Used by the permission of myself. (If you don’t get this, I’ll tell you: We students are supposed to type in “Used by the permission of ..” and type in the person’s name, when you use picture websites like Creative Commons and Flickr. But, I made this picture by myself, so it means I have to use this picture with the permission of myself, which does not make sense.) First, I’ll just explain some facts about making pictures like this since I like to talk about technology. You may skip this part if you want, but it may be useful. I made this picture using Pages (Apple) , and it is really easy. Get a background picture, (like Urumqi on the BG in my picture) and a main picture as a flag. I recommend you flags that have marks, and not plain colors. Click the picture one time, and then click Format, then Instant alpha. Make sure you hold click. The parts you don’t need will be highlighted with a color (example: red), and release clicking. If you need more information, there is a tutorial below, so enjoy!!
If I was a traveller on the Silkroad, I would stop at Urumqi, the city I studied, because there are various buildings as the drum towers, and they look awesome. Also, looking at Chinese traditional art is a great reason to stop by.
The most interesting thing I learned about Urumqi is that the city is in the Guiness Records. Urumqi is recorded as the most remote city from any seas. I think it is a really interesting fact, but I love seas, so I would prefer regions that are really close to the sea. (Laugh)
I would not like to go to Urumqi, because of religious reasons. Mostly the people are Islam, and I am afraid I am going to do something that is not allowed for Islams. If I study, I think I can go.
The physical geography is really important for the Silkroad, because it connects the east and west. If Urumqi was not connected, there would be not that much resources. Urumqi has resources because of the silkroad, and trade occurred.
I researched in the Internet, and Samarkand was connecting mostly the east and west. It means that Samarkand was extremely busy about trading and economy.
Lots of things happened. Some regions traded their weapons to fight with others. Some regions traded food to eat. I got to know about how the traded products passed on and on. I thought about how it was hard to trade in real life, but we just threw the string and then the products passed on and on. It was a really enjoying activity, and it was expressing how the middle city was very important. (travel until other regions)
Kate and Emily’s group was in the middle, and it looked like it was really busy, because they were holding loads of strings. It means that the middle city is the most busy place in economy.
I have embedded my tutorial again. I think this tutorial will explain what I am saying below. Please enjoy! If have any points, please comment. Now we have finished our project, Teachers of the Future! It was a long road until here, but I really enjoyed it. I am a bit sad because this awesome and fun project has finished. Now below is my reflection about through out this project. Please have a look at it. I have explained lots of things through out the humongous project.
I am happy about my finished work. It is because I think I used all techniques I know about great tutorials, techniques about iMovie. I think I used background music in right occasions. Also, I used Quick Time as a tool to have a great tutorial, and used it for screencasting. I think I used a good voice that people can understand. I liked the tutorial, but I made this tutorial in iMovie 2009, so I want to remake it with great transitions and a theme with iMovie 2011. I think I can make it more eye-catching with iMovie 2011, so this is the reason why I want to remake the tutorial.
I most liked the “Create” part of the project. If you don’t know, I’ll explain. In our Technology projects, parts are divided, as Investigate, Plan, Create, Evaluate. In each parts, you do different things, and as shown, Create demonstrates the part of creating something. For this project, we had made a tutorial. You have to post a reflection when each parts of the project is done. I am just doing the Evaluate Reflection, the last reflection in a project. Now let’s go back to the real stuff. I most liked “Create”, because it was the most enjoying. Making the tutorial was a little challenging, because of speech. I had to be conscious of clarity, projecting my voice, and many other things. I had thought of a large responsibility in this part of the project. I had used notes to talk with no fillers and to talk smoothly. Luckily, I was screencasting*, so I kept on reading, and I didn’t have to look at the audience like an oral presentation. If you don’t understand screencasting, I will tell you. It means, recording the screen of your computer with some kind of application as Quicktime. Screencasting often are used for demonstrating something to do with computers. After recording is the fun part. Luckily, I knew things about iMovie, so I could add things that were eye-catching in my tutorial. I was unsatisfied that I couldn’t use iMovie 2011 which had theme choosers, and had cool transitions to make the tutorial more interesting, but I got iLife ’11 (The DVD disk including iMovie 2011) 1 day (exactly) after the day I exported my tutorial. (Cry)
I think I worked well in my class, and was concentrated. One day I forgot my tutorial file in my home, and I was rushing about what I would do. Actually, I thought about what I should do, and then I spent my time on details. (as wallpapers) If I combine everything, I was productive in class. I did all my stuff in high-pace, so that I can check everything I missed and add extra details at the end. I was sometimes talking with my friends about off-topic things, I remembered about going on-topic. Then, I started to go on task and did my work. I would’ve change my somethings. I think I was able to manage more time on my project, so next time in a project I will reflect what I wrote here and accomplish the project with good grades.
The technology design cycle (Investigate, Plan, Create, Evaluate) helped me through out the project to organize tasks I would do, and eventually I made a good tutorial. The design cycle demonstrates the process of creating a certain thing in a project. (Ex. Tutorial) It helped me make a plan of what I should do in each parts, and was really understandable. I was able to think about dividing the tasks I have to accomplish in the project.
I learned the most in the part “Investigate”. For this project, I found out a lot of things that was used to make a great tutorial. https://docs.google.com/a/yis.ac.jp/document/d/1WR7EnlyC-BdkdvVG-zS8CwJoZ6s2f_67hIS7uRtLcL0/edit?hl=en_US# The website linked below is my google docs which shows my tutorial research, what I did in the process of Investigate. I researched on topics I was interested, topics my friends recommended, and listed in the document linked.
The strength was about technology. I think I did a good job making a tutorial with iMovie, and used matching sounds. I was lucky I had good friends who know more about technology than me, and sometimes they taught me in private times. My weaknesses were about speech. I was sure that I talked with complete pronunciation and grammar, but I kept on looking my notes. Next time, I will be sure of what I would talk about.
I want to be a professional soccer player, and I can teach things about soccer skills in the internet. Maybe I don’t have to because I might teach in the television. This project was a real help for me, and after the project was done my mom asked me to make a tutorial in Japanese for how to connect to a website about kimono. She says she wants to show it to other adults in her school. By the way (Again!) my mother is a professional Japanese dancer and a professional kimono fitter.
I learned mostly about the technology skills, but I also learned about the perspectives of different viewers of the tutorial. They may think about the main thing the instructor says, or they may think about the instructor’s tutorial skills. The viewers might have questions, so if it was me I would do things like this:
1. On the last part say: If you have any feed backs or questions please email me: *********@***.com(your email address)
2. Be sure to say every single detail. I wouldn’t recommend you this, because most people find this annoying.
3. The best thing: Add and FAQ (Frequently asked Questions) page and write the answers.
Thank you for viewing my long, long reflection!
What!!! Exactly 1064 words!
Again, Bye-bye!
Credits to my friend 17miyamuram who let me use the phrase of ***words..
Note and Precaution: If you don’t look at my tutorial first, you might not understand some text in this blog post. Thank you…
I learned a lot of things through out the process of creating the tutorial. First, I have learned lots about iMovie, and many preferences about it. I have also learned about how to speak in a tutorial well. I learned how to balance the volume of background music and the volume of my voice, and use variations of background music in different scenes. Speech is a very important thing in a tutorial, and if you train speech skills it can be useful for when you say important parts of the tutorial.
I am 100% sure that I am really happy, and that I am really satisfied. I did a little hard work on speech more than any other things, but I made a good wallpaper (on the title) for this tutorial. I think I did well on projecting my voice, speaking the steps carefully, and adding music on correct scenes.
The easiest part was where you put everything together in iMovie, edit it and finalizing. I will say for now: Special thanks to Kento my friend for little education in iMovie preferences, and also Ms. Cofino, my teacher. The part was that importing video clips into iMovie from the desktop. I made a new event, and dragged it into the event, and imported it to the iMovie Library. I successfully did it!! The hard and most challenging part I experienced in this project, is talking. I was really tired when I finished recording my video, and I actually had to use a little bit of notes to speak. Luckily I was screencasting, so there were no problems about facing the audience, and all those stuff you need to do in an oral presentation or a speech. I had loads to talk about Keynote, and I did all the things step by step, so the audience wouldn’t be confused. That’s why it was really challenging to speak.
