Project X: Blog post number six

Hello again. This is my weekly blog for Media Literacy. This is my sixth blog post incase you were wondering. So it has been a full week since I asked this question. I asked, How long should I spend on my Ted Talks? Now to recap, in my project, I have to make a Ted Talk, by the end of the trimester. Which I have 6 classes to do so, [not including the days we have to perform] to finish a three minute memorized Ted Talk, with a presentation. So that was the question I asked a week ago.

So, at the moment I'm still kinda deciding how much I should spend on them. But my number one idea right now is this. I am currently debating that I should spend two classes editing videos and working on my Ted Talk. So that I can accomplish my 10 video goal. Then in the remaining 4 classes I plan on spending the full four classes and home time to work on the Ted Talks. Which I think will be enough to make a really good and informative Ted Talk. But I'm inviting you to help me in the comments, and help me decide, should I go straight to Ted Talk, should I spend more time making more videos. I need your help, so comment below please. And give me your feedback on what I should do.

There's only three weeks until this class ends, and so far I’m very satisfied with my work. I enjoyed making videos for my channel, HowtowithAli on youtube. And I'm happy that the project did not fail on me, and that I continued with it. This project has also taught me a lot about how youtube works, and a lot of other things you can use on your videos on youtube to make them better, and on Imovie as well, my editing source for videos. This has been my sixth blog post, and thank you for reading, and hopefully you will be here next week for my next blog post.

       Ted Talks Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector     

5th blog post on Media Literacy

Hi, I'm back. After one full week of changing my style of Youtube, I feel I have done better. Now in case you weren't here last week, I talked about changing what I want to do on my HowtowithAli Youtube channel.

I talked about how I should change my style of Youtube from quantity to quality.  Because I was making a lot of videos, but there were a lot of mistakes in them, so the videos weren't turning out good. Which I wasn't happy with. So I asked the question. Should I change from quantity to quality? And yes I did, and I'm enjoying my work much better. But you should also go check my channel [Link in first paragraph] and comment below on this blog to see if my videos have improved, and in your opinion should I change back to quantity, or stay with quality.

But so far I'm happy with my videos, and I'm two videos away from my goal of 10 videos on my channel. In my channel I like to use some of my own ideas, but I also like to ask for help from certain people on their ideas. And of course I ask can I use your idea, and give you credit. So I gave credit in one of my videos to Hisham Bukhari on a card trick, one of my fellow classmate. So I want to thank him in my blog as well. But also I use videos from the internet to also give me brief explanations on certain things I want to do. Which also help me out. And give me good ideas that I would have never thought of. But the number one thing I'm really happy about is my card trick series. I have a series on my channel called The Simplest Card Trick Ever. And I have posted up to four videos for that series. So I'm proud of that, and I'm looking to bring up to six videos for that series. What can I say, I love card tricks.

Now, usually every single week I have a question, and I would love if you could comment on this question and help me out. In this project we are going to have to do our Ted Talks about our project overall. So we have seven more classes left in our class to do whatever. So I wanted to ask, how much of those seven classes should I spend on the Ted Talks. Now the Ted Talks are pretty important and our principle is going to be there, as well as the whole class listening. Also it is three minutes long, with a presentation. So please comment below on how long should I take spending on my Ted Talks.

Clip Art

Changing persepecttives

Hey, I'm not really sure how to start this blog post, so I'm just going to start. It's been a week since my last blog about my videos and I'm back. Now over this week both good and bad has happened between my videos. This is the first week where I haven't got my two videos per five day goal. Which I think is a good thing. I think just taking one video this week, really gave me time to focus more on my videos.

What I realized about my videos was there were quite a few mistakes. And people who were watching my videos have contacted me that there were are few mistakes in my videos and that it was affecting the content. When I started this project I believe that How to youtube videos were all about quantity, there about quality. My viewpoint about it now is that if I look very deeply into my videos they will have good content. And I believe that by doing that my videos will be more educational.

But my main question right now is, Do I believe that what I am doing is important? Yes I believe that what I am doing is important. I Believe that the 20 to 50 people watching my videos are benefiting from my videos. I am showing how to videos about simple things that a group of people don't know how to do, these things that I record doing. And I feel a sign of happiness, that I am even able to help out 10 people in this world. My goal is to have 10 videos by the end of this trimester. And so far I have five. And with my new idea of quality over quantity, I believe I will have 10 good content videos and more by the end of the trimester.

Dribble F.B

The process starting

Finally we have started. What I mean by that is that I have finally been doing my project. I have finally been uploading good quality how to videos to my youtube channel. And i'm so happy to finally actually be getting into my project.

Now, so far my goal is to make this project as challenging, absorbing, and interesting as possible. So you're probably asking. How are you going to that? Well let me talk about each individual thing. First the challenging part of it all,to think of new videos to bring to class every other day is quite hard. I try my best to think of videos that I could upload on youtube and make it so that it will helpful for several people who watch it. The absorbing part of it is editing the videos. These videos take about 20-40 minutes to edit in class. Which absorbs a lot out of me, but it is really fun. And last, the interesting part of all this, well to me that's basically everything I do combined. From the editing, to the filming, and etc.

But last of all I love this project so much, because of the amount that I have learned In this short time[And I know I will learn more]. I have learned how to screenshot a photo on a mac, it's command-shift 4. I  have learned how to use I-movie more effectively. I have also learned how to add a thumbnail,annotations,and etc. to my videos. And it's these small things in my videos that can make my videos just that much better. And I have to give it to my Media Literacy teacher Mr.Mongardi, who taught me most of this, and is pretty much a tech genius. And I thank him big time.

