Spread the word to stop the word.

Recently in one of my classes I heard multiple people use the word retarded.  I'm sure many people use the word retarded loosely and don't think much about it and when I hear it I usually don't think twice about it.  However, I started thinking about how the word came to be considered bad and if people really should use it or not and that is what I want to reflect on this week.

I thought about how this word relates to my passion project and how if I'm spreading autism awareness I also need to think about words that can be hurtful towards anyone with mental disability.  Retarded discriminates against people with mental illness in the same way that Nigger discriminates against black people and Fag against gays.  The problem is, retarded has become a word that people use jokingly with their friends unlike other derogatory words that can cause fights if used in the wrong place.  I went online and found an article called "Noah's Dad" and I really liked the points that the writer had.  I learned that there is a campaign called "Spread the word to stop the word" and he even had a link to a PSA posted on his website that I thought was intersting and had a strong message behind it.  I am going to link the website below for anyone who wants to hear about his story and why he stopped using the R-word.  I am going to make an effort to tell people not to use the R-word when I hear it and you should too.

Link to article:
http://noahsdad.com/spread-the-word-to-end-the-word/

PSA completed

This past week my group has finished editing and making our psa video and I really like how it turned out.  After making it last week we thought that it looked good and we really liked the product but after showing our psa to the class and getting their feedback, we realized it needed a lot of improvement.  I went home the next day and worked on it a lot and sent it to Jamie who edited the video some more and added the music to it and Taylor improved our website even more.  What I really like about my group is that we have our own website as a call to action for our psa.  After people view our psa they can go to the link at the end of our video and read some of the things that Taylor has out there on the website.  I feel like I learned a lot during the process of creating a psa.  The biggest thing I learned is how to have a strong impact on the viewer in a small amount of time through the music and fonts that you use.  Every little detail counts as something that will benefit your psa.  The music and how fast we were able to complete our psa went really well.  It helps when everyone pitches in and finds their own part to work on.  However, if I could do this assignment over I would have done something that involved filming because I think some of my other classmates that have actors in their psa, have a more professional look to their video.

image from http://www.informationanalyticsinstitute.com/OtherServices/CompletionServices.aspx

PSA for digital wellness

This past week my group and I have been working on a public service announcement for digital wellness.  More specifically,  our psa is about not letting social media determine your self-worth.  Your self-worth is not based on how many likes you get on an Instagram photo or the amount of retweets you receive on a tweet.  I am really guilty of deleting a photo on Instagram if it does not get the certain amount of likes that I want even if I really want to keep the picture up.  Social media can really affect people's confidence and it can cause people to feel inferior to someone else just because they have less followers than the other person.  Our psa is bringing light to this because no one should determine their self-worth from Instagram, Facebook, twitter, or any other social media website.  I have worked on creating a video and the other members in my group our working on building a website and making music for our video.  I am really liking the product of what we have been working on and I'm excited to see what it all looks like when it comes together.  If you would like to visit our website, the link is http://yourselfworth.weebly.com.

Thinking about the future

In class Mrs. Mcneilly had a skype call setup with a former Lake Norman Charter student to talk about what he is currently working on and to really just talk about life after Charter.  The speaker's name was Kevin Beaty and he went to Lake Norman Charter when we only had a middle school.  He transferred to Hopewell highschool and took some film classes that helped him decide that he wanted to go to film school after he graduated highschool.  He attended Boston University and worked with professionals, eventually becoming an expert at what he does through the many internships that he worked at.   I really enjoyed listening to him because he painted a good picture of what life after highschool and college would be like, even though I don't plan on becoming a freelance artist.  He did however, talk about journalism which is something that I'm highly considering doing after college.  He went into detail about how journalist these days can't just write, they have to also be able to work the camera and this was something that I definitely paid a lot of attention to.  I've gone to college summer camps to work on things like backpack journalism and I could understand everything that he was saying about journalism.


