Blog Feed

Create a Post

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Sierra Dinvil in American History - Laufenberg on

Immigration Visualization Project on Prezi

Click here for our immigration project.

What surprised me most about the information my group found on immigration is just the overall trend of the immigration rate. I had no clue that the amount of people coming into the country was so inconsistent. By learning this information I feel more conscience about how the things that are going on around us effects everybody. However, it was obvious that during war the immigration rate would go down because America would want to keep a tighter leash on who can come in and out our country.

I feel like if the economy continues to worsen the immigration rate will go down. Either people will choose not to come to America or the government will be more strict about who's coming in.

As a group we decided that we wanted to create a graph similar to the one Ms. Laufenberg had given us, but instead we wanted it to be more visual. We chose to get pictures that best depicted the different circumstances that the world, more specifically America, was going through at the time. We feel like it gets the message across about what happened, and what the immigration rate was that decade in comparison to the years before and after. 

The most challenging part about the group work was the technology issues we had. For a period of time, several people in our group had tech related issues. This delayed the process slightly considering that most groups had 3 functioning computers to work on, and our group had one for a short period of time. It also harder to get work done when someone in the group doesn't participate or put in as much effort as the other members in the group. Aside from that the group work went pretty well.

If I were to do this project over I would probably try and find an even better way to represent the information that we found. I feel like the way we chose was pretty basic, and could have been a tad more creative. 

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Brianna Perrin in American History - Laufenberg on

Immigration History on Prezi

What surprised me most about this information was that I didn't know how much history in and outside America determined the immigration rate. I always thought that the immigration was constant or gradually increasing with the new technology and "freedom" that were being put into Americans. What seemed quite obvious about the was that situations had to happen for their to be a tremendous growth and a tremendous increase in how many people were migrated/immigration from outer countries.
I believe that the immigration rates will stay the way it is for a few months. Simply for the fact because of the recent celebration of 9/11 and issues with the economy now.
Our decision for the project was to simply make a timeline with pictures, dates, and information. So it's easy for everyone to understand but also easy for us to teach the students.
The parts of group work that I found challenging was the research. A majority of the time when I was typed in a certain date or year to research something else in another continent would pop up such as Australia and Japan. Even though people were migrating from there, I was mainly researching about America.
What I would do differently if I had this project to do over and maybe look up for information about other countries. When I was researching the immigration rate I was looking at why people were coming to America instead of why were they leaving their home. But not just because America had jobs and money, but what was pushing them out of their home.

Immigration Visualization Project - Reflection

Posted by Tenzin Ngawang in American History - Laufenberg on

So, our project is on paper, we didn't have it digitally.

What surprised me the most during this project was that we were searching like the immigration rates during different decades and I realized that there were dramatic difference during the decades based on what happened on the decade before. If something bad happened in the Americas, the immigrated decreased like multiple times and when nothing bad or good happened, the immigration increased gradually so there weren't any trend or pattern on the data. Looking at the data, you'll understand why America's so diverse because there are people coming from all over the world every year.

So like I previously stated, our project is on paper. We decided to use paper because we were planning to create models on google sketchup or use technology to represent the data but we were running out of time. One thing that was challenging for our group work was that we didn't get to work together outside school because it was a paper and only one person could edit it. But we worked together on gathering information on google doc. If we were to do this project again, I'd use something like google presentation where everyone in our group can edit. However, at the end of the day, I'm proud of our work. 

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Mohamed Marzouk in American History - Laufenberg on
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.09.00 AM
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.09.00 AM
​I thought the information was very interesting. The dip's the rises of the time periods were interesting. 

For our project we decided that we would make a picture of collage of all our times. Like, for the 2000's we showed a picture of the September 11th terrorist attacks. For the Chinese exclusion Act, we had pictures of Asians that looked distressed, so show what it did to them. 

i predict that the immigration rates will increase, because as our economy grows slowly so will our immigration rates will grow. But, if Barack Obama doesn't get reelected, than i think that our immigration will decrease, heavily. Since, Most of the people that come here are either Arab/LAtino, and his vote for Latino and arab were really high, the next president wont get that approval rate, so it will decline. I don't know if that's good or bad for the United States, because we don't really need a spike in Immigration because, we barely have enough to support the people here.


Honestly, to stay on task. Because, we're all Soccer players and we just usually talk about soccer all the time, so when we get together, it was hard for us to really work together without talking about other stuff, but i think it all came together in the end because we're all great students.


The one thing i'd do differently is use another presenting tool, the one we used is a pain in the but. `

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Mecca Sharrieff in American History - Laufenberg on
The thing that surprised me most about my project with Morgant Marant was not only the differences between the time periods of immigration in relation to history, but the unexplainable parts of immigration. Some of the reasons we found were that over time, a combination of the past and present events created a numeric value of how large or little the population increase became for that decade. 

