Category Archives: Social Studies

Capstone Blog #3

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Capstone is the biggest project of the year, it was a fun and challenging project. I had to choose a topic to research. My topic was how cars have changed to become safer and faster. I also had to research and interview an expert on your to get as much information as possible. Finally, I had to present what I learned about cars.

 

Researching was the most important and hardest part of the project because you need the information to make a good project/presentation. I had to have five resources I used to get information about my topic. I had to get a lot of information which was stored in a slideshow. Researching was challenging because I would get the same information a lot. I would have to look for new information in new resources. I learned that researching is challenging, but the information you get will help you a lot.

 

After I finished researching, I had to make a presentation about all my information. There were three ways I could present my information. A TED Talk, an Ignite, or a Movie. In a TED Talk, you show your information orally, you can have a slideshow, but you don’t need to. In an Ignite, you express your findings in a slideshow and talk in front of everybody, the slides advance every fifteen seconds I didn’t do an Ignite because I didn’t want to time my slides to exactly fifteen seconds for each slide. In a movie, you show your findings in a WeVideo or an Adobe, you don’t need to talk in front of people. Pictures are required and you need to record a voice-over on the pictures. I chose to present my information in a movie because I like making movies and I am good with technology. I didn’t want to do a TED Talk or an Ignite because you need to memorize your script and you can mess up in front of everyone, in a movie, you can do things over and over again until it is perfect. 

Some challenges I had with my presentation were that sometimes I couldn’t find the right picture to go with my information, I had to search for more pictures or change the information I was presenting.

 

I learned a lot about cars and research over the course of this project. I learned that researching can be challenging but you should keep trying. Also, sometimes things won’t work the way you want them to so you have to improvise. I also learned a lot about how cars have changed over time to become safer and faster. Cars have become faster because they have stronger engines. Cars have become safer because of new technology. Capstone was super fun and amazing project, I learned a lot, and I look forward to presenting and finishing my project.

Capstone Blog #2

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The purpose of the interview is so you can gather more information about your topic, the person you are interviewing should have new information. I think that the interview is very helpful because I got a lot of new information from it.

The process of figuring out who to interview was easy, my parents helped me find an interview. I thought I could interview someone who was a mechanical engineer or knew a lot about cars so that I could get as much information as possible. I found out that there was a place called, Mercedes of White Plains that fixed cars. I interviewed a person that was a service advisor named Frank DeMaio. When I wrote my interview questions, I included my sub-questions so I could get more information. Also, I came up with the rest of my questions by asking about safety, the speed of the car, and how the engine affects the speed of the car. Some of my questions are, what safety equipment has been added to modern cars for passengers and for the environment? I came up with this question because I knew I needed modern safety equipment so I could compare it to ancient safety equipment. Another question is, explain how hybrid cars (cars that run on gasoline and electricity) help the environment. I asked this question because one of my sub-questions is, how are modern cars safer for passengers and for the environment? I needed to know about safety for the environment.

My experience conducting the interview was good. The interview didn’t go as expected. The interview didn’t go as expected because it only took five minutes because the person that I interviewed already answered the questions and had them written down so I didn’t have to ask him. Something that I learned was that before modern cars, everything was metal and big and bulky in the old days because they thought that it would be strong. Today, we have impact zones that spread the impact throughout the car instead of the car getting hit in one place. The impact zones help because they lessen the impact on the car because they spread the impact throughout the car.

The interview was very helpful, I got a lot of information that I didn’t know before the interview. I look forward to making and presenting my Capstone project. I hope my project is great.

Immigration Blog Post #1

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In our immigration unit, we learned about push/pull factors. To understand immigration better, I am conducting an interview with an immigrant, the immigrant that I chose was Yasong Jin. Once I had the interview finished, I’d have to transform the information into a Wevideo or an adobe creative cloud video.

The process of preparing for the interview was hard, I had to watch BrainPOP videos and the immigration videos of fifth-graders before me to help create good questions. I had to create a list of twenty questions so I could have multiple questions to choose from.  I couldn’t have more than fifteen questions or less than ten questions. The questions had to be open-ended, which means they had to be answered with more than one word. I had to consider if the questions I chose were important or not so important, it was hard to decide which questions should be cut out and which questions should remain.

The interview was conducted in person. It didn’t really go as expected because it was hard to get my immigrant to go into further detail, I had to tell him things like Describe…Tell more about…why or why not? I could get enough information. I learned that when you conduct an interview, you have to be patient and let the person you are interviewing get comfortable and you have to allow them to remember things. The most interesting thing I learned from the person I interviewed was that his family taught him how to cook when he immigrated to America.

In conclusion, the immigration interview was hard and I learned a lesson, I learned that you have to be patient, kind and let the person you are interviewing get comfortable. Also, I hope that the next part of this project is more fun than this part is.

Immigration Blog Post #2

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Overall, the immigration project was pretty fun, creating the video was easy because it was written out in my script.

The process of making my video was challenging, I had to create a script so I knew what to say and what to put on the slides. Selecting images was challenging because I didn’t have many photos of my immigrant. I had to use photos from Adobe Creative Cloud to sub for the photos I didn’t have. Something challenging was that when I put in photos, they would be really big so I would have to crop them. Besides the photos being big the rest was easy and enjoyable.

I learned that when conducting interviews, you must be patient and gentle so the person you are interviewing will get comfortable and be able to tell you more things. I learned that my immigrant already knew how to read, write, and speak English when he got to America. Also, I learned that my immigrant needed to learn how to cook when he got here. When creating a video, you have to be calm so you don’t mess up even if something is going wrong or you’re device is glitching.

Overall, this project was very fun and challenging, and I learned things about interviewing, I also learned things about my immigrant.

Constitution Project Reflection

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I choose to research the question “what is Freedom of Speech and how does it work?” because I wanted to know what kinds of speech is free and what kinds of speech is prohibited. I also wanted to research Freedom of Speech because Freedom of Speech is the thing that gives us the ability to express our opinions without government restraint. Being able to freely speak and express opinions without government restraint is important so I wanted to deeply research Freedom of Speech.

In this project, I found finding resources challenging. I also found that getting information that isn’t the same was challenging because I went to different websites and some of the websites said similar things about Freedom of Speech. For example, history.com said, “While freedom of speech pertains mostly to the spoken or written word, it also protects some forms of symbolic speech. Symbolic speech is an action that expresses an idea.” And Legal Information Institute said, “You can exercise the freedom of speech is a direct (in words) or a symbolic (in an action) way.”

Overall I think I did a good job explaining my question and what I learned in my screencast, I answered my question, and I explained what is allowed in free speech and what speech is prohibited.