Final Project: Who Do You Think You Are?

For our final project, we were assigned the task of learning about our family history and creating several projects to demonstrate our knowledge. To gain some background information on my mother's side of the family, I conducted a 25-question interview with my grandma, Kathleen Best. In this interview, she gave me the names of her parents and grandparents and the birthdays of almost every family member on the Best side of the family. She also explained her love for music and piano and how she feels that she passed her love of music to her grandchildren.

In a separate interview I questioned my father, Daniel Farnan, about his childhood. He grew up in Richmond, Missouri as the youngest of 11 children. He explained to me some of the challenges he faced with such a large family including having to share everything and not getting along with his siblings. He also said that his large family taught him valuable life and people skills and made him appreciate his mother that much more.

To help me with the rest of the projects, I sent an email to my grandmother and asked for help finding information about our family heritage and pictures of all our family members to use in my presentation. She provided me with nearly all the pictures I used in this project, as she had hundreds of old pictures laying around her house.

With all this background information I had collected within both sides of my family, I was able to complete a thorough family tree. I was not able to trace my family back very far, but with the help of my dad and grandma I was able to include every single living relative I know and trace my family back to my great-great-great grandparents on the Best side and my great grandparents on the Farnan side.

With the information that my grandma and my mother provided me with, I was able to finish a prezi consisting of mainly my mother's side of the family. I was not able to include all of my dad's family because I did not have near as much information about them. Instead I included a lot of information about each of my relatives on the Best side of the family.



After the completion of the prezi, I was able to display my knowledge of my family's heritage through an infographic. I included the countries of origin for both the Best and Farnan families as well as where my family members currently live and some hereditary diseases on both sides of the family.
 
Through this project I was not only able to demonstrate my knowledge of the online tools we have been using in Emerging Technology all semester, but I was also able to learn a lot more than I previously knew about my family history. It was a very interesting project for me to complete and I now know much more about where my family and I came from.

Tuesday, April 28th

Read THIS blog post by a teacher. I mean actually read it. Take it in. Think about it. And then, write about it. What do you think about it? What is the teacher trying to say? In your own words explain what "the main event" is.

I think this is a very powerful blog post written by a very intelligent teacher. He states that he has been losing sleep over his students because they are not understanding the main point of school. He says that in the long run, school is not most important for educating you, it is most important for teaching you valuable life lessons such as how to deal with people or how to learn respect or how to keep pushing through when you are challenged with adversities. He says that we will be challenged many times in our lives and school is how we learn to cope and deal with them. The "main event" is that we as students need to learn to push ourselves and do our best. The point of school is not how many math problems you can do correctly, it is about how you deal with the stress and pressure that school will inevitably bring. School can teach you many life lessons and you just need to be intelligent enough to learn from them.

Wednesday, April 22nd

Blog Post of the Day:

Tell me all about your stop-motion animation project with your group.

For our stop-motion animation project, we are having 2 cars race in a hallway in the school. We have our camera with a tripod to stabilize the photos and cars to take pictures of. We also have start and finish lines for the race. Maggie Boeckmann and I are in our own group of 2. Maggie will be taking the pictures while I move the cars around. We should finish taking all of our pictures today.

Friday, April 17th

GIANT blog post of the day:


Answer the following questions thoroughly on your blog.

What was your stop motion animation about? Why did you choose your video to be about this? Was it because it was easy, because it would be fun, or it would be challenging? Explain your reasoning behind your project (and be honest).

I originally wanted to use a completely different idea for my stop motion animation, but after i couldn't obtain the materials I would need for that idea, my younger sister helped me come up with a new idea. I chose to use shoes for my stop motion animation because I thought it would be a fun stop motion project and one simple enough that I could focus more on the technical aspects of the project, such as keeping my camera still and focusing the camera to ensure that I would have the best quality pictures I could get.

If you could rate your stop motion on a 1-10 scale. 1 being low effort and no very good and 10 being out of this world/mindblowing, how would you rate your project? Explain why.

If I were to rate my stop motion animation project on a scale from 1-10 based on effort, I would give myself an 8. I say that because although my project was not the most interesting one, I was still able to learn a lot from it and I feel that I fully grasped the purpose of the assignment. I also feel that I deserve an 8 because I did focus more on the technical aspects of the project rather than the story I was telling through it. This could be both a bad and good thing.

In hindsight, what would you do differently the second time around? Better lighting? Time management? Explain yourself.

If I were to do this stop-motion animation project a second time, I would create a better story that actually meant something. I would like for my project to have some meaning now that I full understand the purpose of the project. I would also add another source of lighting because although I thought the flash would have a positive impact on all my photos, it was a bit distracting in the end. 

Explain what makes your stop motion animation unique. How do you believe you thought "outside of the box" on this project?

In this project, I felt that shoes would be an interesting take on a stop-motion project because shoes are worn on people's feet and I thought it would be fun to make them move on their own. It was interesting for me to watch the final product because I tried to make it look like the imaginary person in the shoes was walking like a normal person like you or I would. It was fun for me to see the shoes come to life on their own and have an original idea that I hadn't seen before.

What grade do you feel you deserve on this project? Explain your reasoning.

I feel that I deserve a fairly high grade on this project because of the work I put into this project. Although I did not do a wonderful job of telling a great story through my stop-motion animation project, I used an original idea and made the best of it. I thought that my project was interesting and it ended up looking really good and as realistic as a pair of shoes walking by themselves could be. Overall I felt that this project was a fun and interesting one, and a good learning experience.

Tuesday, April 14th

Blog Post of the Day:
3 day weekend... how was it? Give me a good story or something funny that happened this weekend. Go.

This weekend was one of the best weekends ever. Saturday morning I got up at 5 A.M. to go to choir Contest at Olathe South where I performed in 2 ensembles and 1 solo. 7 out of Blue Valley's 8 ensembles got a 1 rating, which is the best out of 5. I was also given a 1 on my solo which means that I get to take my 2 ensembles and my solo to state in 2 weeks. Prom was also on Saturday and I went with a really fun group of all choir people. It was by far the best dance I've been to. On Sunday I woke up at 5 A.M again for a volleyball tournament. My team won silver in our bracket and I am very proud of our team because this was our last tournament as a team and my last tournament playing club. I had to say goodbye to my volleyball coach of 4 years. This weekend was a great and very eventful one.

Tuesday, April 7th

Blog Post of the Day:
Tell me ALL about what your idea is for your stop-motion animation. I need detail. Who is going to help you take photos? What props do you need? Where do you plan on shooting? EXPLAIN everything.

For my stop motion animation project, I will be using a balloon with a face drawn in marker. The balloon will be travelling around my house and doing different human activities that a balloon couldn't normally do such as eating breakfast, brushing it's teeth, and driving a car to school. For this project I will need a normal sized balloon filled with helium, something such as a weight to hold it to the ground so it doesn't fly away, basic household items for the balloon to use while getting ready for school, a permanent marker, and a camera to take all the pictures with. I will shoot at my house with the help of my siblings and one or two friends. I will use my own tripod for this project so that my photos are clear and easy to see. I will bring my photos no later than Friday, April 10th.

Monday, April 6th

Blog Post of the Day:
Tell me all about your weekend and please share photos!

This weekend was very exciting. I got asked to Prom and saw my family in Richmond, Missouri for Easter. On Friday, I got asked to Prom with roses and some volleyball puns. I am really excited to go! On saturday, I went to Richmond with my family to see my aunts, uncles, and grandparents on my mom's side of the family. We all went out to lunch and church for the Easter service. I got to see a lot of relatives and friends that I hadn't seen in a long time.