Family Tree-December 17, 2014

For the Emerging Technology final, we had to learn about our heritage and family trees.  First, I interviewed my grandma on my dad's side and my grandpa on my mom's side. Here is my dad's and here is my mom's. Then I sent an email to my grandpa on my mom's side because I knew less about their side. Here is the link to the email I sent. Then using all of the information I found, I made a family tree on familyecho.com. You can find my family tree here  Lastly, we had to make a Prezi and an infographic about our families and you can see them below.

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Monday, November 24

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Do you have any traditions? Go in to detail about your plans for the 5 day weekend.

Normally for Thanksgiving my family goes to St. Louis to get together with out family and we all eat at my grandma's house. But this year my grandma is going to Dallas to spend Thanksgiving with my aunt and her family. So instead we will be staying here and eating at my other grandparents' house and going to St. Louis for Christmas.  Each year we go to my cousin's house a day before and make one of the meals that we will be eating on Thanksgiving. I am excited to do that this year since we never get to see each other anymore. We also always watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade which is always a good time. This weekend will probably seem weird because the "traditions" won't be the same this year. Also, this weekend I'm going to hopefully catching up on sleep and some old friends that I never see because of school and sports.  I don't plan to Black Friday shop because I find that boring. I think that it is also a waste of time to wait that long in line for clothes.  Plus I think that we have basketball practice some days which I'm looking forward to because it's always fun to spend time with my friends! 

Photo Credit

Wednesay, November 19

Reflecting on the comments and grade of your stop-motion animation... what you would do differently if you had to do it all over again? Would you manage your time better? Find better lighting for your photos? Come up with a better idea? Explain what you would change about your video.

The video I turned in I was proud of! I was also happy that people enjoyed my video. I could tell by what they commented on the page. They were all positive and it makes me feel like I did a good job.  If I could do it again, I would try to come up with something more clever that could have involved people. I think I did a good job on managing my time well even though I had to do it at home. I think that my lighting and camera angles were pretty good but I would try to do something more out of the box.  I am proud of how I did and I think if I can do it again I would do an even better job.  Stop motion animation is really fun and I would like to do it more often because it makes you feel creative and the finished product looks really cool.


 Photo Credit

Monday, November 17

Tell me about your weekend.

On Friday, I went to my friend Eddie's house for a bonfire with my friends Nick, Morgan, and Cameron. It was a fun time and his dogs are ADORABLE!! They are baby bulldogs I think. Then on Saturday I went to support BV Cheer at BVSW and we won.  They did amazing and it was clear that they were the best and that all of their hard work payed off. Then I got invited to go to Eddie's again to hang out but I decided that I wanted to stay home and do nothing. It was awesome!! Then on Sunday  had nothing to do all day so I just kept telling myself I would do my biology paper but we all know that didn't happen. Then I was going to eat at Kyoto's for Maddie's birthday dinner but they cancelled our reservation and my dad picked me up before after we got seated :( </3 It is my favorite restaurant so I was really sad. But then I went to Orange Leaf with my basketball team for an end of the season party and that was so fun. In the pictures I look a little weird though. I got the most ice cream.

Friday, November 14

Tell me about your experience with taking your stop-motion photos. What problems did you run in to? What did you find difficult about the process? What would you go back and change about HOW you took the photos? Explain yourself.

Taking stop-motion photos was kind of difficult. Trying not to move the camera and come up with a creative topic that would look cool was also difficult for me.  Also a challenge I faced was not having a tripod. Since I had to redo mine at home, I should have brought a tripod and that would have helped tremendously. This project was very time consuming and required you to know how exactly you wanted to place things. I would change the location of my photos to a white background but I think I am proud of how it turned out. I did enjoy this project though, it made us think hard about what we wanted to do.