Based on past data, the immigration trend seems as if it would decrease partially in the next two decades. Especially with the new presidency in the next year, laws may change drastically. That is, if the government can ever agree on anything. However, there will most likely always be a rate of increase or decrease with immigration. Even if we block of the border, it will take years to completely finish it. Some may propose that it will "create jobs and support the rise of the economy", but it will really only create a mass confusion of problems. The rate of immigration may then increase by rebellion. It has happened before, and there is no reason why it wouldn't happen again. 

The different decisions made on how do conduct the project were to make sure of a few key points: 

a) The project is visually appealing to the audience.
b) The images aren't too distracting to the overall message. 
c) With the images posted, there is some sort of explanation and way for it to be interactive. 

Therefore, using an online program called Vuvox, we created a timeline of photos. The size of the photos represents the rate of increase/decrease per decade. The decades are labeled above the pictures so that the audience can also visualize the different things that may have taken place during those periods. The pictures themselves are also representative of what happened in that time period. It's almost like watching a short movie. There is a sliding bar that allows a smooth transition between the decades. On each photo there is a small plus sign, and if clicked on, zooms in to the picture and the text shows up, revealing the different facts about that decade. 

The challenges of this project were finding a way that both Morgan and I could work on the project at the same time, finding pictures that fit the decade and expressing a clear explanation of how the decisions of the government clearly affect the rate of immigration. Also, it was a challenge to push for a further explanation of immigration. Sometimes, there were doubts as to why the changes happened the way they did. 

The things that I would change about the project if done over would probably have been to finalize all ideas and make sure every expectation was clear before assuming my partner knew. Even though we both had a similar idea, we had to do the project at least twice each. Once we combined our ideas, it was easy to see that it would be a success. I am happy with the final product, because it is very symbolic and clear to the audience. It isn't very hard to interpret, but it still challenges the audience to think while they look. 




Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Gabriel Pingitore in American History - Laufenberg on
Honestly, I was quite surprised to see the current placement with immigration on the graph. I feel honored to live in such a "drastic" period in history. The last spike in immigration happened quite a while ago. But now, I can see that in my generation, immigration has been the highest it's ever been. But after looking at the graph, I noticed that it's not very linear. In other words, it doesn't have one set increasing rate. It doesn't increase by a certain amount every decade. It's very sporadic, and for some reason, I kind of expected that. 

In history, you can't really predict how things would go. The great depression would have never happened if people knew it was going to. So therefore, it's truly hard to determine how things will be for our future. There are a multitude of options. For example, the United State's economic position right now is... terrible. I don't know how things were during the great depression, but I'm sure it wasn't good. And look how fast that happened. If something happened to America, it could possibly spark another very serious economic predicament. So that means we can go from the highest immigration number EVER, to possibly the lowest. Or, maybe by some unusual coincidence, congress passes some new immigration law that brings more people to the United States without as much difficulty prior. Then instead of nine million, it sparks to eleven million. It's impossible to determine how things could turn out. Next year is 2012 after all, who knows if we'll even be here! (Kidding). 

In our project, similar to a bar graph, we hand-drew a city that's building's sizes vary depending on how the amount of immigration during that decade. And I feel it was interpreted fairly well. You can see some buildings nearly come off the page because of how many people immigrated to the US, whereas you'd need a magnifying glass to see the buildings during the late 1800's. (Exaggeration, you can see it without a magnifying glass). Then each building's name was determined by something that happened in that time period. The larger buildings were from the early 1900's because of war and from this decade. Whereas the "Great Depression" building is only about a centimeter because of the low amounts of immigration. 


In general, the way we wanted to present the information was the hardest difficulty. We had so many awesome, creative ideas. But after realizing that we had almost 20 decades to cover, we came to a loss. Then the idea of a "populated city" came into the discussion, which made a lot of sense. The more people = the larger the city. So I feel it was an effective way of transferring the information in a spiffy little way. After we decided on how to present, it was smooth sailing from there. 

I believe the way we did the project this time was very well. If WE had the opportunity to change something about next time, the amount of decades was rather difficult in portraying in a unique way. If it was a lower amount, I feel one of our prior ideas to the city could have been better. But explaining 20 decades was a little more challenging. Though, you can't leave out important dates in history. So I suppose we'll just have to stay content with our city.

 



Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Morgan Marant in American History - Laufenberg on
​http://www.vuvox.com/my_vox/show/0491fb777a 

The immigration visualization project had some data that was somewhat surprising and others that I thought was a bit predictable. For example, the fact that immigration was so conjoined with our history was not surprising. Even though there should have been a gradual curve in development social implications can always change a graph. It makes perfect sense that during the 1940's there was a huge drop in immigration into the United States, which was predominately caused by World War II. What surprised me the most about the data was that certain parts of the world had more leeway into our country then others. In the next two decades, I'd like to presume that immigration has dropped in our country due to our bad economy and how hard it is to find jobs now. 

