Blog Feed

• Why did you choose this topic?
  My group members and I wanted to choose a topic that was personal to us, original in such a way that it was not cliché and share our opinions and ideas openly on.
• What did you like about this project? What was most challenging?
  I liked that we didn't necessarily have to stay in one section of the Constitution, we were able to choose what part in the Constitution we wanted to. I found myself most successful being able to speak freely on my ideas and opinions on this topic as did my teammates. The most challenging thing though, in this project was figuring out how to fit the C-SPAN footage in, in such a way that everything transitioned smoothly.
  
  
• Describe the most interesting fact or event that you investigated.
  The most interesting fact that I have investigated was how before the Constitution there was quite a bit of persecution for people's beliefs but the same people who came to this country because they were being persecuted in Europe for their religion, did the same thing once they got here. It seems to me that history repeats itself if we let it without a doubt.
  
  
• How could this project be improved?
  I think we could have have switched the camera maybe more than what we did. I also think this could have been improved by ways of having clearer C-SPAN footage, but that was just poor video quality on their part.

• Where did you run into trouble with the project?
  We ran into trouble when trying to convert the video into an FLV file but finally my computer cooperated with me and I was able to upload the video.
  
  
• What went well with this project?
  My group members and I worked really well with this project everyone was able to agree on one thing and really got what we needed to do done. The music, the transitions and the overall look of this project was great and I am proud of the finished product.
  
  
• If you had it to do over, what would you change about your decisions or your process?
  If I had to do this process over again, I would try to record everyone's parts in the same place to keep some type of constant there or at least the background is close to what the other person has. Also I would have added in a skit or something showing what it would be like without that provision in the Constitution.
  
  
• What did you learn?
  I learned just how necessary it is to have the freedom of religion and how strongly some feel about it in terms of them having an opposition to people believing differently than they do. I also learned more about my team members and how they feel about religion, I actually did not know that they sort of felt the same as I do about having the freedom of religion.

• Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre basura.
• Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue afecta el ambiente muy mal porque destruye nuestra imagen como ciudad.
• Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque muy útil y la comprensión.
• Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría probablemente el tema porque me lo va a querer explorar un poco más.

The product in which I created an advertisement for is charity water. It isn’t necessarily a product but a foundation that brings 3rd world developing countries clean water. The message portrayed in my advisement is that everything counts. The slightest amount of money can even make a difference. For example the picture located in the center says, " $20 dollars can give on person clean water". Which isn’t much. When creating this advertisement I didn’t have a specific intended audience I fell as though this add could catch anyone’s attention and would make people stop and look. So I would say my audience would be all different types of people in any age range. I think creating a print add is effective because people can walk by and see it and they really don’t even have to stop. Also my advertisement has bright color that stand out, its visually appealing. If I were to complete this Benchmark again I would do a hand drawn print add because I feel as though I created a great advertisement but it could have been more creative. 

• Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre, el contaminación en la cuidad.
• Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue, es importante ese personas aprender por de cuidad y qué es pasa. 
• Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque, mi amigas y yo nos divertimos. 
• Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría, nada porque el proyecto era bien y simple. 
• Please include the link to the PSA that has been posted by a group member on their own blog.
  http://scienceleadership.org/blog/Espanol_3_BMQ2-Ssapp_y_Awallace 

We now use an array to store a list of circles so that we can track more than one. Each item in the array is an object containing x, y, dx, dy, and r for one circle

The script listens for the space bar to add circles to the system (click inside the red box first so it will hear you)

Zaria Fortson-Linton

The Black White Girl

One summer day, I decided to hang out with some of my friends ad we were talking about many different topis. The topic at the moment was about what we were afraid of. When it came to my turn to admit it, the conversation went from being good, to me being bashed.

“I am so petrified of squirrels! Just there presences is enough to making me sprint away from them in fear!”

My friend then responded saying:

“Why you always speakin’ wit that proper voice & those big words? Its like you tryna make everyone look stupid.”