Tuesday, November 12

For my stop motion animation project, I came up with some different ideas, but I'm still not exactly sure what I am going to do.  I was thinking it would be cool to make it look like my sister was flipping more times than she actually could on our trampoline, but it might be too cold for that.  Some other ideas I came up with were a basketball moving itself up and down a court and then making a basket, a scrabble game with the pieces moving by their selves, or using candy to tell a story. I may not even ed up choosing those, but for now those are my ideas.  All of my ideas can be creative by adding certain features that actually couldn't happen in real life.  I am going to execute my idea quickly and efficiently.

Monday, November 10

What is stop motion animation? If you don't know, look it up! Explain.

Stop motion animation is a cinematic process, or technique used to makes static objects appear as if they were moving.  It is used mainly in claymation and with puppets. In claymation when they make clay figures, they can move them around and do certain things with them to make the illusion that they are moving. Some movies that have used this technique are Coraline, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Chicken Run, and  Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. 

Photo Credit

5 Frame Story Board

Wednesday, November 5

Tell me about your idea for your 5 frame story board. What is the plot? How do you plan to make the story creative? Who's the main character? What is the beginning, middle and end? Tell me about your plan of attack.

For my storyboard, I decided to show pictures of me making lemonade.  I was thinking that it would be fun and I was in the mood to have some delicious lemonade.  The plot is basically me making lemonade.  The beginning is me with the ingredients.  The middle is me gathering water, the mix, and mixing them both together. The end is an artsy picture of the lemonade looking yummy:)  Of course, I am the main character!! Haha. That was my plan of attack. 

Tuesday, November 4

Yesterday you edited and uploaded photos to your blog. Tell me more about your photos. HOW did you edit them? Why did you choose the photos that you did? Explain your assignment.

Yesterday when we started editing photos, I chose the ones I thought I took the best, and the ones with the best quality. Some of the pictures we had to take were hard to come up with ideas, but when I thought of an idea it turned out good and I was proud of how I took it.  When I started using Photoshop.com I tried a whole bunch of different things because I had never used it before.  First, I started by cropping the unnecessary parts out of the pictures.  It was a really cool effect when trying to use the auto correct, saturation, soft focus, hue, etc.  Although they all added cool effects, some of them didn't make the picture look better.  It was a fun website to edit photos and play around with. 

5 Edited Pictures

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Monday, November 3

This weekend I went to two Halloween parties, both on Friday.  At the first one there was a lot of food and it was sort of relaxing.  We sat around a bonfire and then watched a scary movie called Sinister.  I hate scary movies and that was the first one I had ever seen.  I couldn't even watch the whole movie, and ever since I watched it, I have woken up in the middle of the night being scared.  At the next party it was a completely different enviornment.  It was darker and the music that was playing was really loud.  There was a lot of dancing, but since I can't dance, I ate pizza on the couch.  It was overall fun and I was so tired the next day I played Mario Kart all day until my mom asked if I wanted to go shopping, so I went and got a lot of new clothes for fall/winter.

Wednesday, October 29

What do you know about photography and/or photo editing? Do you take photos? How do you take photos? Do you edit photos before posting them on social media? How do you edit them? Explain any background or knowledge you have about photography and photo editing. Do you like it? Do you have any interest?

Photography to me is really interesting. I'm not that great at taking them but I love taking them and how different you can make each photo.  I  don't know that much about how to take it properly and how to edit them the right way.  I do edit them before I post them to social media, just like everyone else does. It's interesting how different you can make the photo look from when you first took it. I really enjoy taking photos on our camera, too.  Then you can really get them focused the way you want them to be. I want to take a photography class next year, because I want to get a lot better at taking pictures and knowing how to make cool edits.

Global Issue Prezi

Monday, October 20

Tell me about your weekend. Share pics!

This weekend went by so slow, but that was okay with me because it was a good one! On Friday I went to the Blue Valley game with some of my friends.  We played Gardener and won 70-20! Then for the rest of the weekend I had six basketball games: three on Saturday, three on Sunday.  It was fun because we got to play against some of our friends. Even though we didn't beat them, it was a very fun and competitive game. My favorite game is our High School league game because I get to play with my friends, and the older girls who are really good.  Overall I had a great weekend and I can't wait for next weekend because it is a long one!

