Mixtape Making Part 1 of 9

May 29, 2013, by JM

I was given the task (along with 9 other kids) to pick 2 songs that would be great for setting the mood at a graduation for our school. While I looked for these songs I looked for songs that had good beats, good timbres, and good pitches. I learned what kind of beats, timbres, and pitches usually resonate well with people and then put chose songs that had them. I am proud that I was able to find songs that would go great with the graduation that will be taking place at my school. 😀 The songs for the  project are down below and so are the statements of why they go with graduation! Enjoy the music!

Touch the Sky (Carlos Serrano Mix)

Kanye West Vs. The xx

4:29

I chose this song because I feel that it sets the perfect mood for graduation, which is achievement and happiness. I believe that the sound sets this mood by the happy pitches of the voices and instruments used in the song. I also think that a key thing in making this such a good song is how the beat fits is so well. The drums/beat went perfectly with the tempo of the two songs that were being mashed up. The happy pitches and the great beat makes the song resonate very well. It just lifts it to the sky.

Fist Up

Gramatik

4:35

I chose this song because I believe that it is extremely unique just like the entire class of students that are graduating this year. I think this song is unique because of the way that the DJ changed the unique pitches and timbre of the guitar and trumpet to make most of the sounds in the song. The timbre of the trumpet is brassy and raspy while the timbre of the guitar is clear, crisp and happy sounding. It invokes the feeling of happiness and celebration in it.

Erase Me Everlong

May 21, 2013, by JM

In a class I am taking, we were learning about beats and how they make people feel. We were then given the assignment of creating a mash up in order to see the power of beat and how it moves people. I am proud that I created a song that made people get happy because it showed me that I achieved what I had been hoping for my track to do. What I learned was how to find an instrumental and match the beats of it up with the vocals of another song. You can listen to my Mashup below and then read the artist statement below it to understand the process of coming to it.

Erase Me Everlong – JM

     For our music course at school we were learning about beats and how they affect people. So, the purpose of this project was to learn how beats and the mashing of different beats and music invokes utopic or dystopic feelings inside of people. I then mashed the song Everlong by Foo Fighters and the song Erase me by Kid Cudi in order to create a song with an utopic beat and that turned the lyrics utopic by doing so. I will explain now how I came to creating this mash up in the following paragraphs.

     What we did in class was we learned about beats in music and how they make people feel through experiencing new and already known tempos and seeing how they made us feel. We then found songs with beats that either made us feel good or bad and decided to try and mash them up. We failed. We then had a DJ come in and teach us how to mash songs together. We then made our mashups and succeeded.

     When building the mashup, I struggled immensely. I spent almost all of my time looking for songs that would sound good together. I went through around 20 songs and finally chose the song Erase Me by Kid Cudi because it had a very appealing beat and it was also very constant. I then looked rigorously for a vocal track that would sound good with the background beat and track. I finally found the perfect vocals for it which was the vocals to the song Everlong by Foo Fighters. I then mashed the lyrics accordingly with the beats of the instrumental.

     My final product was extremely utopic. I found it Utopic because it was filled with a never ending happy background beat (Erase Me – Kid Cudi) and tones that I mashed with some dystopic vocals (Everlong – Foo Fighters) which made the vocals in the mashup seem utopic. The beat contributes to the utopic feeling because it is in a moderate tempo and it is a very constant and song building beat.

Fresh to… Not so Fresh

May 14, 2013, by JM

This post is about a food review I have completed for my Food For Though Course where we are learning about ways that food is changing and how it is affecting us. With this project, we were given the task of going out and finding the different tastes in foods that are made/produced differently. I am proud of finding that processed and easily accessible food may bee cheap and easy but that food you make definitely tastes better and is healthier to. I learned that when you pay attention to what you eat the more attention you are paying to your body and by doing so you already being healthier. If you want to see what I did for this project, check out my presentation below and then read the food review.

