Saeri’s blog

Medieval Reflection

1. What did I feel successful doing during the process of the project? What am I proud of?

I felt successful during this process of the project when I finished my research. I used EBSCO for my whole research and I could find my information about monks and monasteries easily. EBSCO had lots of good sources that were easy to understand and were organized. I felt successful because I knew I had collected enough of information to write paragraphs just from my research records and I realized I had chosen a right topic for myself. The last time we did research, my first topic was trading in Ancient Rome. Most of the articles I found were too hard for me and I couldn’t find much information that I had to change my topic.

Something I’m very proud of about this project is my model of the monastery. It took me about 2 weeks to plan out, cut out the pieces (which I had about 50), paint them, and glue them together. Although it didn’t turn out exactly the same as I planned, when I finished the whole thing, it was pretty satisfying.

2. What new skills did I value learning?

The new skill I obtained from this project was the organization skill and skill to adjust the level depending on the adience’s age. From this project, there were no deadlines in particular part but had only deadline for the whole completed project. At the beginning, I finished my research and games on time so I thought I was doing good on my planning. When I started on my model, it was more complicated than I thought and it took me longer than I expected. And since I was rushing too much and didn’t measure properly, I had to edit my model so many times. This took me even more longer. Although I finished it before the fair, I think I could have done much better if I started it earlier.

Th skill to adjust the level for younger kids was very interesting to me. The medieval fair was meant for younger elementary kids. I had been writing and reading the articles in my level so when I first typed out my first speech for the fair, I realized that small kids such as 2nd graders wouldn’t be able to understand it. So what I had to do was to make my paragraphs easier for little ones using the same information. Another thing I did was to make my speech more interesting. I realized when I went to other class’s fair that audience would be bored and would want to leave the booth if your speech was boring. I added more active things such as asking them to raise their hand or take a guess at some of my questions. I think this was one of the important skill I learned from this project.

3. What was challenging during the process of completing the project? With what did I struggle?

The challenging part of the project was the making of the model. I used one picture of monastery I got from EBSCO. It was also hard because I had to do lots of maths. I measured each side of the building in the picture and multiplied by 4 so it would be bigger. Then one my challenge was here because on the picture, the building it 2-D not 3-D so I had to think logically and guess how long it would be. Then I had to cut out the piece from soft cardboard and see if it worked. I also had to make roofs and I even had to measure the angles. The painting part was not as challenging but the last part where I had to put all the pieces together was very challenging because I had to find the right pieces (many pieces were similar with their shapes or the shapes of the windows) then I had to hold them together until I was sure the pieces were strongly sticked together with the white glue. It took me long time and I think that was the most challenging thing I’ve done from this medieval project.

4. How could I have improved my process so that I would have been more effective?

I think I could have finished everything and had them all ready earlier by planning everything right. Just like what I said in previous questions, I did plan things but when I was doing my model, I realized I had more works to do than I thought so I ended it upworking on it later than what I planned. I could have also did parts of the project in order. When I started on my 3nd part: the game, I realized I should have written more information in the oral presentation for my questions on the game. So I had to edit those speech and had to restart on my game. I think I could have thought more about each part so I’d have it perfect and wouldn’t make the other parts of the project confusing.

5. Did I effectively create an age-appropriate presentation and game for the elementary students? (please explain how you know it was appropriate or how you could have changed it to be more appropriate)

I think I created an age-appropriate presentation, but I think I could have done little better on the game. For my visual presentation, I put some labels on my visual presentation (model) so my audience would know each parts of the monastery I’m talking about. For my oral presentation, I used lots of simple and easy words that 2nd graders would know. Then I organized all my information so each time I start talking about different things, the audience would know that I’m talking about different category and wouldn’t get confused. I think my game’s concept was simple enough for little kids to understand. It was my questions cards that I had problems with.  I think my questions were bit confusing and were little too hard. Also, for some of the questions, I used hard words for the small kids. But one thing that I think I could have thought about it was the size of the cards. My cards were quite small so the words printed were also small. I didn’t realize how most of the elementary kids liked to read the sentences aloud. Since my letters were small, they had a hard time reading it aloud and when I tried to read it aloud to them, they didn’t understand. I thinkmy game would have been more interesting and fun to them if I edited that particular cards.

Jeopardy Reflection

1. What did I feel successful doing during the process of the project? What am I proud of?
I felt successful when I completed the paragraphs about Octavian because I worked very hard on the research. Usually, when I did research, my topics were harder to find information on or the articles were harder to understand that when I finished my paragraph, I wasn’t sure if mine made sense when someone else reads it. I’m very proud of our VIP jeopardy game because this was my first ever made game on power point. I first had no idea on how to make one and I also was confused because our instruction sheets weren’t clear. We had to ask other people or communicate with my groupmates and that was also something that I felt really proud of too.

2. What new skills did I value learning?
From this particular projects, I learned a lot of new skills. First I learned how to use workspaces or bookmark artickles on the internet. This wasn’t the only skill I learnd from the research part. I also learned how to look up the information you want only on limited sites. I think this was valued skill for me because when you want to do that same thing in the future, these might help me save time and get the informations i want quckily. When I wrote the paragraph, we had to organize the research records in outline but this wasn’t new to me. What I learned from this is how to write paragraphs like the encyclopedia article. It shouldn’t be exciting like fantasy story but should only tell the readers the facts and not your opinion. It should be boring and the sentences should stay flat. The last skill I learned that might worth a lot is how to make a jeopardy game on power point. This was toally new to me. In this skill, you had to know how to hyperlink things or even to insert a table which was used for score guide. I think this could be helpful in the future if I wanted to share some informations in a fun way using the projector.