If the economy can be fixed and make us a prosperous country once again, then we will have another huge influx of immigrants and we will be back to the gradual curve. The gradual curve, created an interesting phenomena in comparing that to the actua data. So, when my group made the decision to work together we came together with ideas. We wanted to visually represent the data in a way that was quick and straightforward. We used an online presentation tool called VUVOX. One of the presentation themes in VUVOX is making collages. Our group decided to create a timeline of the information through visual representations of each decade. The bigger the picture the higher the immigration during that decade. 

That course of action seemed the simplest to us and was very useful. Unfortunately, VUVOX is a website so saving work online was a challenge. During the creation of my collage piece it was deleted, or not saved and I had to start all over again. Also, I may have not been extremely explicit in the instructions and my parter and I had two different ideas of what we would be doing. If I could fix my mistakes and begin this project again I would choose some better photos and possibly have  key. The key could describe what was going on in the government or immigration because I have the historical facts but not the ones on immigration. I would also incorporate better pictures or visual representations of what's going on within that time period and within history. I would also include a personal account of a person's journey to America as the audio just so it would add more depth to the story.

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Sabrina Stewart-McDonald in American History - Laufenberg on
Immigration
What surprised me most about this information was how drastically the happenings in both the US and other countries could affect the immigration rate. The things that were really obvious when explaining the data set were when there were wars in different countries, the immigration rates shot up and when the US was involved in the war, they usually went down and also when there were famines or other things that obviously negatively affected the people in a different country, the immigration rates would shoot up again. In the next two decades I expect the immigration rates to be lower because of the economical situation and how easily the situation can be displayed on websites that are very popular. If people in other countries can see that we're going through an economical crisis they will also be able to see how high the unemployment rate is and how many different governmental budget cuts we are going through and they might not want to come to a country going through such hardship. 

At first we were going to do a storybook type thing, but then when the instructions were clarified and we saw we had to display the events and the data, we decided to do a prezi because we could show the overall graph and put more detailed information inside it. The most challenging parts of the group work were finding a way to collaborate on the different websites. Some sites only allowed one person to work on it, so instead of all of us working on it together, at the same time, we had to take it in shifts. On prezi we had found a way to collaborate, but it took us some time to get used to it. I think if I had to do this project over, I would find a way to make it more creative or colorful or something. To me, it's a bit dry, but it's informative. We wanted to add pictures and maybe video to it, but we were short on time.

Immigration graph on Prezi

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Daniel Wirt in American History - Laufenberg on
​
Click here to view project



This project was interesting, and allowed me to look into the past and see why there was maybe so many immigrants that came over during that year. I was most surprised at how dramatically the number of immigrants that came over during the wars decreased as fast as they did. Over the next few years I feel like immigration numbers will continue to climb rapidly. With the world's economy collapsing as a whole, the United States as bad as it is is still one of the best economies in the world. With things falling apart i feel like more people will want to come here. Immigration will continue to climb for several decades. 

Finding a good way to represent the data that we had received was a little difficult. We ran into a few difficulties along the way, and we eventually found a good way to represent the data thanks to Ms. Laufenberg. She helped us find a correct format that would allow us to show our data correctly. The method in which our data was displayed was in a scatter chart, representing the decades and number of immigrants per decade.               


The only part of the project that we found to be challenging was what s. Laufenberg helped us with and that was finding the right graph format that would allow us to represent the data correctly. We all got our data that we needed as soon as we needed it and worked diligently. Also, if we were to do something differently we might have chose a different site to look for graphs to represent the data this was we might not run into the complications that we ran into while we worked on it. 





Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Ryan Harris in American History - Laufenberg on
Project --> http://www.flickr.com/photos/46333332@N03/6166605593/in/photostream


I think the thing that really surprised me was all the data before The Civil War. I knew about events before that time but as far as immigration goes, I didn't know a thing. What seemed sort of obvious to me as the huge decline in immigration during the time of The Great Depression. When I saw that I thought of back then and how it greatly difficult for people living here to find jobs, let alone someone how had immigrated. Yet, one thing I discovered that also impacted that great decline were the Quota Acts of the 1920s. These greatly limited and discriminated against nearly anyone trying to enter the U.S. My group at first wanted to try something with Prezi and we had something going but we found that we were taking too long to get something off the ground so we decided to go with a graphic instead. But as we were working on the graphic, I thought of using Minecraft to have a even better visual interpretation. But we soon realized that this was greatly time consuming and just stuck to our guns. I think the most challenging part was trying to incorporate the dates because sometimes, at least based on our research, the immigration had sort flatten out. If we had more time I'd would surely go for the minecraft idea, because I think that would have been a really creative way to display the data.

