Category: Social Studies

Capstone – Maldives Blog Post #3

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I’ve already explained what Capstone is, so I don’t need to say it again, but it has been crazy! There has been a significant change and improvement compared to where I was in this project when writing my second blog post.

Back when I was still researching and mainly focused on getting an interview was my down point. Slowly things got better and I finished research, and found out when I was finally doing my interview! I did my interview at the beginning of starting my script and got some information, but I knew basically everything because I am now an expert! (As I did do my interview when everyone including me was finished researching so I knew everything, and most people did their interview during mid-research.) I was relieved that I finally finished that setback, so I wasn’t worried anymore. Writing my script was a long process, longer than what it takes for me to usually write a script, but that was probably because Capstone is longer than any of our ignites at 3-6 minutes for a video (which I did,) and only 1-2 minutes and 30 seconds for our past ignites related to Capstone. I thought writing my script would be easy so I took it pretty slow at first. I only had around 4-5 slides script slides, in WeVideo form which is longer than Adobe gradually. (I started with WeVideo, and halfway I changed to Adobe.) After that, I realized I had little time, and finished my script by the next week. I changed my script format to Adobe which took effort because I needed to cut down the script slides shorter, separating them by color-coding. After some editing and revising I started my Adobe video, a good strategy of finding photos for each slide and then adding narration and music at the end to everything.

I think my favorite part of this process was finding photos and researching. I love the Maldives, especially for its beauty, so it was really easy to find incredible beautiful photos and a lot. The research wasn’t a problem because I was focused and interested in the topic, ending up with tons of pages of notes.

Some facts that I didn’t add in my presentation:

The national symbols of the Maldives are coconut palm and yellowfin tuna.

Dogs are not allowed in the Maldives!

There are no rivers and hills in the Maldives, as it is the flattest country in the world! There are only two freshwater lakes in the Maldives.

On the handful of public beaches in the Maldives wearing revealing clothing is illegal!

Climate change means warmer summers in the Maldives and lots of coral is damaged. This is called coral bleaching when the water temperatures become a few degrees hotter than normal for two weeks or more. The coral should be bright and colorful, looking healthy and a place for fish to live in, but the coral is now becoming white and snapping apart. Since the Maldives is made of atolls if the coral reefs die, the Maldives will too.

There are so many more facts and information, but I can’t add all of it. On the other hand, my interview with Christine Drinan, founder, and CEO of Galavante Travel Company.  was very helpful and went well! I got some information from them, but since I had it so late I basically knew everything she told me. Christine loved to travel and during college, she worked in finance and built a travel business. She loved the Maldives a lot and talked mostly about how unspoiled and unpolluted the waters are in the Maldives because of how isolated it is, and how independently functioning it is during the interview.

At first, I used to regret that I chose the Maldives as my topic thinking that I would have a hard time finding an interviewee and information, but I was wrong! I just searched and tried extra hard, and ended up with a really good final movie that I am very proud of. I didn’t do all of this independently though, I had a few friends that helped me! These people were: Camilla, Nea, Raiya, Isabella, Jane, and a big thanks to Ms. Boyer who led me through the whole process in many ways! In conclusion, I so am proud of my final video, and we are so close to the presenting day! The Maldives is a beautiful and remarkable place, and I’m so glad I chose it as my topic, and I am really happy with my final Adobe.

Capstone- The Maldives Blog Post #2

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I am working on a very important project called Capstone this year. I have wrote a blog stating it was also a very important project, but this is the most important. Before leaving 5th grade, every year the 5th graders do a Capstone project. It is the most important project done all year, and it is based on a passionate topic, putting the most effort into it. Capstone is researching on basically anything, I chose the Maldives. From notes and interviews I’ll make a presentaion on it, TED talk, or a video. Working on my Capstone has improved, and so far so well other than some small things. Maybe, one thing though is a problem. Anyway, research is done, I’m pretty confident, and I have many notes, but I am really worried about something.

My interview is what I’m a little worried about. It’s been weeks, and all my friends have done theirs. They did theirs many days ago and talks about how they loved their interviewee, how they got so much info, and how it was so fun, while even though I’m in a pretty good place other than that, and still haven’t done an interview which makes me worried. This is giving me a small setback, but I can’t help to do anything anyway. I can’t force the people I tried to get an interview with to respond. So, this is my only and probably biggest problem.

After I asked for help from my mom to find an interview, luckily in a day, my mom found a travel expert who actually was one of her best friends! This is really good because I can go from 0 interviews to 2 if I get a responce from a person Ms. Boyer emailed, or another person my mom found. This is great, and I am much more confident. After not having an interview for a while, I actually thought chosing the Maldives was maybe a bad idea, but I guess it worked out now that I kept trying. Atleast I am passionate about my topic because I had no trouble with researching on a new, but interesting topic.

I chose this topic because I am recenlty really interested in tropical places, especially the Maldives, and I think It is a good idea to do my topic on. I would actually love to be a travel expert now that I think about it when I’m older!

