REFLECTIONS
This week I am going to focus mainly on Flop, the crappy movie guided inquiry, we only have a month to do this movie, and that is not a lot of time. I feel that will take up most of my time this next month. Other than that I have two bolts I am involved in, BatEthics, where you research the backstory of batman and work with the identity of him. And the other one is Analyzing Comedy: George Carlin. Where we will be watching George Carlin Video and share our opinions/research the logic behind his acts.
February 27, 2017
This week is testing week so we didn't have to come to school until 12:15. I have been planning my plant bed that I am going to be building with my best friend. We combined science and math, I am doing the majority of building for math credit and she will be researching different types of plants that thrive in colorado during spring/summer time. What kind of drainage they need, bugs, soil, living environments, etc. We start building next week and I am really excited to see what the final product will look like.
April 12, 2017
I have had the motivation to read a lot lately, I have been reading a lot of Night by Elie Wiesel and its such a good read, sad, but a interesting book. I am really motivated lately to just do what I love and be excited about my projects in school, which is why I love mosaic, I am so incredibly grateful for mosaic. I want to do some cool stuff soon. My sister left about 2 weeks ago for a 2 month journey in Thailand and she is such an inspiration to me for following your heart, I am very excited to see what the rest of the school year holds for me.
February 13, 2017
Today is Monday which is the beginning of a brand new school week. My biggest plan for this week is to finish the book Night by Elie Wiesel. Other than that I will probably work on chemistry, cosmetic cruelty, etc. I am feeling super excited about learning lately and want to keep that motivation going. I am also feeling really artistic so maybe I will start doing some drawings and paintings:) I want to start writing some outlines for my videography project, and hopefully can start filming those soon. I am excited for this week!:)
February 6, 2017
This week I am going to focus on my cosmetic cruelty project and the crappy movie inquiry I joined. Today there is a short film due for it and we used star wars as an example for our video (click here for video). I really like my group as well, I am working with Talin & Ricky. I am very excited for this bolt because I love anything to do with filming, acting, editing, etc. It's just something that interests me. Martin also just showed me this super cool program called 'Glassbreaker Films' which is for woman who are interested in film. I am super excited to check that out.
February 22, 2017
This week I am going to be focusing on my cosmetic cruelty project, my videography/photography, sketching out and buying the materials for my reading nook and read the book Night by Elie Wiesel. My sister is leaving next Wednesday (February 1st) for a 2 month exploration through Thailand. She is taking my camera and GoPro to film her journey, when she gets back I am going to help her create a video about her trip. I am excited to work this week, I fell really motivated to get work done and create some new projects.
January 23, 2017
So this weeks challenge for the Mouse Trap Bolt was to create a car that moves a certain distance and then shoots a ping pong ball, so basically combining our first two projects into this one. We did not do good, since our car was not great the first time, we had to make a new one from scratch, it moved probably about 2 inches, and that might be pushing it. Marissa and I work really well together and I think that if we did the project alone we wouldn't have gotten as far, we can bounce ideas off of each other really well and that it good. What we did was take our catapult from the week before and basically put it on the wheels we built. We then realized that it was too heavy for the wheels, which is why they were not moving as well. When we tested it, it did not move at all. In the end our car/catapult did not work. I think that we could have tried harder but in the end I think we did alright.
December 14, 2016
I am hoping to accomplish a lot this term/semester. I want to dive a lot into reading, I think that it would be good for me since I have never been much of a reader. I have a few projects that I created a while ago and I think now is a great time to start them. I have my Cosmetic Cruelty project which I am going to use as my inquiry. I am going to research why cosmetic companies have to use animals products and test on animals. I am going to dig deeper into my World War 2 project and learn about that more. I want to continue my environmental research that I started in freshmen year. Last but not least I really would like to build a reading nook. I made a plan in my freshmen year, calculated out all of the costs, all of the materials and now I want to build it. I see a lot of opportunities for myself this year and I am very excited to see where it takes me.
January 3, 2017
This week was a little difficult. We had some setbacks with our project but overall I think that it went really well, although we did not get the ping pong ball in the bucket, we did get close. We started by attaching our mouse trap to a good sized piece of wood, bolting and gluing it down. After that we took the open end of a plastic hanger and connected to the snap part of the mouse trap (we used the open ended part of a hanger so that the ping pong ball could fit inside of it. That did not work as well as we wanted it to. After that failed we disconnected it and used a plastic spoon instead, which ended up working out very well. After making those changes we went to test it for the first time, at least the first time with the bucket. It was going way to fast and low, so we had to make some sort of change. Mrs. Chloupek suggested that we apply a stopper, something ti stop the spoon from snapping all the way down. Marissa and I found a small piece of wood and attached it to the mouse trap. We tested it again and it worked much better, but still not good enough. Every time we would "shoot" the ing pong ball, the direction and height would vary, we needed to find something that made the shot more consistent. Chloupek suggested that we maybe have a string connected to the "snapper" that we pull and release with, to maybe make the shot more consistent. We took some string, well a lot of string, to hold it back with. It did not make the shot better, they were still different every time. So we decided that we could make it work without the string. We then had some help shooting it from Charlie. Somehow the shots got more consistent, not 100% better, but definitely better. We finally tested our catapult and it got very close but not in. I think that Marissa and I work very well together, every time one of us has an idea we go with it and experiment. I am excited to see how our next project comes out.
