Reflexión

  • Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre tirar basura. 
  • Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue lavarse y el cuidado de limpio son importantes.
  • Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque es muy creativo y divertido. 
  • Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría hicimos un gran video con un gran mensaje. 

Quarter 2 BM. 4th Amendment

Uyen Nguyen, Natasha Ashby and Amaris Romero

Link to Natasha Ashby 
Link to Amaris Romero 
Link to our wonderful sources! 

Link to the wonderful VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!

Reflection

Uyen Nguyen 

D band

 

As a group, Natasha, Amaris and I decided to touch on the 4th Amendment to privacy rights and especially the student's privacy rights in school because this is something that's affecting others students compare to what we're dealing with as a special program at Science Leadership Academy. Although it's a really big issue for us because we are starting to getting into the zone of dealing with privacy rights that others are dealing with at their school. Since we're the only school without metal detectors and we have our own system of privacy rights, it was really important for us to know about other's rights as well as what will happen to us if we are being enforce to the rules that the District is giving to us. Therefore, we decided to go out to different school for an investigation as well as get to know about the similarity and differences between our community and the Districts community. 

While going along in the project, we've learned more about our 4th Amendment better and get to know about the affects from it. Not only that but we get to experience what other teenagers have to face at their own school since we do not run on the same system as theirs. It was really surprising for us because we are one of the most luckiest community that does not have to face the privacy protection and searches as of to other schools. 

Although we did get to stick with out plans on visiting other school and community to seek out for opinions as well as experiences. We did run into a lot of trouble because people were having issues with answering our questions, many did not have time to give us a summary of what we need to know. Also it was harder to schedule with other schools since they have a harder rule system than what we have here at SLA. We were also having problem with putting the whole documentary together due to the lack of Cspans footage we were able to find that will touch on our topic. We also have trouble with cutting out many opinions in the interview and picked out the right one for the documentary. 

Over all the project went really well because we were able to work together as a team all the way till the end and as well as getting everything we needed for the video. However, if we were going to do this project again I would suggest that as a group we could have spend a little more time on this video, if we get to visit more schools and get more opinions on this topic than it would have been one informative documentary. It was wonderful feeling to work on this project and learn new things.   

Q2 AmGov 4th Amendment Cspan PROJECT

Link to Uyen's Page
Link to Amaris Page
Link to Sources

Our video! :D 


​Reflection

I chose this topic because when I was looking for topics, this one stuck out to me. It interests me because it actually affected me personally. From the beginning, I wanted my topic to have something to do with high schools students, considering that is what I am. When I saw this topic and looked at the amendments, I knew that this was going to be it!


I liked that fact that this project was a documentary. I am currently in a documentary class, where I learn a lot about how to create documentaries, edit and film. I was able to use the skills I have attained to my advantage. Since, this wasn't so much of a creative project because Cspan told us what we needed to do and what it needed to be about, I was ready to go at it, in the proper way.

I think the most challenging thing was getting the answers we wanted from people's interviews. We expected people to say certain things that they did not say and some were not as useful as we hoped. Therefore, it was becoming challenging for us to try and convey the message that we were intending for the audience to get from the video. It was also challenging to get interviews, in general. At Ben Franklin, we weren't allowed to film some interviews because the principal would need parental consent. THEN we couldn't even find enough Cspan footage! I honestly don't know how they don't have more useful footage about the 4th amendment and high schools because it is an important issue that all students should be aware of.

The most interesting event that I investigated had to be the metal detectors. SLA does not have any and are the only public high school in philadelphia to not have any. I went to Central High School and had to go through metal detectors as a freshman. I was confused and scared because I honestly didn't think that one of the best schools in Philadelphia would have their students going through metal detectors, as if we're at an airport, in which TSA has tightened their security checks due to a terrorist attack. When I went to Ben Franklin and interviewed students about their thoughts of it, it was interesting to hear different opinions. Some students didn't think much of the metal detectors while others felt violated. SLA is so different from other high schools. I thought it was just based on the way we learn but it really isn't.

