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Hello again, my name is Louisa Strohm and this is the last blog of three about my personal experience with Mild Cognitive Impairment. If you would like to read my first and second posts, you can find them linked here. For a short summary I have discussed my personal experience with MCI and shared my story about taking care of my grandmother. Throughout the entire project I have expressed my deep passion in putting more information for at home care of those with MCI or Dementia.

I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do for my agent of change. I went through a lot of ideas but finally decided to go with making a website, so people can access my personal story and tips for living with and caring with those with MCI and Dementia. I made this website because in my personal opinion there is a huge lack of information on how to care for these people at home. This lack of information is leading to people checking their loved ones into nursing homes and assisted care facilities. Although it may seem like the best option, for some people who only have mild Dementia or MCI, it may be better to keep them at home where they feel most comfortable.

Getting back onto the topic of my website, the sites name is Caring for Cuzzies. You can find the link to website here I chose this name because Cuzzie is my grandmother’s nickname and I want people to be able to know how to care for all of the Cuzzies out there. When you visit my site you will find three tabs. The home tab, where you can find five tips for caring for those with MCI or Dementia. The next tab is the ‘My Story’ tab and here I shared my story and personal experience with my grandmother’s disease. The last tab is the Contact tab where I put my email.

The process of creating the website was pretty fun. I learned a lot of new things about how websites work and how to make them. I enjoyed writing the tips and I really hope that it helps someone who’s lost in the sea of information about MCI and Dementia. Sharing my story out there was really scary at first, but once I started writing, and realized how passionate I am about this topic, it doesn’t even phase me.

Picture of me creating the website

Doing the You & The World Project at first was very intimidating. I found that as I worked more and more, did extensive amounts of research, and put my heart into my topic, I really could make a change. Having my family, friends, and peers support pushed me to make this difference and want to help people. I think this project has made me a better person. Learning my grandmother’s full story, and help other people going through the same thing my family did, I think will make an impact on the rest of my life. This project will stay with me for the rest of my life and I think I will always remember my time at SLA through this.

Screenshot of the website's front page.

 In my first blog post I talked about domestic violence and my personal experience with it. I talked about my mother and father's relationship and how to my mom everything seemed normal. My second blog post was about an interview I did with my mother. She experienced domestic violence in her home while she was younger and again when she was adult.

This blog post is about my agent of change. For my agent of change I had the kids at my moms school take a pledge against domestic violence. A girl at my mom’s school who is only 15 years old had to have a restraining order against her boyfriend because he got drunk and punched her in the face.

I had the kids at my mom’s school take this pledge because they need to be aware of domestic violence. I know some of them have seen it firsthand with their parents but I thought that raising awareness would be something good for them. The pledge basically asks that you pledge to never raise a hand to your partner or abuse them in any way whatsoever.

This is a girl in one of my mom’s classes who signed the pledge

30 kids and 15 adults took the pledge against domestic abuse. I found this on the Women Against Abuse website. Women Against Abuse is an organization that helps anyone who needs help after getting out of a domestic violence situation or help getting back on their feet after getting out.

Many women and men experience things such as financial abuse from their partner. Financial abuse is a method abusers use in order to control their partner. It limits the victim's access to their own money. They can gradually take more and more control of their partner's money leaving the victim helpless in the relationship.

Most of the time when people speak about domestic violence you hear about men hitting their wives or you don't really hear  about it at all.   

I would like to complete my you and the world project by saying that domestic violence is overlooked a lot of the time. Both men and women suffer from domestic partner abuse. There is not only abuse physically but mentally as well, in some situations abuse can be one partner having all the control in a relationship. Domestic abuse is never the victim's fault but in some relationships there are signs that it is an abusive relationship. Signs include your partner being extremely jealous of your other relationships. Making you feel bad about having friends or controlling where you go and who with.

A really big sign of an abusive relationship is when all the blame for everything is assigned to one partner. Blame for anything that goes wrong should not all be assigned to one partner. Being constantly blamed for having feelings is another method of mental abuse. Abuse comes in many different ways and need to be recognized. Mostly physical abuse is what people see but, different forms of verbal and mental abuser can also be damaging.