Tasting Cupcakes – From Scratch to Processed

by JM

     I am writing this food review to show that there is a difference between food you make and food you buy. I am conducting the test more for me than for you. Because I have to admit, I am a processed food junkie when it comes to sweets. I decided last minute to do a test on more natural sweetening for my homemade cupcakes to see if I could find the same amazingness in my handmade, not completely-processed food.

     The first food I will be reviewing is a cupcake I made from scratch. This cupcake was made of flour, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, and baking powder. Rather simple. I creamed the butter and sugar together, mixed the eggs in, then the flour and baking powder. Then I mixed the milk in. I placed them inside of the oven at 350º F for 25 minutes and then they were ready to eat. I could smell the buttery sweetness. I could see the lightly brown delicacy that I was about to indulge.

     The feeling of the slightly crisp, moist top of the cupcake still makes my mouth water a little. As I bit into this cupcake, a rush of sweetness and moist texture flooded my mouth. It was amazing. I remember tasting the sweet, slight crunchiness of the top of the cupcake and my brain telling me that I wanted more. The saccharine rich flavor of the entire cupcake enticed me into another one. Other than the sweet tastes that flooded my mouth, there was also this little hint of saltiness in the taste of these cupcakes. The succulent carbs I was eating was filled with Omega 6 and the hanging possibility of a heart attack from all the butter that was inside of this delicious cupcake.

     As I read labels on my ingredients, I found a label on my carton of eggs that I decided to investigate. It said, “ United Egg Producers Certified”. I did research and found out that this symbol meant that the animals are kept in conditions that people see healthy for their hens. They call it Hen Welfare. What Hen Welfare entails is: a code of conduct for proper animal handling signed by trained employees, annual compliance audit by independent third-party inspectors, scientifically supported space for hens, nutritious hormone-free feed, fresh water and air available at all times, prohibits feed withdrawal molt programs, strict biosecurity measures to protect food saftey and health, and space for nests and perches in cage-free houses. Although my deepest efforts, I knew that all the ingredients were only somewhat organic.

     The next cupcake I tried was a Good & Delish Red Velvet Cupcake from Walgreens. I took a look at this cupcake and said, “Well this is definitely going to be different.” I got home later and decided I would eat it.

     This cupcake was in a plastic container. I still hear the snap of the container coming off of it. As I pulled out the cupcake, I felt it moist and the icing rather creamy. Then I grabbed the cupcake and took one bite. I felt a rush of too much sweetness hit my tongue. It was overwhelming. It was so sweet it was practically candied tasting and sickly to my stomach. I believe it was the icing on it. As I pulled it away from my mouth there was an aroma lingering in my nose. The smell of chocolate and salt even though they were making a red velvet cupcake. I think from now on, I might just stick to making my own cupcakes. These processed ones just aren’t that great.

Action 3 project DL

May 13, 2013, by DL

This project was about me going out to find a restaurant and comparing there food to a home cooked meal. What I learned was that my home cooked meal tasted a lot better that the restaurant meal. I can relate this to a time I had sweet potato pie at a store and when my grandma made a pie hers tasted a lot better.

By:DL

5/14/13

Food For Thought

Introduction

I’m comparing restaurant ribs from TGI Fridays to cooked ribs off a grill. In the process I wii be  using my senses. I will describe how the ribs, how they smelled. I will be also be talking about how this connects to Michael Pollan’s five food rules. I will also be talking about the different ingredients in the two different ribs.

Homemade Ribs

I’m going to start with the ribs made from at home. I bought my ribs from the store called jewels one hundred percent pork meat. I grill my ribs on a grill that I have in my   backyard. I use jack denials barbecue sauce from jewels. I cook it for about 30 minutes till the meat turns dark red.  I sometimes wait a little longer so the meat can get a little juicer, but after all that I sit down and ate them.