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Candace Blocker in American History - Laufenberg on

Immigration Data on Prezi


http://prezi.com/pdbkhd6dovfn/immigration-data/

All of this didn't surprise me much because I already knew most of this happened. What I didn't know was all of that could've effected immigration at some point. Because of the way our economy and current job status is I feel as though the immigration rate is only going to slow back down and start to decrease if things don't start to get better. Immigrants come over for jobs and that's what we are currently lacking the most. We kind of decided on it by what was going to represent our data the best. To me, the most challenging part was trying to get the final visual done and how the longer you wait to start your visual the more stressful it becomes when you finally start it. If I had to do anything different I would use my time better and spend less time on trying to find so much information but work with what I have and then do my visual as such. But overall it turned out to be good.

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Breeanna Noi in American History - Laufenberg on
Immigration in America
Immigration in America
What surprised me most about this information is that even when the immigration rate was very iffy and varied. The population had a smooth increase and was constant. In our visual, you can see the red line (immigration throughout the years) and how it's zig-zagging all over the place. The only thing that seems pretty obvious at explaining was WHY the immigration rate was so crazy. The events and history is the key to understanding the population. My group decided to visually present the information like a swirl chart. A swirl of years and images of what went on during those years was shown and the history was presented. The first black line is like showing how smooth the population is and how the immigration (red line) was very crazy. 

The challenging part with working in a group was that it didn't seem like enough work to distribute out to three people. The researching of the dates and events was evenly distributed, but when it came to showing the visual part of the project, it didn't seem like enough. If I had to do this project over, I think my group and I would make it a priority to include more and some phrases here and there. There's a lot someone can understand by looking at the photo, but if they don't know exactly what even occurred in what time frame, they'll stare blankly at the photo. 

Group Members: Maximilien Marton and Jennifer Wright 

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Ruben Burenstein in American History - Laufenberg on
The link to the presentation can be accessed by clicking here. 

This project was fun to research, and fun to create a presentation for. The thing that surprised me most about this project was seeing how certain events made such a big impact on immigration. The single most surprising event was seeing how much impact the great depression had on the immigration to the United States. I would have guessed that it had some impact, but not as much as it actually did. Something that somewhat obvious was that since nothing as big as the great depression has happened in a while, the immigration would be rising at a rate close to what it should be. The only major things that have happened since the research left off was the war in Iraq, and our recession. These things will probably have some impact on immigration, but not as big as something like the great depression. If everything continues with nothing major happening for the next 20 years, then I think immigration will continue in the trend that it should. 

The most challenging part of this project was setting up the presentation. We got all of the data and information fairly quickly, but it was hard to set up the presentation tool that we wanted to use to represent our data. At first my group wanted to use a many-eyes tree chart, but it wasn't working out in the way that we wanted it to. After the tree chart didn't work we decided to do a sort of time line, showing how the number of immigrants increased depending on what the decade was, and if you click on each point you can see what the most important thing that effected immigration was. An example is that if you click on the 1930 point, the main thing is economy because our country was in a depression. 

If i was going to do this project over i would try to use a different presentation tool. The one that we used ended up working out, but it would be much better if we had spent all the time trying to use one too, doing something else with another tool or way to present. The presentation could have been much more creative than what it ended up being if we had more time to focus on the tool the we ended up actually using. 
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.16.55 AM
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.16.55 AM

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Michael Sanders in American History - Laufenberg on
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.16.09 AM
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.16.09 AM
http://museumbox.e2bn.org/creator/

Click load

 username- msanders123
password-yogurt123

Click either.

Reflection.

It was kind of challenging to figure out what kind of project we wanted to do. It was also challenging dividing the work all at once. But I really enjoyed the process of the project. We took a risk and we don't know for sure how the risk will fair out. But I really liked the communication of it though. We might do and easier project differently maybe because this one actually took a long time to do. We also wanted to do a video but that didn't really work out well. I think the immigration is really unstable. Since during the great depression there was really no immigrants coming in I think during the recession we would start to lose because there will be no jobs and no money. So there would be no reason for them to come here. But since immigrants keep coming in maybe because of the American dream and just being america makes people come here. Thats how my friend came here.

Immigration Visualization Project Reflection

Posted by Jennifer Wright in American History - Laufenberg on
​The huge spikes that occurred surprised me most about that data. I thought the immigration due to wars in other countries was obvious. Many people flock to the US for safety. Looking at the data, I see highs and then low-lows. It seems that in 1999-2000 there was a very high percentage of immigration. I would predict that that number is likely to drop for this current decade and the next. The US isn't in a very good spot economically and that would definitely factor into the amount of people attempting to gain access to America.  That same idea can be seen within the data. When the US was doing well everyone wanted in. 

