Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Start of Something New

       Now that everything is done with my passion project, we're moving on. Yay, new things! We are starting to use a website called Google+, which is linked to Google Drive, Google Docs, and such. It's a fun and easy way to connect with other people about things that interest you. It also very easy to find things that could help you with any school work or work you have. It's very simple to use and it's pretty much helpful for anything.
       What we are currently doing on Google+, is we are joining communities that interest us. Communities are basically interactive blogs or that's what I see them as. Anyone can join a community and also post to that community. If you are looking for a certain community that you would like to join, then you can search a key word and a bunch of options with show up and you can look through them to see which one best suits your needs. You can post questions, comments, or helpful tools to the community.
       Yesterday, our teacher had us go onto each of our Google+ accounts and just look for communities that met our interests. I ended up looking for quote communities such as, inspirational quotes, life quotes and so on. I chose to join these kinds of communities just because if I ever need motivation for anything I could go into my Google+ and just look through my communities. Another reason I decided to join these types of communities is because there are quotes that can teach you life lessons and once you read them it makes you realize things.
       The kinds of things I like about the communities is that it's very simple to interact with people who have similar interests. You could essentially carry on a conversation with someone. You can also find pieces of information that you might want to add to the communities you have joined. I have not yet posted anything to any of the communities I've joined because I only just spent yesterday looking through communities and finding ones that I liked. I only joined about five communities. I would've joined more, but I spent a lot of time looking through the ones I joined to make sure I liked them.
       The communities I ended up joining were mostly, like I said, quote communities. The other two communities I joined were Photography and Baking Goods. I'm not necessarily interested in going into photography, I just like to look at all the cool things people create and their gift of taking pictures. There are always those few pictures that really catch my eye and I'm like wow, these are really amazing, I wish I was gifted like that. Now I'm sure you can guess why I decided to join a baking community. It's because I LOVE food!! I mean who doesn't love food. If you know me I love to try new things especially when it comes to new recipes for baking. I haven't looked through this community much, but I'm sure it has some really great tips and recipes for me to try, so I'm excited to see what that community has to offer.
       I think these communities will have a great influence, mainly because I joined inspirational, life, and positive quote communities. Everyone could use a little more inspiration and motivation in their life to be the best they can be. I'm excited to see what other communities I will join and also what kinds of opportunities this will bring for me, if any. Go out and try Google+. It's simple and easy to use and its a very efficient way to connect with people. If you decide to go out and try it I hope it's something that you'll use regularly and I hope it is very helpful!
       PS: Sorry for this book, but I could write forever and ever. You can never learn too much.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The End Result

       Well I have my presentation put together and its ready to go. For our presentation our teacher put together a little workshop type of thing. I guess you could call it that, but it was put into sessions, where there were three sessions during the whole period of time and each session lasted about 10 minutes. Personally I didn't like how our presentation was set up. We also had to present to people that we knew and saw on a daily basis, upperclassmen that is. I would've rather presented to random people that I don't associate with daily. I think that the audience would be more engaged and I also would put forth more effort in my presentation. I mean I'm not saying that I didn't put any effort into my presentation, but I feel like I would put in better effort if the presentation was set up differently.
       Overall my presentation went very well. I was able to present my information in a clear way that was easy to understand. I showed a little bit of each of my papers to my audiences and they seemed to think my writing was great. I think I did a good job in presenting my information but I will say there were times where it sounded like I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. For the most part my audiences were impressed by my work and some of them asked me how they should write their papers and what it takes to write a good paper. My one major piece of advice is to do lots and lots of research so you can become an expert on your topic and an expert in writing as well. Without good research you won't get the results that you are hoping for and in the end it may be a disappointment, but there is always time improve.
       So far throughout this whole project I've learned some great things that will help me in the future. I wouldn't say that I learned a lot, but I learned a good chunk of information about writing. I think that writing my argumentative paper took the most time and research, just because you have to find good and credible research for both sides of your argument. Your paper takes a long time to put together but in the end you'll be impressed with the results. I was beyond happy with the results I got from my argumentative paper. I didn't even think I could write like that. I wouldn't have been able to write that good of a paper if I hadn't done as much research as I did. I probably spent a good three weeks to a month finding good pieces of evidence that were credible to put into my paper. I will say that at first it's overwhelming but once you get all your research done everything else is a piece of cake. Just remember research is key into putting together an amazing paper.
       On a side note from the argumentative paper, I learned two new styles of writing. As said and explained in previous blog posts, I learned how to write and informative paper and how to write a personal narrative. Writing an informative paper is one of the easiest styles of writing. You can literally write about anything you want to. You are writing to inform, just like I'm doing right now. I'm informing you about what I've learned and what my thoughts are about it. On the other hand a personal narrative is fairly easy to write as well. It's basically your personal experiences and your thoughts on things. The writing process for this paper should come along easy and smooth because its associated with you and your thoughts and you're the only person who 100% knows what is going on with you and your thoughts. No one else can tell you what to think or feel. So when writing a personal narrative, get personal. Don't be scared to pour out your feelings into your writing and just have fun with it.
       Well I think its safe to say that this project went very well. It was nice sharing everything with guys, from when I first started to where I'm at now. This project was a great learning experience and it showed me what I can really do. You are capable of doing anything. If you put hard work and effort into anything you're doing, you will get the results you want. Hard work, dedication, and zero procrastination is what it takes to achieve the highest of successes. Work for what you want ans don't give up when the going gets tough.