English Journal #26: Write your own "Mask" poem

Each and everyday I hide behind a lie

in hopes that they can’t judge what’s inside.

There’s no need for them to pity me

or treat me any differently.

 

We all have a past that we’re entitled to hide,

a little piece of us we wish would just die.

It controls every part of you,

and you have no idea what to do.

 

Your mask keeps you going;

there’s no use in anybody knowing.

All you can do is try to let someone in

because once you do that, your life can begin.

English Journal #21: Describe your Thanksgiving in detail

As I walked through the front door I was greeted with the thunderous barks of dogs, the loud voices of the two most horrible people, and the shrill scream of out-of-hand children. In that moment, I was worried what might come later in the meal in this house of horrors.

At dinnertime I isolated myself, staying quiet and unnoticed. The food was wonderful and was the only thing keeping me content and pausing me from going absolutely crazy. The colorful food filled the table and created a warm, confronting smell. In the section of time, we came together as peacefully as we ever had. Just as we finished, the loud house full of banter and cruel jokes returned.

Let’s just say that it was a breath of fresh air walking out that door.

 

Cell Phone Stupidity #3

My last couple of blogs were explaining my reason behind creating these three blog posts. Again, my reason is because I feel humans have become stupider and more lazy over time due to the evolution of technology. The blogs I've already made had a lot of opinions, but this blog has facts and my own personal research.

This blog is my Post For Change! I am writing this blog to try and make a difference in society and help people understand that this is not something to just throw to the side. It's a problem that has been overlooked for years but never actually was taken seriously. But I'm taking it seriously and I will make a difference one way or another!


​I AM FURIOUS!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have become very curious to see if anything has been done to bring forth the issue I am discussing with you. Nothing has been talked about, or shown, or even thought about! Yes, people have talked about how technology has made people lazier and stupider over time, but it was not a huge issue in the whole world's eyes. But in my eyes it is. I am exhausted of dealing with people who do not how to put down their cell phone or their computer or iPad and just read a book or the newspaper. I realize that you're able to access all of these things from your mobile phone but it's a different feeling when you're reading ink. Your vision becomes better and your reading level goes up.

I kept thinking of all these different questions and their possible answers. So I decided to take a survey. The survey asked very simple questions and it gave me the answers I needed. Click here to take the survey.
I found out a lot about how many people have cell phones and how long they use them for. I sent my survey out to over 400 people but only 49 of them filled out the survey. However, I was not able to retrieve every single answer due to technical difficulties. My findings are shown below:

How old are you?
Years | How Many
 12            1
 13            0
 14           10
 15           17
 16            3
 17            6
 18           12
 19            0

Do you have a cell phone?
Yes | No
 47    2

How many years have you had a cell phone?
Years | How Many
  0             0
  1             2
  2             2
  3             6
  4             6
  5            12
  6             7
  7             2
  9             1
 10            2
 11            2

How many hours of the day do you use your cell phone?
    Hours  |  How Many   
< 1 or 1           6
      2               6
      5               1
   > 5              12

Do your parents have any restrictions on your cell phone?
Yes | No
  8    41

What grade are you in?
Grade | How Many
   9            30
  10            0
  11            0
  12           19

What is your grade point average? NO LYING!
GPA | How Many
 0-1         1
 1-2         0
 2-3         1
 3-4        17

Do you have a flip-phone or a touch screen?
Flip-phone | Touch Screen
     11                 38

Do you believe people have become less curious about things due to the evolution of technology?
Yes | No
 24   25

After analyzing my results numerous times, it shows me that when your a young teenager (14 or 15) that you tend to have a cell phone. Not only that, but you tend to also have a touch screen phone and a more high powered phone. It was shocking to me when I saw that more people thought humans have stayed the same over time and over the evolution of technology.


CHANGE
Change is not something easy to conquer, that's why I am working my best to find a way to make change. I want that change to be a result of this blog. So far, I have come up with a "No Screen Week." This week is a pledge to not use any type of technology (i.e. cell phones, computers, iPods) for ONE whole week. For many this is a hard task, but for many this is very easy. The date and way to spread the word about this is still undetermined. But it'll be sometime in the summer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Ms. Dunn
Julia Boyer
Science Leadership Academy Students
Apple
The Internet
Myself
no+cell+phone
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Blog 3 Post for change


Blog 3:

In my first blog I introduced you to the topic of child trafficking and told you why I was interested. In my second blog I showed you some new info I found based off of my new research and I also voiced my opinion on the subject. Now this is my 3rd blog post and it’s my post for change.

In my research I’ve found that things that have been done to raise awareness were written letters to the government so they could step up and try and save these innocent children, donations, some send gifts, clothes, and on the 21st of every month you can join others in fasting for child trafficking. I think these are great ways to raise awareness for child sex trafficking. donating clothes and money could help save a child’s life.

To raise awareness I’ve made a public service announcement. In my P.S.A. I showed where the trafficking is happening, what age group it’s affecting, and how you can help. The most effective way to help children in the trafficking is to donate to UNICEF. My opinion on the subject is for it to stop completely. Trafficking is the second most popular organized crime in the world. and billions of women and children get trafficked each year.

I propose that there should be police stationed in places with high reports of trafficking. Like Thailand and all of Asia. Child trafficking is so popular that I can almost guarantee that you’ll find at least one brothel. And finding one brothel could save up 30 children’s lives. It hasn’t happened yet but I hope that it will happen one day it could be a very effective way to help end this industry.