“I am not! I just can’t help it. It is something I’m so use to doing.”

“Whateva! Tryna act white!”

This is the typical conversation I have with my peers. Most sixteen year olds my age like to use as much slang as they can. They tend to cut off certain letters and make abbreviations in texts. Since I don’t like to use them, I come off as a “Miss Know-It-All”, stuck up, or even white. Being known as a know it all or stuck up doesn’t bother me as much. The one that bothers me the most is being told that I sound white. For one, I can’t seem to comprehend how race has a language. I also didn’t know that using higher-level words that I am taught in school gives off the impression that I’m trying to be someone who I am not.

The worst part about this is that it isn’t just my friends who think this. Even my family views me this way. When I mean family, I mean cousins and aunts and uncles. You see, my mother, step-father, sister, brother, cousin and grandmother all live together, and we all use what people consider “White people talk.” Not only that, because we get really good grades and it’s been that way since kindergarten, that also gives them a reason to classify us as know it alls. I’m not saying that we are stuck up, but I feel as though this generalization is unfair. I feel like judging someone before you even get to know them, or judging them because you were taught differently then they are is wrong and unfair.

In the passage “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” by James Baldwin, he says, “…that language is also a political instrument, means and proof power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public or communal identity.“ 

This quote is something of which I disagree with. Basing the way someone talks is one of the worst ways of trying to get to know and better understand someone. Judging someone before you get to know this is terrible.         

At first, my group wanted to look into the ability of the president to veto bills. However, we couldn't find vetoed bills that really affect us. Instead, since our group was all female, we figured that the amendment that most directly affected us was the 19th. Once we picked a topic, our lives got a bit easier! We did have a lot of trouble choosing a method of storytelling. Although I do really like the freedom we had to pick our method, so long as it fit in the video, we ended up brainstorming for far too long and didn't have as much time to produce.

Although I appreciated that the project was formatted after the C-SPAN documentary challenge, I think that a slightly altered assignment could have been better for SLA. Maybe we could have chosen whether to create documentary videos or some other form of presentation – videos tend to be just as much about editing as about actual information. We could have had more restrictions on how much history we had to put in. My group did a lot of work on finding the history of the 19th amendment, but didn't include much of it in our project because it didn't fit with C-SPAN's requirements.

As we prepared to create our video, we found plenty of drama in the fight for women's suffrage: a constitutional amendment was brought to congress for 40 years in a row before it was passed, women wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments" that is a pointed reference to the Declaration of Independence, and more. The one point that I found most interesting was the story of the ratification of the amendment. In the end, it all came down to the vote of a single senator within Tennessee. He was in his 20s, and ended up voting for women's suffrage partly because his mother wrote him a note and told him to do so.

In the end, I liked our final project. However, I don't think it thoroughly reflected all that we learned. Instead of telling the story of the amendment, we had to think of ways to explain why the right to vote matters to us. I think that we ended up successful because our video definitely explored the reasons that the 19th amendment matters, and even tied in those reasons to the history of the amendment and an international perspective.

My group specifically ran into a lot of trouble with the scheduling and technicalities of collaboration. We had to get the video from computer to computer, and weren't able to find time to all work together at the same time. Even when we did all work together, we ended up unable to work efficiently. I did enjoy working with the group, though, because we all brought different ideas to the table. If I had to do this project over, I think I'd want to start getting video earlier. That way, we would have been able to add more pictures and other edited pieces, and I think our project would have been richer. However, I did like our overall project, and am proud of my work.

"No, you’re wrong it's New Jersey and New York, now you say it"

"Ard, I got chu new jewsey and new ywok"

"Sigh… pero por que tu segi desiendolo haci?"

“what chu been por que? Haci es como yo hablo?”