We could improve this project by definitely getting an interview with Mr. Lehmann and by using outside videos. There was not much CSPAN footage of our amendment at all pertaining to our topic so if we could use other educational videos in our project, it would be better. Besides that, I really enjoyed the project and my partners. We all brainstormed a lot of ideas and really put together a list of good interview questions, so that we could find what we were looking for. I learned a lot about the 4th amendment and how metal detectors could violate that right, but it all depends on the person. If SLA were to get metal detectors and have random searches, it would change the whole vibe of the school. While as, in Ben Franklin, Principal Johnson would rather have them, in order to keep his students safe so that he does not have to make "that" phone call. That is not saying that SLA is not safe, because it is the only school I actually feel safe in. 

TFarah Q2 History BM

Go to Luna's page, Rita's page, or watch our benchmark here!

We chose this topic because it directly affects all three of us, because we're girls who will soon be eligible to vote.  I enjoyed this project because in past years I've learned a little about it in school, but there were so many details I'd never known before that were really interesting, like how at one point the 14th amendment's passage depended on a single man named Harry Burns, who went to vote with a note in his pocket from his mother telling him to vote in favor of female suffrage.  It helped me better appreciate the struggle that the suffragists went through, and the political divide that in fact is pretty similar to the way we're divided today.  The most challenging part was deciding how to present our project, which gave us some trouble.  We went through a few ideas, like fake Facebook news feeds, and had to scrap everything and start over at one point.  I do think our final idea was good, although the whole project could probably have been improved by better acting.
I think the final touches on the project--finding and adding C-SPAN footage, adding pictures to the video, etc--went particularly well.  We were able to find some great photographs, ads and political cartoons that I think really enhanced the whole thing.  It also helped make up for the fact that on the whole, the actual footage we taped of ourselves was not great.  If we were to do it over again, I think I'd want to try filming from other angles and non-terrible acting.
I learned a lot about the 14th amendment and the long struggle to get it passed.  I also learned how great it feels to do things ahead of schedule.  I'm a natural procrastinator, as is Rita, but Luna is great at staying on top of things and she helped keep us on track.  I think having experienced the amazing feeling of not doing everything at the last minute, I'll be more likely to do it myself in the future.

The "V" Word: A fight to protect women's bodies

Alaya White & Alexis Beckton

  • Why did you choose this topic?
    I choose this topic because I think women's rights are often looked past and in the time of elections people get very uptight about pro-life and pro-choice but don't take into consideration the women's feelings. 

  • What did you like about this project? What was most challenging?
    I think the challenging part was deciding how to convey what we wanted to say and finding the most effective way to do it. 

  • Describe the most interesting fact or event that you investigated.
    The most interesting fact that we investigated was the fact that in 2002 a study about sexual behaviors in children showed that girls are having sex as young as 12. 

  • How could this project be improved?
    We could have put movie examples and real world examples. 
  • Where did you run into trouble with the project?
    We ran into the most trouble submitting the project because our video wasn't the right type of file and converting the project took alot longer than we had expected. 
     
  • What went well with this project?
    The amount of participation we received from students was surprising. I usually try not to count on people willingly working on a video because of time constraints or people just not volunteering but this time was completely different. 

  • If you had it to do over, what would you change about your decisions or your process?
    I think we would have really used the last day to super edit and just tighten the project up more. 

  • What did you learn?
    That people really do want to have health education !!!

La reflexión

Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre la contaminación.

Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue la importancia de caminar. 

Me gusta el PSA de mi groupo era un tema interesante y fue muy informativo

Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez yo cambiaría no tenemos video y solo fotos.

