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Works Cited:

Honan, Mat. "The Government's Gadget Habit Has Cost You Hundreds of Millions." Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://gizmodo.com/5812233/the-governments-gadget-habit-has-cost-you-hundreds-of-millions>.

Andrews, Edmund L. "Tax Cuts Offer Most for Very Rich, Study Says - New York Times." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 29 Jan. 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/washington/08tax.html>.

"The First Income Tax." Civil War Trust: Saving America's Civil War Battlefields. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/warfare-and-logistics/logistics/tax.html>.

"Presidental Address." C-Span Video. C-Span. Web. <http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/165970-1>.

"Salmon P. Chase." NNDB. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.nndb.com/people/808/000031715/salmon-p-chase.jpg>.

"Lincoln." History Place. History Place. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <History Place>.

"Army Representatives." Ontario County Fair. Ontario County Fair. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.ontariocountyfair.org/pix/2004%20updates/Army%20Representatives.jpg>.

"IPad." Venture Beat. Venture Beat. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/ipad-3.jpg>.

I've always wanted to know what exactly it was that made the government take taxes out of people's incomes. At first I thought it was just a random way to get money because they had no other way of getting it. Money doesn't just come out of nowhere...unless you print it and somehow avoid inflation. Now that I've done this benchmark, I've learned what started taxes.
What I liked about this project was learning the history of how taxes started. I liked this because, like I said before, I've always wanted to know how taxes came to be. What I didn't like however, was how difficult it was putting the video together. I'm not good with iMovie (as long as I've had it) so I had to start my entire project over due to technical difficulties. What I also found challenging was not making myself sound sarcastic. I didn't want to seem mean while I was talking about the way the government spends our money. I do think I did an okay job at talking about them however. I still think I could've done better though.
The most interesting fact that I have investigated was the gadgets they bought with our money and compared that to the things that need to be done that haven't been done on roads and what not. I thought they just didn't have the money, not knowing that the money that was supposed to go to the road work was going to iPads and useless 30GB Zunes.
I just think I need to be more creative all together. I wanted to make it all pretty and stuff but I didn't know how to go about it without causing a distraction to the information being provided and the point I was trying to get across. Since this was so, I made the most boring video ever in my opinion. 
I ran into trouble mostly with my vocal recordings. I was having trouble with the noise in the background, and it kept cutting off and ding other weird stuff so I had to start from scratch because it would've been too messy trying to fix all of that. However, what went well with this project, in my opinion, was finding information about the 16th amendment and information about the taxes that are being spent and the taxes that have been spent in the past few years during both Obama and Bush's administration. What also went well was the information I got from some oft he people I had interviewed. They said some things I didn't even know about.
If you had it to do over, what would you change about your decisions or your process?
Of course, if I had to do this whole project over I would make sure it's done on time! I would also take more time to make it interesting and not just a project. I would take the time out to make sure what I'm saying doesn't sound mean or anything because I don't want to sound mean talking about the government and submitting it to a competition (even though I really should).
Like I said earlier, I've learned how taxes came to be, when they came to be, how are taxes are being spent now, and what are taxes aren't being spent on. I've learned a little bit more than I had expected to. I've also learned how to work the new adjustments that have been made to Garageband. It took a while, but I got it now.

            I decided to do this topic because I know I wanted to do something involving teens in high school I just didn't know what exactly it was that I wanted to do. I decided to work in a group of up to 3 students because we all wanted to do the same project involving privacy rights, the fourth amendment. I believe we are the only school in the district that does not have any metal detectors. It was interesting and we felt as a group to compare the different opinions o privacy from a school that has metal detectors and from a school that doesn't have metal detectors. It made sense for me because the fourth amendment speaks out on behalf of privacy rights and so do the students we interviewed from both schools. Overall I had a great interest in this topic because of the rights we have in our school and how independent we are.
My favorite part about this project was going to another school and interviewing the students. It was a good experience for me because I wanted to know how other students felt about their privacy rights overall. The most challenging about the interviews was the fact that a lot of the students were shy and didn't want to do the interview. We had a hard time trying to get the students to speak the first time we went out to interview. The second time we went to interview it became more interesting because many of the new students were volunteering to do the interview. It was also difficult because the principal wasn't there and we needed his opinions as well, so we just rescheduled and came back other day. The interviews I believe were the most challenging for me.
The most interesting thing I learned from this was the responses I got from the students. I learned so much on how they view privacy and how the process is for them. It takes the students about 15 minutes to get through the metal detectors, it's their process of getting into school where for us SLA students it takes about 2 seconds because we only sign in. It was interesting to see how their school life is and to see how affected the students were because of the process. The process also hasn't changed for them over the years.
I honestly don't think this project should be improved in any way except when it comes to the rubric. Maybe next time you should pass out on paper or online a rubric students can go off of during the process of the project. Other then that I don't believe anything else should be improved. I agree with the set-up and the overall process of the way the project is.
One big problem we ran into during the project was trying to interview the principal in SLA. It was difficult because at times because me and the rest of my group would get distracted and either forget to do the interview or would be to busy to do it. Also, when the time came down to us interviewing the principal we couldn't because he was busy. That was a major problem we had but we ended up interviewing another person.
The interviews with the students at both my school and at Benjamin Franklin High school went well. The process of going to the other school and being able to do the interviews with the students was great because we didn't come across any problems with the teachers or the students their. The project overall went along smoothly and well because we did have a few bumps along the process but we managed to get across and through our challenges.
If I were to do this project again I would manage my time better with the interviews from both schools. The decisions about the amendment I chose I would of possibly considered and brought up different high school privacy rights other then metal detectors and searches. I would have considered doing the topic about freedom of speech in high school and the overall views of how kids feel about it. Overall I believe we done well with the project and I would do everything else the same way I have done it now in the same process and the same decisions.
I learned a lot from this project about privacy rights and how other schools have to manage through it. How long it takes for them to go through metal detectors and how the process is. I learned that our school is the only school in the district that has no metal detectors. I also realized that our school is given a lot of freedom compared to other schools that have metal detectors and it's because our school can trust the students considering the fact that our school is an independent school.