One thing that he stressed in his lecture was that after college, no one asks you what your gpa was or the grades you got in highschool, everything is about experience and professionalism.  I really liked that he said this because one thing I tend to tell people who freak out over their grades is not to worry too much about it because one bad grade on a test is not going to ruin your entire future.  That isn't to say you shouldn't worry about your grades because they do determine the places that you get into but after college is over and you have a stable job, no one is going to ask you about that one test that you got a bad grade on.  Overall, I really enjoyed hearing about Kevin's life and how he got to the point that he's at now but I couldn't exactly relate my genius time project to what he was saying.  He was helpful for thinking about my future but not so much spreading autism awareness around the community.  I like that he was very on top of things and  he shows determination with what he does.  He taught me that in order to really spread awareness for my passion project I have to be aggressive  with getting out into the community and contacting people that can help me.

Community Pitch Event

On Thursday, November 5th, our digcit class had a community pitch event where the parents walked around and looked at our genius projects and asked us questions about them.  The event had a great turnout and there was a good amount of parents and students there.  I was nervous about the community pitch event because public speaking can sometimes be hard for me depending on the audience.  After I got comfortable I realized there was no reason to be nervous.  Everyone was really nice and it was easy to interact with the parents and tell them about my project and what my plans were.  There were a few people who didn't say much and it could be uncomfortable when it felt like I was having a one-sided conversation.  However, I think the community pitch event turned out well and everyone did a great job with presenting their genius time project.  The event helped me become more comfortable with explaining my project to people and Mrs. Costa even offered to help me spread awareness around the school. 

Spreading Awareness

Since my last blog post I have come up with more ideas on how to spread autism awareness.  I was so overwhelmed with the idea of the genius time project because I was thinking too big.  I realized that I was trying to start with a much larger audience group than I could handle.  I have to start with my school before I can go out into the community and try to convince people of why they should donate money to an organization supporting autism.  My plan is to pass out pins to people that they can wear on their shirts in order to spread autism awareness.  My hope is that people will see the pins and ask what they're about and it will get the idea in their minds that autism is something that should be recognized more.  I don't think many people realize how many are living on the spectrum.  More than 3.5 million people are living on the spectrum and every 1 in 68 children are diagnosed. I want to bring attention to that.

Planning for Action

This week I have been working on my presentation for the upcoming community showcase on November 5th.  I am starting to struggle with how to get my project going.  I know that my topic is something I am passionate about but sharing my passion with the community is going to be hard for me because it is difficult to find a place to start.  My first quarter goals were to get my plans in motion for my project and I have done that in terms of knowing what I need to accomplish but I haven't put my plans into action yet. Have you ever had a moment when you don't know where to start because you had so many options?

Is technology going to conquer us?

In this blog post I want to talk about the effect technology has over us, especially younger people who have grown up in the digital era.  Technology has changed the way we communicate with everyone whether it be texting our family and friends or having a conversation with another person on social media.  I think younger people have an unhealthy addiction with their cellphones but I also think the dependence on technology and phones stretches across all age groups.  The stereotype that only young kids depend on their phones is very untrue.  Everyone that has a phone for a long period of time is going to feel dependent on it because of how fast and easy it is to communicate with the world.  Even though older people might be able to go longer without using their phone because they know what it's like to not have that access to the internet, after a while they would start to miss it too. For me personally, not having my phone when I'm not with friends can start to affect my mood because I feel alone and I don't have anyone to talk to.  Technology and constantly texting all the time does start to affect our social skills for sure.  Last year I hated talking to people on the phone because I was nervous about having to sustain a conversation with someone and not being able to think about what I wanted to say before I hit "send".  Even calling my extended family, people I have known my entire life, would make me nervous.  This year I have worked on this problem just by picking up the phone and calling my friends and family and talking to them more. I am a lot more comfortable talking on the phone than I used to be and I believe that as long as our society doesn't become so comfortable with being online all the time that we can't call someone on the phone, technology won't conquer us.  If we don't lose the face-to-face connection with people then technology can never conquer us.