Egg drop day

      Our egg drop project was today. I was happy but also a bit scared going into the egg drop. But most of the time I was so excited to see if our egg would survive or not, and also being able to see others egg drops as well.
   
      Going into the egg drop, i'm not going to lie I was pretty nervous. But I was feeling confident that are egg was well built that it would survive. And my predictions are so far right. I predicted we would get past the first two rounds.

       Like when our egg was falling down it felt like I was stuck in slow motion. Hoping that our egg did not fall hard and crack on the first or second round. And when the egg hit the floor both times, I could barely hear a single noise, which to me was a signal our egg wasn't cracked. And when I say I could barely hear a noise, i'm not lying. The two layers of paper that we designed as a nest for the egg, really made sure that our egg was protected. Also we had starws at the bottom also protecting the landing of the pyramid.

Link to both of the egg drops today:https://youtu.be/f8-6DLOmKgQ

Egg drop

      We are so close to the egg drop,which is next class. I can't wait to see the results. This project was very fun,but also challenging. The most challenging thing for our group was where we were going to place the the four strings attached to the parachute. Because we have a pyramid, we can't stick one on each point of our pyramid. So instead because if we put two strings on one point the pyramid would tip. We put all of the strings on the top point,and just put a lot of tape on it to support it. The egg drop tomorrow is going to be very interesting, I believe that ours will make it to the roof and then crack because i just don't believe that the parachute and the protection will beat the air resistance.

First Month Into Media Literacy

Welcome to my second blog post. So far I have learned a lot from these videos. There is very much room for improvement. I'm glad, because this project is going very well and so far there is no failure. And i'm proud that i'm getting in the habit of trying to get at least one video every two days to the channel.

So a few things I have learned is a few things about the video taking.  Have learned to get better lighting, and for the cameraman to hold the camera still and put different camera angles while filming. Its these small things that if i improve the videos will be that much better. And also I have learned to put a more effective intro and outro to my videoes.

I got my teacher to watch my first video. Which is great, and he told me things to improve to my future videos. I have also made goals to try to put a certain amount of videos every single week. But so far after these weeks in Media Literacy I have felt confident with my work. The most important thing is that so far this project has been challenging,absorbing, and interesting.

Egg drop project.

      So far my groups egg drop project has been going pretty well, but just like any scientific experiment, there are mistakes and room for improvement. So are group has done a few test trials and we found out something bad. Because we didn't have a parachute, the air resistance really affected us because the egg would go straight down. Getting faster each second. So what we decided to do is to buy a parachute. And it's great that we got to do a design test today, so we could learn from our mistakes, that there is simply not enough protection on the egg, for the egg to be dropped with no parachute. So now we know to go buy a parachute. Also we can be prepared for the energy transfer that will happen when dropping, with like I said, the egg drops faster every single second, so I think the parachute will save us big time, and give us a bigger chance of the egg not cracking.

Link to video
https://youtu.be/574wDUCYNc0

Team X Status Report - Day 1

 I have been assigned an egg drop project. Where I have to be able to buy materials on a budget, to make my egg protected enough to be able to drop from certain heights. And obviously the goal is for the egg not to crack.

      I believe that this is a great project, this project makes you think differently. Makes you feel like you're an engineer. And we are using the engineering process in this egg drop. For me, I would love to be some kind of engineer,and my teacher Mrs. Johnson is basically giving me a head start at youth.

      In my group I have Fallon and Maram as my partners. And I feel like we did good, on the first day being able to draw materials, we didn't. We decided to look deeper, more research and more ideas and brainstorming. Then we drew many eggs, then we chose one. But as the account of the group, I'm a little afraid of spending, which is bad. I need to be able to step out of my comfort zone,and start buying, which I will next class. We are planning to start buying straws and scrap paper. But we are still think bigger, and the end we hope are egg stays alive.

Media Literacy In The First Two Weeks

My first two weeks were very interesting. It was both joyful and stressful. It was joyful finding out what the class was about, it was pretty stressful trying to think of something to accomplish in the class.

When I first walked in to Media Literacy I thought it was a class about taking videos and using green screens and stuff like that. But it is nothing like that. The goal is to do something that is absorbing,challenging, and interesting to you.  Something that is effective and possible, something that will make the world just a bit more awesome.

The stressful part was thinking of something productive to do. It was hard at first for me then I kept thinking and some ideas came in. Some good and some bad. I tried to pick ones that made sense and that I could do for about 10 weeks. The main idea I have now was to do youtube. How to videos on youtube. From experience if I need something to do, I search up a video on youtube. So I felt maybe I could take my creativity and use it so other people could learn something from me they didn't know.

So I'm pretty confident I could do these kind of videos. So I feel like that is what my goal is going to be for these ten weeks of Media Literacy.

Photo Credit: Oejitv

When I Grow Up

      When I'm thirty years old I hope I graduate out of university in America with a PHD. I want to be a clean energy engineer. I want to help with all of this. Now when I'm thirty the year will be 2034, which means I hope the global goals would be accomplished. But continuing, I believe I would work in some place windy and sunny, so our building would use solar penal around for energy. My house world be a solar panel house, but the energy for the city would work on the wind turbines as well, but for houses and buildings, solar. I feel I would drive a solar powered car around to get to places and to work. Mostly solar powers things but some wind power as well. But I hope it will be like this, because I want to live in America, and America wants to stick with coal and fossil fuels, so I also hope I can help to fix that in America as well.

The One And Only Ivan by: Katherine Applegate

What stands out to me so far is all the quotes and things he knows about humans, it is like his job to study humans. All the quotes like, the glass says we are we and you are you and it will Akashi be that way. It makes it sound that the human race is so horrible. That's what stands out to me.