Here’s the link to my bibliography

Burkina Faso (Africa) Election Project - Blase Biello & Ian McClendon

​Burkina Faso is a country in Western Africa, that is surrounded by countries on all sides of it. The capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou. While doing some research on the country, we've learned that the President of Burkina Faso's name is actually Blaise Compaoré. Although entering the presidency in 1987 through a coup, he was elected by the people in the 1991, 1998, 2005, and most recently 2010. Burkina Faso is actually not having another election until the year 2015. Burkina Faso's presidential terms last 5 years at a time. They will, however, be having a parliamentary election December 2, 2012.

We started our project by trying to find some people living and tweeting from Burkina Faso. (1st picture below - click to enlarge). We searched Burkina Faso in the Twitter search bar to try and find some teenagers - but little was tweeted and English and everything seemed to be a dead end. Access to computers is not as common there - and sometimes limited technology is not being used for Twitter. So, we changed up our approach a little bit and tried looking up some International Schools located in Burkina Faso. The biggest hit we got was for the International School of Ouagadougou. So, we checked out the site at the URL: iso.bf  and went to the Contact page - so we can connect with some teachers, who could've potentially connected us with some teachers. So, we both filled out the form seem below (2nd picture) and wrote a detailed message about our project and how we'd like to get some of their teenagers involved. However, we never received a response. So, we then tried to email them directly not-through the site. Blase emailed them through my professional SLA email account at the provided email address on April 26 (3rd picture below) but never received a response. Ian did the same, and also did not receive a response. If we were to do it again we would probably try and find other International Schools and American programs/organizations in the area to try and connect us to some of the youth. 


 



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Post for Change

In my earlier blog posts I talked about the effects of poverty on a student's academic success and the relationship between education, unemployment and homelessness. I also mentioned some information about homeless people infected with HIV/AIDS. If the reader would like to read those two previous blogs please visit these sites: Blog 1, Blog 2.

I am currently holding a fundraiser for homeless children that need a place to stay and an education.  To draw attention to this topic, I put posters that asked for donations to Stand up for Kids around my school and a PDF of that poster in the advisory memo so that all the parents, teachers and students could find out about it. Some students at Science Leadership Academy have already contacted me about donations.

I decided  help StandUp For Kids this because “more than 94% of the financial donations go directly to assisting homeless and street kids”.  This information means that when I ask people to donate they know that their money will be used for putting and end to youth homelessness and that they are not be wasting their money. However, my main goal was not to see how much money I could collect; it was to make people aware of this topic and for them to spread the word. When people can relate to something and learn about it, that is when change starts to happen.

After making my community aware of this issue, the next step to making sure all children get an education and that they have shelter is to have people make a change by volunteering and donating. This will reduce the number of homeless kids in America (1.5 million). One way to make a change without donating money is donating things to the Salvation Army. Once this organization is done collecting all their donated items (t-shirts, shoes, household items)  they sell them to gain money for people in need like all the homeless kids in the United States. Also if they are people that feel very strongly about homeless children in America with HIV/AIDS they can volunteer and donate to the Philly Aids Thrift store.





I was able to raise a total of $62.62 to donate to Stand Up for Kids. Even Though that the amount of money that raised was not that great, my campaign was very successful in raising awareness.  I would like to thank all the people that donated, but most of all Jeremy Spry, Alexa Dunn, Chris Lehmann, Pejman Makarechi, Carlo Makarechi, Bijan Makarechi, Giovanna Chiti and Ray Albarouki. All those people helped me perfect my original content. I could not have done it without them and if it was not for them people would not be as aware of the poverty in the United States as they are now.

I wonder if in the future I will find better ways to inform people about something that is important to me.
“Go out into the world and do good until there is too much good in the world.”
Larry H. Miller
Here is my Bibliography.

Intimidator Difficulty Part 3 Post for Change

My first two blogs talked about the subject of bullying. If you forget or don’t know my name, I am Aaron Tang. The 1st blog consists of details about my issue, and my 2nd is about opinions. The first blog explained different types of bullying. Also the second blog shows charts on how many people are being affected, and my respond to the crucial bully. Since this is a long journey of my project, there will be some changes. You don’t know why I posted this blog, but I will explain the post change. Another piece of the blog is to raise awareness about my issue. There will be a lot of websites where you can make a big difference! Not but not least, I will create a positive change by creating a video for people to see. Where ever you are, please sit back and enjoy reading the last blog of mine!

After collecting all of my research from the google doc form, many people filled the survey. Not too long ago, I have posted a survey on facebook and twitter for my followers and friends to answer the questions about their opinions and thoughts on bullying. I am satisfied of how many people had submitted their own thoughts. Many people had said bullying is a crucial weapon towards other people because it can hurt people’s feeling. Some people have said that bullying occurs around school. Practically, all of people who filled out the survey were teenagers. Most of them said if they see bullying occurring in the school or any place, they will report to an adult. If you still haven’t completed the survey, feel free to submit one.

There’s always a solution beside hurting each other. Children should be the role model because it shows that they are the better person who stands up for someone, or friend.

It’s time for my post of change. The bottom of this article will be a video about how I can get many views to stop bullying. In the video clip, I had grabbed some volunteers to hold the paper about words that describe the victims and ways to help my community a better society. In the video, it shows how many people are willing to help the problem. I can’t thank so many people who had help me. I have also posted the video on facebook for my friends and they had shared it to other friends to spread the word. Also, I grabbed some quotes from celebrities who had been bullied before and how celebrities may change people’s prospective without commiting suicide, or harming their self or other people.


