March 30

Immigration Interview – Blog Post #1

When I found out about the immigration project I was nervous because I could not find an immigrant that I could interview. I remembered my babysitter Manuela Chocoj was an immigrant and I could interview her. Making questions to ask her was hard because they needed to be questions that she could give a lot of details about. I got 11 questions to ask her. While making the questions I needed to think outside of the box. My friends and parents also helped make my questions even better than they were before. Overall interviewing Manuela was very interesting.

Preparing for the interview was hard but also fun. I needed to find questions to ask and I needed to find a day where I was free to interview her. I needed to remember that if she does not say much that I would need to ask her to tell more when the interview happens. While making the questions I did not have any resources. I got ideas from my friends and made most of them myself. While making the list of questions I considered removing questions that were not necessary and questions that were yes or no or only one answer questions.

The interview was not hard. It took 5 minutes and she answered the questions with a lot of detail. I had 14 questions to ask her and needed to write more as we were asking the questions because I did not have that much information to include in the video that we are going to make. While interviewing her I asked her to add a little more detail and sometimes she could not understand the question so I needed to repeat it to her. She did not get sad if I asked her questions about her old place. It did not give her bad memories.

In conclusion, the interview and preparing for the interview was very fun and some parts were hard. I am excited to start making the video.

March 11

Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2

Making the Rube Goldberg machine was very fun. It let me use creativity and confidence. I needed to be confident in my decisions and creative about what objects I would use. The hardest part overall was deciding what to use. At one point I tried using books that were not very heavy. I decided to use Harry Potter books instead because they were heavy and could play the piano. My project had 8 steps and worked on my 5th try!

 

While making the Rube Goldberg machine I learned a lot of things depend on weight and size. For example, when I needed to figure out what would make the toy car go down the ramp I needed to decide between one ball or the other. One of them was too light and would not knock the toy car down the ramp! the other ball knocked the toy car down.

 

Making the video was very hard. I needed to add all my videos, audio, and effects! my video was 2 minutes and 9 seconds long. I added in the text and wrote what I changed and which take it is. I also needed to add my sketch of the machine. The video was really fun to make!

 

In conclusion, the machine and video were very fun to make. It was hard to make the project and video but it was exciting, fun, and joyful to figure out what works and what does not. I would love to do this again! I give credits for helping and filming to my mom and director credits to me!

My sketch and Video:

March 4

Debate Plastic Bags Con

When I found out we were doing a debate about plastic bags I was very happy. I got a group and we started reading articles, highlighting, and annotating. That is how I got all my research! When we found out if we were on the pro or con side I was very happy with what I got! Even though I did not really agree with my topic I still researched it.  I got a lot of research from the articles. We started writing down reasons and evidence. I was focusing on how plastic was bad for the environment and my partner focused on how it is bad for the animals. We started doing counterarguments with My other group members that were doing the pro side. I did the intro and reasons. My partner did the conclusion and reason.  The debate experience was really fun!