 Restaurant Ribs

At the restaurant TGI Fridays I order the one hundred percent pork baby back ribs. The wait for the ribs were about twenty minutes. As soon as I walked in they seated me. They brought  me water the after five minutes they ask to take my order and thats when I waited on my ribs to get down. The restaurants baby back ribs were juicy the meat was dark red like my homemade ribs but the had there own special barbecue sauce. They would not tell me what type of sauce it was. Also the ribs were diced up into small strips of meat. Unlike my homemade ribs they were hole strips of ribs, that mean they were pretty big.

Taste test

Homemade ribs:

Taste:juicy

Smell:Delectable

Touch:rough, wet

Restaurant Test:

Taste: juicy,spicy

smell: salty

Touch: rough, wet,sticky

Food Review

While I was eating the ribs I could taste the sauce and they both tasted kind of similar, but the ribs at TGI Fridays the sauce tasted a little spicier than my homemade ribs, and it was also has that tangy taste to it like my homemade ribs do. This reminds me of one of the food rules from quality and quantity. The quality of the the food since I only made one rib the quantity was low because I only paid attention to only one rib and the quality was high because it was so good.

Conclusion

In conclusion  for the ribs from TGI Fridays were very interesting it was delectable and they ribs were made in a very different way from the homemade ribs that I made. My ribs were juicier than the ribs from TGI Fridays, But the service there was very good they treated me well and served me fast. It took me just as long for me to make my ribs just like they did as well. I just can’t believe that the ribs from TGI Fridays tasted just as good as my homemade ribs the so alike but they’re so different in so many ways.

Sites:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8jN4J6bz-Ec/TV9lEwTf8sI/AAAAAAAAAFs/O02cGZbTLKU/s1600/DSC04623.JPG

https://www.virtualweberbullet.com/beefrib1_photos/beefribs5.jpg

Récit De La Celleri – JM

April 12, 2013, by JM

Daveyboy, 2013

This post is a post about food and how it invokes thought. This gives us the name of the course in which this project is being blogged for and the title of it is Food For Thought. In this project we were to explore food in our family and from doing this find an ingredient that is important to our family. When we found that ingredient we traced it to its origin and after that we were to create a autobiography about this ingredient and how it is now something we are related too. The purpose of this piece is to show just how the world is all intertwined just by the food we eat and how widely spread it is around the world. From completing this project I am proud that I was able to write a story from the point of view of a plant because to try and speak from the point of view of an organism that we have kept contained for so long is a lot harder than most would think. I learned a lot about the history of celery and of the benefits of eating it through this project. I hope you choose to stick around and read my story about celery. I am also including a Prezi that has a family tree of the favorite foods of my relatives and I. Have fun reading my story!

Récit de la Celleri

Escuelas del Pasado, Presente y Futuro

April 9, 2013, by Cecilia

On our Spanish course “Escuela”, we have explored schools around the world, in the past and present time and we have discussed what schools and education will be like in the future. The first Action project consisted in creating a timeline of what schools were like in the past. The second Action Project consisted on creating an auditory description of  the role of a student and teacher in the past, present and what would be like in the future. The third Action Project consisted on designing a lesson of the future. Please see featured Action Projects that the students have created.

PAST: Timeline

MML

PRESENT: Conversation

 AW

FUTURE: Lesson

DC

Lesson Plan

~ENSENAME COMO APRENDER~

Why: The purpose of this lesson is to create the three different ways of learning into the categories past, present and future. By doing this wild will be able to note improvements in schools over time as well as what has been changed and or loss in time.
How: I will create three spaces that represent past, present, and future and split students into those spaces. In each one students will be given a task using a few mediums to complete it with. Afterwards each student will be given two tests one based on simple facts and the other on experience.
When: Friday
Who: the entire class
What: teach me how to learn

Group 1: Past

Background: En escuelas en pasado estudiantes aprendíamos básico matemática y ingles. Estudiantes aprendíamos habilidades diferente. Niñas aprendían habilidades de casa, cocinar y coser. Niños aprendían and advancado ingles y matemática y habilidades de cultivar. Niñas no permitir advancado clases en escuela. A veles niñas eran enseñaban por su madre. Niños aprendiand habilidades tenían éxito en vida. Niños eran maestros y cultivos. Niñas a mas de casas. Todo el mundo las clases se estructuran de forma diferente. El clases en Escuelas de Arabia Saudita son separados los niños y las niñas. Las niñas son mas inteligente los niños. Escuelas en Taiwán son doce horas largo. Escuelas en Korea es también doce horas largo. Escuelas en Korea son caro. Escuelas en China siempre tienen prueba. Estudiantes de Korea, Saudia Arabia, China, y Taiwán todos preferimos escuelas en América.

