Who do you think you are?

This is a link to the transcript of the questions that I asked to my mom.
My mom told me about her side of the family. Her dad is German and her mom is Irish.A fun fact I learned is that my family lived in a town that was focused on clock manufacturing.

This is a link to the transcript of the questions that I asked to my dad.
My dad told me about his side of the family. Both of his parents were Irish and German mixed. A fun fact I learned is that one of my relatives was on an orphan train.

This is a link to the email that I sent to my grandpa asking for information regarding our family.
My grandpa was able to send me a lot of information regarding my old relatives. He had a lot of scans of newspaper clippings and photos.

This is a link to my family tree that I created on Family Echo.
I created this family tree off of basic knowledge of my family and some help from my parents.

Monday 11/14

Blog Post of the Day:

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

For Thanksgiving I am going to Chicago for a hockey tournament. We played in this tournament last year and we did pretty well except for one game. It was against a team from Corpus Christi in Canada and it ended up being a pretty rough game. Playing in Chicago is fun because most of my family lives in Chicago so they can come and watch me play. For Thanksgiving day, we are going to my grandpa's house. He lives in Chicago and some of my other family will be there to eat dinner with us.We do not have many special traditions except for a desert called "white jello" that is made from whipped cream and gelatin and God knows what else but it is delicious.  

Wednesday 11/19

Blog Post of the Day:

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.

If I had to do this project again, there are a couple things I would change. First of all, I would have used a real camera, because my phone was not as consistent with lighting as a regular camera would have been. I also would have made sure that every picture was in landscape. I thought the music was fly, so I don't know why I lost points on that. I also wish I had wings so that I could have become a butterfly and not a human, but that would have required purchases. I was glad that my classmates thought that the video was good and funny, and I am not fazed by students who thought the video was confusing. It's just the circle of life.

Image Credit

Monday 11/17

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me about your weekend.

This weekend I went to St. Louis for some hockey games. We were losing our first game 3-1 in the third period but managed to come back. We scored the goal to make it 3-3 with only .2 seconds left on the clock. We were all very excited because when you tie you get one point in the standings as opposed to 0 when you lose. We won our second game 2 to 1 and lost our third game 2 to 1. My team also went to the St. Louis Blues game. We got a suite for the whole team and it was a great time.

Friday 11/14

Blog Post of the Day:

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 the stop motion photos was fairly straight forward. However, when I gave the camera to someone else (Andrew), he followed me with every photo so I was in the same spot on the screen for like 100 photos. I retook the photos and had my girlfriend do it. Sometimes the colors changed in my photos because of the auto focus but what are you gonna do right?

Monday 11/10

Blog Post of the Day:

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

Stop motion is a video made up of a whole bunch of pictures. Sort of like a really fast slideshow or a movie shot with a terrible camera that shoots at about 8 frames per second. Stop motions are popular when working with subjects like clay figures. You snap a photo, move the clay figure, snap a photo, and repeat for 2 hours until your clay figure has moved about a foot across the table. The rewards are cool, but the work is hard and tedious.

Image Credit 

5 Frame Storyboard

Wednesday 11/5

Blog Post of the Day:

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.

Well I had a really great idea for a story board. I was going to tell the story of a lonely man who can't get a date for dinner.

Picture 1: Looking in fridge for food.

Picture 2: Setting table for fancy dinner for 2. Candles. Flowers. The whole thing.

Picture 3: Sits down.

Picture 4: Looks at watch.

Picture 5: Lonely man.

This was going to be a deeply touching story, but I forgot to take pictures at home. Now I am going to have to think of a new idea. It will probably be made up on the fly, but that's okay. 

Jst 4 Laffs

Tuesday 11/4

Blog Post of the Day:

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.

I picked these photos out of the 15 or so options that Patrick and I had taken. I chose these 5 because they were particularly interesting, unlike a man walking down a hall or a vending machine, like some of the other pictures were. With my editing, I mostly concentrated on the lighting in the photos. My phone's pictures were generally a little bit dark and and some of the colors were washed out, so I touched them up so that they were brighter and more colorful.

Photo Edits

Monday 11/3

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me about your weekend - details please!

I spent this weekend in St Louis playing hockey. We played three games against three different teams, and we won all of the games. Want to know why we won the games? I got a new jock this weekend, which doesn't sound very exciting, but this jock has not seen any losses. It clearly is the reason that we went undefeated this weekend. As long as I continue to wear the jock, our team will keep winning. On Saturday night, my team went to dinner at the Tilted Kilt. If you don't know what the Tilted Kilt is, imagine a Scottish version of Hooters but even more risque. We didn't know it was going to be like that when we made reservations, but we weren't disappointed to say the least.\

Image Credit

Wednesday 10/29

Blog Post of the Day:

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?

