Globalization Project Reflection
This project was a very fun and innovative project. We were able to make a company that would address a large issue. Essentially we would become entrepreneurs. We would go into what we want to and see how we could make a product that can help others around the world. What our group chose to address was the multitude of energy issues. What we would simply do was place in areas that needed it a solar-based fully modular and expandable power grid. We would first implement this into schools that do not have energy and also offer it to other community members. It would cost ~200 USD to set up per school and household. Overtime this cost would lower to somewhere in the 100-150 USD range. Some of the parts of this business I contributed to were the management part of the business plan, I basically on my own did the 9 Steps for Branding, I created the logo from some of the ideas we had in class, I also organized the portfolio for the company so that everything we did was in one place and fairly easy to find, along with that I set up for the actual exhibition so that we were prepared when it did come time to do so, and did a ton of revision on everything from the Preliminary Business Proposal to the Exhibition Business Proposal. However I believe the most important thing I did for the group was focus and push the team. I think that doing this is the most important thing to the position of a leader. The ability to put your peers back into what they need to do so that the group doesn’t need to rush anything and make it less than the best the group can make it. That has hit a ton of companies for example Atari’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. This game was made in 5 weeks because they wanted it to come out with the movie. Think about it. 5 weeks. To make a game today that is similar in specs and gameplay to GTA, I know not the best example, you would need 4 years at the least. That is why this game is known as one of the worst games to ever be made. It was rushed so quickly that it was not able to make it. That is the importance of taking all of the time you need and not rushing it at the end. That is the importance of a leader in my eyes. However doing that can make others dislike you. That is why bosses get such a bad wrap, because people want to procrastinate. However they have bosses that force them to do their work and get it done on time. However you have choices, one you can do it right away and maybe have more time later to relax, two you can take your brake until you realize that there is still a pile of paper work on your desk that needs to be done and stress to get it done last minute, three you can completely blow it off. Fired, that’s the next word you hear out of your boss's mouth. Why? Because you hurt both your boss and yourself by doing so. And that is also the hard part about being a leader, putting you foot down to another you know has the ability to work hard and you respect, but simply put, doesn't.
The main two points of this project were very large topics. Both globalization and social entrepreneurship. It was hard coming into because I felt rushed by so much information I had never heard of before. Both definitions were very blurry to me. I had never heard of either of these seeing as I wasn't very much informed on this sort of stuff. However, near the end of the project, I got used to it things started to flow much better. So lets start with globalization. Globalization is more to me than anything the spread of an idea across the globe. As of right now we have to idea of speed passing through. Speed is a lot of things. It can be a common one we see, transportation. The ability to travel quickly from one place to another is an amazing feat of human technology. Look at our planes, cars, boats. These are all things we use to get around faster. Another way we use speed is through communication. Think about it. Every telephone has this, every computer, and even now a days we have the tablet. All of them connected to two main things. The phone line and the internet, which span across the world. Tell me that is not speed of communication. What this does is keeps families together wherever they may be in the world. This connects to the idea of social entrepreneurs, but first off what is a social entrepreneur? For me they’re people who create an idea and go for it. This idea is human-centered and system-changing. Human-centered means it revolves around people. People are always there tweaking it and fixing it to see how it will work this way and that to make it the best possible fit. It also means that it revolves around the creator because he or she always has the last say in what they want to see with the idea. Another thing is that they creator has to be interested in the idea so that he/she is inspired to do work in that area. System-changing is fairly self-explanatory. It needs to make a change in the current system. Instead of putting a “band-aid” on it. Like my teacher Stephen Sellers said, “You can’t put a band-aid on a bullet wound.” No, you have to get in there, get to the core of the problem pull it out and see what your can do to fix it. How does this connect back to globalization? Well, the people that do this are the people who set out to change the world. They are the people who change the idea of globalization to head towards another path for the whole globe. It’s understandable that these people are more important than we may think. For example the Wright Brothers. They went out to seek the ability to fly and that is what they accomplished. Another example of this is Alexander Graham Bell. He started to see the possibility of what you use so often that you don’t think of it as a part of all of this. This is my largest takeaway from this project. The knowledge that there are people out there who set out to make a change in the world as we see fit and accomplish great things.
Collaboration to me is a very important skill to have today. It’s the ability to communicate with others. That’s it, because with that single word we open up a ton of possibilities. Communicating how someone wants to see something done. Communicating ideas from one another to continue the development of the project. Communicating times, dates, deadlines. Communication is the most important thing of collaboration and in the world as we know it. During this project I was not the best collaborator until I realized that I needed to in order to get the project done. At first I wanted to make a company that would make FNR(Fast Neutron Reactor) nuclear power plants. I was set on this road and I would not swerve from it. The reason was because it was what I wanted to do and was inspired to do and taking that away would almost end the project for me. It would no longer be fun for me. As soon as I realized that my peers were not up to doing what I had wanted to, I lost my road. In one instant I let out in a bit of anger and frustration and said, “I give up!” From there on the project was no longer interesting for me, but my other peers took seize of that moment and found a good opportunity for supplying energy to those who need it. GENergy was created. From there on I did what I could to help the group do what we needed to do to get through the project and get the best possible grade. I learned that you can’t just force an idea on to those that have their own ideas. They wanted to create GENergy and by forcing my idea on to them the group became more and more separated. Next time is going to be a new experience with new experiences and new people. The only thing I can do is apply what knowledge I have now and hope for the best.