Link to Markia's post

Reflection: 

I wanted to have a topic that not a whole lot of other people would choose, but will still be relevant to me on a personal level. I love to talk. I am incredibly opinionated and I love to articulate my thoughts, and the same can go for Markia. You suggested the topic to us, and we thought it would be interesting to explore our rights as students in school. The most interesting fact I learned from doing this project was how the most noticeable start for this fight of students rights was with the student protestors of the Vietnam War. Shows love to reference protestors from this time, but I didn't know it was a big deal in schools. 

I liked the video format, and that it was a relatively longer video because it had to be 5-8 minutes. This left more room for different types of video tools and aspects. Of course, it then became a challenge to tie these different aspects together. When Markia and I showed our video to her older sister to proof read, she did express to us that it wasn't until the very end that everything was tied together and made things clear. The reason for this was mostly we had a lot of clips mixed around and a lot of b-role. To be honest, when we captured some of our video, we lost the audio. So, we had to work around this. We didn't want to have to much of a "pictures with our voice narration" situation because that is too typical, too boring. In order to avoid this, we had to get a little creative. I think that our end product though - especially will our little "reflection" at the end - came together to show the story we wanted to tell. 

We actually got a lot of planning in early on and did our recording not at the last minute. But, when we started putting together the video we started have ideas like "Oh, it would be cool to have a picture of Lauf teaching here." These probably would have helped make our video more interesting. So, we probably could have had some sort storyboard going on from the beginning to lay out all our brainstorming ideas. 

I didn't know the fine lines that come along with student free speech in school. According to some court decisions, we can say what we want as long as no disturbance is called. Then, in other decisions, the message can itself be a big enough disturbance or the risk of a disturbance is enough to silence the students. 

Here is my benchmark

​As soon as I stepped out of the plane I noticed something different, people are speaking a different language it was neither Arabic nor French; it was English. It was so amazing to me because I usually only hear people talk English when I am watching an American movie. My eyes were widely opened as I was walking around and seeing different things and surrounded by different people. I felt like I was in a dream on a whole other planet and I took it all in. However, when I got in the car to go to the house I noticed that there were pictures of models with nothing but a bra and panties. I kind of closed my eyes I didn’t know what to say because I did not see that in Morocco. Oh, I am sorry I forgot to talk about myself; my name is Maryam and I am from Morocco. Now, as I was saying when we got to the house we ordered food and my whole family spoke English and I became upset because I felt left out; I used to get mad because I didn’t understand what they were saying. We came on July 2008 and that summer I just wanted to go out and have fun but I had to sit in the house and  listen to audio all day and read English books with pictures on them and I felt dumb and I would become frustrated and would pack my clothes and say that I wanted to go back to where I came from because it felt like I couldn’t do it or that I couldn’t make it .
my video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ2EWcVOLnQ&feature=plcp&context=C3f3075dUDOEgsToPDskISoykW6Sc4U4pCa50W3Hwd

My product is a print advertisement for Laughter. Laughter is something that is in need in the world today, we have wars, poverty, homelessness, and other depressing things. This advertisement it so remind people to laugh, be happy, and appreciate the little things in life. 

The intended audience is well, everyone. There is no set age, race, or class that this is aim towards, it is for everyone.  The advertisement aims to include most demographics, including age, race, and gender. 