Everything that I know about legitimate photography comes from my sister and my girlfriend. Both of them are more artsy than I am, and are actually interested in photography. Because of them, I know things about photography that I otherwise wouldn't, like lighting and white balance and saturation and stuff. I usually just take pictures on my phone. I don't take important pictures or artsy pictures. It is more so that I can pull up the pictures later and share them with people. I do think that it is fun to mess around with editing pictures, though. For example, see below a picture of me merged with Patrick.

Water Shortage Prezi

Monday 10/20

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me about your weekend. Share pics!

This weekend was my birthday weekend! On Friday the 17th, I spent the day driving down to Springfield, IL for a hockey tournament. We tied our game on Friday night, and afterwards we went to Steak and Shake. We all got Steak and Shake hats and enjoyed our food at 11:30 at night while a drunk man stumbled from booth to booth. On Saturday, we had two games. We won the first one and lost the second one, but managed to end up in the championship game anyways due to the next closest team having a worse goal differential than us. In the second game, I felt a pain in my leg, and afterwards realized that someone had stepped on me and my leg was cut. So that was exciting. On Sunday, we played in the championship and lost with only a minute and 47 seconds left. It was a heart breaker, but the second place hardware was pretty nice.

Tuesday 10/14

Blog Post of the Day:
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.

My opinion on this topic is generally unchanged. I still believe that students should be allowed to wear what they want to a certain extent. Students should wear clothes that accommodate their own body types and fashion choices. However, these choices should not be wildly inappropriate, but what constitutes inappropriate can still be considered modest by some people's standards. So where is the line drawn? I agree that students will need to learn how to dress for certain situations in the future, but is school the place for that? Some days I wear athletic shorts and t shirts to school. Is it provocative? No. Is it professional? No. I would never wear athletic shorts to a job interview or business meeting, but I would to school where I should be able to just relax and learn. Both arguments have their merits, and there is still a lot of gray area.

Monday 10/13

Blog Post of the Day:

I think that in early years of school, like kindergarten through second, there should be classes that teach people how to think critically and creatively. These skills are not "school" skills, but they are important to how a person develops and learns for the rest of their life. As students mature and become more independent, they should also learn how to take care of themselves and prepare for not just their careers but for life on their own. Otherwise, classes should stay essentially how they are, and students should retain the ability to cater their class schedules to their interests.

Water Shortage Infographic

Tuesday 10/7

Blog post of the day:

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 agree with most of this article. It is true that any dress code does not cater to each individual; each person has a different body making guidelines like the "thumb rule" ineffective and inconsistent. Students should be able to make their own choices on attire. However, there should be some limitations. While I agree that "spaghetti straps" and short shorts are not nearly as distracting to male students as the school district tends to believe, there is a point where revealing clothing could become an issue. However, these clothes are usually pretty extreme, and most self-respecting girls would not wear these clothes to school anyways. 

Monday 10/6

Blog post of the day:

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 was a very busy weekend for me. It started out on Saturday when I woke up at 5am for a cross country meet. We drove down to Ray Pec for the Metro meet, and arrived at about 7am. The JV boys ran last, at 11:15, so I had a lot of time before my race. This particular race is one of the biggest all year. There are probably more than 250 kids per race. I came in the top 50 (I think I got 37) and won the medal below. On Sunday morning I had my first hockey game of the season. We lost 4-1, but played pretty well for our first game.

Tuesday 9/30

Blog Post of the Day:

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?

Infographics are visual ways to represent information. They typically do not involve very much reading, and are appealing to the eye. Infographics are used to relay information in a way that catches the eye and attention of the reader. Good infographics look good and get peoples' attention. 

Image Credit 

Monday 9/29

Blog Post of the Day:

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

On Friday I went to the homecoming game, but I left at half-time because the game was a slaughtering and I had to wake up early the next morning. On Saturday morning I was up at 5 in the morning and on my way to Rim Rock for a cross country meet. This course is famous for its large hills, and was ranked in the top 10 for hardest cross country courses in the nation. The race ended at 2 and we were home by 3:30. Once I got home I relaxed for a bit before getting ready for homecoming. My group went to California Pizza Kitchen before going to the dance. It was fun until a kid dislocated his knee and required an ambulance to carry him out on a stretcher (is that necessary?). Then we went back to Lindsay Davis's house and played Cards Against Humanity. 

Wednesday 9/24

Blog Post of the Day:

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.

I think that we should change the way that transcripts are obtained. As of now, students have to request to see their transcripts through their counselor, and sending transcripts to colleges is just as big of a hassle. It would be nice if a student could access his or her transcript from any place and at any time. This would help them monitor their progress and figure out how they stand academically. I do not know if there are regulations on this sort of thing, but it should be changed. 