It was really easy thinking of interview questions, after I wrote a few, more came in my mind, and I had 17! I did have to change some though because I wrote them in the beginning and I changed my expert as my interviewee.

Hopefully, I’ll have an interview soon, and I’ll be back on track. I do love my topic, but maybe it isn’t the best topic for finding an expert about it. My main priorities are to schedule an interview, do an interview, start writing my script, and figure out what format I want to do for my presentation.

Capstone- The Maldives Blog Post #1

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Every year the 5th graders pick a subject to research, and by the end of the year have a presentation on your project. This is called Capstone, and I chose the Maldives. At first, I felt really scared because Capstone is a major presentation that has to be better than the years before that, as it is done by the 5th graders every year. After realizing that I could make a movie and chose basically any topic though, I felt a lot more confident as I could go with something I’m more comfortable with, and work better with. Now I feel much better about it.

At first, I was really stuck on a topic. I wanted to do the Maldives, but everyone else was suggesting big topics like global warming and starvation. Then after a while of not reaching out, Ms. Boyer said it doesn’t need to be a big topic as most people in the past did random things, so I felt confident to say I wanted to do the Maldives, and most of the class probably felt the same because most people changed to a random topic. I felt a lot better and started my curriculum wheel. On my first try, I did the Maldives but realized it would probably be better to do tropical islands instead, so I ended up creating my curriculum wheel on tropical islands, but still thinking mainly about the Maldives. Finally, I came to the decision when I was stuck between the Maldives or Tropical Islands as a topic. It took a while, but I ended up choosing the Maldives, and I think that was a good choice.

After coming up with the Maldives as a topic, I needed a topic question. On the back of my curriculum wheel, I wrote down a few starter questions and called it a night. Then the next day, I asked Ms. Boyer if they were good and she agreed, it’s just I wanted to expand more on them so that day I wrote a bunch of questions down, and finally decided to do: “What makes the Maldives so special and unique?” after a lot of trial and error of the wording of my question, I actually had a base of a question but didn’t know how to word it for a while. I also know that the Maldives is very different and special from most tropical islands, and I mean different in a very good way.

I just recently made my sub-questions, and at first, I was definitely stuck and confused. I didn’t know if the sub-questions were random, connected to the main questions, or how to come up with them. I then asked Ms. Boyer and all I understood was that it connected to the main question and the curriculum wheel. I looked back at it and found my really basic questions on tropical islands, (That time I was stuck on tropical islands or the Maldives so I did tropical islands first, and ended up doing the Maldives but never did a curriculum wheel for it) which wasn’t helpful. So then I stared at my main question for a minute, and came up with an Idea for a sub-question that had to do with my main question: “What are the best activities to do in the Maldives?” This gave me a spark, and I ended up coming up with two more sub-questions that all had to do with my main question: “What is the Maldives famous for?” And, “Why is the Maldives so generally expensive?”

In the end, I now have my topic, question, and sub-questions, and I am contacting and writing to someone for an Interview. So far my research is going well, and I am glad I chose the Maldives because I am very interested to learn about it.

Immigration Project Reflection

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I learned a lot about immigration and my own dad during this unit. I actually found out so much cool and surprising information about my dad that I would have probably never known before if we didn’t do this project. Even though there we so many surprising and fun things about this project, there were a lot of troubles I had that sadly some people didn’t.

Cons:

The biggest problem with my immigration project was the glitches. Somewhere towards the end of my adobe video, I began having a lot of technical difficulties with the photos which slowed me down since it was so confusing and I didn’t have it fixed for a while. Basically, all the different problems with the photos slowed me down and stressed me out a lot, so I was behind a bit.

I found it also confusing to do a lot of things on the adobe video like add photos from my dad and add music. All of that I had to figure out myself because the week before I had covid, and couldn’t work on my project or be here to learn things about it. It was also annoying because I had to do most of my Adobe video on the break because I mostly couldn’t work when I was sick. In the end, I found out how to work out most things except my photos which later had problems that slowed me down.

Another thing a little challenging was that I just started learning about adobe, and since I was absent in the middle of the project I didn’t know some things everyone else knew until I found it out the hard way. Some of these things are in my recordings the audio would glitch if I didn’t start after 0 seconds, and simple stuff that was probably taught in school like what to name the adobe, how many slides you need, etc.

Pros:

The biggest pro was while doing a project interviewing an immigrant, (my dad) I got to learn a lot about my dad that I wouldn’t have known probably without this project. It was surprising and fun to interview him because I got to know my dad’s real back story, and it is interesting!

Writing the questions was very wonderous and fun because I got to think about all the things I wanted to learn about my dad, and when it comes to writing and knowing ALL about something, I was going to put all my effort into the many questions I had. At first, I thought I would have very few questions but when I started thinking of all the ideas I could use I went overboard with questions!

A really helpful thing was the examples of questions to ask, and other students’ projects. This was extremely helpful because I got an idea of what to do and expect, and I had many questions that I could start with and expand on. Without these things, my project would have been much worse.