My group wanted to represent that data in a really creative way. We wanted to do something outside of the normal bar or pie chart. When Ms. Laufenberg showed us a bunch of cool visual graphs my group all like the spiral type one. Ours is a simpler version but with the same concepts. It has pictures to describe the major events and uses the red line to signify the amount of immigration per decade. It is very visual rather than numerical. 

The challenging part of this project was sharing the work. It was one piece that three people needed to work on it. Distributing the tasks evenly was difficult. If I had to do this project over, I would choose a different format. My group tried to do something interesting and it worked relatively well, but it the distribution of work was the hard part. We gathered the info and developed the concept together but the actual construction had to be one person. 
Immigration in America
Immigration in America

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by William Johnson in American History - Laufenberg on

I think overall this was a good project.  When we began to look through history and see what happened it became clear what influenced the immigration rates. A lot of it was due to wars and military action. That was really interesting to me. The challenging part was coming together to create a visualization of our data. I think if we had to do this project over again, we would have used a different program to create our visualization. Although ManyEyes was cool, it was frustrating over 90% of the time. Often we would be stuck reformatting our data and re-entering it into ManyEyes. Because we were so set on using the treemap, we didn't think of trying something else. After we realized that this wasn't working out, we tried a bunch of other formats until Ms. Laufenberg showed us the scatterplot thing. That worked the best so we stuck with it.


​For the full interactive version, click here:

 http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/visualizations/wjohnsonsla-us-history-immigration
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.17.05 AM
Screen Shot 2011-09-23 at 10.17.05 AM

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Maximilien Marton in American History - Laufenberg on
Immigration in America
Immigration in America
When first exposed to the immigration statistics, I took note on how drastic the different change in numbers were. As observed the information further, I connected the different highs and lows of the numbers to different points in history that I was previously aware of. I cannot say that the statistics took me completely by surprise, but neither can I say that one point didn't intrigue me. In the timeframe where the Gilded Age was at its height, the immigration numbers were't as high as I pictured them.

Predicting the future immigration statistics is perplexing. On one hand, the United States is currently in a time of economic tension, which I believe would repel immigrants. On the other, immigrants today from many countries in Europe are trying to escape their own nation's economic problems that are worse than the situation in America. One prediction I feel confident about, is that there will be many immigrants from countries like Greece and several North African nations. I do not know if our immigration numbers will follow the same increasing trend.

My group and I wanted to create a timeline of sorts, but we didn't want a normal, horizontal/vertical type of graphic. We decided to use a spiral, because it is a visually captivating figure. We then added several pictures that represented different points in time that effected immigration. The most challenging tasks in creating our piece had to have been using Adobe Illustrator and marrying physical media with digital media. Finding a scanner was a laborious task as well...
If given the chance to recreate my group's final project, I would like to do all of it in Adobe Illustrator. I feel it would look more streamline that way. I would have also added more information, as well as a y axis so that people would be able to actually get numbers from this visual.

Immigration Visualization Project

Posted by Kamilah Hudson in American History - Laufenberg on
Kamilah's Reflection

So first of all, the project that me and my group did was by hand and so there is no kind of link or anything to post on the blog but you can see it at anytime by just going to see Lauf about it.

  • What surprised you most about this information?  What seemed quite obvious about explaining this data set?
So when we first starting doing this experiment I found that the data was extremely surprising to me. I would have never thought that the immigration income had varied the way that it did. I found it funny that there seemed to be a pattern to the data though. It was like America realized that the immigration was becoming a problem so they tried to control it but no matter what they tried, when people wanted to get into the country, the did.
At first i wasn't really sure of why the data looked the way it did but after looking up the facts about each time period, things started to make since. Some were slightly funny as well. There was one where alcohol becamed banned and there was a significant decrease in the population of immigrant income.
  • Looking at the overall trend and incorporating what you know about the US presently, predict and defend the immigration trend for the next two decades.
The data shows that when the country is going through a hard time, no one really wants to come in. From the data and background research that we did as a group it seems as if immigrants only take an interest in our country when we're flourishing and prospering. Right now though our country is on a fine line between okay and consumed in a depression. I think that the immigrant income isn't going to increase or decrease because right now our country is at a stand still money wise. There's gonna be a pretty constant flow i think for a while until we either get worse or better as a country.
  • Describe how you made a decision on how to visually represent the information.
At first we were going to use prezi but then things got too bothersome on the site. Then while trying to find a new way to present the idea, I got an idea oh how I wanted to visually present it. It would look beautiful digitized but no one in my group had the tech skillz to make the vision we agreed on. There for in the end we decided to hand make it.
  • What parts of group work were challenging?
I think making the visual presentation was the hardest part because it took a lot of effort and thought. We had to make sure that the data was presented effectively but not boring.
  • What would you do differently if you had this project to do over?
If I had done this project over I think I would firstly do it myself. Then I think I would have made the art work a lot more neater and detailed. Because I was working with partners who really don't have drawing skills I had to make sure that the artwork in the project was simple enough for them to mimic so that I didn't have to do it all by myself.