The inspiration of this ad came from usual medicine ads. Most ads for medicine include lots of people liked their new medication but the side effects of the ads usually are worse then the illness they are trying to cure. For example some allergy ads have the side effect of a stroke...thats just not right. That is why the ads has a humorous warning label, to make fun of usual medicine ads, and perhaps make people laugh. 

This ad is also effective because of the quote used at the top of the ad. "I love to laugh, loud and long, and clear" That quote is from Mary Poppins, almost every person knows that line and reminds them of a simpler time and a movie that most kids love.

If this ad could be redone I think the pictures would focus more of the people's faces and but more laughter centric, or perhaps have humorous pictures of animals or toys, to simply funny things. 

For this assignment we had to sketch artwork that was two dimensional. First i choose picture offline and sketched it onto a piece of poster board. Then I wanted to use paint but decided to use charcoal because I wanted to see how it would look. I know it isn't very good because I am still learning to sketch and this is my second time using charcoal but for a beginner its pretty good.

1) unas 

2) el 

3) un

4) el

5) un

6) un

7) Unos

8) aviones 

9) una

10) un

11) la

12) el

13) unos

14) el

15) una 

16) la 

17) un

18) una 

1) vuestro 

2) mis

3) mi

4) tus

5) mi

6) tu

7) Mi

8)tus 

9) mis 

10) mi

11) Nuestros 

12) mis

13) nuestro

14) mi

15) tus 

16) tu

17) mis 

18) to

1) muchos

2) muy

3) mucho

4) mucho

5) muchos 

6) muy 

7) mucho

8) muy

9) muy

10) muy

11) muy

12) mucha

13) mucho 

14) mucho 

Overall, I have been proud of the work I have done with learning about the rules and regulations of election campaigns. In my first blog post, I unfortunately did not dig down deep enough into the rules. This is understandable since the laws are constantly making small, specific changes with new Supreme Court cases and legislation. Also, public opinion is constantly changing. Luckily, through my work on my first quarter benchmark surrounding the Federal Election Campaign Act, I was able to get a better grasp on the information. I'm certain that there is still more for me to understand. There are numerous cases to look at and court decisions to examine to really understand the history of election campaign regulation and its current situation. Knowing that there was one big case (Citizens United vs FEC) just two years ago tells me that there is more to pay attention to. And what about the Occupy Protests? Surely, the citizens of America are just getting more and more dissatisfied with how the government is running. 

Disclosure is one specific subject that requires further investigation. Yes, the public has the right to know who is funding the presidential candidates and their ads. But, when do we get to know this. How much time do we have to examine these facts before it's time to elect someone to office? Is there even enough time to connect all the kinks in the chains that connect different government officials and corporate heads? I can't exactly speak out to government officials before I have a better idea of the current situation. Once I do a little bit more research, I can catch up on what I missed with the last assignment: contact. In my 2nd blog post I named the senators and representatives that have taken an active role in solving the problems in election campaign regulation. So, first up, I need to show my support. There is online petition I can sign, so I might as well go ahead and sign it. Next, I need to reach out to my local officials and speak out about my frustrations. 

I know that my best strategy to continue is to write personal letters to the government officials while at the same time increasing awareness with the public. Most people see the campaign ads on television, but most people don't understand who is behind them and how they ended up on TV. How would people feel if they knew just how many little strings corporations can to pull so they can dangle their favorite candidates in front of us for voting? I wasn't happy about it. As I mentioned in my posts, public trust in government is a huge thing. Officials know it. If they see that people are just angry, which they are, and that they are starting to lose even more faith in the government, they will be compelled to make a change. So, I can just start with my school. Just talk to students about it. With the current Republican primaries and the upcoming presidential election, this will definitely be a relevant discussion to have - especially with all the newly-18 and eligible voters in our school. Meanwhile, I can also reach out to my community through my parent's friends and connections. This is what I have in front of me in terms of my lobbying topic. 

http://59331910.nhd.weebly.com/

​Franklin MancebO
HOPE YU ENJOY https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/New%20Project%20-%20Medium.m4v?w=60b0227c

1st Amendment (Right to Assemble)

We can come together and act as a collective voice. We bring awareness from a grass-root level to what we think the issues are and how to solve them. Our unity can convince the government and officials to reform policies and have the interest of the people in mind.

http://scienceleadership.org/blog/Right_TO_Assemble

I liked the fact that I was able to go over the things I already do in my city. We were given the ability to create a video that took the form of anything we wanted it to be, which is one of the easiest ways to express yourself and your opinion. Specifically to me, I embody my opinion so personally, I feel like what ever I have to say actually holds some weight to it.

It's always interesting knowing that even after you assemble as a people, there's the possibility that your collective voice might not make an actual difference. There are many times that is the case, which makes me think of the best ways to come together with people and bring people to together. An example of this is Occupy Wall Street, which didn't seem to do much but make a lot of noise, but that's not to say it was pointless.