The website is for somebody who may be in trouble of being the victim.
Click here.

Here is a website for donating money. The money is towards for programs to make an awareness. The website also shows who is the bullied learn about the topic, and how people can help.

If you want to read articles about bullying, there are a lot of resources.


No one can stop you, if you try to help somebody. I want people to not be afraid to step up for somebody because the bullied may be afraid when many people are helping the victim.


What will we do if no nobody cares about bullying? It can impact a lot of the victims. Many families will lose a member when they are not living. We don’t want our future to become a chaos when humans hurt other humans. We can always make a step by helping other people.

Together, we can stop preventing bullying in a matter of time.  “We will make a difference!”

I would to like acknowledge to my english teacher Ms. Dunn, my SAT Emma Hersh because they guided me with all three blogs to have a rich blog. Ms. Dunn had been a wonderful helper because she told us what to write for each blog. Emma Hersh had helped me with editing, and upload my video to the blog. I would like to thank all the people who help me with my video, and revise my three blogs. Lastly, I appreciated for everyone who read all the blogs. 

Bibliography


The video is created by me and I want to make an awareness for people to help other people who are in need. Hope you enjoy my wonderful video about bullying. 
tang
tang
All these ways of bullying need to end right now. 
tang 2
tang 2
We can all stop bullying! 
Shawn2
Shawn2
This shows that people are forcing together to put a stop to bullying. 

Post For Change: Reginald Simmons

Blog Post #3 / Post For Change


In my last two blogs, I’ve discussed cyberbullying. What it is, what it can do, what it already has done, etc. Before this project, I didn’t know much about this subject myself, and I’ve learned a lot about this issue. I plan to keep tabs on the path it takes.

This blog post is my last one, and the last phase of the project. This is the post for change. So far, I’ve made change by posting about cyberbullying, so that people on the SLA blog post site can read it, and get the subject in their heads. To continue to make change with my topic, I will craft a sheet of paper filled with sources to stories, facts and websites for readers to look at. It will be a paper intended to simply raise awareness, so that people don’t stop thinking about cyberbullying as soon as they leave me blog. That’s all that I have left to do.
My piece of original content will be the sheet of paper for awareness that I previously explained. I will make enough copies for all my classmates to have at least one. I’m glad i was assigned this project, because in trying to get the word out about your topic to other people, you learn a lot about it yourself. I would like acknowledge Ms. Dunn for all the help she’s provided for me.

See my bibliography here 

Post For Change

 To spread awareness about my topic I’m reaching out to my advisory class at my school. I plan on showing them a movie called “Crash” then having a discussion about it and to get their opinions on the movie and what they think about racism overall. I also have discussion questions for my advisory to answer after the film.

 

This movie is about people of different races who live in Los Angeles with very different lives. Some how they collide in each other’s life and they turn out to need each other. For further information about the film heres a link to the movies main page with a lot of things for your intrest.

 

                               imgres

                  (A photo of the cast from the movie)

 

 I’m planning to watch the film with my advisory on Thursday, May 31, 2012 and Monday, June 4, 2012. I’m also considering playing a game with my advisory. My English teacher played this game with my class in the beginning of the year. She put a line of tap in the middle of the room. Then she asked questions about our life and other things. If the question applied to us, we would step u to the line, if not you would stay in place. This game helped everyone learn more about each other and the things we have all been through. I plan on doing this with my advisory to try to get them to open up more and to learn more about them. I want them to express their opinion about my topic because everyone has a voice. I hope that they will give me more ideas on how to make a change even further than just trying to stop it in my community, but maybe the sate and so on.

               imgres-1

To spread even more awareness about racism and how we can stop it, I’m creating “stop all racism” posters and hanging them up all over the city. By seeing this on street corners and everywhere people go, maybe it will make people think twice before saying some thing racist or even doing a racist action.

Maybe by doing my part, others can help and contribute to stopping racism. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion also, so racism will carry on as long as people who don’t like a race that’s not theirs are against them.

 

                           imgres-2

 

 

Privatization of Public Schools - Post for Change

For the last installment of my series of blogs (you can find my first two blogs here and here about the privatization of public school, I will be creating a “Post for Change” or a blog post about what I have done to create change about this issue.

Before I educated myself about this issue, there were many others already involved, planning, getting organized, and making their voices heard. I stumbled across an issue that many people feel very passionately about. I am happy to say that I am one of those people now, too.

There have been community meetings with the Philadelphia School Reform Commission so that the community can voice their concerns about the proposed plan to close schools and possibly privatize several. To elicit change in this topic, I attended one of these meetings at Girls High School on Thursday, May 24. Below is a video clip of me speaking at the hearing.

After I was done speaking, several people approached me asking if they could use my short speech for several different things, which made me feel great. At that moment I knew that I had made an, albeit small, change. On Thursday, May 30th, the School Reform Commission will vote on what to do. There will be a large gathering outside of the School District Building, In order to keep creating change in my community, I will be part of the gathering outside to voice the concerns of the community. This way, the SCR cannot ignore us.

  The following are a few pictures that I took at the meeting on May 24th, and a few photographs of another small meeting that occurred on Tuesday, May 22nd which the School Reform Commission did not attend. 

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Community members writing down what the believe needs to happen in public schools at Tuesday's meeting.
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SRC Member Feather Houstoun at Thursday's meeting
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SRC Member Lorene Cary at Thursday's meeting.
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Community members holding signs at Thursday's meeting.
In closing, I would like to acknowledge Lisa Haver, a writer, retired teacher and education activist who I contacted for further help understanding privatization, and who invited me to come to community meetings. I would also like to acknowledge my mother for taking me to the meetings. 

For those who are interested, come to 440 N Broad Street outside of the School District of Philadelphia to make sure that the SRC hears your voice! I you cannot attend; you can live stream it from your computer here. It is my opinion that my education, and the education of my friends is in jeopardy, and it is our duty to make sure that we get the education that is our right!



You can view my bibliography here

Fourth Quarter Blog post

    This quarter I did something unorthodox; I stuck with the with the assigned work and did not opt out to work on my own projects. I decided that this quarter I would do that, as I felt the last few I did not produce as powerful pieces as I could have. Been having to stick to a strict plan of having a new thing a week, I had to stay on top of my work or less I would fall behind (which did happen for a bit.)
    I started this quarter off creating an abstract drawing. I was undecided of what to do, as it had to be more than just an abstract image, it had to convey motion within it. I had many different ideas that I thought of doing, but instead of spending a large amount of time brainstorming, I just let my hand and pencil do the work. I started to draw an outline of a large circle, then began to draw smaller ones within. The idea of creating something black and white popped into my head, but that would be too tuxedo like. I instead started drawing lines that extended outwards from the center of the circles, which started to look a bit like needs coming out. I still did not see any motion within this drawing, but saw abstract thoughts were forming. I topped off my sketch by drawing lightening around it. When the lightening touched the points coming out of the center of the circle, they would turn the same color as the lines. If they did not, they would remain blue. Next I took this to black paper and used a white pencil to re-illustrate it. This allowed me work out any faults before moving onto my third design, where I added color to it. In this one, I decided to use four colors; blue; green; red; and yellow. I made the different circles in the drawing a pattern of yellow and green, as I think that is an attractive color combination. Next, I made all of the swirls red, and the lightening that touched it. All of the ones that were not red were blue. I really enjoyed this piece, because it allowed me to learn to use phases to create something, instead of jumping right into it and being disappointed with the outcome.
    The next thing I made was an observation drawing of an unclose object. For this, I chose a hole in the wall. I can not give any particular reason why I chose the hole in the wall, other than it was the first thing I saw when handed the assignment. I did this drawing for two hours; I'm not sure why I did it for so long, but I did. I'm happy with the results, but I could have only put an hour into it and have done another drawing. I learned from this drawing to better manage my time to do more within a limited amount.
    After this, I did some make-up work that I did not get around to. I made my abstract emotion drawings. This concept was difficult for me. I associate abstract with something that is indescribable, and I associate emotions that are visually describable. Combining something indescribable and describable was a difficult concept for me to first approach, but after thinking about it, I was able to muster up two drawings. The one I did has an eye in the center with a tear, being watched by many different eyes. This single eye that has a tear running is what all of the other eyes have their attention affixed on. For what reasons? They are indescribable. The only emotion that is describable is the eye with the tear. My second drawing I split between the center. One side depicts more vibrant and lovely things, while the other has things that are mournful and saddening. The only way to understand emotion in the second drawing is by looking at the lips, but without seeing the rest of the face it is difficult to understand what emotion is trying to be expressed, making this indescribable.
    My next two weeks I had to make some alterations. The weather was too poor during those two weeks to go outside, so my drawings were inside the room. I used this time to try and teach myself how to drawing ceilings and floors during this time; more specifically rows of both. I've always struggled with drawing things that are drawn in the drawing far, then come up close. I was able to get the walls in the drawings down well, but the ceilings posed as an issue during my drawings. I ultimately decided to accept it as how I draw ceilings. When I originally drew my ceilings and floors, I did not particularly like them, but I do now. They are me.
    The final drawing I did this quarter was an abstract of a face and a mask. The one inspired the other. For this I wanted to do something that extremely quirky, but interesting. For the face, which was a rough draft to the mask, I designed it in a way where the mouth took up about a third of the face, and there were several rows of teeth. For the eyes, I designed to have one horizontal and the other vertical. I put two eye brows over the eyes and completed it. As I was looking at the drawing as it was finished, I felt more could be done and removed to it. In the rough draft of the second one, I made it so there were only two rows of teeth, as the multiples in the other one were a bit strange. Next. I turned the base into a mask by drawing the dark spots under the lips to the parallel side. I kept the one eye hole on the right hand sign, as I liked it like that, and kept the other one unsymmetrical, but changed the hole to a circle. Both of these ideas have some sort of design surrounding it. The circle has sharp twirls around it, while the sharp eye has a flower on the cheek and an eyebrow above. I'm particularly proud of this piece, as I really enjoyed making it, and I think it came out pretty well.
    I'm glad this quarter I changed my game. I felt that I accomplished more and pushed myself better as an artist to work with things that I was uncomfortable doing. I learned to accepted faults in things that I create, and realize that imperfects are art; in-fact, if something's perfect, it would be a pretty boring piece of work. the imperfections making a piece compelling and unique. That's what I like to think of my work for this quarter; it was unique.
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Animal Cruelty- Blog Post #3


         To introduce my blog post #3 is to tell you that there will be a change. A change that means something to a lot of people. Change is neccessary for animal cruelty if you have seen or heard about it. The nuts and bolts that need to be changed is that people are going to have to stop doing cruel things to animals. They don’t have voices, so we have to speak for them to stop cruelting them. They don’t deserve it.