Value of Life

Posted by Sean Force in English 2 - Pahomov on
“Hey, can you hold this flashlight for me?” I said as I struggled to try and hold the camera steady.  At the same time I was trying to hold the flashlight steady to take a picture of a little hermit crab scurrying along on the dark sand.  “Sure.”, my one friend said and he took the flashlight so that I could take the picture. 

Meanwhile another friend makes what at the time I had thought to be a somewhat cruel joke, but nevertheless what I thought to be a joke, about taking the very hermit crab, after I was done taking the picture, and throwing it into the campfire. I took my picture and then as promised, but certainly not expected, my second friend picked up the very hermit crab that I had just taken a picture of and threw it into the campfire which was still lit that we had made earlier that night.

A mixture of “Hey, why’d you do that?” to “What’s your problem”s erupted from the few of us who saw.  To be honest we kind of just let it roll off as he wasn’t the kindest person anyway.  When he did this he proved that he didn’t value the life of that poor hermit crab and that he doesn’t value other’s lives.

Another time when my friends and I were back in third grade my science teacher got a couple of mice and put them into a tank with a hamster.  Our science teacher had gotten them for feeding to the snake, named King, as he was a king snake, but he figured that they’d all be okay in there for a bit until he got a chance to feed the snake after school or whenever it got hungry.  Class was calm but then all of the sudden, CRASH, BOOM, BANG!  Now two mice were dead and one injured, later to be named Survivor.  I guess that technically we should have been really sad for a the mice and we were a little sad but…we were a bit more interested in watching the snake eat the two mice that had died.  As we watched we chanted “Go King, Go King, poor mousy, Go King, Go King etc.”  Now I suppose that being in third grade we weren’t exactly the best example of valuing life but we are an example.

Now that I’m getting up so early to go to school the only thing to really watch in the morning is the news. So some mornings I sit there watch it and just on an average day I can see the headlines go by and I can see anything from “One man shot by corner store”, to something like “four dead and three wounded in a shoot out”.  These aren’t just little kids who don’t know really what the difference between right and wrong is these are full grown adults.

This weekend I had another reminder of the fact that some people just don’t value life.  It was 12:00AM and absolutely silent in the house.  Then the phone rang and it was my dad’s work, it’s the emergency desk.  The police needed to search an inlet because they thought that a murderer has tossed a gun or a knife, and other evidence down into the inlet and it needed to be found.  Yes, the crew did find a weapon and they turned it over to the police.  Not only do these people not value life but they want to make it seem, in one sense at least, as if some people’s lives just didn’t ever happen.  

Some people don’t value life.  Younger people may not be able to appreciate the value of life.  So I guess that valuing life does sort of depend on your age and it also does depend on your maturity level.  But it also has to do I think with just the fact of whether you care about anything or anyone else.  Life is precious, you only get one, and some people just don’t get that at all.


De Donde Vengo Yo?

Posted by Jennifer Wright in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
​Niños en los calles
toque de queda es nada
asuntos primordiales- ¿qué hora es la cena?

Amo o no amo, es mi barrio
dices lo que te guste
Yo no puedo cambio



Sí, están hablando malo
pero, otra personas, no yo
el reputación estuvo ganó
Yo no ayudo en lo que tornó

Se llama "The Borough"
pero soló un chiste
Es famoso para las personas locos
Yo no "Un Chicca de Roxborough"

Yo no bebo alcohol
en los fines de semana
Yo prefiero jugo
con mis amigas como hermanas


Reflexion
I'm proud of my rhyming that I included. It's sporadic but it flows nicely. I may have to change some of the words to fit the flow of the song. The way it fits into the music may have to change. I chose to talk about about how my neighborhood is and how I am different. Important though, I included though it may have a bad rep I can't change where I'm from and I'm okay with it. A lot of bad things are said about where I'm from so I chose to focus on that. 

I'm hoping to make this a rap type thing, using techo music. 

My Life in Someone Else's Eyes

Posted by Markietra Keese in English 2 - Pahomov on
Markietra Keese

September 14,2011

Essay

“I do not have a band- aid for that size of a cut.”

That is what my second grade teacher told me. I was a curious seven year old, especially that day. We were reading a book, but I do not remember the name, and I kept rubbing my pinkie finger on one page of the book. I knew I was going to get a paper cut, but I for some reason I wanted to see it happen. My prediction was right and I ended up with a paper cut. I slowly turned my head, looked at my teacher, got up from my chair and slowly walked to her desk. I remember the wooden floors squeaking since the building was at least  one hundred years old.