Annotated bibliography

The reasoning behind my storyboard was due to me recreating a scene from Jaws into a film noir setting with a film noir tone and take of the movie. In this particular scene of Jaws, I had the main character, Roy Scheider, converted from a cop to a detective. Through this, I then reworked more of the story by saying that Roy was called on a case to investigate the attack on the beach to see if the beach should be shut down for safety reasons as the city wants the beach to remain open.

The common tropes of a film noir usually involve a grayscale setting with a rainy or damp atmosphere. There is usually shady people throughout the story and information gathering by the protagonist engages in multiple questionings, along with twists in the story that the viewer may not see coming since the story may seem straightforward. The detective usually comes to a conclusion at the end which usually is very understandable but no one would think twice that it was the correct conclusion beforehand.

In my storyboard, Roy starts gathering information by investigating the raft washed up on the beach. Roy then decides to ask some locals until he stumbles upon the guy who lost his dog to the shark. The two engage in a conversation but the man is unwilling to talk until Roy asks if his dog was missing. The information Roy receives from the man then eventually leads him to the woman who lost her son to the shark. After asking her, she tells Roy, causing a flashback to occur. She tells that on the foggy day at the beach, when Alex went into the water with the other kids, things seemed alright until she noticed the commotion picking up. Everyone ran to the edge of the water and the kids all ran back to the shore. All except for Alex who never returned.

My motivation behind making Jaws a film noir is due to the incident of the shark attacks and the conflict between Roy and the city wanting to keep the beach open. I thought that in a setting like this, Jaws would be a very interesting movie to see if it was less about hunting the shark and working against closing a beach that was a danger to public safety that the city wants to remain open. If it was not just a scene and it was the whole film, Jaws would probably be able to fill in the role of film noir if directed like one. It would engage in tension between the city and a Roy where people would be unwilling to help or provide little information and the city also making an attempt to stop Roy from completing the case. I guarantee that a film like this would be an interesting take on an old time classic and I would recommend that if a remake would be in production that it could put this new style in it to make it stand out from the original.

It’s Time For A Change

My name is Kyla Gladney-Enos and in the previous blog, I talked about an interview I conducted about deep poverty. In this blog, I’ll be talking about how I’m going to make a change for my interviewee. This is the last main section of the You & The World project. I’m really excited to talk about what I’m going to make for the women I interviewed. I’m going to talk about my change and why I picked this change, but before I do that, I’m going to summarize the last two blog posts.   

In the first picture, I’m searching on google museums that allow people to pay with their EBT card. I clicked on the first link that brought me to The Academy Of Natural Sciences of Drexel University admissions page. If you click on the picture and scroll down on the website, you’ll see that you can pay $2.00 for each person if you have an access card (EBT). Since 2011, the number of people who are using EBT cards has increased by 46 million people in the USA.

 In Blog post #1, I talked about what deep poverty is. Deep poverty is when someone is living under the income of $6,000. For new viewers, you might be wondering what’s the difference between deep poverty and poverty. The difference between the two is that you would have to be making under $20,000 a year to be considered living in poverty, whereas to be considered living in deep poverty, you’d have to be making under $6,000 a year. Something I said in the last blog post that surprised me was that even though Philadelphia has the highest number of people who are living in deep poverty within the Nation’s most 10 populous cities, it has a low range of homeless people living on the streets. About half the people living in poverty are living in deep poverty.

In Blog Post #2, I talked about what I did for my original research plan. I interviewed a 26 year old African American woman. The conversation in the interview talked about her personal experiences and how she felt about things. I started off the interview by saying my name and what the interview was about; Kyla Gladney-Enos and deep poverty. I then told the time and the date; 7:19 PM on May 5, 2017. I asked her simple questions like, “How long have you lived in deep poverty and what was your experience like?” The lady answered since she was 16. Her original words were, “Umm, I’ve been living in deep poverty since I was about 16. It’s kind of hard, but if you know how to make it work, then it’s not as hard as you think it is.” I asked her another question like, “Did you ever experience hunger? If so, how did you manage paying your bills and feeding yourself? If not, what did you do to help yourself not be hungry?” She basically said she has experienced hunger, but she knows how to manage her bills.

  &  These pictures show my google doc of the resources I found. I did this because it made it easier to keep track of everything that interested me while researching different things.