It was fun making the Adobe video. Adding photos from google especially, and found beautiful photos of cities (NYC and Tel Aviv), and a mountainscape and beach (Switzerland and Hawaii), with calming and mesmerizing music. (I needed to find those photos to include the cities Guy immigrated and came to/from, and where he’d traveled.) After adding all of that including audio, it was super satisfying to watch the end result so far.

In conclusion, this project had many ups and downs, but I ended up really liking how it turned out, and I’m proud of myself. Here is the final Adobe video:

 

Constitution Project Reflection

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The purpose of this project was to learn and research about the Amendments and the Constitution and then make a presentation all about the Amendment you chose, or a topic on the Constitution. We also learned how to make a presentation, make a script, stay within the time limit and have the number of resources our teacher wants. I chose the 19th Amendment and how women gained their equal rights because I think it is a very interesting topic, and I think it is a very important Amendment, especially since I am female. After we chose our topic we had to choose a question for the topic. We came up with three questions each and ended up with the best one. My first question idea actually ended up being my final question!

After we chose our topic and research question, we had to research. We were each given a guideline slideshow of the process, and we each had to choose three resources to research with. It was really easy to find resources for me. I had my three resources on the first day! After some days of taking notes, I had finished researching two out of the three resources. When I started reading the last one, I realized it was too long and had way too much-advanced information. At first, I thought it would be the most helpful, but in the end, I got the least amount of information from it out of everything, but that was mostly because I already knew most of the information I read because I already researched on the other two resources, which had the same information in it.

Next, after we took all of our notes and did our research we started our script. I also had a good time writing my script, and I just used my notes and wrote a script by looking back to it in timeline order. I had my script done after some time, but then I had to improve again. I hadn’t timed my script yet, and when I did, I realized I was over the time limit. That was the hard part, and I had to cut down the chatty parts with less information. This was also hard because I had to start over my timing every time I edited my script. Finally, I ended up with a good script which was only two seconds over the limit. I then decided not to change anything, and that my slideshow would be within the limit.

Once my script was done, I recently moved on to slideshow work, but this was easy, so it didn’t take long. I only needed to add text and pictures to each slide, which was fun and simple to me. I finished my slideshow, and now was ready to record!

When I started recording, I had a lot of trouble not stumbling, forgetting to change the slide, and getting the script papers mixed up. It was super complicated, and I needed to do it swiftly and quick. This was THE hardest part. I ended up with tons and tons of deleted mess-up recordings and ended with the final three. It was easy deciding, number one out of the final three was my first recording, and it was my first one so things around there and there were messy. Number two was fine except it had a few mess-ups, and was a little long. Number three was obviously the final pick, it was about the right time, barely any mess-ups, and the most recent and best I did. I felt so relieved and relaxed once I finished this part.

In conclusion, I chose the 19th Amendment because I think learning about Women’s Suffrage and how women gained their equal rights is very important, especially since I am a girl, and that it is interesting. The most challenging part about this project was defiantly the recording. I enjoyed taking notes and researching the most. It was satisfying to have two pages filled with useful information after watching or reading an interesting video or article on the 19th Amendment. I learned so much while doing this project, and about this project. It was amazing. The two most interesting things I learned though was that resident Harry Burn changed his vote because his mother made him, (It was funny), and how much deeper women’s suffrage is and that women getting their right to vote was a huge process, not a simple debate. In the end, this project was hard, but I finished with a presentation I’m proud of, which took a lot of work in research, writing, taking notes, and recording.

Here is the final recording of my presentation slideshow:

We The People: The Bill Of Rights by Adam Lambert

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I think the most important right for a citizen to have in a free country is the 1st amendment because the 1st amendment claims many important freedoms like religion, or speech. That is very important for a US citizen. Each right is very important but I think the 1st right is the most important for a citizen in a free country. In addition, for a student, I think the most important right in a free country is the 1st amendment too. All the other rights are more for adults, but even for the citizens the 1st one seems like the most important.   

I think all citizens should have the same rights. I think so because We The People now stand for everyone, no matter wealthiness, skin color, or gender. If a woman didn’t have the same rights as a man, that wouldn’t be fair. Everyone is equal, and should be treated equally.

I think it depends on the situation or rights. If someone said I had the right of speech in these situations, but not in everything that would be fine depending on the situation. If someone said I had the right to speech for everything, that isn’t always good. So it depends, but if it has to do with something like freedom whatsoever, that shouldn’t be taken away ever. Someone could try, but the right of freedom can’t be limited. 

I think we should have the rights of travel, to vote, to keep personal items private, and the right for a fair trial, in the constitution. Technically those are rights, but they don’t claim on the constitution that it is said to officially be a right. 

The Video:

 

Annette Kellerman

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I have been working on a project. The project is researching on a famous person. My person is Annette Kellerman. She was the first women to wear a full piece bathing suit. I made a book about her, and added a  story about her, a lesson learned, and a time line. Then I took pictures of my book, and made a presentation. I am about to show you my presentation so, I hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading!