Editing, Revision, and Introduction

Yesterday you submitted (or should be finishing) a minimum of seven questions for an outside expert in your field. Before you start searching for experts to contact you need to revise your questions for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. You need to make sure all your words are spelled correctly with proper capitalization. If we are going to ask people for help we need to convince them with both the questions we and how we ask them. Appearances are incredibly important when dealing with new people and new circumstances.

Based on the questions I've seen so far, everyone needs to go to their SENT box and open the email with the questions. Copy and Paste the questions into a new email and use the CHECK SPELLING feature in the top right of the tool bar. Send the questions again to me AND your feedback partner to double-check your spelling and grammar.

When you have finished revising your questions, you need to write a brief introductory preface for the email that you will send out to potential experts in your field. The preface should cover the following items:

• Introduce yourself and explain that you are working on an independent portfolio project at Brooklyn Prep High School.
  
• Explain how your project connects back to you and your interests.
• Explain how you discovered the person, group, or business's contact information.
• Ask them if they (or someone they know) would be willing to share their experience with you through a short email interview.
  
• Thank them in advance for any help that they may provide in your efforts.

Please save the preface as NAME_preface in your Google Documents and share the file with me.

Finding an Expert

Many of you are struggling with the idea of how to start your project, because there is an overwhelming amount of information on the Internet. As you know, information is nothing unless you are able to comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate it. In order to help find some guidance we will be searching for experts, or people who have already applied the kind of higher order thinking you will have to, to help us out with the project.

We happen to live in a city of experts. In terms of your projects, many of you will be able to find help and ideas within the school and others will have to look beyond the school walls. How you do find an expert? You search for people and contact information in the industry you are researching and you reach out to several of them until someone responds. I was contacted by a student at the Young Writer's Academy to talk about my work as a writer in Brooklyn. I sat down for an interview about my writing process. The student found my email on the Internet and contacted me. I responded because I thought it would be good for the community.

Before you start searching for an expert on your project (or area of interest), you will need to think of several questions to ask your expert. For example, Dominique wants to make an autobiographical film. She might ask an expert on film "Why did you get into film-making?", "What are the basic steps to making a film?", or "How can I plan out my film?"

Each of you needs to write a series of at least seven questions for an expert about your project. They should not be yes or no questions, but ones that will help guide your work. Email me your questions today at mr.powhida@gmail.com

If you finish your questions early, start searching for people in your field of interest or if you know a faculty member that might be able to help, include them in your email today. So, if you are making a video/film search for "Brooklyn, Film makers, production companies". If you are doing fashion, search for "Brooklyn, fashion designers," If you find any contact information, save it in your RESEARCH DOCUMENT in google docs.

Goal Reflection #1 and Goal Setting #2

Tuesday is goal reflection and goal setting day in class. Today, I would like you to honestly answer the question "Have you met the goal you set for yourself last week?" This is a yes or no answer, which will decide your next response:

• If you answered yes, please briefly summarize how you met your goal and what describe what evidence you have to prove it.
• If you answered no, please explain why you did not meet your goal. List and explain the reasons you could not meet your goal. Please be honest.

Please post your first goal reflection as a comment on your first goal setting post on your blog.

Goal Setting #2
Please post your new goals for next Wednesday (Tuesday is election day!), which will give you a full day off to work on meeting your goals for next week. Again, this should be a next step for most of you in class. Post your new goals on your blog as "Weekly Goals #2" by the end of class.

Evidence #1:
On edline one of your grades in this class will be providing evidence of achieving your weekly goals. You must show me the evidence in some form. Use Gmail, Google Documents, or your blog to share electronic evidence with me such as research or typed lists. Please ask to start a folder today for written or gathered materials such as photographs or drawings.

Weekly Goal Setting Introduction

Now that you have a preliminary 'backwards plan' for your project you will start a weekly routine of setting personal goals for your individual project. The goals you set for your project should be based on your backwards plan, which many of you will update with new steps that you find out you need to accomplish as you work on your project.

Every Tuesday from here on out you will set new goals to be accomplished by the following Tuesday. Today you will set a realistic goal to accomplish by next Tuesday. Depending on how complex or difficult the goal you may want to set one large, detailed goal or a few small, easily accomplished goals. As we move through the semester you will have project time in class at least once a week, but right now you will have to get some of the work done outside of class.

Next Tuesday, your warm-up in class will be to update your progress on your blog by leaving a comment. Your comments should explain not only whether or not you met your goal, but why or why not. Then, after you've commented on your previous goals, you have to set new ones for the following week as new post.

Today, we will look briefly at some of your backwards plan posts and/comments and try to set some possible goals together. Then you will set your goals based on your backwards plan. Goals must be posted on your blog along with your backwards plan.

Backwards Plan

Creating an independent project for yourself is a big task and often the hardest part is getting started. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the whole idea of a project. In order to help ourselves get started we are going to do some backwards planning. What is backwards planning?

Backwards planning is really just a tactic to take a big project and break it down into smaller, manageable chunks that you feel like you can accomplish.

