Week 1 & 2 In the first two weeks of school we have done multiple activiies to start of the 2016-2017 school year. The first week of school, in humanities we learned how each city has a cluster of races around the area. My partner and I did Atlanta, Georgia, we found out that there was a type of line between Caucasians and African Americans. Another thing that we learned in humanities was how San Diego was separated in its own way. Being more specific, Caucasians were more up north by La Jolla and Point Loma, while Latinos and African Americans were down south by the border. In that same week we did a seminar based on the High Tech High school principles. We were comparing the old and the new school principles to see if they got better or worse. In the second week of school, in humanities we learned about reading logs and how they are supposed to help you understand and annotate a text. We had a second seminar based on high income and low income neighborhoods, and why they are most of the time separated or how they affect each other. In math we started on doing an activity call "Which number doesn't belong?" in the beginning of class. We even did our own worksheets and shared them to the seniors to see if they can figure it out, and vice versa. We also did a data activity called "Cars on Rosecrans where we chose how to keep data on cars, for example: color, brand, wheels, damaged, new, or windows. the project that we will be doing this semester is based on data and statistics. In Spanish we have started off learning small phrases to introduce ourselves and verbs. With verbs we learned to conjugate the ones with an ar, er, ir ending. We have started the book that we are going to read this semester, Noches Misteriosas en Granada. We had to read with partners and find cognates and words that we didn't know and put them into a sentence. In the second week we had a class discussion answering questions about the first chapter, personally for me it wasn't that challenging. The first two weeks of school have been fun but challenging trying to adjust to high school. An achievement I had was opening to new people, but a goal that I hope to achieve is tryin to speak up in seminars are generally in class. I hope this year will be a good experience for me and I aslo hope for myself, that I will try o achieve my goals.
Week 3 In the third week of school we worked on our time lapse. The time lapse was about our commute from home to school. Since I live by Lemon Grove it takes me a little bit longer to get to school since there's a lot of traffic in the morning. Without the fast pace in my video it takes me 30 to 40 minutes just to get to school, with the time lapse the video was 3 minutes and 33 seconds. It was still to long since the limit was 2 minutes and 30 seconds. My first process with the video was to cut some of the clips. That took process took me about a few days since I did the editing on my phone. After a while a found an app which was very helpful and I was finally finished with cutting clips. After that process of cutting clips I worked on my Spanish subtitles. The Spanish subtitles had to be about describing what is going on in your commute. We had to do nine to 12 subtitles and had to have excellent grammar. The next process for me was to do it on premiere, which is a program to edit videos and put subtitles on. I used premiere because everyone was using imovie so that resulted to everyone using the Macbooks. Premiere on the other hand, was not working for me and I had to get an extension for my video. Recently Imovie is working great for me and it is an easy program to use. I am almost done, but just have to do a few adjustments. I hope for the best of my video.
Week 4 This week our team went on a field trip to the San Diego Central Library. I expected it to a tall building just with books, since it was in Downtown. I was right about the height part, but it was very different. It didn't just have books, they had different sections for ages, labs, and more resources than any other library. At the library there are nine floors and two of them are part of E3 Civic High. The first thing we did at the library was listen to a presentation about how to find reliable and good resources in and out of the library. After the presentation we went into groups and went on a tour. Our tour guide showed us each floor except for the high school. The guide showed us what each floor had special about it. The tour finished in the teen center where we mostly spent our time. In the teen center my friends and I had a chance to talk to a boy. The boy was talking to us about he was a foster kid who ran away from his abusing home with his foster brother. I feel that this is important because the library in a way is helping them. They have somewhere to go than on the streets or being involved in drugs. It was heart breaking to hear, and I hope they are okay now. The field trip to the library was inspiring in a way. It was very nice to learn how the library helps the community and how they have a lot of resources to help anybody. In the future I would like to go again.
