Blog Feed

1. Who you spoke with and why you chose that partner:

   - SharedTalk; Mariano

2. What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?

     - From this conversation I learned that Mariano is a 20 year old guy who loves to play rugby and wants to improve his english. His english is moderately okay and although Rugby is dangerous he plays because he has a burning passion for it deep within. He wishes to have a career based in international trade and so between going to school for that and working he doesn't think he can go be a professional rugby player. I Also learned that he as a very good sense of humor. I respect to the entire conversation I feel like I've grown in my ability to keep conversations fluent. 
3. /How did this interaction help you move towards achieving your personal goals?
4. This conversation was helpful because it gave me more opportunity to have a conversation and work to keep the flow of it smooth. During the conversation Mariano corrected me on little errors which was helpful because it helped me to notice what I needed to work to improve on more. It also helped me see my common errors.

5. What specifically did you do well according to your goals/expectations? What specifically to you need to improve on?

   I think the thing I did well in this conversation was keeping it fluent. I estimated how the conversation would go, planned questions and comments ahead of time, and looked up all the words I thought that I would need ahead of time. My goal was to not have to use a translator and I accomplished that to best of my ability. My goal was also to not have a strick Q and A kind of flow but an actual conversation. It made me realize though that I need to work on not mixing up words and the way i arrange words. 

• What exactly is Depression and its evolution to treatment

• Chemical changes of Depression

• Anything that the public isn’t aware of that we don’t hear about everyday

For my 10% time year long project I think that I’m going to be researching hidden poisons or toxins in our clothing. By researching what goes into our clothes, especially in a time where most of our clothes are made from synthetics and polyester blends I want to see how it affects our bodies. In a show I was watching on T.V, two men got very sick due to wearing a specific synthetic material for too long everyday, which made me think what could is happening to our bodies when we wear other synthetic fabrics. In the beginning of this project I was going to find out what happens to our organs especially depending on how long you wear a fabric, but without real scientific cases this became nearly impossible to do so I changed it a little bit. My project is still about how clothes affect the human body, what goes into making the clothes and uncovering the hidden qualities of our clothes that hide poisons.

Trevor Hinton

Globalization

4^th quarter benchmark

In and around Philadelphia it isn’t hard to spot a Boys and Girls club or sports group that consist of children from and around the neighborhood enjoying various activities and spending time with mentors and friends. You’ve seen the ads and commercials boasting of the success many famous celebrities actors and actresses have had after being in a Boys and Girls club and the urge they put on children from communities to join and be embraced by the good mentoring programs that they can give to a young person; while many good things and young people come from these programs there is a small group of afterschool programs that don’t get the necessary funding and support that programs like the Boys and Girls club which is a much larger organization receives and the problem arises when you are no longer able to accept children into these programs and their parents still wish to have them doing something proactive after school has been dismissed. A lot of these programs are run out of a child’s school as a way to keep them off the streets but when funding is an issue and program directors can’t get enough of something to keep the program going it can cause the children to lose interest or worse for the whole program to be suspended. There are a lot of things that go into running a afterschool program such as planning of any trips, snacks for the children, planning of activities and any supplies that, something as simple as an afterschool program that allows children to just play sports and hangout with friends for as long as they can so that they are occupied isn’t as hard to manage however when trying to coordinate and plan things outside of sports or arts and crafts it becomes a bigger issue of how to gather everything that is needed in a timely matter so that things can be done properly. My two brothers were in a afterschool program that was run out of there school that taught inner city kids going to public schools how to wrestle and stay off the streets and while the program was a great success and drew many kids in when it came for them to go to different competitions to compete and go to places like the University of Penn to practice because of the lack of funding that was able to be provided from the school a lot of things had to come from willing parents i.e. rides to competitions (sometimes as far as Lehigh), snacks, and in some instances putting down a certain monetary amount so they would be able to rent a bus or van for the day. The bigger question that arises from this is what can be done to keep programs like these running and up if they don’t have the support of a school district or other community programs; if the idea is to keep kids safe and off of the streets getting into things that could harm them shouldn’t more be put on any and everyone involved to have a bigger plan in place to keep things like this open and running as long as possible, what grants can be given what donations can be made to these smaller programs, these are questions that have yet to be given a concrete answer to aid this cause.

• Who did I speak with and why did I choose that person?

  
  I talked to Marion because I wanted to see where she lived in France.
  
  

• What did you learn about them? What did you learn from them?

  
  She likes a lot of music and movies, she lives in Paris and in highschool.

• How did this interaction help you move towards achieving your personal goal?

  
  I wanted to see what movies she liked, and she told me.

• What specifically did you do well according to your goals/expectations?

  
  I wanted to find about about movies, and she told me .
  
  

• What specifically do you need to improve on? (Quote specific things you said or did and what you would have done or said if you could do it again)rc

  
  Some words I wanted to say I had to look up and sometimes I had to translate a word she said with word reference.

• Since my topic is very well-known to many people, it's hard to find an appropriate attitude and explanation I should use for this project. So I looked over many websites and tried to find a objective attitude towards all kinds of comments.
  
  
  
• It's really hard to find the actual truth of the story in Tibet, actually. After I searched all kinds of information, I don't even think that there is a truth exists. Foreign media is always not reporting the truth and exaggerating the mistakes Chinese government had, while Chinese government is always trying to hide something from the people and the media. All I can do is read articles from both sides and to analyze as best as I can. 
  