Image Credit

Tuesday 9/23

Blog Post of the Day:

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

I have many different categories of apps on my phone. Some are games, some are tools, others are media, and there are others too. The game I play the most is Flappy Golf. It is fun because it is very challenging, and there many different levels so that you can play for a long time. My favorite media app is my Reddit app. It always provides me with good-quality entertainment and a case of the giggles. My favorite tool on my phone is my Google Drive app. It lets me transfer my phone's content to my computer as well as store documents and images I might need later.       

Monday 9/22

Blog Post of the Day:

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 electronic messaging. It is not quite as quick as instant messaging or texting, but is typically more formal. Files can also be sent over email that can not be sent over other forms of communication. In my daily life, my email is typically only used by companies to send me spam. Facebook tells me I got poked again, twitter tells me I got one favorite on my tweet, and groupon sends me new deals (which sometimes are actually interesting). Email etiquette is when formal emails are sent between you and an important person. Those emails are formatted almost like letters, as if the recipient was your pen pal. You must articulate professionally and use big words to sound fancy. 

Image Credit

Friday 9/19

Blog Post of the Day:

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 have enjoyed the curriculum thus far in this class. The blogging part of this class is the most new to me. I also do not know how the blogging will help me much in the future, but that's okay. As for the rest of the web tools that we have used so far, a lot of them I was at least partially familiar with before the class. I was especially familiar with Google Drive and the document creators that went with it, and I used them fairly regularly. Evernote is a great tool that I had known about but had not dove into until this class. Those types of tools will be helpful in the future. I have already used it for other projects.

Wednesday 9/17

Blog Post of the Day:

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?

Do I enjoy writing? Not really. The only time I enjoy writing is when I get to completely make things up, and can be as creative as I want. Even then, it is still not my most favorite thing to do. I consider myself more of a math and science type guy. That being said, I don't consider myself a bad writer. I have done well in previous English classes, and grammar comes naturally to me. Writing skills are important because often times your first means of communication with a business or individual you want to associate with might be through an email or letter. It is important to get a good impression across, which is hard to do with poor writing skills. I do not like writing long essays (APELA). My hand develops cramps. Thanks for reading this.

Tuesday 9/16

Blog Post of the Day:

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

Any quote that is from the man on a hunna dolla bill is important enough to be analyzed. What Ben is saying here is that when you do not plan for a future task, you will not be successful in that task. This takes me back to sophomore year. AP European History was my first AP class ever. When the AP exam rolled around that May, I realized that I was unprepared for the test. I ended up with a 3. Junior year I was enrolled in two more AP tests, and with proper preparation I got 4s on both of them. I prepared better, so my performance was more successful.

Monday 9/15

Blog Post of the Day:
What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

From the class conversation earlier today, I gathered that you are a huge Destiny fan. So while I did other things, like take the ACT, watch football, and stain a chair, this is going to be about my Destiny experiences over the weekend. First things first. My character is a warlock, and he is level 11 now. He was a level 9 before the weekend, but due to some missions on the moon, I was able to earn some XP. I got some sweet new weapons, and now I can deal 96 damage with my scout rifle. The world needs saving.

Image Credit

Friday 9/12

Blog Post of the Day:

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 for educating oneself about a topic. How can one expect to learn about something well enough to create rational opinions that can be presented to others without research? Research extends beyond just the background knowledge, and delves into some more advanced stuff. To research well, one must be sure to obtain information from a variety of sources, this reduces the chance of having bias in your research. I once had a teacher named Ms. Edwards who taught me how to research. She explained that wikipedia does not constitute as a reliable source for in depth research. To this day, I still use wikipedia. The end.

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Global Issue Selection

For my global issue in Emerging Technology I have chosen water shortage. I have begun researching the issue and you can find my research questions here.

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Wednesday 9/10

Blog Post of the Day:

This is a very tricky question to answer. Not because I do not have the foresight to predict what life will be like in 60 years, but because children won't exist in 60 years. By that time, robots will have taken over. The only humans left will be those who survived the robot revolution and have been turned into slaves. Kids can't survive the robot revolution. They're just kids. I would be grinding out my final days in robot factories creating more oppressors against my will. That's just life though.

Image Credit

Tuesday 9/9

Blog Post of the Day:

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.