Now, Imagine it's January and you have just shown your amazing project to our class. In your mind, try and imagine where you are in the school. Try and visualize what you have just shown, read, or presented to your audience. Think about exactly how you presented your project. Close your eyes and imagine exactly what your project looks like and what the audience will see.

You should have an idea of what your final project will look like. The question is 'how did you get all the way there from here?' Instead of starting with the first step, let's start with your end goal. Take 5 minutes and write down 5 steps, in any order, that you think you will have to do to create your project. Leave a comment and make sure to include your name if you are not logged into your Google account.

After looking over some of the steps that you have listed, you will now create a simple blog post and try to round out your list of steps and put them in order from the final goal to the first step. You have already completed some of the steps, so list should get easier as you get towards the beginning.

Please post your plan on your blog under the title "Backwards Plan". This plan will help us set and meet individual goals and create a TO DO list.

Project Worksheet #2

Check your gmail account for the second project worksheet that I have shared with you. You need to save a copy of the document and rename it to YOURNAME_worksheet_2. Please answer all of the questions on the worksheet.

Please check Edline for any missing work, which may be submitted until tomorrow morning. Grades will be submitted by noon.

Warm-up Exercise: What's in a question?

Today, we will look at a new research document that I've shared with you. You will use this document to help you document your inquiry into your project idea.

Before we get started post a comment with your response in the form of a question to following prompt:

"If you could ask the next president one question on live TV during a debate what would it be?"

When you have finished posting your question and watched today's demo, please finish yesterday's initial research post on your own blog. What did you find out researching the five keywords your chose? If you did not finish yesterday, please read the post below for instructions.

Initial Research

Today you need to complete some basic research based on your project idea. Your goal is start exploring your topic and discovering examples of your project idea, information about your topic, and resources to help you develop your thesis question. Your thesis question will become the guiding question for your entire project.

For most of you, your projects are too vague and open ended, so today you should start to search for information about your ideas to help you start to narrow down your topic into a specific area. For example, both Joseph and Jasmine are interested in raising awareness about diseases that affect the community. They might conduct a Google search about the following key words; disease, Brookyln

To start your research today, post a comment reply to this post listing 5 keywords that relate to your independent project idea. Based on your keywords, use different combinations of the key words and start seeing what information comes up.

At the end of the period, you need to post a new Blog entry titled "Initial Research" and post a brief summary (2-3 sentences) of what you learned or didn't learn about each key word that you started with today. You can list specific, important information that you learn, website URLs (addresses), and/or what you roadblocks you encountered searching for the term.

Your post should use the Bulleted List feature in the formatting options in the posting menu bar
so that it looks like this:

• Keyword 1 - information that you found out.
• Keyword 2 - www.keyword2.com - I found a website all about my keyword. It has alot of useful links about my keyword.
• Keyword 3 - I didn't find out much information about this key word. It wasn't really helpful in searching for information. I don't think I'll use this again.
• Keyword 4 - Based on this keyword, I found out a list of keywords that I am going to research tomorrow including x, y, and z.
• Keyword 5 - I found out that....and...it's really important because....

You research will be useful in formulating a specific thesis question. By the end of next week we will be presenting detailed project proposals and discussing them in our Socratic Circle. Your project proposal will attempt to provide a way for you to answer your thesis question in the form of an independent project based on research and/or creative experimentation. Post the results of your preliminary research on your blog at the end of class.

Google Documents

Working on computers today is very different than it was five years ago. Many more computers have Internet access and people work on more than one computer. One way to store and edit work on any computer with Internet access is Google Documents. Google Docs is a lot like Microsoft Office, but it lives on the Internet. You don't need any special software or programs, just a functional web browser like Firefox. With Google Docs you can create documents, spread sheets, and even basic presentations. Also with Google Docs you can do more than save files online, but you can share them with other users, publish them online or right to your blog. It's a very powerful, easy to use tool that may become a venue for your senior portfolio.

Today we are going to explore how to upload or create our first Google Document and share the results with me and your feedback partner. Watch the demo on the screen on how to create a Google Document, how to upload a Microsoft Word file, and how to share a finished document with me and your feedback partner.

When you are finished with your project worksheet, you will make it a Google Document and share it with me at mr.powhida@gmail.com

Project Warm Up and Worksheet

Last week I asked you to post your first independent project idea on your blog. Take a minute and look over your project idea. When you have reminded yourself about your project idea, post a comment here with five questions that you have about your project or that your project idea raises. For example, if Tyree is going to create an investment portfolio, a question might be "What stocks should I invest in?"

Your questions can be about the content of your project, how to make the project, skills and materials you might need, what academic connections it has, and why it is important.

When you have finished adding your questions as a comment, please complete the project worksheet by clicking on the link.

1. Copy and paste the text of the Google document into Microsoft Word and answer the questions as clearly as you can.
   
2. Save the file as YOURNAME_PW.DOC
3. Send the file to mr.powhida@gmail.com as an attachment. Please pay attention to the demo so that you can complete the worksheet and turn it in.