Objective: Your objective is to learn about breakfast in France and to speak about it in french.

Task: You have a worksheet to complete.

Tools/Setting: You can only use a dictionary and your worksheets and you can help each other but absolutely NO TECHNOLOGY.

Group 2: Present

Background:Escuelas en presentar son mucho centrado. El contenido de clases es depende en el país. En diferente país ellos son diferente contenido por puestos de trabajar. En mas escuelas ellos tiene mucho tecnológia. En unos pocos que utilizan los libros de texto. Contenido en clases dependerá de las carreras. Puestos de trabajar están en constante cambio.

Objective: Your objective is to learn about breakfast in France and to speak about it in french.

Task: You have to write 5 sentences about breakfast in french using the vocabulary and present.

Tools/Setting: You can use any type of technology but you can’t ask for help or speak to anyone in the class.

Group 3: Future

Background: En el futuro Los contenidos impartidos en clase van a ser muy diferente. La clase esctructurara de manera diferente. Las lecciones van a ser mas interactiva e incorporara tecnológica. Información van a ser al alcance de los estudiantes con la tecnológica. Las estudiantes se les van a enseñar a cuestionar y analizar la información y las ideas. Van a tener que aprender a digerir la información y llegar a sus propias ideas.

Objective: Your objective is to learn about breakfast in France and to speak about it in french.

Task: You have to talk and have conversation about food while you eat it.

Tools/Setting: You will be flying to France to have breakfast with a fluent french speaker. You can use any technology, and your french speaking student to learn.

The conclusion of this lesson is a written reflection and short discussion about the experience. Students will be asked to reflect on what it was like in their group and what group they would like to be in and why.

Resources:

https://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/food_2.htm

DLs Artist Statement

March 9, 2013, by DL

In my textile class I made a sculpture called a Creeper head. I did it because I had to make something relating to a story that we made. What I learned was that its hard to make a head in your own image. I created it by making blue prints and making a box so I can attach the fabric to it.

Hydropower and Pollution DL

March 8, 2013, by DL

This project is for my Fuel course. I did this because I am doing a project on Hydropower and pollution. Do dams pollute the water that the fish swim in? What I learned that dams kill fish and makes the water toxic as it falls from the dam. Please read my paper below.

There are three atoms in a water molecule and it helps to produce energy. You may find it in the air or in the water either or is fine.(Hydrogen) (Oxygen) 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O That’s the balanced equation for the water molecule. First I add up 2H2 plus O2 and I got the combined equation for the molecule.

Carbon footprint is energy that you use in your life and you pollute in sets of carbon dioxide. Hydropower or dams does not produce carbon dioxide and it reduces the carbon footprint. I calculated the carbon footprint for the household vehicle, energy, waste, and recycling. I used the EPA carbon calculator, and my total emission was 5,009 pounds of CO2 per year.

There are pros and con in hydropower. The first advantage is it creates lots of energy.For example, according to Bernard Forest de Bélidor, the power available from falling water can be calculated from the flow rate and density of water, the height of fall, and the local acceleration due to gravity. In SI units, the power is:
where
P is power in watts
η is the dimensionless efficiency of the turbine
ρ is the density of water in kilograms per cubic metre
Q is the flow in cubic metres per second
g is the acceleration due to gravity
h is the height difference between inlet and outlet
To illustrate, power is calculated for a turbine that is 85% efficient, with water at 62.25 pounds/cubic foot (998 kg/cubic metre) and a flow rate of 2800 cubic-feet/second (79.3 cubic-meters/second), gravity of 9.80 metres per second squared and with a net head of 480 ft (146.3 m).
In SI units: which gives 96.4 MW for one dam
( “History of Hydropower”. U.S. Department of Energy)