I could have improved my project by going deeper into the work I do and try to get done in my city. People would then get a serious feel for how deeply the right to assemble actually is to me.

Normally I do all the project myself if I'm working with a group, but this time I didn't because my computer was down. My partner and I added a member to the group after we were already established, my group and I were late, and the communication seemed good, but everyone had their own agenda, which shows of course in the overall work. What did work was the fact that the project came together, and for all the issues we had as a group, it isn't terrible.

If I had to do things over again, I might have worked by myself or took lead more. I normally do, but this time I decided not to be "that guy" which didn't work to my favor too well.

This project reenforced my knowledge that with the right to assemble, there most be movement there after. Without it, a collective voice speaks loudly, but doesn't make progress.

For this assignment Ms. Hull wanted us to edit 5 photos. For this project Ms. Hull showed us how to use photoshop. I happy she did because I HAD NO IDEA HOW TO USE IT! Now i am sorta good at it.I played around with the effects for awhile because I liked using different lighting to make it a whole new picture. For my pictures I either changed the lighting or cropped it. Or added more tones for it. It was very fun to do. Now photoshop is simple to use.

        This project required me to take a topic and ask students about it. I asked the upperclassman at Science Leadership Academy the questions that I should ask the freshman at Science Leadership Academy. Once I found out what questions I wanted to ask, I asked 6 different freshmen for all four of the videos and one senior for one of the videos. I filmed this video in the same space so that the background in this video is constant. Also, the videos have the same overall flow. Below is a list of the questions I used with a link to the post that contains the videos.

 

Questions:

 

1.     How do you think women should be treated in a relationship?

2.     What would you do if someone hit you/ How do you feel about being hit?

3.     What are your views on sex?

4.     How do you feel about relationships in High school?

 

VIDEOS!!!!

           This Project required me to take a photo from the Internet and try to recreate it but keep a certain aspect about it. This picture, the first picture below this post, shows a girl standing in front of birds on a clothesline attached using clothespins. The picture below is a recreation of the picture above. The aspect of the picture that remains the same is that the birds are secured on the clothesline using a Clothespin. Also, my recreation still has a vintage and rustic feel to it. The color of the birds is the true color in this as it is in the picture that I got from the Internet.  However, I did take out the person standing in the picture that I got from the Internet. I wanted the birds to really stand out.

           The remaking of the picture from the internet took a lot of time. First, I dyed clothespins different colors and let it dry over night. Then, I cut square sheets of different color construction paper and made origami swans. Next, I used hemp rope as a Clothesline and tied it to the tree in my front yard. Then, I tied hemp rope around the neck of the origami swans. Then, I attached the swans to the tree using the dyed clothespins.  Overall, this project was a great learning experience.

For my Quarter Two Benchmark in American Government I choose the 14th Amendment; Section One in the Constitution and relate it to my life. Particularly my work life. I am employed at Rolling Thunder Roller Skating Center. There I must conform to the ADA. Meaning that people of disabilities are by law allowed to skate at the skating rink. The 14th Amendment also proves the ADA to be true. The 14th Amendment in a brief sense is an Amendment, giving all of the citizens of the United States equal rights. Therefore hoping for no discrimination amongst people in the United States. 

Citations: 

Special Thanks to Michael Coughlin. 




Reflection: The reason I chose this topic was because I find that people of disabilities surround me and I personally feel like  all people are titled to equal rights and that is stated in the Constitution really clear in the 14th Amendment; Section One. Also the topic was really convenient to relate to my job at Rolling Thunder Skating Rink. Something I liked about this project was the fact that I could relate it to my previous Benchmark for Quarter One. Here is the link. Something that I found to be a challenge for this project was to actually come together and make the final project. I am content with the product but I feel like any and everything can be improved and this project can definitely be improved. However I do feel like the project is up to par academically. The most interesting fact that I have learned doing this project is that the 14th Amendment; Section One, and Americans with Disabilities Act really does affect home base with me. I work at a rolling skating rink that has to abide by these two important pieces of authorized material.  Even when people are blind, in a wheel chair, deaf, etc, it is my duty to accommodate them at my job where I am employed so that they can enjoy their time there. There was no real trouble actually making the project it was just that I know as far as time management went I didn't do so well and by me not doing so I definitely could of came up with a different product.  Something that went well with this project is me creating a piece of work that is relatable. Many people have jobs and have to sign a paper when hired that they're to abide by the ADA. If I had to do the project over, I would take the time I had to actually do it and make more use of it. My time management would definitely be better which would assure me of a better product. I learned that the Constitution really does affect my life and can be presented via video with footage/data from outside sources.