I think it really meets criteria organized, but I am a little dubious about it. Well, I have organized my tutorial with details and I used the way of brainstorming to explain about Keynote. If I just explain it easily, it means for example when you have a statement in Keynote, I can explain lots of preferences about it. The part I am dubious is where I made the tutorial really long. (actually its not too long, so please enjoy my tutorial with clear details and please do not have dubious thoughts like me because it might be long and boring but I hope not )
I think I would work more on technology and learn about it to improve on my tutorial skills, but overall I think I have a good tutorial. I will be asking smart friends that are tech experts, and will join the Student Tech Team next grade to improve on my skills. (Since we were not a Tech Team I was thinking of.. I will not mention any names so it is offensive, but 1 person was funny but fooling around, and we deformed the shape of a excellent Tech Team, so revenge next year to make the best tech team ever!)
P.S. (This part is not included in my Create Project Reflection)
I recommend some tutorial that my friends have made who were listed in Special Credits in my tutorial.
Yesterday I had a baseball match against St. Maur. The 8th graders were starting and we cheered for them. In the last inning, I was called to do right field. It was the first time I was called to do baseball in a match, so I was pretty proud. The match ended, and the second match started. The second match was a match where players who didn’t have a chance to play would play, and a match to choose the next year’s starters. I was playing second baseman. I was the lead off batter. (1st batter) The first time batting, the pitcher threw 4 balls, and I got to walk to 1st base. I stole home base, and we got a point. The second time I stood on the batter box, I saw a little white ball running into me, in the strike zone. I hit the ball, and it was a RBI. (RBI is when you hit a ball and bring runners to home base) I came back again with steals. I was really happy that I scored. So the baseball match ended. Then, I went to Yokohama, and I met Kento, my friend. We went to the skate park at Nissan Stadium in Kozukue, and eventually I was skateboarding with my friends Kento Shirotsuka, Yong Won Choi, and Jeong Hyun An. We did somethings that were dangerous and fun.
We have done a water rocket experiment these lessons in Science. The aim is to find out how much the rocket will fly with only pet bottles, tape and cardboard. I knew that when the rocket cuts off a clump of air, the air has to come back together at the end, which means that it has to have curved smooth noses and rears, but the height of how much flies will be lost when the rear or the nose of the rocket is flat and not smooth.
I thought that group A had the rocket which flies the highest, because their rocket design was perfect. Just as I explained, the rocket design cut off friction and air resistance, as well as making air come back together. Actually, Group A did win.
We used 3 500ml pet bottles, tape and cardboard. We made little of a bottle the nose, 1 bottle the main body. We used duct tape to stick parts. We used cardboard to form flaps (wings?), to cut off air resistance. We first thought about what we should put on the bottle rocket, and we thought about the example rocket our teacher made. It had wings, and we used the wings as a clue to get some ideas of rocket design. Some pictures are here to list our process.
I have made a table in Numbers to show how the rocket launch was done. It is shown below. First, we put 200 ml of water in the rocket, and set it on the launch pad. Somebody pumped air in the petbottle, and a person tracked the altitude. I took a video of launches and I uploaded them in this blog post. Some went high, but some failed because of leaks. The winning rocket had wings that were curved, that cut off air resistance, and it flew really high compared to other groups. Group D had a leak and tried with just a plain petbottle, and it actually flew really high. The average was actually higher than other rockets, but it didn’t count as a result because the environment was different from other rockets. Below are 2 videos of launches made by our class groups.
I thought from the first that Group A will win, and my prediction was correct. I think it was a fair test because some people said it was not fair because there were more people who were good at science in a group than other groups, but it was fair because everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and a group can fill up each other’s weaknesses by strengths. For the materials, I think it was a very fair test. I learned that air resistance was a very important thing to remember when you launch rockets.
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