One disadvantage the is that it kills fish. For example according to treehugger.com, When the toxic gases from the water falls from the dam it kills over 100,000 fish in the Columbia River. Messenger, Stephen. (May, 2011.) section. After I found out the advantage and the disadvantage of using hydropower. My con was how many fish they kill will dams in my external section, and my pro was a dam gives 96.4 MW (megawatts).

Works Cited
Messenger, Stephen. (May, 2011.)Water Released by Dam Killing 100,000 Fish a Day https://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/water-released-by-dam-killing-100000-fish-a-day.html

Kellert, Stephen R. “Water Encyclopedia.” Hydroelectric Power. New York: Macmillan Library, 4 Nov. 2010. Web. 07 Mar. 2013. <https://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ge-Hy/Hydroelectric-Power.html>.

What Are The Pros/Cons of Corn Ethanol? by JM

March 8, 2013, by JM

This essay is about corn ethanol, its pollution, and its pros/cons. The purpose of this piece is to show the pros and cons of corn ethanol and it is also about how corn ethanol makes an effect on the worlds carbon footprint through your very own. I am proud of being allowed to continue off of a previous action problem. I am proud of this because it has allowed me to voice my own opinions on this topic. What I learned from this project was a lot more information on corn ethanol and the chemical reaction on how corn ethanol is burned. I hope you chose to continue reading because this project was really fun and awesome to complete.

What Are The Pros/Cons of Corn Ethanol?

Dreamcatcher – JM

March 8, 2013, by JM

This is a blog post about the magic of making a dream catcher and learning about its magic. The purpose of this piece is to show just how amazing the dreamcatcher and its power is. I am proud of being able to create this dreamcatcher because I am not very artistically adept. What I learned the meaning of a dream catcher on a normal basis and a spiritual basis and I loved learning both of these.

ARTIST STATEMENT

     The materials that I have used for my project are paper, paint brushes, blue paint, white paint, red paint, and brown paint. These materials were used to paint a dreamcatcher. Dream catchers are not tools like many people of our culture today think. According to the native people who created the dream catcher, they have a lot of spiritual meaning.

The dreamcatcher is structured in a way so that the meaning of it is portrayed through however it is made. In my dreamcatcher, I have center that is created by a web that makes it look as if it moves into oblivion. I have it like this because I want it to symbolize the great mystery (what I believe is the ability to question everything). I had this weaved into the middle of the web because I believe that if we question things a little to much, we begin to loose the focus of our lives. My dream catcher has blue and white beads on it because I believe they symbolize the essence of peace, clarity, and calmness. The feathers hanging down from the dream catcher are the main passageway in which the good dreams flow down from the web. I have a web that is complex enough to catch the toughest of bad dreams/thoughts and to know to allow the good. I chose red paint for the web because I feel anger towards bad dreams and anger causes blocking of things and I also feel a color of anger is red.

My dreamcatcher symbolizes my fear that I want to block because my fear is the fear of questioning to much. I feel that my dream catcher truly blocks this fear. I feel this because the center of the web is the great mystery the reason for that is that my dream is supposed to not have to deal with bringing up really scary questions.

I feel that the dreamcatcher is a really strong elemental and spiritual tool. I feel this because I feel the meaning is to allow your superego to grow. The superego are the thoughts we previously pushed away and I think thats allowed to grow when you have a dreamcatcher because it opens the concious and unconscious because it allows you to have dreams in your unconscious that you want to remember when you are conscious.

I think that if I were to use this dream catcher, I would hope for it to let in dreams that at least have some of my fears in them so that my dreams enforce my acts of good. I would hope that the spirit of the dream catcher would see the source of the bad thoughts and let in only dreams that would aim towards me being against those bad thoughts and ideas.