To draw out what has been done to raise awareness to stop animal cruelty, The Humane Society of the United States has been very active in campaigning for animals. They prevent abuses such as dogfighting and cockfighting. Other awareness organizations are PAWS, which is a foster program to adopt animals in Philadelphia and the ASPCA which helps prevent cruelty in Philadelphia that’s happening to them. It ties in to the other organizations that helped stop animal abuse and animal cruelty because it is like a shelter and a foster home for these helpless animals.


My opinions on ways to change is first get the whole school involved. Then the the principal will set out the word on animal cruelty to his family and friends and students will do the same. Everybody will have a chance to help them. Once this happens, the cruelty must stop immediately!!! There’s no ifs ands or buts. Without animals and pets here, what other way can people entertain themselves if they didn’t have anything else to do. Lets not forget, these animals have feelings just like humans.


I will do this by showing a presentation on animal cruelty to my advisory and have a bake sale then when the school has a chance, we will then donate it to one of these organizations and we will all take part in volunteering to help them help these animals.This will someday improve our society and the animals society. Another way I can raise awareness by making videos of pictures of it with text and put it on the SLA site, make a big poster of it to raise the awareness or just make small posters and put it all around the school. Someday, the world will know that there will a change and its going to start with them.


To make these changes happen, we will work together. People will notice these changes and notice that it is wrong. When they see these signs around school and hear the messages that have been said people might think its annoying, but its not. It’s for a good cause. Once these animals have the help that they need, they will be happy and will be able to survive with life. Give these animals a chance. This change hasn’t happened yet, but it will happen and it will occur.


The original content I can make to illustrate how a positive change is occurring is that more people or all people will go to their local vet place or local shelter and everybody will help these animals. People will help these animals no matter what it takes. People will love them, take care of them and treat them with respect as if they had their own child. People will look at how these animals lived and feel sorry for them because they can’t take it any more. Their hearts will be broken just like ours. Continuing on my original content, is that I will make posters in order for people to show their love and how I love animals. Both animal testing  and animal cruelty is wrong.


Click Here if you want to see a video of how animal cruelty should be stopped

Click Here if you will like to donate to the ASPCA.

To sum up my last to blogs would be if these animals will be helped and if there will will be any more public awareness  to save these animals for my first blog post and for my second blog post was about my opinions and latest research on Animal Cruelty. Now  for the third blog post was about how I was going to make a change.  

         What I did to make change was that I created posters. I created posters to give a good message that cruelty should stop and committing these animals to die. What is still left for me to do is to find out if this awareness works or not. I hope this awareness will work. If it doesn’t, it wouldn’t be good for them or for us. I just can’t stop thinking and I know you can’t either stop thinking that more of these animals are going to die.

To explain my original content of the project, its obviously posters. The posters say people need to make a donation and stop animal cruelty. When you look at them, they almost make you want to cry and help save the day. Even the people reading this post should spread this word out and not only me. Save these animals today!!!

I will like to thank Ms. Dunn, for helping me get through this project. I will also like to thank her again because she helped me get through this whole project myself and always gave me feedback. I will like to thank Emma for also checking my work from the beginning when we first had began the project. I will also like to thank myself from Ms. Dunn’s help and Emma’s, because I finally achieved the projects goals. They are the best teacher and student assistant teachers ever!!! To close out this blog, is if you see animal cruelty happening don’t let it happen again. Make it end or take it to the court to get it handled. REMEMBER, STOP ANIMAL  CRUELTY!!!


click here for my bibliography


Click Here to watch this video on animal cruelty.
Poster for Animal Cruelty #1- Dunn
Poster for Animal Cruelty #1- Dunn
​Here is a picture of my original content!!! 

Globalization Quarter 4 BM

For this quarters benchmark is was sort of tough to do because I didn't really know what to take pictures of as well as the topic I wanted to do. But then as I walked around the city I say a lot of governmental issues at hand so I thought I should talk about them. My favorite image is the construction image because that is something I think is so dumb that the government is doing right now. I feel like it could be avoided and changed in so many ways. I feel like the evidence is relavent Philadelphia because these things are happening here and right now a lot of people are looking at us because a lot s happening in our tri-state area. 
lauf bm

The Post for Change (Blog Post #3)

This is Slavery

A Story, A Life

 People wonder what can "we" do to stop or change Human Trafficking? Like I said before there are main types of Human Trafficking such as Sex Trafficking and the Labor Trafficking. Both of these are horrible, but what will put an end to this? Humans (Victims) are tricking into thinking that they will finally be able to go to America or where that wish to go but are made into slaves that are forced to work way below the minimum wage. Also yes, it does happen in other places besides the United States. It happens mainly in Eurasia and according to research it does not have a high rate of happening in the US but that does not mean that it does not happen at all.

Hope, they take their hope and twist it. The Slave Traders take the Victims “Hope” of supporting their family, actually getting out of their home and twist into a promise that will never come true. The Slave Traders say “If you come with me I’ll take you to “blank” and all you need to do is work for me for a while.” That “while” will never end and the Victims and never meet their dreams. Their dreams will never come true, they will continue to work unless someone helps them. But how can that person help if they do not know where to help. The victims cannot call out for help because they are trapped, trapped as a slave in a foreign country. “They are largely silent, they have no voice, no hope, that’s the impact.”  

Here is a story that one of my fathers suggested to me, it talks about prostitution in Spain. Have you ever wondered where Human Trafficking Victims come from?