December 2, 2016
This week has been good so far. We started our new bolts and inquiry block. I signed up for two bolts. One is about the U.S soldier that was captured by the taliban for five years and survived. The other is creating cars, catapults, etc. The inquiry I am now in is about helping others, using your empathy to help someone, I am most excited for that one. I started a new book called no summit out of sight, it is about the youngest kid to climb all seven summits, so far it's a great book and very inspiring. This week I will be working on turning a mouse trap into a car, somehow, reading, listening to podcasts, and researching non-profit organizations to invest my time in, or maybe even creating my own.
November 15, 2016
I joined a bolt that allows you the express your creativity and create contractions. So far I suck at expressing my creativity. My partner and I are in a rut with building our mouse trap car. The wheels wouldn't work, and we can not get the vehicle to accelerate. Hopefully we can get it to work before we race them. We never thought of using cd's for the wheels because were air heads but, fingers crossed that we can achieve our goal. What we did at first was glue the mouse trap to a hot wheels car, which did not work very well because the car was smaller than the trap, so the power of the trap snapping overruled the power of the car. The next day we took the base from a toy car and used the wheels, it hasn't worked yet but we are hoping it will for tomorrow.
November 17, 2016
This past eek I have mostly been working on CVTV, both of my partners are busy this week so it' up to me to produce this weeks video. We decided that doing a story on the upcoming musical Aida would be a video. Yesterday, I did interviews with a few of the actors in the musical and some of the tech students (behind the scenes). I am really proud of the footage that I got and hopefully can create a good video to promote the upcoming musical.
In Mosaic I'm still working on some politics, trying to finish up my political manifesto.Lately I have been really passionate about singing and dancing but do not know how to incorporate that into mosaic. Those are definitely two of my passions and hopefully I can find some way to start up a project with Mosaic. I also have been very interested in the North Dakota Pipeline, my sister just got home from being in North Dakota helping out the Natives. I am hoping to help down here in Colorado however I can.
November 10, 2016
School is going good. Lately I have been working on researching my political views, updating my website, and practicing my ASL. I am really enjoying learning about where I stand on the "political chart", politics have always confused me, that is why I joined this inquiry. The past couple weeks In ASL we have been learning the states and cities, on Friday we had a test to see how well we knew our states and I feel very confident that I did a good job.
October 30, 2016
These past few days I have been working on civil rights in our political inquiry. Putting down my opinions on abortion, drugs, guns, etc. It's been a little stressful but nothing that school hasn't been before. I created a document to start my cosmetic cruelty project, to research why cosmetic companies need to test on animals and use animals products. All I need to do is communicate with a teacher about it and then I will start my research.
November 2, 2016
My first week as a high school sophomore was surprisingly great. I love my classes, and my teachers. We all had fun creating projects for the first week. My favorite was upcycling materials (PICTURE) I had two of my best friends in my group, Ethan W & Haley Y. We took a light fixture with three lights and a piece of wood and created a shelf. Ethan worked on the fixture, we took out the bulbs and wiring. He then took two license plates and cut them into pieces and bolted them to the fixture's backboard. Haley and I worked on the wood. We made a design of the colorado flag with the Denver city skyline on it. It turned out great, we got awesome feedback from our classmates, and we had a fun time making it.
The second week was great and I'm starting to get the hang of things. Still loving my outside classes and love my friends. Back to school night was really fun, got to see my teachers and show my parents the school. My fourth hour is CVTV witch is part of the student media aspect of Castle View, we have some incredible opportunities in that class. In October we are going to Fort Collins for a day trip, then in March we are headed to New York, and last in April we are headed to Seattle. I am so excited to see what this year holds.
August 12, 2016
Creating the archives page was a little more difficult than I thought, not in the page itself, just transferring all of my handwritten notes to a digital format. Other than that it was pretty easy, it was fun too, especially doing the format. I will be updating this every time I start/finish something new.
April 2016
I am very proud of my display page, I honestly love how it turned out. I talked about some of my projects and even incorporated a video, which was a little difficult because I had to upload it on Youtube first and then link it into the file but other than that it was really fun to create this page.
April 2016