Quarter 2 Benchmark : Student Free Speech

By Markia & Elisa

Video

Sources

Reflection :
My partner and I chose this topic because in the requirements aid that we had to talk about something that we felt relates to us. Since we go to a technology based school we decided to do something that had to do with censoring and student free speech. It was thoroughly enjoying to complete this project because I was able to learn about cases in the past. During a time when students didn't really have much of a say in anything.
Other than that my partner and I were really able to talk about and form our own opinions about our topic. One of the things we research that made me really think about the different ways students can express their free speech rights was the case of Tinker v. Des Moines. The entire case was the school district opposing black bands being worn in protest of the Vietnam war. I really wanted our project to make people think  about how student free speech has and has not changed since then. 
I think we did a good job of making people think afte they watched the video but some of the imagery in our project could have been better. For example, when we posted some of the things we as students have to deal with we should have had a visual behind the text of something related. Other than that I believe our product came out well my partner and I really collaborated to create our video, and personally I really think we did a good job.Our video was interesting and related students today with the first amendment. We learned ourselves about the fine line between what is seen as inappropriate and self expression. 

Q2 History BM

​Link to Luna's page
Link to video

Reflection:

We chose this topic because it was easy to explain about and it really was important to us as voters and as women. I liked how the project gave us a free reign to make the video however we wanted, although I found it challenging that it was supposed to be a video. My group had three people in it and getting us to share the work equally was very difficult because there is no place online that lets us all share and edit together. The most interesting fact that we learned was that the final vote for women's suffrage came down to one man and that, that one man was very whipped by his mother. This project could be improved by making the time limit shorter because 5-8min of video is a lot of video. We ran into trouble with this video when it came to editing time because we had to do all the exports and imports and sharing onto a flash drive then give it to someone else then do it again so that everybody could do an equal amount of work. I thought that our teamwork went very well, I was in a good group that pulled their weight and we worked very well as a team. If I had to do it over I would change the way we went about creating the video. The video itself could have been better with more angles and shots to get all of our full faces in it, we could have probably gone about editing the video in a better way and you could clearly see that we were reading from a script. I learned more about women's history and more about myself with regards to how I feel our our government and our government in the past.

The 10th Amendment and "Us"

My group (Mathhew Scuderi and Julia Boyer) and I chose the 10th amendment because it was something that not everyone in the class was researching. We weren't too schooled on the powers reserved to the states and wanted to become more informed on the subject. In completing this project, we learned that the basic idea of the tenth amendment is that there are certain powers or laws, rather, that the states have control over. The nation should not interfere with the way that the states handle issues like education or gay marriage, among other issues. The tenth amendment is the reason why Obama can't forcefully demand that all states require their children to go to school until the age of 18; he has to ask the states permission to implement this law because education is a power reserved to the states. Among all of the issues that we could have dwelled on for this project, we chose to research education as a power reserved to the states. 

I liked this project because we were given the opportunity to use video as a our means of media presentation. It is not something that I, personally, usually use to present, so it is exciting whenever I can make a video for one of my projects. I also liked that we were given the liberty to speak with outside professionals about our topic and could record interviews, not only with said professionals, but also with our school peers. We were able to put the student voice into our documentary. 

As with all of the projects that we complete in school, our documentary could have used some growing room. If I were to do the documentary again, I would start on the project a little earlier and incorporate more dimensions of the issue at hand into the documentary (How we can fix the problems, the funds that we have to make changes to the way that this works, connect education as a power reserved to the state to the powers of the states under the 10th amendment, etc.) I feel like we could've done a better job connecting education back to the 10th amendment. 

We ran into a little bit of trouble with this project after winter break because I missed school for a week, as I was with my family in Puerto Rico. I was not back on time to work with my group on the project in the beginning of January, and had to wait a week before I could see them again. I worked on finding information for the group on our issue and posting it on our google doc while I was still away and after a week was able to come together with my group once again to touch base about what we needed to complete our project. My absence threw me back a little because I could not effectively find out what my group needed from me to complete the project. We fixed our problem by making sure that we all completed our designated jobs on our own time so that when we did meet, we could present what we had to import to the project. In the end we put all of our individual pieces into one project. We were all pretty on point and prompt with all of our individual tasks which helped us to complete our project on time. We also made sure to collect our c-span footage really so that when it came to put all together, we wouldn't have to spend too much downloading the videos from the site and adding them to our movie.  If I had to do it over again, I would probably begin my project before I left to Puerto Rico, so that my group could have a big bulk of it already done before the new school years starts up again. If we would have done this, we would have saved ourselves a lot of stress and time.

