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.

easel.ly

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. 

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