For this blog post, I’m going to be talking about the change I made for the lady I interviewed. For my Agent of Change I made  a care package for the lady I interviewed. In the care package I included things I think will help her. I included a lot of museum admission information in the care package because if she shows her access card, she’ll get to pay $2.00 to get in. Plus, she has little kids. When I was a kid, I remember going to a lot of cool museums that educated me on little things. I decided to do this because I felt like it would be more effective for me to give someone in need a care package than to give a presentation to my classmates. I also put a map of free clinics in Philadelphia because after the interview, she told me a story about one of her family members, so I thought this would help. When I decided that a care package would be my agent of change, I felt like it wasn’t that hard of a task, but when I was completing it, it was mildly difficult to find museums for children in Philadelphia that allows people pay with their access card. I was effective in making this care package because I was creative and thoughtful when finding information. My creativity really came in hand when I was making the pouch to put the information in.

& This is the final product of the care package. After I was sure what I wanted to put in the care package, I printed the pages out, cut each individual item up, and rolled it up to put in the little pouch.  

I felt really calm while completing this project. I wasn’t really stressed when it came close to the checkpoints because there was so much time to do each one. Usually with a benchmark, the deadlines are so close together that it gets so stressful, but with this project, there was a lot of time to complete checkpoints without feeling that stressed out. I learned that I didn’t know a lot about poverty. Like, I knew what it was and what it looked like, but I didn’t know the facts. I think I could have found more sources about poverty, because the more I know about something, the more I can understand it. For my project, there isn’t anything else to do. Some things people have done to raise awareness is asking their local community to give up one thing they enjoy (make-up, phones, food) on a particular day. Others have petitioned for a poverty reduction. I honestly think signing petitions and protesting is a good idea because when we fight for what’s right, it brings attention to the issue. Everyone will know about what’s going on if we protested about poverty. Thanks for tuning in, see you later!

(P. S. Check out my annotated bibliography for more information!)

My element is platinum. My atomic number is 78. Platinum was first discovered in South America. The first written account of him was Julius C Scaliger in 1557. The origin of its name is “platina” which means little silver. Platinum is used for jewelry, catalytic converters, and dental work. I am making a print design to represent platinum. I thought of this idea because platinum is used in jewelry. Many people use platinum to represent their commitment with a ring. This print had the best image in my mind. First, I did research and I found many different uses for it. I found out that people use it in jewelry. I thought that the most perfect idea would be to represent commitment. I came up with many different designs to represent platinum. I finally came up with the perfect one. I had traced my idea onto the tracing paper. Once I was finished, I flipped the printing paper backwards and retraced over it with the foam board. I then got the foam board and rolled paint onto it. I pasted them down onto a blank sheet of paper. I selected the best three, matted two of them and unmatted another one. If I were able to redo this assignment, I would come up with a more precise design. I could use more details within the design of the dress and make it very detailed. I would trace my lines more accurately.  

Printmaking was quite exciting! The best part had to be the ending. When I used the roll to paint and pasted it down onto the paper, I was anticipating how well my prints would turn out. I would slowly lift the paper peeling it hearing the paint and the paper sticking. The end results were so fascinating. The negative and positive space were so contrasting. Printing down my own designs was really fun. It was a great new experience! I can't wait to design more creative prints on my own.

Well here we are. We have reached the end of my project which means this is my last post. It was a crazy ride. This project took a lot, I learned that you should keep up with your deadlines for assignments because once it’s late it gets added to the 15 million other things you have to do and it becomes more difficult to find time to complete it. Well that’s enough reflection, now let’s talk my progress since my last post and my agent of change.

First lets look at past posts. For you faithful viewers you should remember my first blog post where I introduce my project and it’s purpose and importance. That post had the most information about my issue. If you are new or just want reread that post please click here . After that post I then posted a second post called Exercising The Public. In that post I showed you my results from survey and talked a little bit about obesity and who it affects.

This is post 3 where I tell you about my agent of change. For my agent of change I partnered up with my good friend Elijah Afrifa. For his You and The World project he wanted to promote parks so that they can build more in the communities that need them. For more info on his project click here. Together me and Elijah invited some kids from Science Leadership Academy to join us for a day at the park.

We went to Penn Park and played sports and other games that involved physical exercise. The activities included: Soccer, a Relay race, Skateboarding, and a game of tag. This was to show that exercise could be fun and going to parks can be fun too.

From the reviews I got from the participants they said they enjoyed themselves and would like to do this again. Honestly if I were to do this again I would change the park because we had to share it it with others who were there doing their own thing. I would aslo plan it better because it was kinda last minute and not a lot of people could come.