Tuesday, October 14

Below is a letter written to the editor who wrote the article 'Enforcement of dress code creates negative effect' that your blogged about last week. Most of you wrote on your blog that you agreed with the writer. What are your thoughts after reading the letter below and seeing a different perspective. Are they the same? Are the different? Do you agree? Disagree? Explain yourself.



This perspective is very different from a student's. But, it still needs to be thought about when writing a strongly opinionated article. I think that Mrs. Scheuerman's article was opinionated too, but I think she does look at it from both sides, which is important.  I still agree with the article that Riley wrote, but not completely.  The school isn't making us go buy certain clothes.  Teachers have the right to tell us that our outfits are "risque" because like Mrs. Scheuerman said, there is a certain time and place for different attires. I think school needs to be more professional, not showing too much, and if you want to show more or dress a certain way that doesn't go along with Blue Valley's dress code, then dress like that away from school.  I think there are outfits out there that can make you feel good about yourself or that you like, that don't need to show off a lot.  But, I can see from Riley's point of view that it is annoying when teachers say that student's shoulders are distracting boys, because they are shoulders! I don't see how a shoulder can cause someone from not listening to a teacher over them having their phone.  Overall, both the  article and the letter are good to look at because they make your try to see it through someone else's perspective. Both have key points which show that a good middle needs to be reached, so that students and teachers don't continue to find this a problem.

Monday, October 13

I think the set of classes that would be most useful might be different from what I am taking now.  Some of my classes, I don't see myself using in the future, such as what I am learning now in Honors Geometry.  Angles and triangles don't seem like they would be extremely as useful as Spanish. Spanish will keep becoming way more useful as life goes on, with the number of Spanish Speaking Americans increasing. Ideally I think it would be important to learn how to pay taxes or bills.  Maybe there is a class for that I can take.  A lot of my classes as of right now, I can see myself using in the future, but sometimes I think the classes should be taught where students are excited to go to that class because it is their favorite class, not where half of the class is playing on their phone because they are bored out of their minds. So, I wouldn't change too much, except for having more classes to help me in the future and they would be set up more efficiently.  The new names of the classes would stay the same, because I bet there are some out there that we don't know about.

Homelessness Infographic

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Tuesday October 7

The following article was in the September issue of The Tiger Print. Read the article (even if you already have) and respond to it below. What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Consider all perspectives of the article while you respond.

I completely agree with this article that she has written.  I think there should be a fine line between what is okay and what isn't okay.  I agree that girls shouldn't be blamed if their shoulder distracts some teenage boy from a lesson because there was no intent to do that, she was just simply wearing something she likes. I also agree that teachers shouldn't voice their opinion if they don't like an outfit; unless, the outfit is actually a problem.  From a teacher or administrator's point of view, I could see why they find the dress code issues a big deal.  They are probably tired of seeing girls wear short shorts and low cut shirts; but to me, if that is such a huge distraction, why don't they just make us wear uniforms? I think there just needs to be a known difference between short and too short, and that before making a rude comment about someone's outfit, maybe they should try to view it from another perspective. Below, I think that this outfit would be acceptable because even though there is a little crop top, she is wearing a cardigan to cover it up.

  Photo Credit (Actual URL not allowed access by school)

Monday, October 6

Tell me about your weekend! If you don't have anything fun to share, tell me about the city you live in. What do you love about Kansas City? Do you have a favorite place in the city? Favorite team? :) Favorite event? Explain.

This weekend I hungout with my friends, watched the Royals, and played in a basketball game.  Nothing was very exciting but it was super fun to watch the Royals sweep the Angels.  I love that Kansas City has so much enthusiasm when cheering for our teams.  We broke the record for loudest stadium and now everyone is cheering for the Royals to keep winning. My favorite place in Kansas City is probably my house because I can do everything I love there: eat cookies and watch Netflix.  My favorite team is the Royals because they are fun to watch. 