What could stop this or who? For example if this was happening in Pennsylvania, who could stop it? Many may think the president but President Obama can’t do anything. It is actually the local officials, such as Police. The problem is getting the police to actually get up and do something. Right now Police are lazy some are not. If the police investigated more into Human, Sex and Labor Trafficking, they could find a Slave Trading Route or a building where it takes place.

Now to make the Police in other countries to get up and do something. The President whether it is a he or she could definitely affect the Police and get them to do something. But maybe it is a problem with the Police, the Policemen or Policewomen could not be willing or wanting to help. No matter how hard people may try, it is almost impossible to stop men and women from having or thinking about coitus.

The Time to Act is Now, People of The World End This Crisis!

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photo

Philadelphia Murder Rate- Part 3: CHANGE TIME


            The, “Post for Change”! If you have followed along in my first and second posts, you should know that I have been discussing a topic that is very dear to my heart, and that I feel very passionately about; the murder rate in Philadelphia. This is an increasingly ongoing problem, and I have been working on my own way to try and change this, more of on a smaller scale though. My entire blog has been leading up to this, where I explain to you how I have figured out how to create my own personal post for change.

 

            Throughout the past 3 or so weeks, I have been researching, and talking to as many people as I can to try and learn as much as I can about the violence in Philadelphia, as well as one of the main ways that violence can be reduced. After evaluating everything, I have realized that one of the most effective ways to reduce violence is to enforce an effective neighborhood watch. This has been shown to reduce the amount of door-to-door violence, which would result in a significantly lower murder rate in Philadelphia. Even though this is the most effective way, due to my lack of resources, as well as age, I did not think it would be very realistic for me to attempt to set up neighborhood watches in Philadelphia. So I decided to make more awareness about the Philadelphia murder rate. I believe that awareness may result in people having a reality check, and understanding everything that has and continues to happen in Philadelphia.

 

            In order to create this awareness, I have created a piece of original content that I have also posted onto my Tumblr, Facebook, as well as my Twitter in order to increase the amount of people that are informed of this problem. My original content piece consists of a video of a montage of photos that shows you the sadness that comes with violence, especially murder. This video also has a piece of background music that not only is also a piece of original content, but also fits perfectly with the video. The talented Ronald Harper; who is doing a blog of his own if you would like to check it out; has composed this rap, and is performed by me.


Here is my final bibliography link!

 

 

Testing on animals, Post #3

Hello readers! My name is Amy Farrell and this is my third post on the topic of testing on animals. If you wish to read  my first 2 posts, click here for post 1 and here for post 2. In post 1, I gave an overview of what animal testing is all about, and included an informative video on the topic. In post 2, it was more about my opinion and other research I have found. In this post, this is my plan for change. This is the last part of the project, so this will be my last blog post.  


The final question we all have is:

What can we do to help?


There are many things you as a reader can do to help. First, view this list of companies that do test on animals (Below) , and make sure you do NOT buy their products. Here is an easy way to find brands that do and do not test on animals.  If enough people boycott companies that use animals for testing, they will run out of business OR decide to change their testing methods. 


Here is a petition that you can sign that says you will not buy products from companies that test on animals. After signing this, a letter is sent to one of the companies saying you are boycotting their products. 


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168678_181582895210556_180464141989098_365257_3394343_n
story_wide
story_wide

My Plan / Original Content 

I sent an email with this link to the freshman class at Science Leadership Academy. So far, I’ve gotten over 40+ people to sign it. By sending this link to people, it will spread awareness. Also, after you sign the form, it asks you to send it to a friend. By sending it to a friend, more and more people will be aware of this happening. Even after this project is done, I still plan on using products that do not test on animals, and I will continue spreading awareness. 


Acknowledgments:

I’d like to thank Mrs Dunn, Emma Hersh, Max Amar-Olkus, and RubyJane Anderson for helping me complete these 3 posts. 



If you want to do more, you could contact the companies by yourself and tell them why you aren’t going to buy their products. If many people do this, they will realize they need to change. Here is a list of companies that still test on animals. It may be shocking to see some of your favorite brands listed, but it is the truth. As I stated earlier, you can contact these companies yourself and tell them what you think about this. Change always starts with one person, and that person could be you.



Also, if you wish to join PETA’S Action Team to help animals, click here for more information. 

If you wish to see my bibliography, click here.

Who wouldn't want to see more animals being healthy and happy? 
How-to-maintain-a-healthy-cat
How-to-maintain-a-healthy-cat

Social Networking: Positive or Negative #3

​   From my first and second blog post, I’ve certainly done a lot of work and personal research. For one, I made a survey and posted it on all of my social networking accounts to have people fill it out. As a result, 110 people filled it out (thank you if you were one of those people!).

            From my survey, I found lots of interesting information. When I was finishing up making it, I decided that I needed one last question. While I was trying to figure out what this one would be, I had a thought; I wonder how many people typically would remember a friends birthday if it weren’t for a facebook reminder? Pleased with myself for thinking of this question, I quickly typed it in, thinking that most people would respond with “Yes, of course I would remember a friend’s birthday!” Instead, my results spoke very differently. Turns out that 60% of people would not remember. To me, that is incredibly shocking. Because of that fact, I’m contemplating changing my birthday on facebook to a false date so a bunch of people wish me a happy birthday and then I get to laugh at them.