This shows that it’s not hard to get out there and exercise, you just need to find the time to do it. If you are still stuck on where to start with exercising look at this site. It has a ton of information and it gives workout routines to help you plan out workouts. If you choose to do any these plans you should do them consistently. I think I have another website like that one that also gives out ways to workout in my Annotated Bibliography.

Thank you for your faithful reading. I hope you took this to heart and decided to get you health and body on the right track if it wasn’t already. Till next time stay healthy.

Attempts to Help the Public Defender System

Hello, my name is Payton McQuilkin. Recently in my English 1 class we have been doing a project on an issue in the world that we are passionate about. I choose to draw attention to how overworked a public defender is. Throughout my first blog post I realized so much more about the actual job of public defenders. I found that they have tons of cases and get more and more everyday. They have such little time to even talk with a client before appearing in front of the judge, and unfortunately in some cases, no time. In my second blog post I talked about how I did some original research. By this, I emailed an actual public defender in Brooklyn. In this interview I got a closer look in on the system. I was able to tell his goals, such as being able to get the court to see the clients as people not just criminals, and more about the job and know it was correct. I also interviewed my sister, Taylor Rogers. She had an experience with a public defender I thought she’d also be a good source.

Public defenders aren't a big topic in the world and no one really draws attention to how overworked the public defender's can get. The system is quite out of control. Especially in Louisiana, the public defenders are so overworked. Their pay is based off the traffic tickets and fines. My opinion is that people need to start standing up for the issue. So many people are affected everyday and nothing is happening. People need to take a stand and getting the information out there. Hopefully informing people will raise attention. Drawing attention will then raise awareness. The more people you have behind you supporting you will help. This is me working on my blog post!!

For this portion of the project we had to put our effort in to make a change to the issue we chose. My agent of change was putting the information out there. I created a website with the facts on how much a public defender actually does. I thought this was important because it gives more people the information they were unaware of. I raise attention to the website by showing my peers, family, and friends. I think informing people on the issue was helpful because if their ever in the need of a public defender they are now familiar with the system, they know more about and hopefully some people will have a passion to help raise awareness and get this system turned around. This is my website.

Throughout my project I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed informing people on how important this is to me. I shared a touching story, that was personal and I think showing how much it meant to me was special. I learned a better understanding of the system and it answered some questions I had with my experience. I learned the true facts of a public defender. It was also really amazing to hear what others were passionate about and learn further into their topics. People did touching topics also and it was interesting to see each one. I appreciate this project because it helped me a lot in so many ways. I am going through a lot with the system now and learning more about everything, educating myself to better understanding what would happen with my sister was spectacular. I think there is still much to be further done with the overworked public defenders, because giving the information across is only half the battle. I think once the courts start taking it in consideration and the system needs help. Of course I can’t fix it all, baby steps help!

Throughout this project learning about the different things a public defender goes through is amazing. I really put my all into the blog posts and put all my thoughts in them. The experiences I had is something I will never forget. This project gave the chance to gain information to  case of my very own sister and helped my understanding of where my sister is and what happened during her case. Here is my annotated bibliography of the sources I used throughout my project.

Radon was discovered by Friedrich Ernst Dorn a german chemist. Radon was found when chemist realized a gas emitting from other radioactive elements. the residue left from the elements when they breakdown is radon. 86 is the atomic number, 222 is the atomic mass. For this element a lot of images immediately popped into mind with gas masks and explosions but that seemed too easy and unoriginal. I thought of a character named Radioactive Man from the Simpsons and realized that he fit perfectly with the properties of radon. It was a different and fun way to represent Radon.

The first step to make this print was to sketch out my image on a 4x6 rectangle. After we had the perfect sketch we laid tracing paper on top and traced the image onto the tracing paper. That is when we were given our plate to trace the image one last time onto to the plate. We had to make sure that we trcaed the image on the plate backwards so that when would print it, it would be right side up. We had paint on a tray and used the paint roller to evenly spread the paint onto our plate. We printed the image onto a sheet of paper and used a wooden spoon to smooth out the paint and details on the paper. Then we cut out the border and glued the image on.

If i were to make this print a second time I would make a more complex image so that it would be more visually pleasing and have the process be more precise. also i wish i would've had spread the paint evenly so that there wouldn't be all of those white lines. I enjoyed the painting and actual printing the most because it was really fun having our image come to life and printed onto the paper.