 Photo Credit

Tuesday,September 30

What is an infographic? If you don't know, go look it up. Read about it and then in your own words tell me what an infographic is. What do infographics do? How do they work? What makes a really good infographic?

An infographic is a picture or diagram that represents data.  It gives people a visual image of data instead of just a bunch of numbers. They need to be engaging the audience and shouldn't be boring. They add more information about a certain topic. 

Photo Credit

Monday, September 29

Tell me about your Homecoming weekend! If you didn't participate in the Homecoming festivities, what did you do? Share pics!

This weekend I went to Homecoming for the first time with my all of my friends. It was so fun because I got to get my hair, make up, and nails done, which I don't get done very often.  We took pictures at Sydney Renkemeyer's house and then split up into our dinner groups an my friends and our "dates" ate at Kyoto's.  It was really fun and delicious.  When we got to the dance, I expected it to be dumb and boring because that is all I heard that it was, but surprisingly I had so much fun with all of my friends.  Afterwards, we just went to a friend's house and just hung out.  It was a fun weekend overall because I also had two basketball games and went to the Homecoming football game on Friday.

 

Wednesday, September 24

Imagine Mr. Bacon has asked you to suggest one way of improving Blue Valley High School to make it a better place for students. Think about the changes that are needed at your school. Pick one change you feel would really make a difference and explain what it is and why you'd make the change.

Just from being at this high school for about a month, I really like it.  The school is great and always fun to be at but it could use some improvements.  I think that we could use some more school spirit especially during this spirit week. A lot of the people aren't dressing up because they are too afraid to look silly, when the whole point of it is to look silly and have fun.  I also think that maybe the lunch ladies could be a bit nicer.  Sometimes they take our lunch if we are negative and we have nothing to eat that day except what our friends give us and sometimes our parents just forget to put money on there.  They are either in a really happy mood or a really cranky mood. Even though there are some minor things that Blue Valley could fix, it is an awesome school overall.
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Tuesday, September 23

What are your favorite apps on your phone or tablet? Why?

I have a lot of favorite apps on my phone. Probably my favorite app is the mesages app because I enjoy texting my friends because they keep me entertained when I am bored.  My second favorite app is Bakery Story because you can build your own bakery and make cool foods and you can also play with your friends and see how quickly you can level up.  Some of my other favorite apps are Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. I like Instagram because I can see pictures from my friends' events. For example, when my friends went to homecoming at a different school I can see them and what they looked like. I like Twitter because you can tweet what is on your mind,you can see what your friends are doing, or what is trending on the web. I love using all of these apps but I should probably spend a little less time on them. 

 Photo Credit

Monday, September 22

What is email? When do you use email in your own personal life? List reasons and ways that people use email. What do you know about "email etiquette"?

Email is a way to send stuff on the computer through your email account.  I use email to get my schedules for sports.  I also use email to send my stuff at school to myself so I can access it at home. Lastly, I use email to receive tons of junk mail!! =) Sometimes adults use email to send out important information and seem a little more professional or sometimes they just communicate through email because that is what they are used to. I don't know a lot about email etiquette but I know to keep it professional and first class. 

Photo Credit

Friday, September 19

Now that you've been in Emerging Technology for several weeks... what do you think? Do you think the web tools (Drive, Evernote, Bubbl, etc.) are helpful to you? Do you think they will be helpful throughout high school or even college? Explain.

I think this class has been so helpful in many ways.  The tools that I have learned how to use will be extremely helpful in the future.  I will definitely use them in the future.  I can stay organized way easier and way more efficiently. It makes it so easy to save something onto my Google drive because I can access it anywhere and I don't have to worry about it not saving or me forgetting to email it to myself. All these tools especially Evernote and Bubbl make it so much easier to do research and save the information we found fast and easy to get to.  Researching will be so much easier from now on.

Wednesday, Septmeber 17

Do you enjoy writing? When do you enjoy it? What kind of writing do you enjoy? Why do you think the ability to write is so important no matter what kind of writing it is? Give an example that you enjoyed writing or hated writing. Why?