            From my survey, I also found the average time that people spend on social networking sites per day. The largest amount was that somebody said was 16 hours in total, which is astounding. The least was no time at all, and that was obviously from someone who didn’t have any social networking accounts. I tallied and found the average of my results, and created this chart:

Screen Shot 2012-05-21 at 6.06.24 PM
Screen Shot 2012-05-21 at 6.06.24 PM
I was also interested to see what social networking sites were the most popular, and so I made a question on my survey that the person could check all of the social networking sites that they have. From that information, I tallied the number of people who had each site and then divided it by the total number of people who answered my survey and made it into a percent, and then made this pie chart:
Screen Shot 2012-05-21 at 6.29.08 PM
Screen Shot 2012-05-21 at 6.29.08 PM
From my survey, I also found interesting small facts about the use of social networking. For example, I found out that 86% of people said that they were able to get in contact with someone whom they normally would not have been able to. Also, 42 people said that they have posted things on social networking sites that they regret. From those, 39 were teenagers. Lastly, 55% of people say that they have witnessed bullying on social networking sites.

            The most controversial question on my survey was “Have you found that you can express yourself better on social networking sites than you can in real life?” One of the best points that I saw was that when you’re behind a computer screen, you can think about how you want to articulate your thoughts and once you start typing words, you can always delete them if you haven’t posted them yet. Whereas in person, once the words are out of your mouth, you can’t take them back. However, a wonderful point that one of the responders posted was that “nothing on the web is ever personal or private, once it’s out there everyone can see it.” (here is an interesting article about that)

twiting-saidaonline
twiting-saidaonline
I even saw directly contradicting statements. One person answered “Yeah, because a lot of people are scared to say stuff to a person in real life so instead of confronting them in person, they will do it online.” After reading this, I was thinking about the wisdom of posting something online that you wouldn’t normally say when, as stated above, nothing is personal or private once it is posted. Ironically, someone directly stated against this saying, “No, because I believe that whatever you say on a social media site should be something you would say in real life.”

            One of the most interesting answers that I received, however, was this: “Better? No, definitely not. More carefully crafted? Sure. Those are different though.” Another one that can be discussed is when someone said “No. Social networking can sometimes remove the ‘human touch’ that is present in verbal communication.” Related to the concept of missing the “humanness” of a face-to-face conversation, one person answered “No, it’s difficult to communicate without using the non-verbals like body language, facial expression and tone of voice.”

Well, it’s time to make change. Throughout this entire process, I’ve been wondering what it’d be like to do a week without any sorts of social networking. And so, I decided to put this plan into action. Five of my friends and I (I tried to recruit more people, but my friends weren’t to keen on going an entire WEEK without facebook or twitter) started yesterday and are doing a week (May 28-June 4) free of these sites! Every day, we’re filling out a four question survey that I created which asks simple questions such as “How are you doing without social networking today?” and “Are you less distracted than you normally would be?” Results from this experiment will be posted next week.

            And so, the main question comes back: Is social networking good or bad? Through this project, I have become enraptured by both opinions, good and bad. I have heard excellent reasons for each of them, and I have certainly learned more about the topic itself. However, I only focused on a portion of the internet: social networking. With all information online, the use of google rather than textbooks, and the majority of communication happening on the internet, where is our generation headed? And once we become completely immersed in a technological life, will be able to get back out?

 Will we want to?



Here is my bibliography.

Supporting the LGBT_ Blog post #3

This is my last and final blog post of the You and The World Project, this also includes the post for change. Which is when you choose something unique in order to demonstrate/ show awareness about your topic For more information on my previous blog posts, please click here
Some things that have been done to support the LGBT community would be things such as clubs, programs, petitions, and even organizations that people begin on their own. When positive changes like these are occurring then they result in bringing awareness to the LGBT community as well as their constitutional and civil rights. Also, even well known people like President Barack Obama have brought full attention to issues that branch out from my topic. Afterwards, this can be the result of informing everyone in the U.S as well as world-wide. 


Screen Shot 2012-05-31 at 11.53.45 AM
Screen Shot 2012-05-31 at 11.53.45 AM


To support the LGBT you don't have to be gay, all you need to do is be yourself and that will do. The LGBT community want respect and that can easily be earned because they are humans and have rights like we do too.


In my opinion I think that these ways are an amazing and inspirational way to make a change in this world. These are just some of the small things in life that can actually begin to form a huge difference. Things like clubs and programs are ways in which everyone can get involved in. This can even begin in places like schools, a great opportunity to let voices of students be heard and make CHANGE. 
MAKE-CHANGE-A-POSITIVE-PART-OF-YOUR-LIFE
MAKE-CHANGE-A-POSITIVE-PART-OF-YOUR-LIFE


Change is just a word, but... once someone comes and proves it, the whole world sees it. 
If your interested in learning more about my issue, check out this website.

>>>CHANGE BEGINS HERE .

Something I plan on doing to make change would be to create a slide show in order to raise even more awareness about my issue, more like informing others, especially the ones who are bias and don't know much about my issue in general. Adding on this, I felt like this still wasn't enough. In order for me to make change and feel good about it, I would have to go beyond my comfort zone, and so I did!!! That's why in less then a week or so I will be in front of an audience speaking about my issue! This will be taking place in my middle school, but I must admit this is really nerve racking! Along with this speech I will also be presenting something more visual to these middle schoolers and that is the presentation I mentioned above. 

To view this presentation, take a look below; 

Support THE LGBT _ BLOG POST #3
For more resources, check out the bibliography!

Acknowledgements: 

Mrs. Dunn
Julia Boyer -Student Assitant Teacher 
Classmates - For reviewing my blog(s).