 I learned that the States can decide how they deal with issues like education, marriage, and gun certification. The Federal government cannot interfere with this. The problem is that sometimes, since the federal government funds the states, federal policy tends to leak into the state policy (because states need funding and support from the federal government). 

To see our bibliography, click here

If you are having trouble viewing the video, please click here

Focusing on the 14th Amendment.

For this benchmark I worked with Ayanna Robinson we focused on the 14th Amendment. I will be uploading our citations and Ayanna will be uploading our video and then we will both make sure we have everything on both pages at a later time. Below are the sources we used. 

Mulligan, Robert, dir. To Kill A Mocking Bird. Writ. Horton Foote. Universal , 1963. Film.

 

Comer, Dawn, writ. Our Friend, Martin. Dir. Rob Smiley, and Vincenzo Trippetti. DiC Enterprises, 1999. Film.

 

Brooks, James, dir. Spanglish. Columbia Pictures Corporation, 2004. Film.

 

The Ed Show

 

Fox News

 

C-SPAN

Medio Ambiente PSA (Force y Manton)

Introducción
Hicimos un PSA sobre el contaminacion del aire en Filadelfia.

Es un asusnto importante a nosotros porque nosotros queremos aire que no esta contaminé.

Esperamos que el público de Filadelfia ayudarán nosotros con nuesto meta.


Mi Reflexión
Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre el contaminacion del aire en filadelfia.

Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue que hay muchos, muchos cosas que nosotros podemos hacer a ayudar el medio abiente.

Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque yo pienso es un muy bien PSA, y yo peinso que es un poco comimico tambien.

Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo pienso que yo cambiaría los tiempos que nosotros hacemos algas cosas.

Quarter 2 Benchmark: 14th Amendment

I would like to start out by saying me and my partner Samantha have learned alot more about ourselves and our struggles with our past and our present by completing this project. Using the 14th amendment with both of us having ethic backgrounds and expeirencing discrimination in some sort of way whether it be school, jobs, or anything that we as people can come into contact where you can possibly be judged for, we deal with on a daily basis. I know that not only is the 14th amendment important to me and Samantha, but that law being written im the past has given us ample opputunities for today and will give us even more our futures. We hope that you enjoy our video.
One of the main reasons why me I choose amendent 14 is because I realized that without this amendent there would be a drastic change to,the lives we lead today. although there are many topics that fall under the 14th amendment the one that hit close to home was discrimination. We live in a time where everyone has the same equal rights but not for a second do I forget the people who fought, died and marched to get those rights granted. I did this amendment because I could relate to the feeling the desire and the privelege of people who were discriminated against but ultimately survived and knew they deserved better and got better. What I enjoyed most about this project is that it allowed me to take time out to think about the day to day things I do without even thinking about it twice and really examine if this amendment was not there, there would be many things even on my way to school that would be difficult for me to do, on the other hand the most challenging thing to do was to relate the message though a presentation even though there was a Set way you had to present it making your video unique and different was the hard part. While doing this project the most interesting fact is that people who we incuded in our video were good at explaining thier point of views on the subject and had stories as to go with our topic that was interesting. I loved doing this project but overall if there was anything I could improve it would be our timing and our editing. The timing part was good but towards we had some problems with sound and what not, but if we would have had more time that we paced ourseleves we could have had it perfect. And editing it was both our first time working with editing so that was kind of difficult. What I learned is that don't forget that life is how itbecuase of these amendments.
Bibliography

HIV/AIDS Discrimination - Recent Court Cases, Issues and Articles." American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.aclu.org/hiv-aids/hivaids-discrimination>.