3. What was challenging during the process of completing the project? With what did I struggle?
Finding information I want and reorganizing in your own word were probably the hardest thing. It was hard because when I found 2 good article on my topic, Octavian, there were 2 different information on something and I had to make a choice on which article to choose. The organizing part was hard also because I put all the informations in different order so in outlines, I hard to put all of them together in order. I had to struggle with that but I was happy whenI finished it.

4. How could I have improved my process so that I would have been more effective?
I think I could have done a better research because I first didn’t understand the researching process and it took me long that it was supposed to. I think that would have been more effective since I had to do the rest of the work as a homework. I also think we could have done better while making the jeopardy game because we spent nearly half of the limited classtime on choosing the backround of the slides. But I’m pretty satisified with the rest of the work I did on this project.

United Nations World Issues Reflection

#1 Think about the presentations and reflect on the projects your classmates presented and the information you listened to. Explain with details and specific information what you learned, what you found interesting, surprising, or shocking about the presentations you heard in class.

From this presentations, I realized that there were so many things happening in the world. Our topic was Preventing Conflicts and from this, I learned that this was quite a big issues and I think it was very good to know about it. It was surprising that there were lots of wars and that UN had been doing some good works too because I thought it was doing nothing successful. It was also shocking because people have to get injured, killed, or sent out of the country because of these conflicts. The most important thing that I learned from our topic was that it’s very important to prevent them. They can get worse easily and very hard to do it. I think it’s very important to at least think about it.

From other groups’ presentations, I learned about other issues that have been occurring around the world. Something that was very shocking and sad to me was about refugees. In their iMovie presentations, it showed about lots of refugees been sent out of the country and what other countries had done about it. I think it was nice and kind that United States Presidents let some of the refugees to let them come to their country. From all of their pictures, I thought it was such a horrible thing. I didn’t really know about these people so I learned a lot from this.

Another one I learned a lot was about HIV and AID. It was a serious topic which they can’t really prevent the diseases. They come from monkeys or apes and most people from Africa gets them. No curing methods were invented yet and it can slow down but once you get it, you know you’ll have to die one day soon.

The last topic I learned was about Child Soldiers. It’s related to our topic about preventing conflicts. From their presentation, I learned that there are lots of child soldiers around the world, but especially in Africa. One thing that was shocking to me was that dangerous weapons have developed. Lots of child soldiers are been sent because lots of weapons have been easy to carry and use o it’s also possible for small kids (from 7 to 18 years old) to use and have them. They are also forced top buy weapons on their own.

#2 What would you change to improve your project/presentation if you were to do the assignment again?

I would try to organize myself little more and think more carefully. We first decided to do Power Point Presentations because it was the easiest. But at last, we thought we should have done iMovie. I would organize myself more because our Power Point Presentation was so long that people were getting tired and no long paying attention to the presentations. Next time I do these kind of presentations, I would also try to make things more clear so it easy for the audience to understand. I think I was supposed to explain things more ti my group mates because I just gave them a piece of paper and when we were actually presenting, we didn’t know who was really supposed to present the clip. I cared too much only about myself so next time I’d be careful to do things fair in the group.

Homework for Block E and Block H (Friday 6 October)

What have I learned?

I learned that it is really usefull to use Google Earth maps for presentation because we can see the information quickly and easily. It is also because you can see where is the country you are presenting located on and what country is located near. From this presentation, I learned lots of things about what many countries need to challenge on.

 What did I find intersting?

 I found that putting every 6 grades country informations into 1 map was another way we can use in our presentation. I think it is saving time because we don’t have to open up each people’s file and you can get country information immediately.

 What did I find surprising?

 Nothing really surprised me from this presentation at all but it was really good that we get to see other people’s country information when you put your informations into someone’s file. I thought it is like blog because you can share your informations and we don’t need to have any usersname or passwords.

 The reflection from the presentation:

(It is also on Homework for Block E and Block H (Wednesday 4th October))

What did you learn from this task?:

I learned a quick way of collecting information, how to organize them and the way of presenting. When I had to collect information, I only used the links from Ms.C and Ms.N’s blogs because I can save time. Most of the time, I used CIA facts book and inforplease.com for my Tunisia information. To organize them, I first put the definition for each word in Then I put the information in the computer and printed out by Microsoft Word. I learned that we could use Google Earth when we present. By using Google Earth, I also learned about Html. I used Html color chart for the color.

Did you find this difficult or easy? Why?:

All of them were difficult for me because all these stuffs were first time for me and they were bit challenging for me. Using Google Earth was first time for me to use and I didn’t save so I had to repeat my work again and again until Ms.C find out what I was doing wrong.

What else would you like to learn about creating Google Earth maps?:

I would like to know what we could do in Google Earth maps and I want to learn about them. I would also like to learn more about Html we could use in Google Earth maps because it was just so cool!

Add anything else you are thinking about in relation to this project:

I think next time, we can all put our country information into one Google Earth map. Using Bold and Italics would help the map looks better. I think Google Earth is a good way of presenting when you are presenting about Country or the City.

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