Mali Election Project – Jeff Kessler, Emma Hersh, and Julia Boyer

This semester in Globalization, the class was divided into groups, each of which was given a country. Jeff, Emma, and Julia selected Mali in the Saharan region of Africa. The goal was to assemble a collection of student recorded election interviews documenting Mali’s election process. To achieve this goal, each member of the group selected a role that would make him/her responsible for a specific form of contact to Mali. Jeff was responsible for utilizing his abundance of followers on twitter. Julia used her charm via email to reach schools in Mali. Emma used her connections with the BuildOn global community service organization to network with a school in Mali.

While the election was going to take place in late April, an unexpected obstacle interfered. A military coup seized power and the election was thwarted! The school that Julia was in contact with disassembled but no one was in danger. The country is still uncommunicative with the global community and assumably still under militant control.

Broadcasted Communication Documentation:

The Change

​Hey everyone!
For a while I've been putting up information about bullying. If you didn't get to read the click here for Blog1 and click here for Blog 2.

  Here is my bullying video hope you like it. :)
Also if you want to know where i got my information for here is my bibliography.

My change is to let people know about what they are doing to people. I believe that I will let people know by going to some classes in SLA like Mrs. Dunn Class and telling people about bullying. I think a lot of people don’t think about what they are saying to people. Maybe if I tell them to think about what they say, then they might stop bullying people so much. That how I will make a change.

I found out a lot about bullying by doing this project. I found out that a lot of people that had been bullied or seen people get bullied start to bully other people. This help me understand why bullying was a big and everyone needed to know about this. That’s why I made a video about bullying. I only thing I ask is to please stop and think about what you are saying to people and doing to people. 

Natalie Sanchez and Ashley Etheredge's voting project: Armenia

In globalization, we were assigned a project that required us to make connections with someone from a foreign country and have them conduct "voting day" interviews on their country's election day and share their findings with us. In the past year, Ms. Laufenberg had already assigned us to conduct voter interviews in our districts, but now it was time to branch out. The objective of this project was to 1.) learn how to make global connections via internet social sites and more importantly, 2.) to learn how the voting process and opinions towards the same differs in different countries other than the United States. The country that Ashley and I picked was Armenia. The hardest part of this project was making connections with people halfway around the world. We tried to contact a Philadelphia local of Armenian decent, Lavan,  who could possibly connect us with his family members or friends in our voting project country, but he could not get back to us. We also tried emailing many Armenian-American institutions in the country, like The Yerevan International school of Armenia, the American University of Armenia, and European regional academy of Armenia, among others, but we did not receive a reply. It was only until we messaged Ms. Karen Abalyan, an employee of the communications department of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America in New York that we actually got a hint of communication flowing, but in the end, this did not fall through. After this, Reverend Hakob Gevorgyan of holy trinity church recommended Greg Bilazarian as a good contact point. We emailed Greg several times and found that he was very helpful; he was even going to find a student to conduct the interview for us, but we could not get a reply from Mr. Bilazarian after the Armenian voting day (May 6, 2012). After a couple of weeks of hearing nothing back from our contact, we sent him an email  to follow up with his progress. It wasn't until we ran into an online article about the Armenian voting day that we found out that  there was a voting protest in Yerevan, Armenia in support for Ter-Petrosian because of suspicions of flawed voting. The protest became a violent demonstration that might have proved dangerous for the students that were going to do the interviews. Ashley and I assumed that this was the reason that Mr. Bilazarian was not able to send us a reply. In conclusion, we ended up not receive a reply from our contact, but learned the how bad Armenia's political system is at the present. 

check out this link to view our presentation.

Election Country: Slovakia

To go to the youtube video that we received from the country, click here.

As for the process of going through all of this and doing the assignment, it was a rough one. At first, it took so long to actually get started. We tried to find different numbers, different people we could talk to, and even schools but we saw that it was landing us nowhere. We were not sure what to do. We went to Ms. Laufenberg and told her the situation, and she gave us an idea to get into contact with a british international school. We decided to give it a shot. We went to the website and found some emails, then we emailed each one stating what we needed and hopefully they could give us a response.

Finally, we received a response, but not only one, but two or three. Some people immediately offered to help us with the project. Even the people who could not do it gave us emails to other people and students that would be willing to help. With the extra push of Ms. Laufenberg, we were able to get the whole process running.

   There was one specific person we were in contact with whose name was Ms. Legg. She is a history teacher in the British International school, and she was the first to really give us anything. We stayed in contact with her, and though sometimes it took a long time for her to respond, she gave us what we needed, which was an interview of people on the voting process in Slovakia. Another person that really helped us alot was the principal of the school. He sent out to many people my message and through that, we got into contact with two different students. Both emailed us, but only one persisted, and his name was Juraj. He helped us out of the blue by sending a script of an interview, and that was a great addon to our project. To see that script that he sent us on the interviewing on their election process, click here.

In conclusion, we finally got into contact with people in Slovakia and were successful at receiving more information on the voting process in Slovakia by actual people there. It is very surprising and enlightening at the same time to think that we actually got into contact with someone on a completely other side of the globe. It just shows how technology is going far. To see some evidence of the process, look at the pictures below. We would like to thank Ms. Laufenberg for really giving us that push because without it we would not have gotten that far into the project.

Journal Entry #41

You never really understand what we went through till you see it. You never heard our pain, heard our cries. Theres nothing we could do, to change the past, only the future. The one thing you can do is be a friend. Someone to cry on, someone to love, someone to listen, someone to share the pain with. But you will never understand our pain.