"HIV & Your Civil Rights: Know Your Rights in the Workplace." American Civil Liberties Union. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights_hiv-aids/hiv-civil-rightsbrknow-your-rights-workplace>.


"History of U.S. Since 1877 Important People, Terms, and Events." Colorado Public Record Search. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://coloradopublicrecordsearch.org/95/history-of-u-s-since-1877-important-people-terms-and-events/>.


Somerville voices article. web 23 Jan. 2012<http://www.somervillevoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/somerville_ma_schools_graduation_and_drop_out_by_race_ethnicity-1.jpg>. 


Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to be Far Lower Than Expected. web 23 Jan. 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html>. 


How Important is Cultural Diversity at school your school. web 23 Jan. 21012 <http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/defining-your-ideal/284-cultural-diversity-at-school.gs 


Racial Disparity in School Suspensions. web 23 Jan.2012 < http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/education/14suspend.html


Milestones in African American Education. web 23 Jan. 2012 <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0872844.html>

Reflection

Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre la importancia del agua limpia.
      Mediante la creación de la PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue que el agua la suciedad duele más que sólo las personas.
      Me gusta mi grupo PSA, ya que escuchaba a mis ideas.
      Si yo pudiera hacer de nuevo el proyecto, que cambiaría el tiempo que tomó para que empecemos.

http://scienceleadership.org/blog/PSA:2

PSA

Hicimos un PSA de agua potable en Filadelfia. Se trata de una muy importante para nosotros porque el río de Schuylkill es uno de los más sucios ríos. Esperamos que el público de Filadelfia no va a contaminar el agua.

The 26th amendment - StudentCam Benchmark

Created by:
Ali Ahmed
William Marsh
Tim Mamrol

My group chose this topic because it was the most relevant topic we found. As young men, the voting age is massively significant to us, especially because we will all be 18 by the next presidential election. I liked the freedom we were given in completing this project, and I also especially like working in video and digital media. I found the most difficult aspect of this project to be finding people to interview. My parents (Earl Marsh and B Hibbs) agreed to be interviewed eagerly, but Ali and I spent at least two hours asking people to answer a few questions and found all of three people that were willing to speak to us, out of dozens. I was fascinated and horrified by the Kent State shootings in response to student protest of the Vietnam war and the draft. As someone who will be going to college this fall, while not of the same era as this horrible event, it was startling to think that someone of my age had been killed by his own country for protests. 

I think that the project would have been better if we got more interviews and better stock footage to use for voice overs. I was a bit disappointed by how bland some of the images we had to use for our voice overs. I ran into issues with this project with organizing group mates and formatting the video. When changing the format of the video into flv (the preferred format), the audio consistently cut out in the same spot in three different sets of encoded video. I changed the settings around to the same settings used for the full time digital video class, but the audio still cut out. I think that our script and the interviews were done very well. If this project were to be repeated, I would try to distribute the work more evenly. I feel that I did a large amount of the work, with a decent amount of help from one of my group mates, while the other was largely uninvolved. I learned that the voting age had not always been 18, but perhaps more importantly I learned how valuable a draft can be. While I do not want to be drafted, or have the draft reinstated, the draft can be held responsible for a huge change in the politics of the nation. By forcibly taking mother's sons away from her, to be sent halfway across the world to fight in a brutal, controversial war, the draft really made people in the U.S care about the politics of the nation and the world. While I don't like the idea of the draft, I must say it is an incredible source of motivation for the youth of America, something that is seldom seen in the voting environment.

Inflation Valuation - StudentCam Entry

Learn about how one small clause in the constitution affects every decision we make!



As one who has always been interested in economics, I have always understood the importance of inflation and the valuation of the US Dollar on our purchasing power. As a result, I decided to study congress' ability to value money as found in the constitution. My interest in this topic certainly allowed me to enjoy both the research and filming of the project. However, the most difficult portion was certainly getting stock footage of various people doing random acts, as many people often feel uncomfortable with being filmed.