“sigh”

People nowadays are just so quick to fix someone else up when really there's nothing that's broken. People want others to speak what they consider and accept as "normal" when really it's just one of millions of ways to talk. For an example, when I'm talking with my brother he says that I sound like I'm from Brooklyn or if I'm Italian when honestly I don't It's just the way I talk. It's kind of stupid that people want everyone to talk like how they talk. Everyone is different in everyway. But, then there are some people that take it to a whole other level even though it's not that deep. Just because one say certain words how the majority of people say them doesn’t mean the whole world need to say it the same way. When I'm having a full conversation with different people they all say that I talk weird because I speak both Spanish and English at the same time and I be pronounce things differently than others. For an example some words that people say that I always say wrong when I know that im saying that they are right are, “Inevitable”, “Congratulations”, “talk”, “New York”, and “New Jersey.”

When I'm speaking to my close friends I also switch back and forth using both Spanish and English to talk to them. When I'm talking to my friends when we go to the corner store and we all are making fun of each other or something we always switch from Spanish to English. So when I talk people say that I talk really weirdly because I apparently talk “Ghetto”, like an Italian, and Spanglish. Im always having somebody correct me and I get annoyed because I know that im right and it’s just the way that I want to pronounce them.

“Ayo, por que tu siempre esta hablando haci. You saying that the way that I tolk is wrong when u can’t even pronounce have of the words you is saying.”

“Si pero like you say New York and New Jersey like a whole italian boul or if u from Brooklyn when u is not and u talking like one of the drugies around here.”

“I know im not cambron pero that’s the way I talk and I don’t get it, why is it wrong like how is it wrong”

“Porque tu nunca oyo los gentes aqui talking like that, you talk like a whole nut daawg”

“o.”

The conversations would be full of argument about how we both talk and the pronunciation of words ect. Also, I think that I am the only person that talks the way I do because I haven’t seen anyone else talk the same way. Like, the combination of English, Spanish and the Italian accent and Brooklyn accent. When im having a long conversation with someone they realize it imitaly and the point it out. Then that’s were it starts the argument of how Im just talking normal and they say that it is not normal and they begin to correct me and talk slow for me and they just cant because I don’t know how else to say them. So, I have im guessing a few accents mixed into one.

Now another example is when im talking on the phone to a company and I start talking how I always do my mom would get mad because I sound like im talking “ghetto” or “dumb” when really it’s just the way I talk. Why is it that when we talk there is a “smart” way to talk and a “dumb way” to talk. Shouldn’t talking just be Basic English everywhere we go and not be judge by how we pronounce words or the accents that we have. So I think that I could relate to “Tonge Tied” a lot because in the story there was a quote that said “She didn’t understand black language. I stood their nervous and sweating I did not know how to react or what to do. I couldn’t run away, I couldn’t breath, I could not even swallow.” This quote explains how I feel when people give me a weird look, or ask me about what I just said.

Another quote that I could relate to from the same story is when it say’s “there are different Spanish’s. “Every Spanish speaker waits and wants to hear what kind of Spanish you use. If u mess up a lot of words or the pronunciation of a word you are look down at and they will think that you weren’t raised right or you grew up in a bad neighborhood”. I have this feeling all the time when talking to my mom friends or when talking to my friends because I don’t want to make a mistake I want to speak as perfect as they do but it’s hard when I talk the way I do. If I were to pick a thesis for this story it would have to be “Everyone’s a critic, always ready to judge one’s language and style.” Why I decided to pick this thesis was because I think that it’s true how no matter what race, age or sex one can be are there’s always someone ready to judge the way you talk and will look at you differently once you open your mouth and that reputation will always follow you because of the first time you talked to someone they will always have some kind of word to describe you.

• Hicimos un PSA sobre contaminación en Filadelfia.
• Es un asusnto importante a nosotros porque Filadelfia es bello pero mucho contaminación.
• Esperamos que el público de Filadelfia esto lo que puedes hacer para parrar el contaminación en Filadelfia.