Sometimes I enjoy writing, but it depends what I am supposed to write about.  I enjoy writing when I can choose what I want to write about.  I don't enjoy writing when it is a timed write and it is argumentative when you need to grab evidence from every article you read.  The ability to write is very important in every kind of writing because if you are told to write a certain way but you only write the way that you enjoy, then you will have a lot of difficulties trying to write a different way. One time I hated writing was when it was a timed write and I couldn't think how I could answer the question that was given so I spent a lot of time trying to think and then I was rushed writing so it wasn't my best quality of writing. 

Tuesday, September 16

Reflect on this quote. Give an example of a time in your life that this might have been the case.

i agree with this quote one hundred percent. In life you can choose to ready yourself for what is coming up that may be difficult or you can wing it and end up doing poorly. This quote could be used for a lot of things. If you have a big test coming up and you hangout with your friends instead of studying, you would be preparing yourself to fail the test that you could have done well on if you had studied. One example, that suits me more, is in sports. Softball isn't my favorite sport so I don't necessarily make it a top priority and sometimes blow off practicing at home.  Then in games I immediately regretted not spending that extra time because I messed up on something that I know I could have done right if I practiced it more.  Sometimes staying up late and being stressed out before a big test or a game, will turn out better for you rather than you blowing it off.

Monday, Septeber 15

What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

This weekend I played in a basketball tournament on Saturday and we won!  It was really fun an I love to spend time with my teammates.  We are always laughing.  This weekend I also went to the Blue Valley game on Friday with all of my friends.  It was so fun to be a part of the high school section even though the freshman section was the worst at cheering.  We won against West and I also got to see my friends that go there, that I haven't seen in forever, so it was nice to see them again. Also, I watched the movies Cyberbully and Nonstop.  They are both really good and I liked watching both of them.

Friday, September 12

What is the importance of research? Why do you need to know how to research? What have you learned in high school about researching topics and finding quality resources? Have you had a helpful teacher that has taught you to research? Explain.

Research is important in many ways. It gives you a lot of knowledge on information you want to know and it teaches us about topics that we may need to know more about in the future.  Knowing how to research is very important.  If you don't know how to research, or set yourself up to make it easier for you to research, getting the facts that you need will be much more difficult to find.  I have learned a lot in high school so far about finding credible sources and how to make my research a lot easier.  Mrs. Edwards has taught me so much about how to know if a source is credible or not and to use databases over websites when you can. 

Photo Credit

Global Issue Selection-Catherine Szukalski

Global Issue Selection
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For my global issue in emerging technology, I chose homelessness.   I have begun researching the issue and you can find my research questions here.

Wednesday, September 10th

Kids these days are spoiled rotten.  They get anything they want and don't work hard towards anything.  All they do is sit around and text one another or spend all day on social media.  The amount of time they spend on their phones is ridiculous. They have to have everything that their friends have, so it is always a competition on who can have the best clothes, newest iPhone, or the best selfie. Kids are showing less and less respect for parents. The words that come out of their mouth are disrespectful and sometimes even bad words at a very young age. They need to mature and not be as crazy.

Tuesday, September 9th

Tell me about the global issue you selected. What do you already know about the issue? What are you looking forward to learning about it? Explain

I chose to do breast cancer because seems like more and more people I know are starting to get cancer. A very close friend of mine had a family member get diagnosed with breast cancer so it has had an impact on my life. Also, my mom did the three day walk for her friend who had breast cancer and it was fun to support her during that. I don't really know that much about breast cancer but I know there could be many ways to treat it. I'm looking forward to learning about the effects and what we can do to prevent from getting it. 

Monday, September 8

What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

This weekend I went to the Blue Valley Football game at Shawnee Mission North.  It was really fun because it really felt like I was finally in high school by being able to participate in the theme, this week's was USA, and get out of the middle school section and into the high school section. It was also fun because we beat the Cougars 29-0! On Saturday, I hung out with friends and had a softball practice and we all ate pizza together afterwards.  On Sunday, I saw my cousin and aunt who just moved to Kansas. Then I went to see The Giver and ate dinner at Jose Peppers with my friends.  Overall, I had a fun weekend.