One of the most interesting things that I discovered through my benchmark was that there was an "eagle" in addition to the standard dollar. This was primarily interesting since the eagle no longer exists in our economy, nor do many of them still remain. I would've liked to who an eagle in my project; however, I had not found any. My project could've mostly been improved by focusing a little more on how it directly affects myself; I spent much of the time focused on how it affects everyone in their daily lives. Despite this, I think that this project was certainly done very well, as it explained a topic in a way that was both easy to understand itself and its implications. Overall, in addition to learning some tricks for documentaries, this project taught me much about the economic system that affects our daily lives.

Q2 Benchmark - Freedom of Religion

This was LaMaya's, Tyler's, & my project for our Q2 Benchmark. The provision we decided to focus on was the freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Click to watch the video below.
Benchmark Reflection:

  • Why did you choose this topic?
    My group members and I wanted to choose a topic that was personal to us, original in such a way that it was not cliché and share our opinions and ideas openly on.
  • What did you like about this project? What was most challenging?
    I liked that we didn't necessarily have to stay in one section of the Constitution, we were able to choose what part in the Constitution we wanted to. I found myself most successful being able to speak freely on my ideas and opinions on this topic as did my teammates. The most challenging thing though, in this project was figuring out how to fit the C-SPAN footage in, in such a way that everything transitioned smoothly.

  • Describe the most interesting fact or event that you investigated.
    The most interesting fact that I have investigated was how before the Constitution there was quite a bit of persecution for people's beliefs but the same people who came to this country because they were being persecuted in Europe for their religion, did the same thing once they got here. It seems to me that history repeats itself if we let it without a doubt.

  • How could this project be improved?
    I think we could have have switched the camera maybe more than what we did. I also think this could have been improved by ways of having clearer C-SPAN footage, but that was just poor video quality on their part.
  • Where did you run into trouble with the project?
    We ran into trouble when trying to convert the video into an FLV file but finally my computer cooperated with me and I was able to upload the video.

  • What went well with this project?
    My group members and I worked really well with this project everyone was able to agree on one thing and really got what we needed to do done. The music, the transitions and the overall look of this project was great and I am proud of the finished product.

  • If you had it to do over, what would you change about your decisions or your process?
    If I had to do this process over again, I would try to record everyone's parts in the same place to keep some type of constant there or at least the background is close to what the other person has. Also I would have added in a skit or something showing what it would be like without that provision in the Constitution.

  • What did you learn?
    I learned just how necessary it is to have the freedom of religion and how strongly some feel about it in terms of them having an opposition to people believing differently than they do. I also learned more about my team members and how they feel about religion, I actually did not know that they sort of felt the same as I do about having the freedom of religion.

reflexión, español 3, Q2BM, Brown

Escribe una relfexión personal en español sobre el PSA en tu blog usando este formato: 
  • Mi grupo y yo hicimos un PSA sobre basura.
  • Por crear el PSA, la cosa más importante que aprendí fue afecta el ambiente muy mal porque destruye nuestra imagen como ciudad.
  • Me gusta el PSA de mi group porque muy útil y la comprensión.
  • Si pudiera hacer el proyecto otra vez, yo cambiaría probablemente el tema porque me lo va a querer explorar un poco más.

Charity Water

The product in which I created an advertisement for is charity water. It isn’t necessarily a product but a foundation that brings 3rd world developing countries clean water. The message portrayed in my advisement is that everything counts. The slightest amount of money can even make a difference. For example the picture located in the center says, " $20 dollars can give on person clean water". Which isn’t much. When creating this advertisement I didn’t have a specific intended audience I fell as though this add could catch anyone’s attention and would make people stop and look. So I would say my audience would be all different types of people in any age range. I think creating a print add is effective because people can walk by and see it and they really don’t even have to stop. Also my advertisement has bright color that stand out, its visually appealing. If I were to complete this Benchmark again I would do a hand drawn print add because I feel as though I created a great advertisement but it could have been more creative. 

 

 

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