  
  
• The story actually attracts far more attention than I ever thought, however, the truth is not attracting any focus at all. As if everybody are mislead to different kinds of acknowledgement, the people in China, the foreigners, the media, and even myself. Each side has its own point of view and evidence. Although I can tell parts of it are completely wrong, the rest is still bothering me because all the "truth" are in a conflict. For example, There is no way to identify whether Dalai Lama is involved in the conflict as a man with guilt, nor can I find any evidence to prove his innocence.
  
   
• I think it will. After all the articles I went through, what I see was only one side disagree with another. Either Chinese media and government saying foreign media are all telling lies, or foreign media blaming Chinese government about freedom and human right but never speaking about the improvements. In my article, I tried to combine the two ideas together and try to find some similarities between them. 
  
  
  
• I learned a lot about the ancient history between Tibet and China, and I also learned about the prejudice media have on China-Tibet conflict. What's the most important, I discovered that there might be something with no truth existing at all. What we saw is just a surface. The truth itself might already been covered up by time.

(Option #3) 

The most challenging thing about this project was finding sources to back up the pictures I had taken; I started taking pictures before I found my sources, which was a bad idea. I should have looked up things in Philadelphia that were well documented and then taken pictures of them. I looked at the document on the moodle assignment page for the benchmark hyperlinked as topics and started brainstorming ideas of what pictures I could collect and what theme I wanted to portray through my pictures. I then thought about pictures would be the most convenient to retrieve after school or even during school if I had a free period. After I collected the ones that were close by the school I started thinking of other places in Center city that I could get to via trolley or short train ride and by my house that I could go and document as a sign

I took 10 pictures although there are only 9 posted because I couldn’t get the 10^th picture to upload and I was running out of time for my project. My favorite picture was the mansion. Not only because the Elkins Estate is beautiful and I’ve loved the architecture and elegance that the home has but also because I had to work very hard at finding history behind it. I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to use that picture because I hadn’t found anything worth using that I could connect back to my theme or globalization. After I found information about the Nun’s that lived there I really started to dig up lots of information. So this picture became my favorite because I worked the hardest at it and because I love the house, after finishing my connections for that picture I felt more accomplished than I did for any of the other pictures. Overall, I’m not sure if it’s less or more prevalent in places other than Philly because I didn’t look for links between globalization and those cities. However, having said that I think that there is a larger amount of people immigrating to other countries like Florida and California that might have more signs of globalization because there are larger cities than Philadelphia so it makes sense that within those places that there would be more signs. I think that for a moderately sized city I think that it’s pretty evident in this Philadelphia. There are lots of examples in the businesses, neighborhoods, restaurants and shops as well as in the universities; each of them show a different portion of globalization but it is pretty evenly conveyed in each section.

I learned a lot about how I work and about Philadelphia. I didn’t have a lot of trouble actually writing about the pictures connection to globalization because it was pretty evident if you understood the lessons that we were taught in class. I learned so much about Philadelphia; I didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. I’ve been to the liberty bell, constitution center, Chinatown; all of which are places that I’ve been too so many times and never even thought about the historical value of the landmarks. I always assumed that the majority of the landmarks were put there as a agreement or as a gift and most of them were but I never thought of them as globalization. Now that I do Philadelphia seems much more interesting and historically rich than ever before. 

• What did you find most challenging about this project?
  
  The most challenging aspect of this project option did not lie on the photo, but rather figuring out ways to connect the picture with the larger globalization themes.
  
  
• How did you go about collecting the images or selecting the images?
  
  I skim through the collections of photos that I have, as well as wandering around the city with the lens of globalization in mind. Sometimes, I had a very clear vision of the connection between what I see and globalization. However, when it became less relevant and significant once I put it down in writing.
  
  
• Which image is your favorite? Why? Elaborate.
  
  My favorite was the pictures of Italian Market. I like the transformation that the place has witnessed over the years. I really wish I have the picture of the place 10, 20, 30 years ago to compare the change.
  
  
• How prevalent is the evidence of globalization in Philadelphia? Do you think it is more or less so (evident) than in other large cities in the US? Why Why not?
  
  Globalization is conspicuous arguably everywhere now. However, it has a stronger presence in urban than rural, and even more so in larger urban area. In Philadelphia, it is certainly not that hard to find evidences of globalization, as it is the hub of major activities involving multinational interactions. In larger city, such as New York, it is more ubiquitous, as there are more people, and activities.
  
  
• What did you learn?
  
  - That escaping globalization seems to be impossible in Philadelphia.
  - The root of Globalization is strikingly inhuman.
  

The most challenging part about this benchmark was trying to figure out how to layout the entire process. It was difficult for us because we were unsure on how to provide a good design. In the end we designed it in a way where we felt it was the most creative yet simple.

The story was easy for us to get because there are many students within the school who of course have a story to tell. There were many students who had similar stories and throughout the process of us finding  a topic to focus on it was simple because a friend was telling us her story and she started to mention the different people who are in similar positions as her. Her story inspired us to go outside of the box and interview multiple people in order to have a thorough general understanding of successful immigration stories. 

I believe that this story hasn't received much attention because it hasn't been revealed. I feel like it is unknown but in a way it is known because we know about it. It's unknown because no one takes the time to acknowledge or notice an immigrants story.

Yes, if our article is shared to the public and no because if this article only stays within the walls of the school how will anyone else be able to hear out their stories.

I learned so much from this assignment I've learned about how strong people are and how monstrous others are. It all depends on the way you were raised I suppose because of everything that is being taught to them. I learned to be a leader like Bach and to keep moving forward never to let anyone bring you down.