcolm X : Biography." Spartacus Educational. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmalcolmX.htm>.

http://www.africawithin.com/malcolmx/malcolm_bio.htm

Necessary, Any Means. "Biography of Malcolm X." Africa Within. 2001. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.africawithin.com/malcolmx/malcolm_bio.htm>.

These 3 sources are all Biographies of Malcolm X. The difference between these 5 sources is that they all give information that the other doesn’t as far as dates and information. Also, they aren’t 100% accurate so to have more than one is better than having one not 100% accurate source.

 

 

http://www.ushistory.org/us/54h.asp

"Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam [ushistory.org]." Ushistory.org. 2008. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.ushistory.org/us/54h.asp>.

This source is someone’s view about who Malcolm was through the Nation of Islam. It tells about how he lived through his religion and who he became because of it. It also explains the effect he had on other people because of the effect the Islam had on him. We’ve decided to use this source because although as a secondary source it is not 100% accurate or reliable, it had good information worth using for the task at hand.

 

 

http://www.colostate.edu/orgs/MSA/find_more/m_x.html

"Malcolm X." Colorado State University - Fort Collins. MSA. Web. 05 Jan. 2012. <http://www.colostate.edu/orgs/MSA/find_more/m_x.html>.

(Timeline) This site is a time line of Malcolm X's life. This site points out different things that he did in his life, providing us with dates and things to focus on as far as his story. We've decided to use this site because instead of researching blindly, we could look this over and decide which, of many, revolutions in his life that we would focus on. Then from there we could locate the reaction and reform later on the timeline, making the figuring out what the revolution, reaction and reform portion of the research already taken care of, giving us more time to focus on actual research.

 

I was put into a group with Dylan, Jesus and Stephen. At first I was quite skeptical about working with them. I didn’t know how we would do together as a group but as soon as we started discussing our problems I stopped worrying. I’m not very good with computers or making videos so when Dylan and Jesus said they wanted to make a video I wasn’t excited. But film editing and making videos are their specialties so all I had to do was read lines. There wasn’t a single argument within our group. We all agreed on things and no one was angry about the decisions that were made. The first day of a free work period Jesus and Dylan were both absent from class. That made it really stressful for Stephen and I for the simple fact that we didn’t want to make posters without the rest of our group being present. I got in contact with Jesus and he made sure to help us out with the script and e-mail it to all of us so we knew what we had to work on for the upcoming week. On Monday when we had class again my group was ready to work. Dylan and Jesus already had all the video materials put together and we started filming that day. It made me glad that my whole group got along and there was no bickering about who would do what and how much work each of us was going to contribute. Our only real challenge was that we only had two days when all of us were there together. Usually it was just Stephan and I. If I could work with this group again I would. It was a good eclectic mix of skills. I was good with the finding information Stephan was good with

 

            For our third quarter benchmark I worked in a group with Christian, Serg, and Bethany. The topic that we were assigned to campaign about was High School Drop Outs. I was really happy about being assigned this topic because dropping out of high school is a topic that I feel very strongly about so it made it a lot easier to campaign since I am interested in my topic. Overall it was a good experience working with my group members on a project that I enjoyed.

            I feel like for the first few days of being assigned this benchmark my group members and I were stuck because we didn’t know what exactly to write about our topic, for everything on the internet felt repetitive and boring. We wanted to find a way to be creative, as well as inform people. We finally decided that it would be a good idea if we each picked a different way of broadcasting our topic, and put them all together in a website. The topic I chose was videos. I feel like my group members and I all got a little off topic leading us to do our topics, plus a little more work as well because we didn’t want to just do our assigned topics.

            For my video I made a video of me pretending to be at work at McDonald’s. I kept saying in the video how this is where you’re going to be if you drop out of high school still working at your minimum wage paying job that you had as a kid, into you adult years. I felt this would send the message to my peers and others that if you don’t graduate, you won’t be able to actually grow up and leave childish things behind, like your not well paying job at a fast food restaurant. As well as the video, I thought it would be cool if I added an add to promote why dropping out is negatively looked at so I did lots of editing and created an add that I’m pretty proud of, it’s actually on the cover of our website. Also, my group made a pledge not to drop out, which I thought was pretty inspiring.

            All in all I think that my group members and I all did an equal amount of work and it was a pretty good experience. I enjoyed the people I worked with and I wouldn’t change anything about my project!

Click HERE for the project if the embedded presentation fails to work.

      The two countries that I selected were Greece and Hong Kong (not actually considered a country). Greece has recently been through some hard times with its economy and Hong Kong has had a thriving economy because of the help it readily receives from its homeland of China. Hong Kong has a host of trade partners though its connections with China, but that also leaves it with a large amount of enemies as well. Greece, while not having many trade partners, which hurts its economy is not bombarded by hostiles as much because it is so low key when compared to other countries in the area.
     My process was fairly simple. It took a while to gather research and other information regarding the economies of both of these countries because they both have such a rich history. Hong Kong has always had a strong economy and getting to the bottom of why this is true was a challenge because many wondered whether staying true to China would be a good move for them. Although the "country" wants to break away from China, they really have no choice but to stay with the homeland because their big corporations and banks keep Hong Kong's economy thriving. It was a bit easier finding information on Greece because of their recent economical mishaps. The five points of framework were somewhat difficult to apply to these countries because I couldn't tell if I should apply them to just recent events or things that had happened far back in the past.
     If there was anything that I could change about my project it would be to choose a form of presentation that could get my information across better than a keynote. I feel like I could have said a lot more but restricted myself because I wanted the keynote to look a bit nicer. However, I fell like the keynote got the point I was trying to make across to the viewer well enough.

The idea of making a campaign was very difficult for me as I did not do work on such a project before.  So it was very hard for me to come up with an idea. But my group members helped me in this situation. We put so many thoughts in front of each other  in order to make this campaign more real.

 

We tried to come with ideas to present in front of target audience. We also thought that what should be our target audience.  Obviously it was very hard to choose the audience and then convey them a message. After so many thoughts my group member and I decided to choose younger children. Because I think this is the best age to learn. So after deciding our target audience we then started thinking about how to present in front of children.  I was very confuse during this process because it was very hard for me to brain storm for a strong idea.  But at last we decided to make posters. For me it was actually easy to make a poster. Aja and Quinn also decided to make posters and then asked from me. As I was also thinking of this so also planed that we should make posters.

 

As our target audience was younger children so we decided to make colorful posters because kids are attracted by colors. So me, Aja and Quinn started making posters.

Me and Quinn made a poster. She drew a cartoon and I wrote “How well can you read?” in bubble writing and then we colored that . My group members were vey happy to see that because that idea was very strong to attract children by cartoons and different types of colors. Similarly Aja made a poster with colorful same word that we wrote but she drew a book on both end sides of the poster. At one side of the book she wrote word literacy and on the other side side of the poster she wrote the same word but in opposite way. Which was actually a good idea.  That everyone when look at the poster, will think a moment about that what actually it is.

 

Then after making poster we now started to brain storm about the ideas for making video . And it was actually very hard not only for me but also for other members too.

Because making a poster and then filling that with colors was not actually as video was.  I think our poster idea was very effective because of the cartoon characters and color collection.

 

Now the main thing that how to present this in front of audience . Which is really hard for me . It is also very difficult for my group mates to put the main idea of  campaign that everybody understand  what actually we are trying to figure out . We also want to meet the expectations of the project and Miss Pahomov as well.  So we still trying to make this project more strong. Because we want to present our project with the strong  core message.