“Can I have a band-aid?”

“Why?”

“ I have a paper cut.”

“ I do not have a band-aid for that size of a cut.”

That was our conversation. Since I was only seven, I did not really know what to do but believe it so I did. It was not until I saw her favoritism that she had for one of her students. It took me a while to figure out that she really did like one of her students more than she liked the rest of us. Her name was Megan, I think. She barely hurt herself, and did not have a scare or a bruise or anything at all to show for it. It was the same day I got my paper cut. Even though she was barely hurt it did not stop my teacher from giving her a band-aid, a band-aid that was supposed to be mine. Since then, eight years ago, I learned that the world was unfair. It is not about how hard you work but the established relationship you have made with that person.

I experienced that a lot in my life so far, and I know that I am going to experience a lot more. Most of it happened in my schools. The only time I did not mind it was when I was in the fifth grade, and that was because I was the favorite student. Now I am not going to lie, it felt kind of good. I am lying it felt very good. I am not sure when I became her favorite but it felt like I could do whatever I wanted, well almost whatever I wanted. I do not know how I became her favorite and I never questioned it until now. I was not a teacher’s pet, I was more on the quiet side, minded my own business, and did not start any trouble with anyone unless they started with me first. That is probably why she liked me. Whatever the reason was, I got good grades, but that was only because I deserved them.

I also realized the favoritism outside of school, and in personal lives like friendship and relationship wise. Everyone has a best friend, and if you are a little more social than others you may have a handful. Even if you have a handful of friends that you can call your best friend, you will always have that gets a little bit more favoritism. Even if you only give them a little bit more detail about something that happened to you or you hang out with them more, they are still your favorite best friend. This same thing applies to relationships. Long lasting relationships last long for a reason, and everyone has one relationship that was better than the others.

Favoritism can be both good and bad. Of course if it benefits you than it can be a good thing but also is unfair, and when it does not, than that is a whole different story. Sometimes it is not that big of a deal and there is no point in talking about it, and other times, it can affect your whole life.

Filadelfia <3

Posted by Kenisha Hood in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
​

Me encanta mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Mucho amor por mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Filadelfia


Filetes de queso
Si, mucho bueno
Tú vienes a mi barrio
Si, está todo bien
galletas saladas muy fresco, hoagies tambien.


Me encanta mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Mucho amor por mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Filadelfia

las calles están locos
Pero la visiones están bonita
Tú vienes a mi ciudad
nada es mejor
Mi ciudad es la mejor


Me encanta mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Mucho amor por mi ciudad

Me encanta mi ciudad

Filadelfia



Reflection:
I am proud that I made my first song in spanish and I managed to get all the lyrics done. I do not anticipate on having to change anything before recording my song. In my song, I talked about the food of Philadelphia and how it is. I decided to talk about these things because they are the things I know most since I have been here since birth. The song Im putting my lyrics to are "Moment For Life".


My Personal Essay

Posted by Jamekea Lee in English 2 - Pahomov on
Jamekea S. Lee

 

           

            “Get her, get her! No you don’t touch her, you better not touch her!” I was screaming so loud, my ears were ringing. I was getting pushed back in forth. I hate it when I’m standing the middle of a crowd when a fight is going on. Even though most of the time I’m encouraging people to come and look at them because I was screaming loud enough for everybody to hear. Just because I don’t like people fighting will there’s nobody looking. It seems useless.

We were all standing in the schoolyard because it was our lunch. It was warm day I’ll say not hot enough to have sweaters on but not cold enough to have shorts on. The lunch was made up of the 8th, 7th, 6th graders. We all knew what was going to happen because we’ve been talking about it for months.

“You gon to fight her? my friend asked.

“If she gets in my face, yea!” My other friend responded.

“You better not start bitchin’ neither.” Said the first girl.

“Yea you better Waka Flocka Flame her.” I said. And all my friends started laughing. They laughed until tears came streaming down their faces. “Waka Flocka Flame” was the name of a move my “twin” and I made up. It was basically two punches and a body- slam.

 

            That was me in the 8th grade. I used to be rough, I mean I’m still am but not like I was. When my friends from home and me get together we always reminisce about how we were.  That was then, though. This is now.

“You wanna spy on people?” Ayoola asked.

“Yea come on!” I replied. As Ayoola and me ran through the hallways trying to find somebody to spy on, we heard people say ‘ Ya, need to stop. Ya too old to be acting like that’.  We would just laughed about it. If you saw our faces you would have been cracking up. Ayoola had yanked her head back, laughing basically screaming. It sounded so bad. I was the leaned against the chipping painted wall, with one hand on my head, and the other on my leg. I was laughing so hard that you heard me gasp for air.