The global issue I selected was the world's water shortage. As our population continues to grow exponentially, problems have arisen surrounding who gets access to the world's water. Less than 2% of Earth's water is usable for consumption, bathing, agriculture, and other things. Today, there are already problems with poorer countries not having access to appropriate amounts of usable water. Even in America, states like California have had to begin regulating water usage. As population grows, more water will be needed to support it, but where we will get this water I don't know. I picked this topic because it is a very serious issue that for some reason nobody seems to talk about. We can take long showers and flush the toilet and drink straight from the tap whenever we please. We take water for granted and it is very possible that within our lifetimes we will not have this luxury. 

Image Credit

 

Monday 9/8

Blog Post of the Day:
What did you do this weekend? Share pictures if you have them!

This weekend I went up to Omaha with my family. For father's day (long, long ago), we bought my dad tickets to the History of the Eagles concert. The Eagles have been his favorite band for a long time. While we were in Omaha, we also went to the Omaha Zoo. My sister's boyfriend lives in Omaha so we allowed him to point us out to the best restaurants and hangouts downtown. We went to a really good Italian place and I got pasta with chicken and pesto.

Friday 9/5

Blog Post of the Day:

Imaginary Report Card:

Finding incredible deals on Groupon: A+
Keeping up with tech news: A
Making my own food: Ramen
Writing my own grades: A+
Using spoons to eat cereal: A+
Starwhal: A-

Wednesday 9/3

Blog Post of the Day:

Yesterday I asked you 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

     There are two main reasons that I believe you asked us to diverge from a typical PowerPoint format. The first one is that this is a technology class, and we should be pushed outside our limits to learn how to use programs like Google Slides to their full extent. We should strive to master each and every function of these programs so that we can create whatever type of project we want. Anyone can make a series of slides with a couple of words and maybe a few pictures. Secondly, while there is nothing wrong with that type of approach, it is not suitable for every type of project. A PSA is meant to be emotional and attention-grabbing, and to do that, bullets and headers just don't cut it. Presentations like these cannot bore the audience if they are going to be successful in getting their message across. 

Image Credit

Smoking PSA

Tuesday 9/2

Blog Post of the Day:
Tell me all about your Labor Day weekend. What did you do? Include photos!

     I had a very busy Labor Day weekend. It started on Friday night when I went to the Goo Goo Dolls concert; Chris Daughtry opened for them. I have listened to the Goo Goo Dolls ever since I was little because my dad always listened to them when I was a kid. The concert was amazing. On Saturday I went to Worlds of Fun with my girlfriend and a couple of her friends from a camp that she goes to. Besides riding plenty of roller coasters and sitting in the wave pool, we played a bunch of games. It was dollar day, so most of the games were only $1 to play. I failed the first couple game but heroically redeemed myself and won like 3 games in a row. I even popped 4 balloons with 3 darts. Winning two prizes at one game? Yes. Sunday and Monday I went down to the lake and chilled out with my friends Jack Snow and Dane Holland. 

Pictures will come. But the WiFi at the school hates children so I am unable to post them at this moment.

Friday 8/29

Blog Post of the Day:
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.

This newspaper clipping is a bit over-bearing. What does this guy have against teenagers anyway? I understand that there are more important things to be doing in your life than playing video games and being lazy, but what's the harm? I agree that everyone should strive to be productive members of society, but this isn't 1984. This author tells teens to "develop a backbone not a wishbone", which sounds fine out of context but isn't this guy also wishing a lot with his view of what teens should really be doing in their free time? Teens have a lot on their plate already; they're still developing. 

Tuesday 8/26

Blog Post of the Day:
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 important message that is used to inform or warn the public of something. For example, when you are watching TV and the weather is horrible outside and that loud beeping sound interrupts your American Idol marathon to inform you that there's a chance of a flash flood. With that giant weather map and big text showing with counties  "in danger", how are you supposed to enjoy your favorite contestant use their god-given pipes? Public Service Announcements can also be less obnoxious though, and can be important. Occasionally, PSAs show the dangers of things like drinking and driving or texting while driving. These have good messages and are helpful at reminding people, or scaring them, into making the right choices.

Image Credit

Monday 8/25

Blog Post of the Day:
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."

     To me, this quote is a call to action. It's meant to shift the paradigm that we have lived in for as long as we can remember. It calls attention to one of the greatest questions of all: what is life about? The first part of the quote is much more interesting to think about. Society has been crafted by average human beings since man first used a club to defend themselves from dinosaurs (and yes, that is accurate). No higher power set the rules on society that humans would live by forever; the way we live is influenced every day, and with each experience. "Life" is constantly changing as new ideas, new products, and new conflicts force us to adapt and change the way we live our lives. The latter half of the quote is what I referred to earlier as the call to action. Now that our eyes have been opened to the impressionable world we live in, Kutcher encourages people to leave their own mark. People should strive to improve the world they live in both for themselves and the people around them. So go out and act. You can make a difference.

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Who Am I? Presentation