We all love superheroes. Whether it be Spiderman or Batman, many people find themselves engaged by these types of stories. Because of this, most people fantasize about what alternate versions of these heroes would look like and how their worlds and narratives change because of this. That is what my project focuses on. My conversion takes the neo-noir superhero story of Batman and puts a western twist on the setting, props, and production. For this project I will be recreating the opening scene, where the Joker is holding Robin (Jason Todd) hostage while trying to draw out Batman to save him

I chose to turn this movie scene into a Spaghetti Western type of film because I felt like these universes and the characters that reside within them have a lot more in common than most people think. Batman, in a way, could be considered a very secluded and nomadic figure similar to how someone like Blondie acts in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. He has a strict code of justice that he follows and takes along with him throughout his adventures in Gotham City. Robin, specifically Jason Todd who eventually becomes the Red Hood, could be seen as his partner stands as an anti-hero towards Batman himself as there are many things that they are at odds about. It is for this reason that I chose to do this type of conversion for my storyboard, The characters and stories hold a lot of parallels for it to not be able to work. Another things about the genre of spaghetti westerns is the cinematographic choices that directors like Sergio Leone use to give them that gritty feeling of the American West in their films. I noticed that in scenes during different dialogue segments were not interrupted at all by cuts or any other technique that transitions into another shot. I also noticed that there is very little non-diegetic noise which means that there are very little times in which things like the soundtrack or any other noises that only the audience hears are cued to go off. Because the setting would have to take place in the American West, the scene would take place in some sort of old and run-down farmhouse or warehouse. This would add a much older feel to the scene and will make the overall feel of the scene even more raw and intense.

Hi, I’m Sam Gualtieri. For my first blog post, I discussed the concept of the technological singularity and how realistic it was. In my second blog post, I reviewed the interview I had just done and discussed the more realistic dangers of computer technology and what should be done to prevent them, as well as what the majority of people thought about the subject.

My subject is something that’s only beginning to show itself as a problem in our society. Many parents have started to find problems with how the internet interrupts their children's social interactions. This is true for basically all ages, and is far from the only problem that comes with computer technology, but it’s one of the most popular ones to be protested. However, there’s more to this story. Computers are an incredibly powerful tool, and many worry that one day they may become too smart and be beyond our control. However, as Mr. Kamal pointed out to me in my interview, the problem isn’t software (or other things) being too smart, but too stupid.

It’s a powerful tool, and has no foolproof way to stop itself from getting out of the hands of someone with dangerous intent. For my Agent of Change, I created an informational video and put it on youtube. The best way I can describe it is a Vox-style educational video. The video contains 6 recommended guidelines recommending questions to ask yourself before creating a new technology.  The goal is to share this out as far as possible and maybe make those guidelines mainstream. The questions are:

1. How much will it cost to create and maintain?

1. Are the materials too expensive for mass productions?

1. On that note, would it be smart to use this material environmentally?

2. Could my product be a danger to the user in any situation?

1. Electric shock? Exploding? Sentiance?

3. How could my product be used with negative intent and what can I do to  prevent this?

1. How powerful is my tool?

2. Could it be used to hurt people? (physically, online)

4. How easy should my product be to acquire? (commercial or specific market)

1. Should people be able to order it online, or should there be legal requirements involved?

5. Would this product replace human jobs? How many?

1. While maybe it could be convenient for companies, how many working class people would be let go?

6. What are the benefits of my product? Does it justify these risks?

1. What does my product do and how beneficial is it to the world?

2. Have I found many problems looking through these past problems?

3. Are they worth risking for the sake of the product?

Overall, I’m ok with my video. I hate everything I make, as do many content creators of any creative medium. The timing is weird in places, and it can be very dense, but it also looks really nice. Mr. Kamal had a lot of interesting things to say and it was difficult to try to cut it down. In the end I wish I could have made his part shorter, but there was just so much good stuff. I’m passionate about this subject, yet I learned that I don’t know as much as I thought I did, and compiling all that into a video is hard. There are plenty of things about this video that I wish I did differently. The transitions from The Singularity to general safety with technology isn’t really explained outside of Mr. Kamal sort of changing the subject. I still need to post this link on all my social media and try to get people to share it. Otherwise, I’m done.

Annotated Bibliography: