The Monster's Blog

Website - Evaluation

2010-05-31T19:02:00.000-07:00

Criterion A
For Criterion A, we were supposed to learn basic skills of using HTML, investigate what topics were used to create websites, and research on some sample HTML websites that were made by others to learn what kind of design would be the best for creating our own website.

We firstly took a look at a website called “Thinkquest” where different designs of user-made websites are able to be viewed. We then chose some websites that we liked or disliked, and made comments on colors, contrast, font, navigation, photos, etc. for each of them. I think it was a good opportunity to learn what designs will be preferred by people and easy to utilize. I was able to learn the importance of using contrast of colors to give an effective look to the website, using a simple font so people can easily read the content, and putting a good navigation that works perfectly. Also, I learned that adding too many animated files or movies would not make the website look good, and it will take a long time to load the page, so it is not that recommended.

After that, we read three articles on HTML. Since it was my first time using HTML, I thought reading these articles would help me to create a better HTML website. The assignment was to make notes on what I read about, and I made some notes on my blog. However, there were some parts that I did not fully understand, so I just skipped them and continued reading. Also, I was not paying attention to the last article because it was way too detailed and had a lot of information which just made me tired. Therefore, I did not read it carefully but just skimmed through the articles. I think I could have made some further research on the content that I did not understand in order to broaden my knowledge on HTML. It would have helped me when I was having trouble with creating a HTML file of my website. Also, even though I was not in favor of reading the articles, I should have at least read it carefully, and understand what was in the content. For the next time, I should take my time to investigate to get a better result on creating HTML website.

Criterion B
When we were done with investigation, we were supposed to come up with at least three different potential topic that we would like to make a website about it. I came up with three ideas which were:

The wild animals (information about animals and their habitats)
ISU Grade 10 (about our class)
Travel Around the world (information about different cultures, foods, clothes, holidays, etc)

Then I decided to make a website about our class since this school year will be my last school year at ISU, and I wanted to create it as a keepsake of my memories of living in Mongolia. After I decided my topic, I created a paper design of the website to briefly sketch how my website would look like. I wanted my design to be unique, so I drew it as creative as possible; however, while I was actually creating the website, I realized that the design that I made was almost impossible to create with my knowledge and skills of HTML. I think I could have done better on this part. I could have drawn some more paper designs as a mean of alternative sketches since it is almost for sure that some designs will not be able to create.

After that, I came up with my own design investigation which was:

Neat but interesting formats such as the entire website design, background, proper fonts for the content, etc.
The font for the menu can be decorative, but the font for the content should be neat, such as (but not limited to) arial, calibri, times new roman.
The colors for the website should not hurt readers' eyes. Contrast of black and white will be okay, but the website should avoid using bright colors like red, yellow, bright green, etc.
Appropriate images that suit to the website
Music if it is required, but there should be a way to stop playing so that the users can play and stop the music by themselves
Menu that is easy to navigate with a suitable design
Contents that are not way too small or big, and there should not be too many texts on one page

I also made a list of what should be included in my websites:

Student individual photos for the background of the website
Sign up page
Profile - Brief profile of each student and homeroom teachers such as: name(or nickname), date of birth, email address, phone number, profile picture, etc. (If they do not want to show their identity, then I'll skip them)
Discussion - Free discussion forum to share ideas, have discussions on any topic and to know what's going around the school
Homework - what homework we have, including the deadlines, etc.
Photo - anyone can put pictures
Suggestion box - to get suggestions from people in order to improve the website

After I created the website, I realized that I followed most of design specifications and the required content list. Since I used a CSS format file, I did not make the background of the website by myself because the template is already made for me. There I did not have to worry about the contrast of colors; the contrast of white and green was okay for me. For most of content, I used Calibri as the font, and for some menu icons, I downloaded decorative fonts from "dafont.com". I think each page had enough amount of content and images added to the website were appropriate. I did not put music because it was not necessarily required, and I think it would just made the website viewers annoyed due to the continuously playing music. Overall, even though I did not include Sign-up page, and changed some information that I wanted to put, I included most of the content onto my website, so I think I did pretty good on criterion B.

Criterion C

There were a lot of changes made. I firstly made my original plan, but there was a change of duedate and I had more time to work on my website, so I needed to change my plan based on the new due date. Also, I turned out to use CSS form instead of using just HTML, so I was quite behind than the plan that I created. In the end, it was really hard for me to follow the plan.

I think this criterion was the one that I did not do well. I was not familiar with using HTML, so I had to spend more time to learn about it than I planned, and some failure on making a website slowed down the progress on creating website. If i made a plan that is more detailed, not just writing about general process but with more details, I could not have rushed in the end, and worked better on making a website.

Criterion D

Criterion D was the part that everyone had to spend a lot of time creating a website. We used Coffeecup and created our own pages. I firstly started with a blank page and typed html codes to add images and content; however, it was much harder than I expected, so I changed my whole plan to use CSS form instead. It was not so easy to use a css form html either, but it was much easier than using a blank html page.

I also used powerpoint to create menu buttons, and some page designs, some other programs that can make a forum and a photo portfolio. I realized that there were a lot of souces where you can decorate your website easily. How convenient :)!

While I kept working on the website, I was getting used to using Coffeecup which was a great improvement for me. However, the problem with using Coffeecup was that it was only a 30days trial, so I had to rush in the end to finish creating the whole pages within the deadline of the expiration date.

I think a way to improve Criterion D would be having a plenty of time creating HTML websites. Because most of our classmates are not familiar with using HTML, we all had difficulties at first. Therefore many people had to rush in the end to finish their websites before the due date, and some people still did not know how to utilize Coffeecup well by editing the codes of HTML. If there was a more day to learn about HTML, then we all could have created a better quality websites. Also, since I have not used any other HTML Editor programs before, I thought that Coffeecup was pretty easy to handle, however, we should try out a different program if there is a better and easier one.

After creating my website was done, our class had a competition.My intended audience was my classmates, and since they tested my website, I think it was a great chance to see their reaction toward my website. They made comments such as:

"Your website is also very pretty to look at. It had a lot of colors which matched together!"

"You have tons of information on everyone and everything. Love the homework journal. The forum doesn't work as well as the suggestions, though."

"You display lots of text as image, which is not always practical, but overall it's easy to use:)"

"Fancy."

"Easy but got lost somewhere."

In general, many people liked my website which was a good thing. Some people gave me critical comments on navigation. I realized that I put the link of navigation wrong, so some of them did not work well. I should have checked it before I let people test it.

I think my website would be able to help our ISU class of 2012 community since they can have a discussion on the forum, and check their homework. Even though this website is only for our small community, I still would be satisfied that my website can help students in a social way in terms of interacting with each other online.

This unit was the last MYP Technology project for me, and I think it was the hardest project that I have done. However, I was able to show my creativity by making my own website with the design that I wanted, and the information that I wanted to include. Also, I think this unit was very helpful for me since HTML is often used in peple's everyday life, and I became a part of those people who know how to utilize HTML.

Website - Plan Changed

2010-05-25T21:28:00.001-07:00

There were a lof changes made while I was working on my website.

This is the changed version of plan (Criterion C)

Website - Plan

2010-04-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

Plan for my website:)

Website - Design map

2010-04-19T22:49:00.000-07:00

This is my sketch for the website. It is the image of the main page. Because I scanned the image in a wrong way, the picture is divided into three sections, but actually they all are on one paper.

The background will be decorated with classmates' pictures and there will be a white outline around them. The title that I wrote is ISUG10; however, because G10 is almost over, I'm going to change the title into ISU2012, the year that we will graduate.

The menu from the design includes: home, class profile, forum, homework journal, photo and suggestion box as I mentioned while I was brainstorming on my design. The menu icons will be in different colors, but I have not decided what colors to use. Roughly, I think I'm going to choose yellow, light blue, light green and some other light colors so that the text on the menu can be shown up easily.

Under the menu, there is a sidebar on the left side which has an image of the school logo, assignment deadlines and updates. This sidebar will be always there whenever you load different webpage. The right section will be the part that the contents will be shown up. For the texts, I'm going to use simple fonts such as arial, calibri, or times new roman. Also, if it's possible I'm trying to make the title font and the menu font to be more decorative.

For other pages such as class profile, homework journal, the content design will be different than the main page. I'm not fully developed with all the other page designs, but I think I can be creative while I'm actually working on my real website design.

So far, I like my sketch for the website, but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to create it exactly the same as the design. It is my first time creating a website, and because I'm not skilled enough, I'll try my best while I'm working on it.

Click the image to view it larger

Website - Week 3

2010-03-28T05:55:00.000-07:00

The final topic that I chose for the website will be about Grade 10. Since I really like my G10 school life at ISU, I wanted to create something that will keep the memories of my class and classmates. Even though more than half of G10 school year has passed, I think it will still be a good online place to share school "gossips", memories, events, and some academic talks. Also, if this website got popular among our classmates, then I can also use the same design skills to build one for next school year :)

Before I start brainstorming for my website, I made a simple design specification.
I believe that the website design should have:

Neat but interesting formats such as the entire website design, background, proper fonts for the content, etc.
The font for the menu can be decorative, but the font for the content should be neat, such as (but not limited to) arial, calibri, times new roman.
The colors for the website should not hurt readers' eyes. Contrast of black and white will be okay, but the website should avoid using bright colors like red, yellow, bright green, etc.
Appropriate images that suit to the website
Music if it is required, but there should be a way to stop playing so that the users can play and stop the music by themselves
Menu that is easy to navigate with a suitable design
Contents that are not way too small or big, and there should not be too many texts on one page

So the things that I want to include in my website are:

Student individual photos for the background of the website
Sign up page
Profile - Brief profile of each student and homeroom teachers such as: name(or nickname), date of birth, email address, phone number, profile picture, etc. (If they do not want to show their identity, then I'll skip them)
Discussion - Free discussion forum to share ideas, have discussions on any topic and to know what's going around the school
Homework - what homework we have, including the deadlines, etc.
Photo - anyone can put pictures
Suggestion box - to get suggestions from people in order to improve the website

To be continued...

Website - Week 2

2010-03-21T04:28:00.000-07:00

For week 2, we are supposed to read three articles that give some tips to create a website. All of them were pretty straightforward which make me easy to understand, and I think all the information listed on these three websites will be very helpful as well as useful in terms of making a website.

1. "About.com: Web Design/HTML - Readers Respond: What Design Scares You?"
The first website is from About.com, and there are several responses made by different users, and they are based on a question that what factors make a website to scare them. The answers gave me an idea that what things that I should NOT include in my website design such as:

Putting too much animation/flash - I often find out that some Korean websites tend to have way too much animation to 'advertise' their products, and I just get tired of waiting the main page to load. Too much flash make the users be annoyed for taking long time to upload the website, and it is not interesting of fancy at all but make your eyes get tired.
Playing music that keeps playing again and again without any pause - I totally agree with this response. Whenever I enter a website and it plays annoying music forever, I really want to leave the website or I sometimes blame for the creator of the website for putting such lame music. If you are trying to put music to your website, your website should have at least a stop button to pause the music. For some websites that I know, they stop playing songs when I press the 'Esc' key. Maybe people should consider about using that way as well.
Way too strong contrast between the background and the contents - It will just make your eyes be extremely tired if you have to read a text that is written in bright red or yellow from the black background. Well, these color contrasts would be suitable when you create an artwork, but for a website, wouldn't they be way too much for your eyes? Therefore, people suggest that a white background with black texts is the best way.
Dragging the mouse over the text to see the content - I strongly think that people are supposed to 'view' the text from the website without dragging the mouse to see the content. Maybe some people did it in order to make the website to be more 'interesting', however, nonsense! It is just an annoying job to do.
No Navigation - Some websites do not have navigation system, which makes website users have hard time to find the information that they are searching for. In order to visually aid the users, many people believe that there should be a proper navigation on the website which I also agree with them.

2. "Web Style Guide 3rd edition - Sidebar: A List of Reminders"

This website also tells me about some reminders to follow in terms of creating a web page. It tells some tips of website design, and how to put good quality of contents. There are some advice that I like which are:

"Know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and for whom you’re doing it before anyone touches HTML or Photoshop" - Even though adding decorations and making your website look interesting are important factors, the first and foremost thing that you should do is to figure out the purpose, and the specific users of the website.
"Do not overwrite" - People do not enjoy reading a web article that has such small fonts; small fonts are uncomfortable to read. Also, if a website is just full of texts, people will easily get bored of reading the contents. Therefore, an adequate amount of writing will benefit the website users and viewers.

3. "HTML Source: HTML Tutorials - Accessibility"

This website is about accessibility of websites. In order to access a website well, there are some major factors that I think people should take into consideration such as:

Navigation - It is important to guide the web users such as where the information that they need is located. Navigation also shows the depth of your website such as how the information is demonstrated through the website. In order to navigate the readers, a good sense of structure and organization is required.
Content Accessibility - With appropriate use of information and proper codes such as HTML, the content should be accessed to everyone even for those who are handicapped. The content will be better if its more objective than subjective because every reader is qualified to read it.
Logical Style - Unfortunately, I did not understand the information of logical style fully, but what I have understood so far is that using appropriate logical elements (that gives functions to the web pate) and block-level elements (ex: <>, <>) would help the website be more organized and be in order. Basically, I think it is more related to the functions of website creation with using HTML.
Testing your pages - Checking whether your websites have the same fonts, designs, sizes, etc. would help you to organize the information as well as the website, and it will benefit the readers to understand the content better in the end.

Works Cited

Kyrnin, Jennifer. "Readers Respond: What Design Scares You?" About.com: Web Design/HTML. 21 March 2010. http://webdesign.about.com/u/ua/webdesignbasics/what-design-scares-you.htm

Shannon, Ross. "Accessibility." HTML Source: HTML Tutorials. 21 March 2010. http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/accessibility/

"Sidebar: A List of Reminders." Web Style Guide 3rd Edition. 21 March 2010. http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/5-list-of-reminders.html

Website - Week 1

2010-03-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

(1)
• LEAD Portal
(http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/02289/#?page=defining-leader§ion=perception)

Colors – There are different colors are used in the website. For the menu icons, colors such as green, blue, yellow and purple are used in order to grab the viewer’s attention. Since the background color is dark, the bright colors used for the website is showing out very well, and make the website to be interesting and colorful. When I scroll down the website, there is an animated menu with different colors, which makes me to be interested about it and gives me a desire of clicking one at each time to figure out what information they contain.

Contrast – There is a significant contrast of colors demonstrated in this website. Firstly, the people icon at the top of the website is in colors that can be showing out well from the dark brown background. Since the content background color is white, the menu icons which are in blue, green, yellow, and orange make a good contrast of colors. Because of these contrasts, the website is able to make the website user to be more interested of the website design and the contents of it.

Photos – There are not many real photos are used in the website, but some characterized icons. On the top of the website there are diagrams of people in different colors. On the side of the website, where the menu icons are, there are also some images of cartoonish looking drawings on them as well as on the bottom of the website. Since realistic photos are not used for the website, I think it makes the website to be less serious and give friendly look to the website users. Also, since the topic is about leadership, which may be boring and even hard sometimes, I think it is a good idea to give some cartoonish view to the website so that people will be able to enjoy reading the information on the website.

Font – Fonts are simple and not fancy, which makes viewers to read the information without having any reading difficulties. For the texts on the menu icons, they are decorated with some colors that match with the colors of icons, and for the information texts, they are in black and simple fonts.

Navigation – When you click any menu, it did not open a new browser, but it directly linked to the information on the same page. Therefore, it was very easy to organize what information I wanted to find, and the website did not become very messy even though I clicked on different categories for several times.

Overall, I think that the cartoonish design of the website was the most appealing. Since I am a visual learner, I prefer websites that have some good graphic designs so that I do not become bored out of reading information on the website. Nice choose of fonts and use of simple icons to visually aid the menu were another part that make the website to be a successful one.

• Portable Partners (http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/01589/home.html)

Colors – There are not many colors are used for this website. Different tones of red are used for the general website design. If LEAD Portal one used different colors, this one tends to be simpler and more organized due to simple color choice. The background has a light tone of pattern, and the main website color is red, which makes the red part to show out better. Even though only one color is used for this website, it grabs viewer’s attention because the color is red and it’s very bright. However, if you just look at the title part for a long time, your eyes start to hurt a little bit because of its brightness.

Contrast – The background is covered with small round pattern, and the main website part is in red. Since the pattern tends to be dimmed, the strong red color makes a good contrast with the background.

Photos – All the information that is included in the website, there is a picture in order to give a visual effect to the information. I think it is a very clever choice to put some pictures to the information because it makes viewers to be more interested in the website rather than just reading a long article.

Font – Like the previous website that I visited before, this website also has a very neat and simple font. It helps me to find out information much easier, and makes the website to be organized. However since the website itself already has a very simple design, I think it might have been better if the website had fancier title image.

Navigation – The website was very easy to navigate. The topics were divided into different menu icons, and when you click it the information is directly linked from the previous website, which you do not require a new online browser to read the information.

The reason why I think this website is a good one is because A) it has an organized website design, which I was able to figure out information conveniently, B) the use of simple portable device icons as a visual effect of menu was very unique and cute.

(2)
• The Simphony of Chocolate (http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/00696/intro1.html)

The first reason that I did not like about this website is its poor quality of graphics. There are some animated icons as the menu, and they look terribly bad. The image of chocolate box looks like it just got its shape from a photo. I think it would be better if they just used a simpler version of graphical images. Also the font to describe the menu is sort of hard to read. The colors that are used for this website are different tones of brown, but since everything is in brown it is hard to find some good contrast between the background and the information. Lastly there is a spelling mistake. I think it should be Symphony, not Simphony. Overall, the website is just full of animated icons with bad quality. I wonder how it got a first place from the competition.

(3)
My possible topics are:
• The wild animals (information about animals and their habitats)
• ISU Grade 10 (about our class)
• Travel Around the world (information about different cultures, foods, clothes, holidays, etc)

Website

2010-03-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

We started a NEW UNIT! It is called "Website". In this unit we are going to learn how to make a website using html and make our own website that the topic is based on a topic that intrigues us. In order to learn some website creating skills, we are going to have online learning using a program called "Moodle". We will have a class discussion as well as some personal discussion with Mrs. Wilson. Since we are learning about websites, I think it is a very good idea that we are going to have a discussion online instead of having a face-to-face traditional form of discussion :) After we make our website, we are going to have a class competition to figure out who's website is made the best, and I think it will be a very interesting process since the competition will lead us to enlarge our knowledge on creating a website in order to win the competition :)

We chose Approaches To Learning as our Areas Of Interaction because we are learning skills of creating a website through using various methods; online class discussions, investigations, and visiting some sample websites. We then chose Inquirers as our IB Learner Profile since we will be able to acquire skills that are required for the new unit.

Since I never tried making a website before, I think this unit maybe challenging, but interesting. I believe that if I know some basic skills of creating a web page, they will be very helpful for me later on because I could use the skills to make my own website about my hobby/interest or even for my career or jobs. I hope I enjoy all the steps to create a website.

Wikiality Evaluation

2010-03-01T21:38:00.000-08:00

1) Evaluate Wikipedia group project against our own Method and Design Specifications

The method that we came up was:
1. Choose a topic/subject that we’re familiar with
2. Check if there is a wiki page on it
3. Check if the information on the wiki page corresponds with the information we know
4. Find a reliable source to back up our theory (News sources, books, magazines, web etc.)
5. Once we’ve found an error, print it out and ask Mrs. Wilson if we can change it.

Our design specifications were:

•The information should be cited properly, using MLA format
•The information should be accurate enough that no additional changes are required
•The information should be from valid source, so that it is reliable enough

The topic that we changed on Wikipedia was about Thailand. We all agreed that Thailand is a great place to spend holidays, but I do not think that we did not have further information about Thailand except how famous the country is for a vacation. Therefore, I think that even though the topic was very interesting and intriguing, it was not 100% familiar for us in various ways.

Despite that the topic was not very familiar, we were able to find valid source on the surface area of Thailand, because there were some governmental websites that provide the most accurate information about countries, such as CIA factbook. We could not use any other sources but websites because 1) we could not fine any articles from paper source, and 2) we did not have much time to look thoroughly to other sources. If we had more time to work on the project, we could have probably added more changes since we could have investigated deeply about the subject.

After we added a change to the Wiki Thailand page, we put a proper citation using MLA format. Then we went to the page again, and found out that our change was not changed again, which means the information that we added was accurate! :) Even though it was a minor change, we actually helped Wikipedia to have more accurate information.

2) Evaluate each stage of the project (Cr. A, B, D)

Criterion A - Investigation

Before we started working on research, we firstly made our wiki page and had an experiment how it felt when someone else changed our information. I often made some funny comments on others' wiki pages, and in fact, it was very funny. However, I noticed that I definitely should not put any silly comments or changes on the real wiki pages because I will give disadvantages to other people who might need to use the information. When others added changes on our wiki page, we thanked for those who made some correction on grammar, etc. But others who put weird information just made us feel ridiculous. I think this activity was a very good to learn how we should use wikipedia in terms of editing information in a proper manner.

When the activity was done, the class members are divided into different groups, and I was working together with Sonya and Elise. We then worked on research of Wikipedia. There were two categories of question types; the first one was a individual work, and the second part was a group work. The individual work was mostly based on the questions that were more personal, and asking for one's thoughts and reasons.

There were six questions for the group work process, and each of us took two and answered them. After we answered the questions, we put the information on each one's blog and told other members to copy the information to combine together. While I was working as a part of the group, I felt that I really should be responsible about the topic that I chose, and I should be good at time management. I often procrastinated while we were working on the investigation and I was keep asking a pardon for being procrastinated. I finished investigation on time, but I needed to make other group workers wait for me to put my information on the blog. Next time, I should push myself to work hard during class times so that I would not make other people to feel uncomfortable with working together with me.

Criterion B - Design

For criterion B, we searched for a wiki page that we could possibly make changes, and find sources to prove that the change that we are going to make is valid. Then we created our design specifications.

When we were looking for information that we could add a change, Elise came up with the idea of checking the information on Thailand. We all agreed, and found out that there was a wiki page about Thailand, and there was a minor error on the surface area of Thailand. We found out valid information from CIA factbook and Mundi, a website that provides all the countries' profiles. Then we decided to change this information, then came up with three design specifications.

I think I was able to finish criterion B very quick because my group members provided so much information to me. They were really good at researching, and finding out information that they are needed. If the project was an individual work, I would probably had difficult times to what to choose for my topic. Furthermore, I learned the benefit of group work, which is we can come up with different ideas and solve a problem in a shorter time.

Criterion D - Create

As soon as we started working on criterion D, we went to Wikipedia Thailand web page, and logged on to the website. We added changes to the total area of Thailand, and then checked later again if there was another change made. The whole process of changing information went very fast (in fact it took only 10 minutes to finish Criterion D!). However, it was sort of complicated to change the information because the page was not like an ordinary web editing page, but full of HTML and other information. So we needed to find out where the information of the area is located, and the work cited page of it. After tried for more than 3 times to change the information, we finally saved the wiki page, and we were done with the process.

Overall I learned that changing information on a professional, or popular wiki page is really easy, therefore, people should be award of the validity of the information. Even if the website is a well-known one, there might be some flaws found in it. The entire process of this project went very quickly, but it was very interesting. What is going to be the next project?!? :D

Wikiality Investigation Possible Topics

2010-02-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

List of possible topics that we can work on this project

Nicholas sparks
Disturbia
Hitchcock
Confessions of a shopaholic
She’s the man
William Shakespeare
10 things I hate about you
William Shakespeare
Mongolia
Comparison between book version and movie
The proposal
ISU

Wikiality Investigation 2

2010-02-23T04:19:00.000-08:00

For this project, I'm working with Sonya and Elise. We are going to explore the world of Wikis and make a correction on one of wikipedia pages after that. The questions and answers below are individual work that is done by me. :)

What is a Wiki?

A wiki is a website that can be edited by any web users. It is run by a type of server software that allows to create and edit information freely. Wikipedia uses this software and made an online encyclopedia that everyone can be an editor of any web pages.

Who creates them?

Any wiki pages can be created by ANYONE. Since wiki is an "open-editing" website, anyone who wants to share their knowledge can create a wiki, allowing other people to get sources. It can be created by a student, a company, or by professionals as well.

Why use them?

People often use wikipedia because:

Wikipedia has works cited page, so the information is accurate enough.
Some of information that can bring a controversy is edit-protected, and the information is edited by both sides of an argument. Therefore it is unbiased.
Wikipedia pages update often, putting latest information.
Wikipedia is convenient to find information that using paper sources. It works as a good encyclopedia.

Who edits them?

Like I mentioned before, wikipedia is "open-editing" web page. Therefore, everyone can edit information from wiki pages. When they figure out some false information, or trying to add information, they can easily edit the website. Furthermore, any administrators from Wikipedia have rights to fix the information as well in order to create a clean wiki environment.

What is your task?

For this project, Sonya, Elise and I are going to understand how wikipedia works. After that we are going to choose a topic that we all are familiar with, and trying to find out some biased information on its wikipedia page. After that we will get confirmed from Mrs. Wilson whether we can change/edit its information. If it is okay to change, then we will change the information without putting any other biased information. Then we will check whether the change is still remained on the page.

Why is it important for you to learn about Wikipedia?

Learning about Wikipedia is important for me because I often use Wikipedia to find sources for research. Even though I've already realized that Wikipedia sometimes give you biased information, I do not know in what was the information is inaccurate. Therefore, if I investigate about Wikipedia and the validity of information, I will be able to learn to figure out in what ways the information is right or wrong. Furthermore, learning about Wikipedia will give me a moral that putting biased information should not be happened. I can learn that Wikipedia is a open information source that should be stayed with a high rate of accuracy as much as possible.

Works Cited

"Wiki." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 February 2010. 23 February 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

"What is Wiki?" wiki.org. 27 June 2002. 23 February 2010.

http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

"Wikipedia: Why use Wikipedia." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 29 December 2008. 23 February 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_use_Wikipedia

Wikiality Design

2010-02-22T22:34:00.000-08:00

An example that we found from Wikipedia was the inaccuracy of information of Thailand’s wikipedia page. We found out that the surface area of Thailand was inaccurate.

This was the information from Wikipedia about Thailand.

According to the image, the total area of Thailand is 513,115 sq km.

After that, we went to the CIA world factbook to see if the information was wrong.

(Click the image to view it larger)

In the CIA world factbook it said that the area of Thailand is 513,120 sq km.

We went to another website called "index mundi", a website that also shows accurate country profiles, to see if the information on CIA factbook was correct. According to the website, the area is also described as 513,120 sq km.

Therefore, the information on Wikipedia was invalid according to our investigation.

Our design Specifications are:

The information should be cited properly, using MLA format
The information should be accurate enough that no additional changes are required
The information should be from valid source, so that it is reliable enough

Works Cited

CIA World factbook. 2010. 23 February 2010.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/th.html

"Thailand Area." Index Mundi. 2010. 23 February 2010.

http://www.indexmundi.com/thailand/area.html

"Thailand." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 23 February 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thailand

Wikiality Investigation Method

2010-02-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

1. Choose a topic/subject that we’re familiar with

2. Check if there is a wiki page on it

3. Check if the information on the wiki page corresponds with the information we know

4. Find a reliable source to back up our theory (News sources, books, magazines, web etc.)

5. Once we’ve found an error, print it out and ask Mrs. Wilson if we can change it.

Wikiality Investigation Group Work 3

2010-02-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

Answered by Elise

Where does Wikipedia get its information?

Wikipedia can get its information from a range of different websites. It can get it from personal blogs, twitter, or any other website that are either personal or public. However, it is important that the information on those websites is valid so it won’t be removed soon after.

Who is in charge of deciding what goes into an article and what gets removed from an article?

Even though the Wikipedia program is processed by its administrators, every user can edit every source on a wiki. If someone believes that the information is incorrect or invalid, that person can change or remove the information. Also, administrators have the rights to remove the information in order to keep the web environment reliable.

Wikiality Investigation Group Work 2

2010-02-22T22:09:00.000-08:00

Answered by Sonya

How would you know whether a particular article really is accurate?

You can check the ‘for more research’ link. This will give you a list of different books/websites that may go into more detail about that specific topic. Another link that can be used is ‘sources’. You can go to the websites where the information on Wikipedia came from. If the information is similar and makes sense you know that the sources are correct. Before completely believing all the information you should check other sources like Encarta or encyclopedias for more research.

How would you go about discovering whether an article contains inaccurate information?

Once you have found out that Wikipedia page contains false information you can change it. Once you change something you should put your source so that other people can see that you changed the information for a reason.

Wikiality Investigation Group Work

2010-02-22T21:55:00.000-08:00

"If there is some debate about whether a particular bit of information should or should not be included in an article, what is the process for deciding?"

When Wikipedia checks the reliability of a source, they use certain criteria to evaluate the information which are:
• Accuracy of information included in the article
• Appropriateness of the images provided with the article
• Appropriateness of the style and focus of the article
• Susceptibility to, and exclusion and removal of, false information (a criterion specific to the Wikipedia process)
• Comprehensiveness, scope and coverage within articles and in the range of articles
• Identification of reputable third-party sources as citations
• Stability of the articles
• Susceptibility to editorial and systemic bias
• Quality of writing

If an article does not match with these criteria, then the editors/administrators consider it as invalid information, and it will be eliminated from Wikipedia.

How reliable do you think Wikipedia actually is?

I think Wikipedia is a pretty reliable source in certain areas such as science fields or profiles of celebrities. In 2005, a report from the journal Nature included that Wikipedia had a similar level of accuracy on its scientific sources compared to Encyclopedia Britannica with a similar rate of making errors on the information. Even though there was a controversy over the validity of this information, it is still believed that people think that Wikipedia can be a good source. However, since Wikipedia can be edited by every user, there is a high possibility of creating false information. Wikipedia in English has a lot of information with a good accuracy of work sources. You can view the same webpage in a different language, and I think there can be some mistakes while people are translating the information into a different one. For example, there is a very long and accurate English Wiki page while only basic information is included in the Wiki page in Korean. Therefore, Wikipedia is a source that the reliability depends on what information the user is going to find out.

Furthermore, Wikipedia can be a reliable or unreliable source based on different age group. For example, students who do not have a lot of information on certain topics may believe that the contents in Wiki pages are 100%true. On the other hand, professionals will be much easier to fine out errors or false information from Wiki articles since they know more information than the other does.

Works Cited

“How reliable is wikipedia?” Yahoo! Answers. 2009. 23 February 2010.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090313101943AAc1mgS

“Is Wikipedia Reliable?” Dummies.com. 23 February 2010.
http://as.dummies.com/how-to/content/is-wikipedia-reliable.html

“Reliability of Wikipedia.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 February 2010. 23 February 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

Wikiality Investigation 1

2010-02-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

Wikiality Investigation

We firstly made a group wiki website. I was working together with Sarah and Brooke. We went to a website called "PB Wiki" (http://www.pbworks.com) that offers free wiki. We made an account using Sarah's email address, and we put a nickname called "Bobella" :) as our name in order to hide our identity. We decided that everyone on this website is allowed to add or edit things on our wiki web document.

After we created our wiki called "BOBELLA", we put Sarah's fictional podcast script as our web document. Then, we went to other groups' wiki websites individually, and we made either a comment or added changes on their script or wiki front page.

When I was looking around others wiki webs, I intentionally made some "funny" comments on them. I was being one of those mean users who put false or silly information on wikis. I felt very interesting that I could change information so easily even though the website did not belong to me.

When I was done with commenting on other wiki websites, I went back to our group's wiki, and found out what changes have been made. As I expected, our script became very different to the original one. People added silly stuff, and some were even perverted... :(!! Our script had a short profile of the narrator, who was a teen girl, but now there is a profile of weird black guy who enjoys clubbing, not reading. I think people changed these things on our wiki just for fun because they already knew that our wiki belongs to one of their classmates, so it is okay to add silly stuff on it. Also, I do not think that they would do the same thing on professional wiki websites because all the information on those webs needed to be accurate as much as possible so that a lot of people can share each other. When I saw our wiki at first, I felt a little bit angry because we put our information in order to share each other, not just letting them to "adjust" information. On the other hand, I also thought that other people would feel the same as I do when they saw some weird changed happened to their wikis. And I felt guilty that I put so many silly stuff on others' wiki webs.

Luckily, Wiki owners are able to delete some usuless information on their web docments. For example, I could delete some information easily from the page history of our wiki. Furthermore, if owners think that it might be annoying to delete every silly information on their wikis, they can go back to the original (or older) version of their wikis. In order to change the wiki onto its original version on PB Wiki, 1) open recent changes page 2) Click "show changes" of one of the oldest version of web document. 3) Click the changed date that is shown on the top of the website. 4) Click "revert to this version". By using these steps, people can go back to its original version without having any problems :)

I think that wikis can be used in many ways. It can be used to: (Class opinions+my own)

-give resources, or information.

-advertisement

-survey

-debate

-create cooperated book

-create class websites/blog

-etc.

Wikiality

2010-02-02T20:02:00.000-08:00

Today we started a new project called "Wikiality". It is going to be about investigating wikipedia and finding out whether the information we get it from there is valid or invalid.

Wikipedia is a type of online encyclopedia that all the individuals can put and fix the information on that website. It provides information in different languages so that many nationalities may share the same information with their mother tongue.

Personally I thought that wikipedia was a good research source that I could get all the different types of information easily. Most of the times, Wikipedia helped me to find out and understand information for my projects. However, one of the problems of wikipedia is that all the information can be adjusted by other volunteers. Therefore, there are possibilities that some information are false and are nonsense. Of course there are people who work hard to fix all the false information on Wikipedia, but there are some sources remained as biased.

In this unit, we are going to search for some of wrong information on Wikipedia, and try to adjust it without putting any biased facts. Also, the information should not be published maliciously.

This project is related to principled, one of IB learner profile, since we need to know some principles of using wiki properly. The chosen Areas of Interaction is "Health and Social Education". Even though it is not related to the "heatlh" part, it is closely related to social education since we are learning netiquettes of using wikis.

I think this project is going to be very interesting, since I'm a great fan of using wikipedia, and I would want to learn a lot from this project.

Podcast research URLs

2010-01-25T21:53:00.000-08:00

Oops! I forgot to mention what websites I used to research about teenage suicide!

Here's the works cited page^^

Works Cited

“About Teen Suicide”. Kids Health from Nemours. June 2008. 19 December 2009. http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/suicide.html#

“Teenage suicide in the United States”. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 16 December 2009.
21 December 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide_in_the_United_States

“Teenage Suicide Prevention”. TEEN SUICIDE. 21 December 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide_in_the_United_States

Podcast Evaluation

2010-01-25T21:38:00.000-08:00

A. Investigate

Before we started researching about podcast, we interviewed peers and one of our parents to ask about their teenage life. I interviewed five friends and my mom. While I was interviewing people, I was very busy since it was the time which I came back to UB from Seoul. Therefore I was rushing through all the processes, and I realized that I should have worked on these interviews while I was in Korea. Interviewing was not a hard work to do; creating some questions about adolescence, send the notes to people, and organizing and publishing their answers were basically all the processes I was supposed to do. However, bad time managing has resulted me being procrastinating, and cramming. Therefore, I thought a good plan and pushing myself to follow the plan were very important.

Investigating about podcast was a very interesting task, especially when I was listening to some examples of podcasts. I was supposed to research what podcast is and how it is made. Also I needed to listen to at least three different podcasts in order to get some ideas that what I should include in my podcast. While I was researching, I was able to learn a lot about podcast. I have heard of podcast, but I did not know much about how it is created. Through out researching, I got information of the definition of podcast, and how people, or an organization explain their thoughts or ideas through podcasting. (I firstly thought that podcast was one of products from Apple company :p) Furthermore, iTunes helped me a lot while I was struggling to find examples of podcasts. I listened to podcasts that were based on sciences and meditation for teenagers. All three podcasts were very informative, and I was very impressed by the way how they speak; very clear with nice music. No mistakes... (While I was recording my script, it was VERY hard to finish it without making mistakes!)

I think I could've done some more researches on podcast, because when I was publishing a podcast, the recording system was not in a very good quality, and it was pretty hard to record it without any noise. I could've researched what equipmetns that I could use in order to record in a better way. I finished investigating on time, but I was sort of rushing in the end. I always mention it on my evaluation, but I seriously need to manage my time better. From now on, I should make myself to work on a project everyday, even though I use only a few minutes on it, so that I can get used with good time management without procrastination.

B. Design

Brainstorming for podcast designs were very interesting. Since the topic needed to be related to adolescence, I wrote down some ideas; however, most of them were sort of depressing. (such as teen suicide, stereotypes, etc) Because I'm also a teenager, I think making a design on these topics tend to be easy. When I was working on some previous projects, I needed some further research in order to get some sketch, or design ideas. But for this one, a lot of ideas just came into my head.

My three designs were based on: teenage suicide, wild teen life (drugs, smoking...) and stereotypes. I thought these themes were very interesting for me, and since the I chose topics that I liked, it was pretty easy to organize what I'm going to put for my podcast.

The final design, which was about teenage suicide, was created well without any big problems. I didn't want to make my podcast to controversy (since the topic itself is already controversy), so I just organized some simple lists of what would be included as contents.

I posted the designs on time, and I think there were no big problems happened while I was working on the process. One thing that might be weakness of my designs is that I got some ideas from some of my friends designs. I did not exactly follow what I was going to put in my podcast, but when I couldn't come up with some topics, I looked into others' blogs and got a few from theirs. Lucklily, I do not think no body else worked on teen suicide for thier final product, but I think I could've come up with some more original ideas. Therefore, I need to spend more time to consider what topics might be original enough and creative so that I could make better designs.

C. Plan

Creating plan was a very complicated process, especially for this project. I created a plan that I could work on my product during the break; however, the plan didn't work at all. The plan was specific enough, with all the steps I need to do and how much time I should spend for each day. But the problem was that A) since it was break, there were some other events that I did not expect, which I could not follow the plan as I planned, B) many people were on a trip to other countries, which made me hard to interview them. Even though I could contact them through the internet, the time difference was also a problem. On the whole, the plan seemed it was impossible to follow.

Then I created a new plan. It's not like a totally different plan, but I re-organized it. I wrote down the dates that I actually worked and followed the plan. After that I put some changes on it.

Making a plan always helps me to be organized and disciplined. However, I still need to be more used with following plans, and creating a realistic one.

D. Create

For create process, I wrote my scipt for the podcast, recorded it, and published the podcast. Writing script was very fun, and I really enjoyed writing my script. The information that I got from websites about teenage suicide helped me to make my script more interesting. I included causes of teen suicide, some interviews and ways to prevent suicides. I was kind of worried that what if people feel bored about my contents of podcast; however, after I asked for several people to read my script, the result was pretty good. People enjoyed reading my script, and they were looking forward to listen to my podcast.

Then I recorded my podcast. First, I used iPod voice recorder, but there were so much noises so my voice was not clear enough. Then I used my laptop recorder, and the quality of voice was better. The thing that annoyed me so much was that I made so many mistakes while I was recording. I tried to record the entire script without pausing the recorder, but it was impossible. I sometimes pronounced words awkwardly, and I often skipped some lines while I was recording. Then I decided to record one paragraph at one time. So, overall there were about 9 recordings, and I used moviemaker to combine them into one mp3 file. Since I recorded my script separately, my voice tend to sound different for each recording, so the flow of the voice was not smooth enough. I thought if I had a professional equipment to record the script, I think it would have been better. After I published my podcast and listened to it, I felt kind of funny since I was listening to the recording of my own voice :p. Nevertheless, it was a very interesting process.

The biggest problem that I faced while I was working on podcast was testing my podcast. My original plan was to publish on youtube and ask for people to listen to my podcast and make a comment either on my blog or facebook. I've sent messages to people so that they could listen to my podcast; however, it was exam week and everyone was busy. So, no one actually made a comment about my podcast. Therefore, I needed to ask my classmates face-to-face to listen to my podcast. I put the link on my blog and after they listened to my podcast, they made some comments. They were saying that my voice was not very clear, but the contents were interesting and very related to adolescence. So I think that the result of testing is pretty good, even though I had to change my testing plan.

To sum up, making a podcast was very new to me, and I learned a lot from this project. I learned not only about podcasts, but also some facts about teenagers and their lives. Sometimes I felt we spent too much time on this project, and I got sort of bored. However, after I'm done with all the processes, I think it was an unique experience that gave me a lot of information. :)

Podcast Plan with changes added

2010-01-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

There have been a lot of changes occurring to my plan. The biggest change was about the interviews. I was going to interview people about teenage suicide during break; however, many of them left to other countries for vacation, and I was not able to keep in touch with them. Therefore, the previous plan that I was going to interview people during the break needed to be canceled. Also, I skipped some of plans during the break, and now I noticed that I was wasting so much time during the break.

Click the image to view it larger :)

Podcast Final Product

2010-01-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

Dear Audiences :)

I finally published my podcast!
Here's the link:
http://hayoungr.podOmatic.com/entry/2010-01-18T22_18_37-08_00

Please listen to my podcast and make a comment on my blog^_^ Thanks!

"Teenage Suicides... Yes or No?"

Image Cited

"Schools Confront Teen Suicide". Edutopia. October 2006. 26 January 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_suicide_in_the_United_States

Podcast Script

2010-01-18T02:28:00.000-08:00

“Mom, dad... I’m tired of everything… and now, I think it is time to end up. I love you, goodbye.” (Pause) Several months ago, I found an image of letter that was written with blood while I was web surfing. It was from a teen girl, making a farewell to her beloved parents, saying that she doesn’t want to live anymore. Then, there was a big argument whether it was a right decision of her to finish her life this early. Well, I do not know what happened to the girl after she wrote her letter, and yet I wished that she did not commit suicide.

(Short pause)

Hello everyone. My name is HY, and I’m an ordinary sixteen year old girl. Today I’m going to talk about teenage suicide. Many of you probably have heard of teenagers committing suicide on newspaper, magazines, and even on TV programs. Teenage suicide is becoming a big social issue and the rate of suicides has increased rapidly these days. Even though there is a low rate of children committing suicide, it starts to increase amazingly during adolescence. According to CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, teenage suicide is the third-leading cause of death for 15 to 24 old teenagers and adults. If so, what would be the main causes for these “young adults” to commit suicide? People might just say that too much schoolwork or having a bad family relationship would be the main reasons. Well, they ARE some parts of the causes. However, I want to remind people that there are actually more than those two factors that teenagers finish their lives.

To begin with, I’m going to tell you some of suicide causes. The first one is bad family relationship. Adolescence is the time that teenagers become very sensitive and easy to get stressed or tired. Also, it is time which their parents should encourage their children from any hardships by giving encouraging words or some advice. However, if there is a crack on one’s family relationship, teenagers can easily get bad impacts. Divorce of parents, domestic violence, unemployment of parents or household financial problems may give fatal harms on teenagers both physically and mentally. Teenagers are not like little children who don’t know or don’t care about those problems. Most of teens are already mentally matured enough, and of course, they definitely would get pressured and depressed from bad house circumstances. They are afraid that something unexpected would happen to their family, like parents divorcing. Fear and anger toward parents… If teenagers are under these environments for a long time, they become mentally exhausted and reach the moment where they just want to give up everything by crossing the river of no return.

How would you feel after you had an argument with your friends? A bit frustrated, and depressed as well, right? Then how would you feel if you get bullied from others? What if you do not have any friends that can understand you and warm your heart? The second suicide reason is related to friends. Teenagers spend a lot of time with their friends sharing their interests and hobbies as well as telling their concerns and get cheered up from each other. In other words, teenagers need friends to express their thoughts. But what if friends turn their back on you? Personally, I would be VERY depressed. We, the humans, are social animals. We are not able to live without having any social interactions. Becoming a victim of bullying, or became socially rejected from others may give serious damage to one’s mental health. Hence, teenagers are very easily to get mental disorders, such as depression, since they can be very emotional at some moments. And if it lasts for a long time… unfortunately, yes, committing suicides might happen as a result.

School is probably one of the most important things from a teen’s life. Teenagers learn new things and have social interactions at schools. Likewise, school will be the place that teenagers would spend most of their time except their homes. The problem is that, what if they do not enjoy their school life and get stressed every day? What if they get bad grades on their studies and starting to lose hope that they can do it better next time? There are some students who are very sensitive at getting grades, and if they are not satisfied with their grades, some of them just burst into tears and they are in a panic. Sometimes there are some teenagers who just end up their lives because they became depressed and thought there is no hope for them.

Drug abuse is also becoming a very big issue among teenagers these days. Some teenagers start going on drugs because of their ultimate curiosity or occasionally by peer pressure; however, they did not notice that drugs are very fatal that can lead them to death. Once teens are addicted to drugs, they just can’t help it. They want drugs more and more. The overdose of drugs just leads these poor teenagers to finish their lives so that they can get away from addiction.

So, you’ve heard some factors that lead teenagers to commit suicide, and now I’d like to ask you this question: how do you think of teenagers committing suicide? Five teenagers already have answered the question. For their personal privacy, their names will not be read out loud. Then let me read their responses.

Teen A responded that “Teen suicide is a very depressing topic because it’s extremely hard to try and relate to these teenagers. There are many different reasons why teens commit suicide and she thinks most of them are not feasible. You have your whole life ahead of you and of course there will be times when you are unhappy and have problems but that doesn’t mean that you should kill yourself. Whenever you have a problem the answer is not to kill yourself.”

Teen B said that “committing suicide is a way for some people to get away from their stress and problems. Since most of them take their life away because they feel bad about something or stressed out, she thinks it is a serious issue for those people and she would advise them to seek professional help. It is a terrific thought of taking away your own life and she certainly believes that there are other ways to manage with stress problems. There are still much better ways to handle this situation rather than committing suicide.”

Teen C also made a comment that apparently “girls tend to think about suicide twice as much as boy do, yet four times as many boys die from suicide. Teenagers struggle to see the point of dealing with some troublesome situations and/or feel as if they can’t handle them. She believes teen suicide is a waste of a life which still has so much left in it.

So, Teen A, B and C suggest that teenage suicide should not happen.

Then Teen D answered in sort of different way. “She doesn’t think suicide is something that she has much experienced with. She doesn’t know any people who have done it. However, through watching movies and documentaries she has seen some of the factors that indicate whether a person commit suicide or not. She does not think suicide is that common in her environment here in Mongolia because of the support we can get from friends, family and school, all things which can make a person commit suicide. Overall, she was in neutral whether teen suicide is right or wrong since she did not have any experiences.”

Lastly, Teen E replied with a lot of background information. He thinks that “teen suicide is a colossal problem in the world, especially in the US and East Asian countries. The major cause of this is stress from school. This is not such a great issue in the States, where the only problem teenagers face is the conflict between students, and assimilating into the school society, but in countries like Korea, Japan, and China, the issues are aggravated by the competition of “academics” for admission of college, as well as corporal punishment. It has been studied that one of the largest adolescent suicide rates come from Korea, where students prepare to go to college ever since elementary school.” Wow, thanks for very detailed info.

(Short Pause)

Most of responses tend to have negative image against teenage suicide. They suggest that teens committing suicide is not a very appropriate way, and therefore there should be some ways to prevent suicides. In my opinion, I also believe that teenage suicide should be stopped. I totally agree with what others have said. I am a teenager as well, and I also sometimes feel depressed, hopeless and desperate to give up. I also have thought that finishing my life would be the best way to have a comfortable rest. BUT, in fact, it’s NOT TRUE. One’s life is very worthy. It belongs not only to him or her, but also to his/her family, especially mom and dad. I would like to ask those who attempt to commit suicide whether they have considered about their parents after they end up their lives. Furthermore, we, the teenagers, are still growing both mentally and physically. After we grow up, we will be facing a lot of problems in our lives, and some of them might be even worse than the problems that we have now. Therefore, all the hardships that we are struggling at the moment are like some practices for our future. If we overcome them, then we will be able to enjoy our lives after we become adults.

Okay then, what should people do in order to prevent teenage suicides? Basically, the most important factor for family members and friends to help teenagers attempting suicides is to understand their minds and behaviors well. I found out that there are some warning signs of teens committing suicide. For example, when he or she talks about death or suicide in general, it can be one of signs that she is depressed or feeling guilty. Having no desire to participate in favorite activities or having a trouble to concentrate or think clearly may also be some dangerous signs. Furthermore, if he/she starts to make some self-destructive actions, such as drinking alcohol, or going on drugs heavily, you should be aware of him or her. Dramatic mood swing can also be a significant warning sign. If your friend or child seems to have a lot of mood changes, then you should consider whether he/she is having a trouble or depressed at the moment.

Parents should keep a close eye on their teenagers who seem very depressed and try to have more time to have a conversation with their children. Reassure teenagers that parents can be a help whenever they need for it. Also, Parents should be able to listen openly without making any judgments and believe what he or she says. Also parents need to understand seriously about the threats that are bugging their child. If teenagers do not feel comfortable sharing their concerns with their parents and try to avoid them, parents can suggest their children to talk to someone who is more neutral, such as other relatives, or school member.

Some parents hesitate to ask their teens whether they have thought of committing suicide because they may give the idea of suicide to their children. However, I would suggest parents to ask their children if they are thinking about suicide. Asking directly often helps people to talk about their concerns more easily. Likewise, teenagers may feel more comfortable to tell how they feel like when their parents directly ask them whether they think about committing suicide.
Furthermore, if teenager’s symptom of being depressed seems severe, it is better to take him/her to the psychologist and look for ways to cure his/her depression.

If you want to help a teen from committing suicide as a friend, having a serious conversation about a teen’s problem may help to release one’s depression as well. Tell him/her that you will be always there if there is a need of help. A comforting word can warm a teen’s mind and it will lessen the tension of depression.

For those who think of committing suicide, I would like to encourage them to think positively. I know it will be hard for them just to be optimistic when they are in blue mood; however, at least trying to think positive things would be able to give changes in their moods.

(Short pause)

This is all for today, and I would like to thank everyone who listened to my podcast. Also, I really appreciate for those who answered the survey question. You were listening to HY’s podcast, and I’ll be back with another interesting topic to discuss. See you!

Podcast Plan

2009-12-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

Click the image to see it larger

*Mrs. Wilson, I forgot to add the plan on the blog.... I kept it in my flash disk after I created it, and I totally forgot about it :( i'm sorry for posting it late*

Podcast Designs

2009-12-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

My design specifications – The podcast…

It Must be published
The topic should be related to adolescence
The podcast should have a picture that describes the topic
Should have background music – quiet and smooth
The length of podcast should be between 5 to 10 minutes
I should speak clearly so the audiences will understand my podcast well
Audio format
No offensive words
Tone of my voice – calm and relaxed, but sometimes strong to emphasize some points

Design 1
“Teenage Suicide”

Greet people in a formal way with relaxing music (sort of classical type)
Play the recorded interviews of teenagers how they think of teenage suicide – it will give audiences to get some ideas for the topic
Give some examples of the ways teens commit suicide – I can research online for this information
Question the audience about teenage suicide (ex. “Do you think it is a right way to end up your life?”)
State my opinion of the topic, and give some supporting reasons
Provide some preventions – for further information, I need to research on this topic as well.
Pause after talking about preventing suicides (music volume a little bit louder) Then sum up my ideas on teenage suicide and finish podcasting.
The music is playing for a few more seconds afterward

Design 2
“Being Wild and Dangerous”

Start playing the background music and greet people (the music would be better if it has a fast tempo to foreshadow the topic)
Question audience in a casual tone about the wild habits of teens (ex. “Have you ever tried smoking or drinking?”) – caution: be careful not to be offensive
Examples of dangerous activities that teens undergo. Give brief explanations of them
List the consequences of doing such things, such as teen pregnancy, alcoholic, types of chronic diseases…
Suggest my point of view on teenagers going wild and provide reasons
Interview some teenagers and adults about the topic to show different views on this subject
Summarize my topic and make a final comment
Background music plays a few more seconds after the podcast is over

Design 3
“Stereotypes”

Start the background music and greet people in “nerdy” way – using professional vocabularies, etc.
Ask audiences about how they felt about the way I greeted them
Response to the question and state that stereotypes are wrong and biased
List some common teen stereotypes
To give information of those stereotypes, make a short improvising theater scene of them – I will need to ask for other classmate to help me with it
State my opinion on stereotypes and try to persuade audiences
Play voice records of some teenagers talking about stereotypes – 2~3 students
Make a final comment on the topic and finish the podcast
Background music plays a few more seconds after the podcast is over

My Final Design

I’m going to choose my first design to create a podcast because the topic “teenage suicide” seems a very interesting topic to me. I think teenagers should be aware of committing suicides by encouraging them to think positively and being happy and satisfied. I also want to give an advice for those who tried to finish their lives that it is wrong, and not a proper time to end up their precious lives. I think I will be able to work hard on researching some causes and preventions of teen suicide.
Even though all these three designs tend to be related much to the design specifications, I think the first design fit to them the most. For this design, I will be able to change the tone of my voice very effectively when I’m recording the podcast because there are parts that I should give audiences some warm words as well as a bit harsh and rational thoughts with strong voice.

Audience

Since my topic is based on adolescence, teenagers will be my general audiences. It does not mean that teenagers only in Mongolia, but teenagers all around the world. This is because I think teenagers have similar feelings and thoughts that can be shared by other teens. Therefore, I do not think that many teens will have difficulties to understand my topics. Even though it is mostly for adolescents, any grownups can listen to my podcast as well.

Podcast Design Possible Topics

2009-12-14T06:27:00.000-08:00

I started creating a list of possible topics that I may use for my design as well as for the final podcast. They are not directly related to teens in Mongolia, but I think I can create connection between the topics and lives of Mongolia teens. My topics are:

Teenage suicide
These days, the number of teenagers committing suicide is getting larger. Whenever I saw some articles on news or magazines on teenage suicides, I wondered “what made them to end their life so easily.” In Korea, for example, some teenagers commit suicide because of peer pressure, or stress of grades, and some family or friend relationships. I think these factors are not only the causes of teen suicide in Korea, but worldwide causes.
Personally, I’m against teenage suicides. I, as a teenager, think that I’m too young to end up my life. We are not fully grown up, and we haven’t experienced other parts of the society yet. I believe that there will be a lot more fun stuff that we can do after we become adults. Therefore, I would like to encourage students to think positively and try not to give up their lives easily.
In this topic, I would like to talk about some main causes of teen suicide, and ways to prevent committing suicide.

Stereotypes
Adolescence is the time period when we, the teenagers are easily get influenced by different stereotypes. However, stereotypes tend to be biased most of the times. Without knowing the fact that stereotypes are wrong, some of students put others into these “groups” and make fun of them. Those who get stereotyped often feel depressed and excluded from others.
Overall, I would like to talk about some stereotype examples and giving advice to teenagers that stereotyping people is not a good thing to do. I think having some interviews would work well for this topic since I’d like to give some valid supporting details for my statements.

Hobbies and Interests
The way we (teens) spend our free time has changed due to the development of technology such as computer, cell phone, TV and some game devices like playstation. Our hobbies and interests tend to be different to our parents’ generation’s interests or hobbies.
For this topic, I would like to talk about some reasons of changed hobbies and interests, and then compare the way how teenagers in the past and now spend their free time. Interviewing elders such as teachers or my parents would work well for this topic.

Family relationships
Since teenagers tend to have emotional changes very often, they sometimes have arguments with their family members. I also argue with my family, mostly with my mom. After we fought, I always feel uncomfortable and sorry to my mom. I think many other teenagers would feel like me after any arguments. In this topic, I would like to talk about some ways to have a good relationship between teenagers and their families, such as how to suppress their anger and try to understand others’ feelings.

Being Wild and Dangerous

Teen pregnancy, smoking, drinking, going on drugs… These are some of factors that some teenagers have or have not experienced in their lives. They sound very wild and dangerous to me. I’m one of those who have not experienced these stuff, but I sometimes thought how it would feel like doing those things.
Basically, this topic will focus on some wild teenage cultures, and the consequences of undergoing dangerous teen cultures. I may need to research a little bit more on this topic if I’m going to choose it. Still I think it is also a very interesting topic to talk about on the podcast.

Additional Interview

2009-12-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

*Soo Yeon turned in her interview questions note this weekend=)*

Interview with Soo Yeon (Age 17)

What does ‘being a teenager’ mean for you?
To me, being a teenager means preparing for my future getting to know myself better. It’s when I come to maturity. It’s a time when I have more chances of learning new things, such as language and sports and fun activities. I think being a teenager is like being free, being wild when necessary.

Are you enjoying your life as a teenager? Why?
I don’t know whether I’m enjoying my life as a teenager because I’m always in a safe place. I want to go wild at some times like some other teenagers, but I can’t. My parents would try to protect me or set rules on me. I have to do things within the limit of their protection. I think I myself am setting too much rules on my behaviors and actions.

Is there anything that you get influenced more after you become a teenager?
I think friends influence many teenagers very much. But not me. I get influenced most by my parents’ advice or stories of life experience.

How would you define your teenage life?
hmm... Finding a role model and feeling safe in a community would be my teenage life for now.

Is there anything that has changed after you became a teenager?
I began to care about my appearance and what people think about me. I noticed that I have personality flaws sometimes. I began to think about my future career and what I should do in order to get into college.

What should a teenager do in order to enjoy his/her life?
I think teenagers shouldn’t play all the time. There should be a balance between playing and studying. Going to a lot of places would be good, too. I’ve done a lot of traveling with my family and it was a great experience for me as a teenager. Challenging or trying out new things is good, too. Or developing your own hobby can be fun.

Do you often feel emotional changes? When and why?
-I feel depressed sometimes with NO reason. I become edgy and I make sharp retorts at people.
-Sometimes, I go mad inside if my parents bring in guests without informing me. I feel like my privacy is revealed when the guests just walk in and I’m in my pajamas or my room is messy. I hate it when children come into my room and play. I hate it when people don’t close my room door when I’m doing something in my room. I think it’s all about privacy, I think.
-When I’m tired, I become edgy and depressed.
-When there is a big change in the climate or anything else, I become excited. Changes make me feel excited.

Have you ever thought of trying bad things (ex. Committing suicide, smoking, etc)? Why?
I don’t know if going to a night club would be a bad thing. But I wanted to go to a club with my classmates sometimes when they talked about it. But I never go. And I imagined what it would be like to drink and get drunk. People always drink in dramas or in movies. It would feel funny.

What is the most important thing in your life? Why?
For now, I think it’s my belief as a Christian and my study. Being a Christian would guide me through life and help me to form my life standard. I have to prepare to go to college or university, so I have to study hard.

Adolescence is a time to be prepared to become an adult. Are you prepared enough?
Not yet. I’m still not used to life outside of my parents’ protection. I have to become more independent in order to fully become an adult.

Any comments you would like to make about being a teenager?
hmmm..... I think it’s a time when you can make mistakes and do wrong things but can still correct them. So try new things~!

Podcast Investigation 5

2009-12-07T09:04:00.000-08:00

In order to record a podcast, I come up with two methods. The first one is using voice recorder. This is the general way that people record voices because it can record voices clearly without any noise. I think it will work well when I'm going to make an audio podcast. The second method is to use a video camera and record the voice while I'm recording a video as well. This will spend less time if I'm going to create a video podcast. However, a video camera has higher possibility that it can catch some other sounds that I do not require to make my podcast. Other than these two ways, I do not think there is another one unless I can buy a professional recording equipments =)

After I record voice, I need to edit the records to make a better podcast. For this process, I can use podcast websites. They are really easy to utilize, so I can make and publish a podcast easily. However, I also think that using windows movie maker will also help me edit the podcast, especially when I'm going to make a video podcast. After that, I can go to the podcast websites and learn now to publish the podcast on websites. Some good podcast websites are: www.mypodcast.com and www.podomatic.com They both include some tips of creating a podcast, and they also have creating podcast system online, so people can create a podcast without big difficulties.

I have not decided if I'm going to make an audio or video podcast. Despite of that, I came up with an idea to test my podcast. When I'm done with creating it, I'm going to put it on Facebook, and Youtube since I have accounts for both of them. Then I would ask people to make a comment on my podcast whether it came out well or not. I have some friends that I am not that familiar with each other on facebook, and I think they can be my guests to make a comment on my podcast. If I asked my classmates, I think they will try to make good comments since we are friends. However, those who do not recognize me will be able to make a rational, cold reply to my podcast so that I can figure out what I could've done better while I was working on it.

I also thought of publishing my podcast on itunes; however, I did not think that it would be an effective idea. When I was searching for some good podcasts on itunes, there were a lot of podcasts with good qualities. But many people have not seen all of those podcasts yet, and there were not enough comments about them. Therefore, I thought that if I put mine on the itunes, I would probably get poor feedback from other itune users.

I hope the project goes well, so that I can enjoy the entire process of making a podcast :)

Podcast Investigation 4

2009-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Rethinking Adolescence
Audio podcast link http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkingPodcast

This podcast is recorded from a history teacher. I firstly found it from itunes podcast section, and then I found the website of the creator of the podcast.

His podcasts are based on rethinking one’s adolescence in different ways. From the podcast that I heard, it told to people that journey of one’s life is very important and people should not be afraid of choosing the wrong path of their lives, even though it might be a challenge for some people.

I really liked this podcast; it made me feel calm and gave me a time to think about myself. This podcast gave a different mood than the other two, which were about sciences. The advices that he gave have very deep meanings and they were very helpful for me to think how I should make the path of my life.

The music was also nice as well. It matched with the record and the tone of his voice. His podcast gave me some information that music is also one of the most important parts of creating a podcast. If the music was very loud and fast, it would just distract the record voice.

I think his podcast went very well until he mentioned about his website URL. Even though the URL telling was sort of a type of putting an advertisement in a podcast, it ruined the quiet and sentimental mood of the podcast. Maybe he could’ve said the advertisement without the music to make the contents and the ads separate each other.

So far, there are only five podcasts uploaded on the website; 4 audio and 1 video. The latest one was published on 25th of April 2007, which has been a long time. It seems like he stopped podcasting at the moment.

On the podcast section, you cannot find information about the author, but on his blog. Therefore, if you want to know more about the author, it’s better to check his online blog.

Works Cited

D'Ambrosio, Jay. "Rethinking Adolescence". Rethinking Adolescence. 5 April 2007: 1. FeedBurner. 6 December 2009. http://feeds.feedburner.com/RethinkingPodcast

Podcast Investigation 3

2009-12-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

This Week @ NASA
Video podcast link

http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/409260main_TWAN_12_4_09.mp4

This podcast (or NASA cast) is from NASA. The podcasts can be played as either audio clip or video clip. I chose the video podcast, to see some differences between audio and video podcasts. This channel tells you what events have occurred weekly. It is sort of like astronomy news.

The podcast that I chose included some information such as landing of Soyuz spacecraft, ambassador of exploration, and 17th anniversary of Apollo 17 mission. It included various information that are categorized differently with title pages.

Before I watched this podcast, I was expecting of getting some news of what’s going on in the universe, or some facts of the universe. However, it was mostly about some events going on NASA, not like giving information of exploring the universe. After I watched the video, I was not pretty satisfied with the contents.

This podcast was hard for me to understand. It might be related to my lack of English skills, as well as my knowledge of astronomy. After I looked at the script, I was able to figure out what kind information the podcast was giving.

Despite of having a hard time understanding the contents, I liked the visual effects of the podcast. Compared to audio podcasts, I could be more interested in watching the podcast. I was able to focus more on the topic, and the video tended to grab my attention better than the audio one. While I was watching the podcast, I thought that video podcasts will be beneficial for those who are visual learners like me.

This podcast channel has a new episode weekly, including a lot of information within. Since the podcast is not a private one, there is no information about the creator, or the narrator of the podcast. Overall, the podcast was created from the NASA organization.

Work Cited

"NASA TV's This Week @ NASA, December 4". NASA Podcasts. 4 December 2009: 138. NASA. 6 December 2009. http://www.nasa.gov/mp4/409260main_TWAN_12_4_09.mp4

Podcast Investigation 2

2009-12-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

In order to know more about podcasts, I found three example podcasts from different sources; two from websites and one from itunes. Since I was interested in sciences podcasts, two of them were about some scientific facts and the other one is about teenage life, which can be related to the topic that we are working on at the moment.

Pharaohs Had Heart Disease
Click the link in order to listen to the podcast
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=pharaohs-had-heart-disease-09-11-18

This is a podcast called “Pharaohs Had Heart Disease”, which is from online science forum “Scientific American”. It is from a section named “60-second science” and including introduction and conclusion, one podcast tend to have a length of 1min 15sec to 1min 30sec. The podcast is very short and it focuses on one major topic.

Basically, the podcast is about that scientists have found out that ancient Egyptian mummy had symptoms that are related to heart diseases. It gives an idea to people that heart disease is not a disease that people in modern times only get it from having greasy food.

I think this podcast is very interesting. It tells you some scientific facts in fun ways. Science tend to be very boring when you just talk about it without any visual explanations, however, I was able to enjoy listening to this podcast because the topic was simple and easy to understand. Also, the person voice recorded is very clear which I can hear it without any noises.

However, since all the information has to be done within 1min 30sec, the speaker tends to speak fast that sometimes I cannot understand the contents of the podcast thoroughly. If there was no transcript, it would be hard for me to fully understand what the speaker is talking about.

This podcast channel put new episodes very often with the interval of one to three days maximum. I think most of the topics are very interesting. However, I was not able to find information of the podcaster from this podcast except her name; I suppose that she definitely is a member of Scientific American.

Works Cited

Hopkin, Karen. "Pharaohs Had Heart Disease." 60-Second Science. 18 November 2009: 13. Scientific American. 5 December 2009. http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=pharaohs-had-heart-disease-09-11-18

Podcast Investigation 1

2009-12-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

We started a new unit which is going to be about creating a podcast on the teenage life in Mongolia. A podcast is a type of digital media either in audio or video forms that are released in episodes. You can easily download podcasts with/without paying on many online websites that offer podcasts, such as “itunes”.

The term podcast came from mixing two words: “pod” from iPod, and “cast” from broadcasting. Podcasts can be used in different ways. Some of them are made to give you some tips of studies, entertainment, or some life advices for people. They can also be used to show the podcast creator’s hobbies or his/her interest on certain topics. Overall, it can be a way to communicate each other in indirect ways through telling one’s opinion via video or audio.

Any people can create a podcast; a student, a specialist or even a businessperson. For example, there may be a professional NASA astronaut who recorded a podcast, and a student also can create a podcast by using his/her own knowledge on certain science categories. Likewise, age, gender, profession does not matter in terms of creating a podcast. ANYONE can be a creator.

There are a lot of people who enjoys listening to podcasts. Some people may listen to them for fun and others for education, or even relaxation. Anyone who is willing to listen to podcasts is welcomed to subscribe podcasts.

There are some websites that allow you to create a podcast for free. (http://www.mypodcast.com/ is a good example) In order to create a podcast, first you record your contents either in an audio or video form. After that, you can edit the record by adding music or advertisements so to make it more nicely and sound “professional”. =) Some expert podcasters may use high-quality recording systems, but they are very costly, which might be not affordable for some commoners. Therefore, many people use simple voice recorders in general; they still record the sounds pretty well.

My task, as described above, is to create a podcast about teenage life in Mongolia. I think this project will be a good opportunity for teenagers, including myself, to learn how to adapt them better to the new technology. Teenagers are going to be the one who is going to face the new technologies in the future, and I think podcasts are a good sample of the new technology. Podcasts are “developed” versions of radio broadcasting, and I think they will help teenagers to understand developed technology more. Furthermore, personally, creating a podcast will actually help me to know what actually it is. I did not know about podcasts until I started doing this project. As soon as I started to get some information about it, I think podcast is a very interesting media source that people can enjoy. Therefore, I would want to figure out what I can do and learn from creating a podcast.

Since I’m going to make a podcast based on a life of a teenager, I think my podcast will be the most suitable for teenagers, especially those in Mongolia. In fact, I think any generation can listen to my podcast; however, there might be some parts that do not match with other generation’s cultures. This is why I would prefer teenagers to listen to my podcast.

Works Cited

"Podcast". Wikipedia. 4 December 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

"What is a Podcast". How To Podcast. 4 December 2009.

http://www.how-to-podcast-tutorial.com/what-is-a-podcast.htm

Interviewing Hanaa

2009-11-24T05:11:00.000-08:00

Interview with Hanaa (Age 16)

What does 'being a teenager' mean for you?

Having fun, think, free, imagine, live in fantasy, dream a lot, have friends, and learn life by experiences.

Are you enjoying your life as a teenager? Why?

Yes, because even I make a mistake, it doesn't become really big one, so I learn big things from little mistakes, and I can be free.

Is there anything that you get influenced more after you become a teenager?

I think friends influenced me the most...

How would you define your teenager life?

Having fun, being imaginative, learning :)

Is there anything that has changed after you became a teenager?

Many things have changed. I started to see things from other side that I have never seen before.

What should a teenager do in order to enjoy his/her life?

They should let their emotions be and try to find how to manage their emotions.

Do you often feel emotional changes? When and why?

I feel a lot of emotional changes. There is no reason when I become emotional or change my emotion suddenly.

Have you ever thought of trying bad things (ex. committing suicide, smoking, etc)? Why?

Yes, once. But I think it often happens to teenagers. Teenagers can be interested in those bad things, BUT they shouldn't go further than curiosity.

What is the most important thing in your life? why?

My future, because it is my rest of all my life. ^^

Adolescence is a time to be prepared to become an adult. Are you prepared enough?

NO! I think I still need more experiences

Any comments you would like to make about being a teenager?

Do everything you want to do during your teenager time!

Interviewing Suugii

2009-11-24T02:49:00.000-08:00

Interview with Suugii (Age 17)

What does 'being a teenager' mean for you?

Being a teenager means that it is a chance for me to discover myself. As a child we don't know about the deep meaning of life, furthermore, the world inside us. So, being a teenager is hard, annoying etc, yet it is a journey that I enjoy.

Are you enjoying your life as a teenager? Why?

Well, I enjoy it most of the time; however, I feel upset and kind of depressed whenever I face a problem that it is hard for me to solve on my own. Besides those problems, I enjoy being a teenager because I get to experience many things and most importantly I am getting to know myself more :)

Is there anything that you get influenced more after you become a teenager?

Hmm, I think my environment. Since I moved to Germany, I had to face lots of problems such as communicating with the kids or dealing with new technologies, etc. I learned actually a lot when I came back to my home country. Of course I knew there were poverty, murdering and 'bad things' going on outside in the world. However, I saw those problems with my own eyes when I came back to Mongolia. So this might also have changed my goals, opinion, etc.

How would you define your teenager life?

Hmm, more like an ocean. It is mostly calm and very relaxing; however, when strong wind comes, it becomes very violent and disturbing ^^

Is there anything that has changed after you became a teenager?

Yes, a lot. Ok, as we all know our bodies change. We can skip tha part ^^. Hm, I am sure that a lot of things in my life have changed, such as my point of views on certain topics or my values, believes, my priorities, etc. For example, as a child I mostly thought of playing around and having fun with my friends. However, now I am thinking more about my future, such as my education, my life time goals, etc :)

What should a teenager do in order to enjoy his/her life?

A teenager should not be very serious or very playful when it comes to 'life'. S/he should enjoy doing what sh/he likes doing and most importantly have the balance between school, fmaily and personal life. If that person manages balancing out his/her life, then there won't be any other great depression on that person in his/her future life.

Do you often feel emotional changes? When and why?
Hm, I think it has to do with puberty where all those hormones are going crazy -_-. I personally think that I can control my emotions very well and that I only show them to those I truly trust. It is very strange: Whenever something very exciting happens I am very happy and hyper but after like an hour or so, I am very sad, because of only small things such as marks on my face or something like that.

Have you ever though of trying 'bad things' (ex. Committing suicide, smoking, etc)? Why?

Everyone is curious about the 'bad things' that the grounups talk about and strictly tell us not to even try them out. I once grabbed some real grasses from the back yard of my house and I rolled them inside a leaf, and then I set them on fire. I tried to smoke; however, it did not really work out, so I just got annoyed and left it. I never tried drinking and I am not going to because it is not just healthy for me. Some people have different opinions; however, I don't want to die in my mid 30's.

What is the most important thing in your life? Why?

My most important thing in my life is growing as a person. Of course family, friends and education is important; however, for me, I think that should grow and make a better person out of myself. I don't want to just be stuck there in life with those skills I already have. I want to try out new things and I want to learn. Enjoying life, learning from it, feeling happy... satisfactions. These are the things I am looking for.

Adolescence is a time to be prepared to become an adult. Are you prepared enough?

In my opinion, I am well prepared for the upcoming problems and responsibilities; however, I sometimes wish that I would stay as a child. A child doesn't have any problesm to deal with...

Any comments you would like to make about being a teenager?

A teenager is phase where we experience a lot of things. You might have done something wrong, disappointed your peers and families. However, the most important thing is that you learn the lesson and try not to repeat it again.

Interviewing Rebekah

2009-11-23T22:47:00.000-08:00

Interview with Rebekah (Age 14)

What does ‘being a teenager’ mean for you?

Being a teenager for me means times when you are in your most emotional stage. I think it also means when you are mostly, likely to be interested in the people of your opposite gender. Being a teenager also means when you are in the stage of puberty and when you are the most sensitive.

Are you enjoying your life as a teenager? Why?

Yes, I guess so, let me re-phrase that I used to like it. Now, it’s getting to difficult for me to handle. I used to like my teenage life and the change and all those fun times but now, it’s just too much and it’s too stressful. It is stressful because of the pressure, homework, appearance, studies and etc…

Is there anything that you get influenced more after you become a teenager?

Well, yes after going through a period of time of being a teenager you learn many different and new things and you begin to understand and care about certain things you never even noticed before in you previous years.

How would you define your teenage life?

I would define my teenage life as dull but sometimes exciting….. Also maybe stressful… Also sometimes just sometimes lonely…

Is there anything that has changed after you became a teenager?

Yes, I guess so. When I used to be young, I would tell my parents I’m sorry for whatever I did and wrote letters but now… after turning 13 I rarely do it also I get mad and upset over little things and seem to upset my parents a lot.

What should a teenager do in order to enjoy his/her life?

They should live their lives at the fullest. Study and have fun studying either by oneself or with groups of people you enjoy being with and people who make you happy. Also have fun and actually have fun! A teenager should not be alone… In this time of period you should not be alone or feel too lonely because then later you might not be able to socialize with people and you don’t enjoy being with others. This might not be a good thing.

Do you often feel emotional changes? When and why?

Yes, I do feel emotional changes, like, for instance. I used to be happy a lot when I was young but now, I feel very gloomy and don’t like certain things. I feel the most emotional when I am alone or when I’m at school sometimes. When I used to be little I would be happy and hyper and all like that at school now I feel all bored at school keep feeling very dull.

Have you ever thought of trying bad things (ex. Committing suicide, smoking, etc)? Why?

Yes, I have I have thought doing all those bad things but not as bad as desiring sex or anything just things like smoking, drinking, clubbing and etc… I have thought about doing it because I see my other friends try it and I hear it from other people which makes me want to do it and try it. Things like committing suicide I may have thought about it but I didn’t go too deep, I would just think of which is the less painful and how and etc but it was usually just sometimes (Rarely though)

What is the most important thing in your life? Why?

The most important thing in my life are my friends and family. They are the most important because without them, their help, their guidance’s could be totally different. Without my parents I wouldn’t be even breathing right now and without my siblings I wouldn’t be as happy as if I never had them.

Adolescence is a time to be prepared to become an adult. Are you prepared enough?

No, NOT AT ALL. Well, maybe I am kind of excited for the whole baby and raising one and etc… but I am not ready for any of that what so ever… I think I still need more guidance and more preparation.

Any comments you would like to make about being a teenager?

Although it can get tough all you have to do is just hang in there I guess.

Interviewing Ji Won

2009-11-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Interview with Ji Won (Age 16)

What does ‘being a teenager’ mean for you?
It is the most important stage of your life, as I believe that the path of your life is decided at this stage.

Are you enjoying your life as a teenager? Why?
Yes. I get to be with my friends and my family more often, and I enjoy some changes in myself and in the environment around me.

Is there anything that you get influenced more after you become a teenager?
My friends and I get to have some likenesses, as I spend more time with them. In other words, my personality gets affected the most. For example, the way my friends and I talk is similar.

How would you define your teenage life?
My teenage life is full of changes and chaos. ;(

Is there anything that has changed after you became a teenager?
As I answered previously, my personality has changed ‘very’ much, and now I became less shy unlike past few years. Secondly, my point of view to the world has been broadened.

What should a teenager do in order to enjoy his/her life?
Enjoying is enjoying, just think positively besides making progress!

Do you often feel emotional changes? When and why?
I experience ‘severe’ emotional changes in my life when I have squabbles with my parents and in the moments I get to find out difficulties in the progresses of my academic performances.

Have you ever thought of trying bad things (ex. Committing suicide, smoking, etc)? Why?
Uh, frankly speaking, I have. (Not like smoking and drinking……) As I have excessive changes in emotions, when I am depressed I usually take situations seriously.

What is the most important thing in your life? Why?
(Values?) Success in future career, my family and friends

Adolescence is a time to be prepared to become an adult. Are you prepared enough?
I am not sure, because I think I act like a mature girl, on the other hand I think I didn’t learn much about this big, big world.

Any comments you would like to make about being a teenager?
Enjoy your life as a teenager, dream a big dream XD

Interviewing my mom

2009-11-23T21:38:00.000-08:00

Interview with my mom (Young-wha Kang)

This is the note that I took while I was interviewing my mom. Since the interview was taken in Korean, I translated it into English below this note.
1. 옛날 청소년기에서 제일 중요했던 것은?
대학 입시 – 제일 중요하다
2.엄마의 청소년기에서 제일 중요했던 것은?
미술전공 – 학교 끝난 후 화실에서 입시 준비를 하였다.
방과 후에 공부만 하는 것이 아니라 미술을 같이 해야 했기 때문에 바쁘고 힘들었다
3. 옛날 청소년들과 지금 청소년들의 가장 큰 차이점은?
공부만 잘하면 성공할 수 있다고 사람들은 믿어왔다. 공부 이외에는 아무것도 하지 않아도 된다고 생각한다
현재: 여러 분야에서 자신이 좋아하는 것을 공부할 수 있는 사회의 분위기가 많이 바뀌었다
Ex) 음악, 운동 등의 필요성이 강조 – 학생들이 즐길 수 있다
공부 이외에도 다양한 것을 할 줄 아는 사람들을 필요로 하는 사회
4. 왜 옛날 청소년기와 지금의 청소년기에 차이점이 생겼다고 생각하는가?
정보 공유가 가능해졌다.. 정보를 얻어내는 방법이 정말 많이 변했다. 놀이문화의 변화가 너무 크게 변했다.. 특히 인터넷은 놀이 방식과 사고 방식을 많이 변하게 하였다.
청소년들이 조숙해지고, 순수함이 많이 없어진 것 같다.
책보다는 웹서핑… 고민하기 보다는 빠른 답을 찾길 원하고 찾아낸다. 즉흥적이다
5. 대학교 입시에 대한 청소년들의 스트레스는 어떠하였는가? 지금이 더 심해진 것 같나?
옛날이나 지금이나 입시에 대한 스트레스는 똑같다
옛날: 대학 가고싶은 사람만 가면 된다… 일자리를 얻는 것이 큰 문제가 되지는 않았다
요즘에는 더욱 심한 것 같다,
삶의 질에 대한 눈높이가 높아져서 학생들이 더더욱 높은 점수를 받는 것에 목숨을 걸고, 좋은 대학 – 좋은 회사 취직… 이를 만족시키지 못하는 경우 자살을 택하는 것
6. 엄마의 청소년기에서 대학 입시는 어땠는가?
당신께서 하고 싶어했던 것을 했기에, 힘들어도 보람찼다.
목표를 가지고 노력 해왓기 때문에 힘들어도 즐거웠다.
7. 옛날 부모와 지금 부모의 자식을 교육시키는 것에 차이가 있는가?
형제들이 많아서 부모님: 교육 보다는 생계에 더욱 신경을 쓴다
그래서 개인의 교육에는 많이 신경을 써주지 못했다
엄마: 전업주부, 엄마의 역할이 주업
요즘에는 자식의 수가 줄고, 교육에 신경을 쓸 기회가 높아지다보니 자연스럽게 자식에 대한 기대가 더욱 높아 지는 것 같다.
사교육이 늘어남
8. 옛날의 청소년기를 간단하게 표현하자면?
순수함과 열정을 가졌던 시대
- 사회의 부조리에 때묻지 않았으며 자신들의 꿈을 생각하면서 그 꿈을 키워 나가는 과정이었기 때문에, 이상향, 좋은 것, 긍정적인 것들을 생각하면서 노력했던 것 자체가 순수하다.
- 꿈을 위해서 모든 것을 투자하였기에 열정적인 시기이다.

What was the most important thing from a teenager's life in the past 30 years?
Mom: I would say preparing for going to college. Many students (teenagers) considered entering a good college as a very important goal in their lives.

What was the most importnat thing from your teenage life?
Mom: Preparing for going to art school... Since I was going to major at art, I thought art was the most important thing in my life. After school, I spent most of the days practice drawing. Also, I needed to consider getting good grades on my schools in order to go to a good art college. Preparing for the school was very important to me, but it was such a hard process to accomplish.

Do you think there are any differences between current teenagers and teenagers in the past?
Mom: Hmm... I think there are not any "big" changes between those two. However, I would say that there has been changes occurred in the society itself. What I remember is that, when I was a teenager, many people believed that they will succeed if they are good at studies. Since studying was the most important thing for them, nothing else was considered as a necessity. But now, I think the society has changed... People can study not only in academic ways... I mean, nowadays many middle/high schools think having P.E or music classes is important for student to develop their artistic abilities. This didn't happen.. no couldn't happen in my days, you know.

Can you be more specific why those differences have occurred? (related to Q3)
Mom: The main cause of this phenomenon probably is the improved method of getting information. After the invention of computer, teenagers can get information "very easily". Internet has changed the ways of how teenagers spend their free time. You know, on the internet, there are sometimes some biased, or inappropriate information for teenagers. I think it influenced them to be mature than before, and the way they think has changed as well. For example, when I was a teenager, I always needed to look into the books gathering some information. Now, internet is "the ocean of information." You can get the right sources by "click". I think this also caused some of current teenagers that they are not very good at being patient. They want things to go quick.

Do you think teenagers of past and present have the same amount of stress of going to college?
Mom: Of course teenagers in the past were under a lot of pressure of going to college.... I don't think there is a difference of the amount of stress. But I can see that students' point of views of college has changed. I mean, when I was a teenager, people thought that not every student needs to go to university. It was not a necessity.. only those who wanted to study in universities prepared. Now, you see, going to college is almost like an obligation for teenagers. They want to go to good colleges, so the competition became even harsher. When some of those students, in fact, "fail" to go to universities that they wanted to attend, end their lives committing suicide.

How did you feel when you were preparing to go to college?
Mom: It was hard, but it doesn't mean that I wanted to give up. Attending a good college was my final academic goal so I did my best. If I recall my teenage life as a senior, I would say "hard but joyful"

How were your parents like when you were a teenager? Are there any differences between the way how parents in the past and present educate their children?
Mom: You know that I have many siblings, so my parents were very busy taking care of four children. They considered feeding their children was more important than providing extra education for them. Therefore, I didn't have a chance to get any private tutoring. In my teenage life, the main role for dad was working outside, and moms were staying home and nurturing children.
Now, many moms work as well, so I think the amount of income of one family has increased, right? Also, there are not that many children in one familiy these days. Because of these facts, teenagers in these days can get extra education... I mean, they can be more educated than my generation. So I think parents in the present are more caring about their children's education.

How would you define adolescence in the past 30 years?
Mom: "Being pure and passionate" because I spent my everything to achieve my dream and to follow the ideal image of myself as a grown-up fashion designer. At that time I did not know much about the "dark sides" of the society, so I would say that I was somewhat pure.. you know ^^.

Portraiture Technology Attitudes in Technology

2009-10-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Portraiture Technology unit was very interesting. I really enjoyed when I was working on my portrait; however, I sometimes get annoyed at the slow progress of creating a portrait. Nevertheless I tried my best to have positive mind. Whenever I struggled with materials or methods to make my portrait, I always thought of the final results. I thought that if I endure this hard time, then my portrait would look much better than now. If I was being negative during the process, I would have probably got bad results and I would not be able to enjoy this unit.

Creating a portrait motivated me to think about myself such as my characteristic or my personal favorites. To be honest, I did not care about who I am in my past times, and I was not very interested in thinking about myself. However, this project helped me to figure out my true nature of myself and I really liked and enjoyed the process of learning about myself. Sometimes I thought that why I should share my personal thoughts with others because portrait could show some of my personalities that I did not want to share. On the other hand, I came up with an idea that if I share my thoughts with others, they may give some suggestions that can give benefits to form a better characteristic of myself.

Since this project has to be done individually, I think it is related to independence a lot. For example, if I had any problems, I was supposed to solve them by my own. I would be the only one who would know best of me; therefore, it would be less effective if I just ask others and get help from them.

During the process of making a portrait, I needed to take care of safety. I always make my water bottle closed whenever I entered to IT classroom which could give damages to computers if I spill water on computer. When people asked me for sharing some materials or asked me for a help, I accepted most of those requests. I listened and respected other people’s opinions most of the times as well. Therefore, I think I have fairly good attitudes toward safety, cooperation and respect for others.

Test Results

2009-10-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Here are some questions You need to answer :)

Please write one word/sentence after you saw my portrait
Do Do you think it represents me? Why do you think it represents me?
If my name wasn’t written down on the portrait, do you think you could figure out who the person would be? If not, who would the person be? (please explain a little bit)
Do you think my portrait is finished successfully? Please explain in a short paragraph

Thank you!!!!

1) Suugii

Futuristic +cool

Yes, it represents you, because I know that you like ‘non-girly’ stuff and you like more mangas and cartoons ^_^ Your hands indicates me those traits =) It LOOKS like you, because it has the same shape of your nose, lips etc. If the name was not written on the portrait, I would say it is a handsome boy! ^^ Your artwork is AMAZING! First of all it is unique and it is done so neatly! ^_^ I really like your artwork!

2) Sarah

It looks like you’re a shy, but secretly crazy person, which I think you are =) I could easily see who the person on the portrait is, first because no one else draws that well, and second because it still looks like you. I think it’s successful, of course!

3) Urangoo

I can see creativity right away

I really do think it represents you. It’s because first of all it looks neat, and for me – you are a neat and organized person. Then because I know that you like math and you would like to be a doctor of animals, I can see that on your hands. The way you held your hands on your face looks like you are trying to hide from other people but the way you are and what you do always gets people attention. Even though you do not want to show off your intelligence, other people already can see them.

I think, I will figure you out somehow. When I just look at it I can smell, taste, see, touch, feel you. (With my 5 senses)

I think, you are very successful. I can see no way how to improve it.

4) Elise

Happy

This really represent you because not only does it really look like you( you’re an amazing artist), but you have also included a lot of things about yourself. Of course I’d think it was you J Your portrait is amazing because you’ve been able to include so many things about yourself .I really like it!

5) Bilegt

Loves everything

I don’t really know if it represents you because you don’t show much of your interest, but I learned many things by looking at this such as: medicines (doctor), animals, loves learning and likes spaghetti. If your name wasn’t on it, I would still know it is your picture because it is obviously you on the photo, because you are awesome at drawing and art. Your picture is perfectly finished because no white part is showing (except the hands). You used a lot of colors, and you portrait looks very messy but organized… I don’t know what that means though.

Portraiture Technology Evaluation

2009-10-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

Portraiture Technology project was very interesting in general. I was able to be open-minded about using mixed media in order to create an artwork. I enjoyed all the processes starting from investigation and finishing as a presentation for other students. It also gave me an opportunity to think about myself and how I would be able to express myself to the other people using different medium. I also think that the ISU community would be able to notice some characteristics through my portraits. On the whole, I think the whole process of creating a self-portrait was to know about myself and how I could show myself to the society.

When I was working on the investigation, I was able to learn about a lot of artists who created artworks using mixed media. I researched what kinds of sources they used in order to get an idea for my portrait. Vik Muniz, the mixed artist that was introduced by Ms. Sudra’s PowerPoint presentation, helped me in many ways to think out of the box. I was able to learn that every single material that is around me could create an awesome picture.

During art class, our class had an assignment to research about one portrait artist and one mixed media artist. I did not include this information on my blog, and I think I could have created a better investigation if I included it. I would have written down my ideas and opinions more thoroughly if I put more information into my investigation.

I also described how I would test my portrait in my investigation, but I could’ve come up with better test ideas since my test was not able to be performed. It turned out that I needed to change my test method in order to perform it. I looked at other people’s tests, and they were creative and easier to do. Even though it will be better if the test was creative and original, the main purpose of testing is to get results of how others think of my portrait. Therefore, I believe getting a result is a prior thing to do rather than just coming up with a unique test idea that couldn’t be on a practice. From next time, I think I should come up with practical method to test my product.

Creating designs for the portrait was very interesting part. I could know about many photo altering programs and most of them were very easy to facilitate and the effects were amazing. I was supposed to create five different designs using photo altering programs. I used picnik and photofunia. I preferred using the first website because the effects in that website were more suitable for me to express myself.

I think I could have used different photo managing program rather than picnik and photofunia. Mrs. Wilson gave different types of website that we could use; however, I was too lazy to try all of them. There might be some other effects in other websites and I could’ve created more designs. I thought I would be running out of time if I use too many websites, and I was not being a risk-taker to challenge myself. Nevertheless, I was very satisfied with all of my designs because they followed my design specifications most of the time.

A part that I have to improve for next time is to put more time working on designs. I do not think that I was spending enough time and did my best to create them. For the next time, I should manage time better in order to put my best effort for creating sketches.

When I was working on the create process, I was very pleased with the result of my portrait. At first, I was a little bit worried about failing because I did not have any good ideas to create this large artwork. However, as soon as I found the medium, I started to enjoy a lot and time flew in every art class. I did my best to create this portrait and I thought the portrait reflected my personality very well. I was able to have an opportunity to know more about me. When I was thinking of materials to use, I had to ask myself many questions about me. For example, I needed to ask what my favorite colors are, what my hobbies are and what I would like to do after I grew up. Some questions were simple while others were difficult to answer and I was supposed to have a lot of time trying to think about me.

Another aspect I was able to learn was that every material around us can be an artistic material as well. Spaghetti noodles were not just for cooking for me. It was a material to decorate my portrait as well as a matter to connect the portrait and myself in reality. I deeply realized that these materials were able to show the depth of the art as well. They were able to create shades and give 3-dimensional images to people.

I think the strength of my portrait is that I used various types of medium and each of these medium gave different feelings and meanings. For instance, the hands gave very strong impact with big contrast of black and white while my face looked smoother and softer with similar green tones. Also, while my hair represented one of my favorites, the background showed my characteristics. A weakness of my artwork is probably the process of working on the t-shirt. I could’ve drawn patterns by myself and it would be more creative; however, I was sort of running out of time and I just used the pattern that is from the internet. Therefore, the shirt pattern is less creative compared to others.

If I were going to do this project again, first of all, I might try a different pose rather than covering my eyes. Maybe I might show my eyes and make another facial expression. I definitely would try other medium to create my portrait. I could make a collage of animal pictures and paste them on my hair. I could try using rice next time as well. My original plan was to put rice particles onto the portrait so to make it look like it’s snowing. However, I canceled that idea because I thought the picture would get too complicated and messy. So next time, I probably could try using this material.

The hardest part about this project for me was choosing appropriate materials. To be honest, I’m not a creative type of person and I needed to think a lot in order to come up with unique ideas. However, I think it was a good chance to improve my creativity as well as my drawing skills. The easiest part was coloring my face with oil pastels. I used oil pastels several times before and now I’m pretty used to utilizing this media. Therefore, it tool less time for me to work on it. Recently I bought some oil pastels so materials were easy to get as well. Comparing with using acrylic paints and pasting noodle pieces, oil pastel was much more convenient and easier.

I think technology was a tool for me to achieve more creative work because without technology’s help, I would not be able to come up with many designs. It would take a long time to draw designs by hand. The photo altering program ‘picnik.com’ was a great help for me to create such unique design. I was able to brainstorm lots of ideas by altering my picture from there. Furthermore, with the internet’s help, I was able to learn about mixed-media artists and their artworks. This helped me to get an idea of mixed media for my portrait. Without the internet, I wouldn’t be able to know about mixed-media artworks because I didn’t have enough knowledge about it and I do not have books about mixed-media at home.

I needed to change my test idea since I was not able to work on my original one. The portrait was not supposed to have my name on it, but Ms. Sudra already wrote the name. Therefore, I got an idea from other people how they test their portrait. I wrote down some questions that are related to my portrait on the computer and asked a few students to answer them. Since there was not enough time to test my portrait to every student in our grade, only five people answered to my questions. All of them answered that the portrait represented me. Therefore, I believe my test ended successfully. If I had more time, I could’ve asked more people so that I could get more precise answer for the test.

The presentation went very well. I practiced the night before the presentation day, and I was not nervous when I was doing the real thing. It was risk-taking, but the result came out good. I was very satisfied with my tone of voice and eye contacts with other people, except that sometimes I was repeating same thing over again and my voice was pretty low. I should be more confident in myself so that whenever I have a public speech or a presentation, I could present with louder voice.

Portraiture Technology Create

2009-09-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

After researching about mixed media portraits and creating some designs of my picture, I finally started working on the create process. First and foremost, I drew a sketch of my picture using a projector. It was very easy and convenient way to draw a picture because if I didn’t use the projector, it would take a long time to draw as similar as possible to the original picture on a bigger sized paper. The one problem was that if someone moved the projector tray, it was very hard to put it back to its original spot. So sometimes, it was hard for me to draw exactly same to the original altered picture. However, I don’t think it would be a big problem. After that, I searched for some good materials in order to decorate the portrait.

At first I could not come up with good ideas, so I randomly picked up some materials that belonged to Ms. Sudra and thought about how I should use them. Then suddenly I thought it would be a good idea to relate my picture with animals. I love every kind of animals and my future job is a veterinarian so I can express my feelings and my goal on a portrait using animal-related materials. I found a tie with penguin patterns on it and I cut the tie cloth into several small pieces. I was going to combine the cloth and some hand-drawn patterns; however, later I changed my plan. I found an animal pattern and printed it out on different colored paper. I cut them into equal sized rectangles and pasted them in order to make my shirt look stripped. I liked my new idea because if I used my original idea, there was a risk that my portrait might look messy since I might draw patterns unorganized.

The edges of the shirt are not straight but ripped-off. They represent that I have a wild and crazy characteristics deep inside my mind. Also, they show that I want to get out of stereotypes. If the edges were straight, it probably meant that I’m trapped in different types of stereotypes. However, by ripping off the edges, I could show that I don’t want to be stereotyped and have my own uniqueness.

I used two types of noodles for my hair. The yellow, thick one is spaghetti noodles and white, thin one is Korean noodles. I broke them into several pieces and pasted on the portrait. At first the pieces were very small, but I realized it would take forever to finish and I used longer ones later. The reasons that I used noodles as one of my materials are that first of all, I love eating noodles. I love every type of noodles whether they are boiled, fried. Spaghetti is one of my favorite foods and I wanted to tell others that I like having spaghetti. Also, noodles show that I’m Asian since many Asian people consume noodles for their meals.

My original plan for the hair was to color it into another color after I finished pasting. Nonetheless, I canceled this plan because if I colored the hair, I don’t think it would be able to show the characteristics of noodles very well.

Because I spent so much time to work on my hair, I worked at home to finish my portrait. At home, I colored my hands, face and the background. To color my hands, I only used a black marker. I wanted to give a contrast of white and black with some patterns. I really like using markers to draw an artwork and I thought this would be an opportunity to use them.
On the left hand, there are lots of medical devices such as stethoscope, syringes and surgical knife. On the right hand, there are different languages such as Korean, Japanese and Chinese, some books and mathematical symbols. These hands show the future and the present. The left hand shows my future as a veterinarian. This is why I put lots of surgical materials to show that I want to be a vet as well as I’m ready to achieve my goal. The right hand shows the present. I learn languages and other subjects at school and I enjoy my school life.

After I added some shadows on hands, they look sort of scary, but I really liked when I was working on this process. After I finished coloring the hands, I realized that some of fingers that are overlaid could be a bridge that relates present and the future.

When I was done with hands, I worked on coloring my face. I used different tones of green color oil pastels. I like oil pastels because I like the effects when they are combined together with other colors and they are one of my favorite medium. I chose green colors because they make people’s mind to be peaceful and calm and they are colors of nature. These colors also represent that I am a part of the nature.

Before I started working on the portrait, I outlined parts that are darker than rest of the parts. This helped me a lot when I was coloring the face. I was able to figure out easily which part needed to be light or dark. I started coloring using lighter tones of green colors such as lime green or light green. Then I put some darker green colors and smudged those colors together. The colors created a nice gradation and I was very satisfied with them. A problem was that I traced the picture lines too dark, and I was not able to cover it with bright oil pastels. For example, the highlighted part on my nose is colored with yellow; however, I was not able to hide the outline and I ended up leaving it like that.

When I was done with the portrait, I was very pleased with the result of it. At first, I was a little bit worried about failing because I did not have any good ideas to create this large artwork. However, as soon as I found the medium, I started to enjoy a lot and time flew in every art class. I did my best to create this portrait and I thought the portrait reflected my personality very well. I was able to have an opportunity to know more about me. When I was thinking of materials to use, I had to ask myself many questions about me. For example, I needed to ask what my favorite colors are, what my hobbies are and what I would like to do after I grew up. Some questions were simple while others were difficult to answer and I was supposed to have a lot of time trying to think about me.

Another aspect I was able to learn was that every material around us can be an artistic material as well. Spaghetti noodles were not just for cooking for me. It was a material to decorate my portrait as well as a matter to connect the portrait and myself in reality. I deeply realized that these materials were able to show the depth of the art as well. They were able to create shades and give 3-dimensional images to people.

If I were going to do this project again, first of all, I might try a different pose rather than covering my eyes. Maybe I might show my eyes and make another facial expression. I definitely would try other medium to create my portrait. I could make a collage of animal pictures and paste them on my hair. I could try using rice next time as well. My original plan was to put rice particles onto the portrait so to make it look like it’s snowing. However, I canceled that idea because I thought the picture would get too complicated and messy. So next time, I probably could try using this material.

The hardest part about this project for me was choosing appropriate materials. To be honest, I’m not a creative type of person and I needed to think a lot in order to come up with unique ideas. However, I think it was a good chance to improve my creativity as well as my drawing skills. The easiest part was coloring my face with oil pastels. I used oil pastels several times before and now I’m pretty used to utilizing this media. Therefore, it tool less time for me to work on it. Recently I bought some oil pastels so materials were easy to get as well. Comparing with using acrylic paints and pasting noodle pieces, oil pastel was much more convenient and easier.

I think technology was a tool for me to achieve more creative work because without technology’s help, I would not be able to come up with many designs. It would take a long time to draw designs by hand. The photo altering program ‘picnik.com’ was a great help for me to create such unique design. I was able to brainstorm lots of ideas by altering my picture from there. Furthermore, with the internet’s help, I was able to learn about mixed-media artists and their artworks. This helped me to get an idea of mixed media for my portrait. Without the internet, I wouldn’t be able to know about mixed-media artworks because I didn’t have enough knowledge about it and I do not have books about mixed-media at home.

The whole process took about two weeks to complete. For me, two weeks were not a short time period; however, I enjoyed every moment when I was working on my portrait. During this project, I got some advices from Ms. Sudra about materials that I could use for my portrait. Thanks to her, I was able to come up with better ideas through her help and advices.

Compared to others’ work, the biggest difference was that my portrait doesn’t have eyes. However, I think this makes my portrait to be more unique and creative. Some students used various medium for their portraits. In some way they look crazy and improvising, but they represented their characteristics very well. It’s hard to say that which portrait is the best one because everyone’s portrait represents their own personalities and traits they contain. Therefore, I would prefer saying that all the portraits were created very well.

Overall, portraiture technology unit was very fun and interesting. I really enjoyed working on creating the actual self-portrait. I’m also very satisfied with my artwork. If our class is going to work on this project again, I’m sure that I would love to participate in it!

Portraiture Technology Design

2009-09-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Reviewing my design specification

Multimedia(If the photo is suitable to be drawn with mixed medium)
Technology (Picture should be altered using technological devices before drawing)
Photo of self, no one else
Express self (It should represent me)
Portrait should not be too crazy – people should be able to identify the picture

Use medium that are related to myself, or represent myself
Medium should be able to handle (for example, sugar will be hard to create and fix it after I’m done)

Image of picnik.com website

As soon as I start working on my design, I tried using a website called ‘picnik.com’ (http://www.picnik.com/). This website is similar to the Adobe Photoshop, but it’s much easier to use the functions. Even though I did not spend a lot of time on decorating my picture, I was able to create some awesome designs.

This is my first design. I used round edges, snow, duo tone, posterize and neon effects. When I saw the posterize effect, I wanted to make my photo to be graphical and sort of abstract. After I ‘posterized’ my picture, I wanted to make the colors to be simple and I chose two colors that contrast each other well: green and brown. Green is one of my favorite colors and it is known as the healing color since it makes people’s mind to be calm. I used neon lights to make show the edges clearly. I really like how I put the snow effect. Even though the picture became kind of messy after the snow effect, it matches with the pose I’m taking in the picture and it adds a fantastical look to my picture. This design follows some of my design specifications. First of all, it is a photo of me, and it expresses me such as using my favorite color for the background. I used internet to decorate it. Also, I believe the picture is not very wild and people would be able to recognize that it’s a person’s figure. Since I did not decide what material to use for the portrait, I do not have very specific ideas about materials. However, I think for the snow effect, I may use rice to give the snowy look. I can also use paints, and other traditional and non-traditional art sources to create the portrait. One thing I don’t like about this design is that I used round edge effect. I don’t know why I decided to make my photo with round edges, but I think it could’ve looked better without this type of edges. If I’m going to choose this design, I’m not going to make my edges round but straight.

This is my second design. Unlike design 1, it looks very abstract. I used hypnotic, duo tone, focal zoom and text effects for this picture. I really like the duo tone effect and I used it again for this picture. However, if design 1’s duo tone shows dark parts with dark brown and light parts with green, I switched over the colors for this design. So dark parts have very light green and light parts have black color. Because I changed the colors, my face looked very funny especially my teeth because they are black and glowing with light green colors. The picture looked like an x-ray film. I used focal zoom effect to emphasize my face so other parts were a little blurry than my face. After I used those two effects, I thought the picture is very similar to my first design. So I searched for some unique effects on the website and I found this hypnotic effect. After I used this effect, my picture got distorted a lot and I couldn’t find my face but my top of head and there were many hands. I think this represents that inside of my mind, there are lots of crazy thoughts and expressions of myself. I thought this image reminds me a word ‘illusion’ because it looked very mysterious and fantastical. That’s why I decided put the word ‘illusion’ on the picture. I like this design a lot and I think this design is more creative than the first design, but I figured out it doesn’t follow many design specifications. Even though it is a portrait of me and it represents my personality, I think it is hard to be recognized by others that this is an image of me. The hands are covering my face and even I can’t recognize where my face is. Furthermore, I don’t think I can use different sources to create the portrait. The design is very complicated and there are too many colors so it will be hard to describe the same for the hand-drawn portrait. I do not think I’m going to use this design as my chosen final one.

Image of photofunia.com website

After I did these two designs, I went to another photo altering website called ‘photofunia.com’ (http://www.photofunia.com/). This website is different to the previous one. If picnic.com was more like decorating only the photo itself, photofunia.com is adjusting my photo into real-life images. I think this website is also an interesting one and I made several designs from here.

As you can see, my picture is drawn on a wall by someone else in this design. It is a graffiti version of picture. Three are some other graffiti drawings next to my picture. I think my image on the wall is very similar to picnik.com’s ‘posterize’ effect. The picture is not portrayed with details but like an image from a poster. It looks more abstract than the original one. I think it is a very creative idea to put myself as a graffiti image, but I think this design is not very suitable in order to create a portrait. Basically, I used a photo of myself; however, this doesn’t show any of my personalities. I created this design just because I like graffiti. Also the picture includes some other images such as the graffiti painter, and some other drawings near my picture. Because of these features, it sort of looks like the male painter is the main character and I’m just an image drawn by him. Maybe I can get some ideas that I can add some graffiti designs on my portrait from this picture, but I don’t think this will be my chosen design as well.

This is another design using photofunia.com website. My picture is shown at a big business or shopping center, or at a station as an advertisement picture. When I see this picture, I feel like I’m a famous model from a fashion brand. I like how the picture is divided into small square glass or tiles. Also the people under my picture create this picture is not purposely made, but as if it was already there and make natural look. Nevertheless, like the previous design, it doesn’t represent me either. Since there are so many other figures in the picture, it’s sort of hard to say that the picture is mainly focused on me and I think the design will look very complicated after I trace it on a paper. But I am able to get a good idea from this design which is I can use the mosaic method when I create my portrait. Each mosaic piece is from the whole picture of myself and it represents a memory or a part of my characteristic.

This is my last design and I think it is very similar to the first design’s duotone effect. There are same pictures of me in different types of colors. I think this design is the best form with using photofunia.com website. The picture is like my pictures are shown in an exhibition. This design reminds me of Andy Warhol, a famous pop artist. The colors used for each picture implies some characteristics of me. For example the blue one represents the coldness or being rational. The red one means being angry or passionate. If there weren’t people in front of the pictures, I think the picture could’ve looked better. I think if I draw this picture bigger for the portrait, it will be an interesting picture to use with mixed media.

The final design that I chose is the first design. I think my first design fits to most of the design specifications and the picture only includes an image of me without any background. The photofunia.com used designs have a background with people or other architecture which is not very suitable in order to create a portrait. Also, the picture is not very complicated and crazy so I think people will be able to notice that it is a portraiture artwork. Like I wrote before, since this is going to be my chosen design, I’m going to fix the edges of the design into straight edges. From now on, I should start thinking about what materials I should use for the portrait. I think the create process will be very interesting and I’m sure that I’ll enjoy doing this project.

Portraiture Technology Investigation (1) Works Cited Page

2009-09-19T22:17:00.000-07:00

Works Cited

“Barack Obama: “Breakfast of Champion”.” Ruminating Out Loud. 15 September 2009. http://wolafen.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/barack-obama-breakfast-of-champion/

“Food is Art.” Food is Art. 15 September 2009. http://www.foodisart.co.uk/index.html

George is such a sweet boy. 20 February 2008. http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?in_article_id=100687&in_page_id=7

Lv4Tunes. Jackson Pollack. http://media.photobucket.com/image/jackson%20polak/Lv4Tunes/pollock.jpg.

Muniz, Vik. Action Photo, after Hans Namuth. 1997. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Muniz, Vik. Self Portrait (Fall II). 2005. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Muniz, Vik. Valentina, the Fastest. 1996. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html.

Sudra, Anna. Art lecture. International School of ulaanbaatar. Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 8 September 2009.

Sudra, Anna. “Portraiture Technology.” Powerpoint presentation for MYP Visual Arts, International School of Ulaanbaatar. September, 2009.

“Vik Muniz.” Vik Muniz. 15 September 2009. http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/bio.html

Portraiture Technology Investigation (1)

2009-09-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

I started a new project called "Portraiture Technology - Who am I?" In this new unit, I am going to use computer photo managers to alter one of my photos of myself and create a self-portrait. Also, I'm going to use mix media to draw a self-portrait in art class as well.

I came up with some questions that will help my investigation
· What are portraits and how is it important to myself?
· Why do/did artists draw portraits or self-portraits?
· What materials will be suitable for my final product and presentation?
· What can you feel when you see mixed media portraits?

Portraits are able to express many aspects of oneself to a society such as his/her characteristic, favorites or emotions or feelings. For me, portraits are a great example to know more about me. Since the portrait needs to include aspects that represent myself, I can think carefully about who I am and look for methods to describe myself on a piece of paper.

Even though many people believe portraits are created with using only one medium; however, in fact there are many types of different portraits using tons of variations. During the art class, my classmates and I saw some images of portraits that used different medium. There was one using lots of patterns, using papers to create three dimension (3D) image. Also there was a huge portrait of a man using millions of jelly beans. I was very impressed with this portrait because I could find out from the picture that the artist who created this artwork must have been put a lot of effort for it. Not only that, but I learned that jelly beans can be a good source to create an awesome picture rather than known as sugary and sticky jelly.

This is a portrait of a famous celebrity, George Clooney. What I learned from the art presentation is that all the materials that I can easily find out, no matter how big or small they are can be a medium to create a fabulous artwork. The society wants products to be different to others, unique and creative. Therefore, thinking out of the box and creating a mixed-media portrait is one of brilliant ideas to show one’s own identity.
I also looked for some other portraits with different medium. While I was researching, I was able to get so many creative ideas which would help me when I’m working on my self-portrait.

This is a portrait of president Obama. They are made of sugar cereals. It is created by Hank Willis Thomas and Ryan Alexiev. They created this artwork to celebrate the election of first black president. I like how they put shadow on the picture by using not only darker cereal, but colorful ones as well. They make the portrait look sort of abstract and more interesting.

This is a portrait of Marilyn Monroe that is originally created by Andy Warhol, a famous pop art artist. The picture is formed of lots of chocolates in different colors. It is hard to believe that it is chocolate-made portrait however if you see the background, you can see round chocolate balls in rows. I think this portrait is a very creative, unique one; however, I suddenly came up with a thought that the artwork needs to be stored in a cold place so that the chocolates don’t melt.

Miss. Sudra also showed us a video about a mixed media artist named Vik Muniz. Muniz is a Brazilian artist who used mixed media and created lots of artworks. She told us that this video might help us to get some ideas for creating mixed media self-portrait. I found some examples from his website.

Muniz used many different media to create artworks. He used medium such as thread, sugar, wire, chocolate syrup and even caviar. When I was looking at images of his works, I was very impressed and thought he is very creative. All of his artworks are very sophisticated and detailed. I wondered how he can come up with ideas to use such medium in order to create an awesome work.

This is an artwork using chocolate syrup. It is an image of famous painter called Jackson Pollock. I think his chocolate artwork shows Pollock’s image very well. The pose that he is doing in his artwork is very similar to how Pollock used to paint his picture. Also, I like how Muniz spread syrup to look like spread paint on a canvas. I think using chocolate syrup is creative but it will be hard for me to use for my portrait because it can’t be stayed for a long time since it will melt easily and mess up my picture if the room temperature is warm.

This is a portrait of an African child called Valentina and Muniz used sugar to create this artwork. I believed that that sugar cannot be a suitable material to show details; however, Muniz just proved that sugar does creates details. If I see the picture with a distance, it looks like it’s drawn by a charcoal. It looks very smooth. I like how he created shade with sugar. I’m curious that how can sugar be gray or black in his picture. Maybe he dyed it with dark tone colors. Again, this material is not a good source for me since sugar is also easy to melt and I don’t want to make my portrait look dirty.

This is Muniz’s self-portrait. He used sources that he can get in autumn such as colorful leaves, and dried branches. I really like this picture because the picture gives me comfortable and natural view. It looks like he is a part of the nature. Also, the colorful leaves make the artwork very bright. I think leaves will be a good idea to use for my portrait. If I’m going to use leaves, I should hurry to get some since winter will come soon in UB.

On the first day of this project, 8th of September 2009, all the classmates went out and took photographs of them. I also took several photos, and I chose one which my hands are covering my eyes. I wanted my picture to be unique than just making a smiley face, then I thought of this way to show myself.

There are some reasons why I covered my eyes. The first one is that I want to my other body parts. My parents, who have seen me for many years, told me that if I cover my eyes, the next part that is most noticeable is my mouth. My parents told me that when I smile the sharp canine tooth is recognized by them.

Another reason for covering my eyes is to show my personality that I like to hide some of my feelings. I like smiling in front of other people and I don’t want to show some of my emotions that may give bad impression on others, such as crying or getting angry. When you are sad or angry, even though you are not trying to express it, your eyes can show how you are feeling at the moment. So I thought that if I cover my eyes and smile, people could think that I’m happy, but in fact no one but me knows how I’m really feeling.

After I chose my picture, I thought what kinds of design specifications would suit self-portrait. Our class’ design specifications are:

·Multimedia(If the photo is suitable to be drawn with mixed medium)

·Technology (Picture should be altered using technological devices before drawing)

·Photo of self, no one else

·Express self (It should represent yourself)

Then I came up with some of my own design specifications which are:

·Portrait should not be too crazy – people should be able to identify the picture

·Use medium that are related to myself, or represent myself

·Medium should be able to handle (for example, sugar will be hard to create and fix it after I’m done)

Even though I'm not fully ready to alter photos using photo management programs, I have an idea that I'm going to create my photo that looks not very real, but kind of abstract. For this portrait, I'm thinking of putting large image without too many details.

So far, I have a few ideas for what medium to use. Since I am Asian, I'll use sources like rice or maybe noodles to represent that I'm proud myself as being Asian =). Also, I love animals, so probably I'm going to relate my picture to nature and animals. I think creating animal pattern will be a good idea.

In order to test my portrait again my design specification, I'm going to focus on whether people are able to recognize the picture and to think of any thoughts when they firstly encounter the portrait. I'm going to hang the portrait on a school wall. When I'm putting the portrait, I'm not going to include any information about the portrait and the portrait will be there without my name written down so that people wouldn't notice it is created by me. Next to the portrait, there will be paper and I'm going to put questions on it. For example, I would write "Who do you think the person in the portrait is? (It is a self-portrait from one of G10 students)" and "What kind of impressions does it give to you?" Hopefully if some students answered to the questions, I'll take the notes and look through their answers. If they guess them similar to what I expected, then I'm able to think I followed my design specifications well. I'm not sure if my test would work well, but I'll give it a try.

The project is related to one of AOI list called Human ingenuity. Human ingenuity is basically learning about creativity, action and thoughts. It allows students to think about human’s abilities to create, transform, enjoy, and improve the quality of life. There are two key questions of HI which are:

·Why and how do we create?
·What are the consequences?

Human Ingenuity is related to many aspects of our life. For example, it can be related to laws, languages, principles, arts and ritual habits as well. Our grade’s project is related to technology and art and we are going to invent our own portraits which are parts of Human Ingenuity.

To answer the key questions above, we create portraits both using different media and technology

to test what kind of effects we can get by using those sources. Every medium gives different impacts. For example, colored pencils give soft and smooth look while acrylic colors give very vivid and strong effects. Also computer photo altering programs give more graphical feeling to the portrait and other medium such as water color or pastels give more traditional look.

The consequences we may get are we can notice that we may learn more through experience. We can get information by just looking at some of mixed media artworks through books or internet web images, but feeling the texture of media and creating the artwork by our own hands, we can remember better about how that media is like or when should we use that media to give a certain look, etc. Not only that, but students also may have a chance to know better about themselves. For me, apparently there is not enough time to think about who I am and what I enjoy and vice versa. However, I believe this project will give opportunities to them to look back into their past lives and think about how to express them on a paper since self-portraits somehow show their emotions or characteristics.