 

            I have two sides to my personality. When I’m in front of my friends that live other my way, I’m this cold- hearted girl. You could die tomorrow and I’ll be like ‘Oh, I really don’t care.’ When I’m around my friends at this school I’m friendly like if you was to die I would console your family. I know it may seem weird but it’s true. I don’t fully understand why I act like that. I guess I’m still growing inside.

           

One place where I am friendlier is on facebook. I remember when I posted that I was “playing spy” with Ayoola. My friends from home saw it and was like ‘ WTF you mean you was playing spy. You need to cut that out.’ I knew had forgotten that they could see it.

 

The biggest factor is that I don’t want to have two sides to my personality. I want all of my friends to accept me for who I am. Which is being sometimes friendly and sometimes to cold- hearted. I mean I’m not always friendly, and I’m not always cold- hearted. I have days that sometimes I feel like being “weird” as people call it. Then I have some days when I feel like being mean. All I really want it is for them to accept me for who I am.

 

I’ve been trying to show them that I’m half and half. This process is going to be a hard one, but one day I’ll like to be able to who I’m really am. In the future I want people to think I’m cool and friendly but I can also be serious. If the people at this school were to come around my way, they would recognize me. If the people from around my way were to come to my school they won’t recognize me. Basically I’m just saying I don’t want to have to act a certain way for people to recognize me.

msanders verso

Posted by Michael Sanders in Spanish 3 - Gierke on
​Mi nombre es MIQUAL.!!!!!

​Mi nombre es MIQUAL.!!!!!

Yo mi gusto el comida.

Yo comido el pollo y el sandwhiches.

Y Yo siempre es hambre.


Ahola mi nombre es miqual

Yo vengo es Filadelphia.

My madre y padre vengon es Filadelphia.

Nuca me abuela venge es virgina

Ellos decae. uno cuento.’

Nuunca dexperdico hambre.




Mi gusta deportes

Yo deportos el futbol

y baseball y basketball y Amercanio de futbol

Mi famila la historia in deportes

Nosotros gustomos deportes.



It explains where my actual neighborhood Im from. It also talks about what my family and doesand eats. I don't believe the full lyrics is done but my el refrain and 2 versos are done. The full lyrics will be done on sat.

Broken Mirrors

Posted by Octavius Collins in English 2 - Pahomov on
​Octavius Collins

Sept. 22, 2011

Silver

 

“Are you guys twins?” A lady would ask,

“Yes ma’am, we’re fraternal” I’d respond.
“Awww, what are y’all names?”
“Dwayne and, Octavius” we’d answer together.

“How old are you?” She’d individually as one of us.
“15.” I’d reply with a monotone voice.
She’d then continue with an ignorant follow up question like “ … and how old are you?” directed toward my twin.

 

People have a lot of misconceptions about what it’s like to be twins. A clear example of the conversation above. Twins are generally the same age unless for some miraculous reason one is born before 11:59pm on December 31st, but with my brother and I that isn’t the case. Assumptions have been made that my brother & I dress alike, act alike, even look alike, do the same things, like the same things, but the honest truth is that we are completely different.

I was always told that I had the exact traits and attributes of my father. I took his looks, personality, and that we were walking reflections of each other. Of course my brother was also a reflecting image of my mother. My mother and brother were just alike, she favors him. Even though we we’re twins we were treated a little differently. As I got older it became more of a problem but I always kept it to myself.
         Since first grade my brother and I were always separated from each other. In 1st grade my mother detained him & had him repeat. It wasn’t a problem since we were still in the same school and we lived in the same house until I went to high school. Small things like getting home late, starting new sports, or problems at school is what separated us from each other. Each year we’d both run track, but last year I took it upon myself and decided I wouldn’t do any sports but more or so focus on my schoolwork, and my job. The examples of us being completely opposite start to fall in as he started 2 new sports and I stopped sports. By age 8 we hated dressing alike each other. That’s when we began dressing differently.

I’ve always been the tough one, the less sensitive one, I never went to my mom for help, hated asking for help, always tried to do things myself. My brother was a completely pole apart; he was the mamas boy, which wasn’t a problem because I favored my dad. The problem I had was that she favored him as a child and I felt that we should have been treated equally, but that’s beside the point. Although him being the technically older brother (by two and a half hours) I’ve always been told I act older. His goofy, and young adolescent ways are what became the explanation for as to why I had to act older. Some people even ask us do we fight and argue. The fighting had been frequently lately but the arguing is pretty consistent since we’re different and will always have our disagreements but it’ll never change my love for him.

I bet if I didn’t take the time out of my day to write and explain how all twins aren’t the same, and how my brother and I are complete opposites, the misconceptions of twins would still spread among other citizens that thought the same. Everyone is there own person regardless of how related you are, or how much differently you look, you’ll never find two twins completely the same.