Friday, September 5th

If I could make up an imaginary report card, there would be a lot of classes that I would get an A in such as:

Watching Netflix: A
Staying up late and sleeping in: A
Making people laugh: A
Procrastinating: A
Eating junk food: A

There are some classes that I would fail such as:

Talking to boys: F
Motivation: F
Getting up when my alarm clock goes off: F
Using my time wisely: F

PSA

Wednesday, September 3

Yesterday I asked your to "think differently" and push yourself to be uncommon with your PSA project using Google Slides. Why do you think I asked you to do that? What is the point? Why not just use bullets and headers? Explain.

I think you wanted us to really try to make it unique and put in a lot of effort.  Typically we just make boring power points and it is the same thing over and over again, which probably gets old to watch and grade.  I think you wanted us to try and do something outside the box and see how well we know Google Slides.  The point is that we shouldn't always do the easiest way possible through everything but that we try to make something different and unusual. For example, I made my own gif by taking screenshots of different positions of images on my Google Slides. I also used the tool bar to make lines and shapes and try to make it more unique. We shouldn't always just use bullets because they are boring, unoriginal, and normal. 

Tuesday, September 2

Tell me all about your Labor Day weekend. What did you do? Include photos!

For Labor Day, my family went to the Lake of the Ozarks with my uncle's family and my grandma. My uncle has a boat, a jetski, and we rent a condo. It's always a blast because we go tubing, fishing, and go karting. I love that I get to see my family because they live in St. Louis, so that means we can't all get together as often as we would prefer.  My favorite part of the trip is when we went tubing because it was so choppy out on the water, we were in the air most of the time.  It did hurt extremely bad when we fell off though because we were going so fast and it was so rough.  I also enjoyed riding the jetski for the first time because we could go way faster it seemed like and we could do more turns and fun things. I always enjoy spending the time that i get to spend with my family. Photo Credits

Friday, August 29

Read this small newspaper clipping and then write a blog post about it. What are your thoughts? How does it make you feel? Do you agree? Disagree? Explain yourself.

After reading this article, I totally agree with the it. The post makes me want to start working way harder for things that I want to accomplish. A lot of times we expect stuff to be given to us and we give nothing in return, such as doing chores or helping others before ourselves.  We expect our parents to let us do everything and give us everything when all we are doing is sitting around waiting for someone to do it for us. A lot of times teenagers don't work hard for what they want and the just try to find short cuts and try to take the easy way out.  I think everyone needs to start working hard for what they want and not hoping that it will happen or that someone else will do it for them.  I agree with this clipping and I am going to let it help me to do better. 

Photo Credit

Tuesday, August 26

What is a Public Service Announcement? If you don't know what it is, Google it. In your own words, now tell me what it is? What are they used for? Can you recall an example of a PSA you've seen before?

A Public Service Announcement is an announcement to the public to raise awareness about something, inform them, or try to change their view or opinion on something. They can usually be sent through the media, where word spreads quickly. They are used to try and get their message to as many people as possible. One PSA I can remember is about not smoking and trying to end smoking, or get the numbers as low as possible. 

Photo Credits

Monday, August 25

After watching the short clip of Ashton Kutcher's acceptance speech what did you take away from his advice? What does this quote mean to you -"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use."

After watching Ashton's speech, I took away many things. His speech means a lot to me and is inspiring.  He tells us that we can change the things that we don't like and to build a life not just go through life doing everything as we are told. I totally agree with what he has to say for many reasons.  A lot of times we are expected to do everything a certain way or we have to do a certain thing because that is the way someone else likes it. Sometimes it feels like they want us to think inside the box and stick to the a "normal routine" of life.  I like the fact he encourages us to change what we don't agree with and do things the way we want to do them. I also liked how he said that "...life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.." because everyone who wanted to, could have a chance to make something different of what they  know now, not just people smarter than I may be.
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Who Am I Presenation