Failure vs. Success

This week in class we talked about failure in school and personal life.  We watched a ted-talk by Carol Dweck and some of her points were grading with not yet instead of failure and having a growth-mindset.  Grading with not yet is supposed to be a way of saying "you didn't fail, you just aren't there yet. Keep trying." I really like this idea because everyone takes failure differently and some people give up when they consider themselves a failure. The idea of "not yet" would be an encouraging way to help students get through challenging obstacles.  Her other point was the growth-mindset.  A person with a growth-mindset looks at obstacles and is excited about facing them.  The last thing she said in her ted-talk that stuck out to me was that we should praise wisely.  Instead of praising inteligence or talent, praise effort.  This stuck out to me because it can be hard to watch someone be praised for something that is so easy for them and then no one praises or acknowledges your effort.  Some days when you are tired of facing challenges and you want to give up, you need that praise because it keeps you going.  The class discussions this week changed my views on failure vs. success in school and life because I realized how easy it is to give up and not want to face your obstacles, but having a growth-mindset helps you conquer your obstacles because you know you can improve and do better.

Twitter Chat Tutorial

On this upcoming Thursday, I am going to be involved in a twitter chat tutorial after school helping students and teachers learn how to be involved and host a twitter chat. A twitter chat is when a group of people get onto twitter and have a discussion about the topic of the host's choosing. Twitter chats are very easy to use and Twitter is a social app that allows everyone to communicate with each other without being in the same area, state, even country. I like that twitter makes it so easy to communicate with people who you would most likely not talk to in your everyday life. Twitter can also be used for educational purposes. If teachers were to hold twitter chats on a weekly or monthly basis, students can have discussions about the class whether it's for the lesson that they learned in class that day or a study session the night before a test. A group of students that have a twitter account can plan to get online at a certain time on a specific day. For example, a group can decide to get online and have a discussion at 7pm on Wednesday night. A downside to twitter chats is that you have to use a hashtag of your choice for others to see your tweet so if you forget to hashtag, no one will see your tweet unless they personally follow you on twitter. The other issue with hashtags is that if someone uses the same hashtag that is being used for your discussion, then your group will see their tweet. Other than hashtags, I think twitter chats are great to use personally and for school. I feel that having a twitter chat the night before a test to discuss things would be helpful to myself and other students and also if a student wasn't able to log into twitter at the time that was agreed, they can still search the hashtag later that night and read through the discussion on their own time. I believe that twitter chats will be very beneficial to not only my school, but schools all over the country.

Technology in the School System

Today I want to talk about education in the digital age and how it is going to be in the future.  My generation is the first generation to really be learning through technology.  When I was younger smartboards had just started to come out and they were being installed in schools.  I remember how excited my classmates and I were when we started using smartboards and everyone wanted to participate because we would get to go up to the board and write things.  That feeling of excitement to learn and participate in the class activities is how every student should feel about education.  I believe that technology really gives that to us because we are able to have more resources available to us.

Technology in the school system has come a long way but it still has a very long way to go.  At my school we have an ipad air for every student to use but many of the teachers prefer not to use them because they don't think that the ipads are helpful to the class.  The teachers have caught students playing games on the ipads and they take them away from students because they don't want us to be distracted.  It causes the teachers to not ever use the ipad in class and the whole class has to suffer the consequences of not being able to use their ipad because of the students who do play games.  My school has even resulted in taking away the app store from everyone's ipad and I really believe that this was the wrong approach because there is always going to be someone to figure out how to download apps onto their ipad and then everyone has them.  If schools are going to have technology available to students then they should give us full access to our resources because if they don't we are still restsricted to the apps they have us and it limits are creativity.  There are thousands of apps available on the app store and we have access to less than 200 apps.

  In the future, students will be able to do amazing things with the new technology that will be available for them to use but for right now I don't think technology in schools is being used to the best of it's ability.  As of right now many of the teachers are not used to the technology, schools are not willing to give the students full access to the ipads, and many schools don't even have the technology available to them.  I would prefer to either have all of our assignments on the ipad or have them all on paper.  To ask students to use the ipad for some classes and then never use it for other classes is too much in my  opinion. One of the reasons we started using ipads was because we wanted to limit the number of books students have to carry and the school also wanted to  limit the amount of bookwork we do. I still carry the same amount of books and binders in my backpack and in my opinion the amount of bookwork hasn't changed.  Hopefully technology will be better used in school systems after a few years have passed and schools know how to use it well.

Twitter Chat

Recently in class we have started talking about twitter chats.  Twitter chats are when a group of people use a hashtag to discuss a topic that someone has picked out.  A moderator can have a twitter chat on any topic that they would like and anyone can join.  If I was a moderator of a twitter chat I would probably want it to be about fashion and makeup and I would want to talk to other girls my age about the hot topics going on right now but if I were to make a twitter chat for my DigCit class, the topic would be along of the lines of bullying.  I wouldn't make my twitter chat about stopping bullying though because everyone already knows bullying is wrong.  Instead, I would want to ask questions about why people bully others and I would also ask if anyone has been the bully or has been bullied.  I think I would make it a survey type of twitter chat so I could get other people's feedback.  I've never understood why people are mean to others.  If I ever say something mean to someone it stays on my mind for what seems like forever and I can't imagine someone causing harm to someone else and thinking that it's okay.

I could use a twitter chat as part of my Genius hour project by creating a discussion about autism and start by asking people if they know of anyone who has autism spectrum disorder.  Twitter chats are an effective way of communicating with others because it is quick and easy.  As long as you use the hashtag that is provided, you can share your opinion with everyone that is in the discussion.  It is also effective because people that follow you will see your tweets and it could possibly spark their interest and make them want to join the chat.  The only problem that I see with twitter chats is that you only have 140 characters to type your opinion and if your comment requires more, than you have to either shorten your response or send it between two tweets.  Other than that, I really like the idea of twitter chats and I'm excited to participate in one.

Shark Tank

I presented my Shark Tank to the class and I also recieved a lot of good feedback.  Everyone had to present their idea the way contestants would present their ideas in the tv show. The Shark Tank process really helped clarify my Genius Time project because I didn't know where I wanted to go with my project and now I have a clearer vision of what I want to do.  At one point I was going to change my project from speaking about kids with autism to something along the lines of gay marriage and accepting people who are different than us but I quickly decided to stick to my topic of autism because I felt that it was more personal to me and therefore would be easier to talk about.  After researching my topic I learned some new statistics such that autism is the fastest growing developmental disorder in the U.S.  I wasn't aware that it affected so many children in the U.S. and that boys are five times as likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls are.  One of my goals for the near future is to find a mentor who knows a lot about autism and has experience working with kids who have autism spectrum disorder.

Genius Time

For my Genius Time project I have decided to focus on helping autistic kids and also spreading awareness to younger children who don't know much about the topic.  This topic is important to me because I have personally worked with kids who were autistic and I also have a younger cousin who has a very minor form of autism.  I've heard the things kids say about other autistic kids and I don't think that kids realize how hurtful the things they say are.  This topic should be important to a larger audience; especially locally, because North Carolina has one of the Nation's highest autism rates in the country.  If the community could spread autism awareness, be more accepting of kids with disabilities, and also explain to young kids what autism is, it would help with bullying in schools and would also give kids with dissabilities a more accepted feeling.  My goals for this project are to work with younger kids and teach them about what autism is and why they should treat everyone the way they want to be treated.

Heartbreak Map

In Class we made heartbreak maps to talk about the things that we're passionate about and what we love about those things. A heartbreak map can be done in many ways but I chose to do mine with the things I am passionate about on the right side and on the left side I wrote about what breaks my heart about these things.  The main topic I feel passionate about is autistic children and how they are often times treated as less than our equals. I hate seeing someone being treated badly just because of a disability. Everyone should be treated fairly and there are many cases where the kid doesn't know they have a disability so they are confused why other kids are mean to them. I think a possible solution to this, is to encourage parents to talk to their younger children about disabilities and why we should treat everyone equally.