Week 5 In week five our field trip was to the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park. We were slit up in to two groups. One half went to the library down stairs, and the other half went into the museum. After a hour we switched places. Down in the library we looked at files, old pictures, and newspaper clippings of our neighborhoods. We had to record notes and write down what seemed most important to us. Up in the museum, we had to write down notes in a packet we got earlier about a couple of pictures from the early 1900s. for the remainder of the time we just walked around the museum and balboa park. Week 6 In week six we did a scavenger hunt all around San Diego, where we went to popular landmarks and had to look for clues for our destination spot. We used this app called Action bound, where it was like Pokemon Go, but instead of pokemon there was clues and problems we had to solve. We started at Old town and went around the park trying to find plaques which the clues were pointing towards too. After that we went down to Little Italy, and ran around trying to find parks, and those clues led us to the Maritime Museum. By then we were tired out by running everywhere. The clues then made us walk to Seaport Village, where the clues were by the museums or artifacts. That whole day was very tiring, but fun since every time we got a clue right our group got excited. This field trip was very amusing. Week 7 In week seven, the team didn't go on a field trip, but we looked at interview tips. We watched a ted talk based on a program called Story Corps. They have booths were you can interview anybody, and save the interview forever. We watched and listened to many of those interviews and gotten a lot of tips on how our interviews should be. The class then had to brainstorm questions to interview a relative or a friend. I'm interviewing my dad, because he moved to the U.S. when he was young, therefore I want to get his side of where we live. I think the interview will be interesting. I think it was cool that I got to learn about my dad's history more. Week 8 In week 8 we went to the Spanish house in Balboa Park. We learned about the history of Spain and how it was brought up today. We learned that Spain first owned thecontinent of the United Stes of America. We also learned the type of money that was used back then. They used bits of metal for their money. Another interesting thing we learned was that there was a queen that united different kingdoms in Spain. Week 9 This week we were put into our groups for our project. It took a long time because we had to fill out a paper fullof questions for our skills. The skills was if we were artistic, a researcher, a spokesperson, and a leader, also a follower. There was more, but I can't remember them. I put in the middle for most of them, because I am unsure of myself. After we put what we are then we go around and talk to people if we want to collaborate, using there skills. I walked around and got put into Maddie's group. That is the group I will be in for the rest of the semester. Week 10 In week 10 we had to do a field plan in the neighborhood that we are focusing on. My group's area is City heights. In City Height, Maddie proposed the idea, that there should be a community is less reliant on cars. Therefore , there can be more public transportation and bike lanes around. On the day of the field trip we were split into groups and took pictures and interview City Heights residents. All the interviewees agreed that there should be more bus stops around that can help people get around therefore they aren' t reliant on cars. Personally I noticed that there is a lot of hills and to get to specific places we had to walk up and down steep hills. On the hils I observed that there wasn't any bus stops. It would be very difficult for certain people to get around. Week 11 In week 10 we continued to do research on our group projects. Since my group is focusing in making City Heights less reliant on cars the group researched bus models and placements, car free cities, scavenger hunt, and the storyboard. I personally researched car free cities and the scavenger hunt. When I was researching car free cities I noticed that in different cities there are multiple ways to make a city car free. For example, only certain areas be car free, only letting cars with odd number plates drive and the next day with even ones, banning cars for a day or week(s). Research shows that these experiments reduce pollution affectedly. I think these facts will help us find more ways of solutions that can make areas not reliant on cars. Another event that had happened this week was we had a speaker, come and talk about his ideas for the city. He talked about building walking and bicycle roads with parking in the middle of roads, also underground public transportations stations and underground roads for less congestion. I believe week nine was very informative for our project. Week 12 In week 11 we had our first draft of the fact sheet due on Friday. During the week I worked on the fact sheet and looked through different doucuments and old papers that we had ued for research. I did my third draft of the fact sheet and got critiques from Matt and Loredana. I had to put more a lot of effort and persevere into my fact sheet. This week was stressful, but atleast we are almost done with the project. Week 13 This week we practiced our presentations and got them critiqued from Matt and Loredana. We made our slides with the title Cruising It Up in South City Heights. We made our slides on google slides and each group member had to have a slide. Also each member had to talk for atleast one minute. By Thursday we had to present to Matt and Loredana with another group. We got a lot of critiques, but it was good to have feedback,therefore we can make our presentation better. The week was stressful trying to get everything close to done. Week 14 This week we had to present our ideas to professional urban planners. Some of them were nice and thoughtful, but some of them were sort of harsh and gave us lots of critiques. Personally, to present it was nerve-racking, but I tried to calm down and look professional. I tried not to forget to stand up straight, make eye contact, and talk loud enough. I felt relieved when we finally finished our presentations. On Thursday we have our exhibition, where we showcase our projects. We showcased our fact sheet and documentary. I felt that we did well. This week was crazy, running back and forth, but finally it is winter break.