This project also included the ideas of both mindsets, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Let’s start with the fixed mindset. This mindset tells us that we can’t do this and will never be able to do this. For example, I can’t do parabolic math. This gives the idea that you will never be able to do that type of math. The other mindset, growth mindset, tells us that we can’t do it yet. For example, I can’t do parabolic math yet. With that single word you have changed that sentence from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Do you get the gist of this? The fixed mindset says you will never be able to do this and will forever fail at it. The growth mindset tells you that you are not able to do this yet, but if you keep trying and learn from your mistakes along the way you will be able to do what you are striving for. How do we get these mindsets? Well they come from those around us. It comes from socialization, meaning our media, schools, friends, and parents. How do they do this? Simply they have to say a few words. For example, if you hear them say something like this, “Wow! that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” That is fixed mindset praised because it’ portrays intelligence and/or skills as a fixed quality. If you hear something like, “Wow! that’s a really good score. You must have tried really hard.” That is growth mindset praise because it focuses on the process. During this project I had mostly a growth mindset. I say this because when I was introduced to it I wanted to become that type of a person because I had been in the fixed mindset from elementary school without realizing it. I was that really smart kid, you know the nerd, until I realized that in doing so I had believed that my intelligence was fixed. Then I saw the video and how I could change then took action. I have been trying to keep the growth mindset throughout this project and I believe I did well in doing so. One time where I said can’t would be when I took leadership over the group. I said to myself, “I won’t be able to put my foot down when my team is getting off task.” However even this changed to being necessary and from this experience I learned that sometimes it is necessary to put your foot down. It can be hard, but I will persevere. All in all I would not change too much of my mindset in this project. I feel I did well keeping over on the growth mindset during this project. This helped me continue to be as efficient as I could be throughout the project and when Stephen said to me after class, “Thanks for the hard work.” It reassured me that I was doing my job and working hard.
At the end of the project we had the exhibition as Animals normally does. It was difficult and awkward for me. The main reason being that I did not have a passion for what we had created for the project. Before the main part of the project started I had watched Pandora’s Promise. A documentary on nuclear power and its benefits. So at the beginning of the project I had wanted to create a company that would start to build FNR(Fast Neutron Reactor), also known as a breeder reactor. This reactor has the ability to give people limitless energy and create much less waste than the current reactor, the light water reactor. There is a ton more information I have on nuclear energy that I would have loved to talk about in exhibition, but the group wanted to head in another direction. After a while of battling my group members to get this company idea through I finally conceded and we went with the creation of GENergy. Thus my exhibition was not up to par and felt strange. Of course I could have put more time in to studying what I could say that was positive about GENergy and put more research in to how to sell the company so that I didn’t leave my team mates in such a bad shape at the beginning of exhibition. However I did practice the elevator pitch so that I could just use that to start off with a bang for the investor. That is what I mainly used. I learned that if you have no interest in what you are selling you are not going to be able to sell it, makes sense right?
The main two points of this project were very large topics. Both globalization and social entrepreneurship. It was hard coming into because I felt rushed by so much information I had never heard of before. Both definitions were very blurry to me. I had never heard of either of these seeing as I wasn't very much informed on this sort of stuff. However, near the end of the project, I got used to it things started to flow much better. So lets start with globalization. Globalization is more to me than anything the spread of an idea across the globe. As of right now we have to idea of speed passing through. Speed is a lot of things. It can be a common one we see, transportation. The ability to travel quickly from one place to another is an amazing feat of human technology. Look at our planes, cars, boats. These are all things we use to get around faster. Another way we use speed is through communication. Think about it. Every telephone has this, every computer, and even now a days we have the tablet. All of them connected to two main things. The phone line and the internet, which span across the world. Tell me that is not speed of communication. What this does is keeps families together wherever they may be in the world. This connects to the idea of social entrepreneurs, but first off what is a social entrepreneur? For me they’re people who create an idea and go for it. This idea is human-centered and system-changing. Human-centered means it revolves around people. People are always there tweaking it and fixing it to see how it will work this way and that to make it the best possible fit. It also means that it revolves around the creator because he or she always has the last say in what they want to see with the idea. Another thing is that they creator has to be interested in the idea so that he/she is inspired to do work in that area. System-changing is fairly self-explanatory. It needs to make a change in the current system. Instead of putting a “band-aid” on it. Like my teacher Stephen Sellers said, “You can’t put a band-aid on a bullet wound.” No, you have to get in there, get to the core of the problem pull it out and see what your can do to fix it. How does this connect back to globalization? Well, the people that do this are the people who set out to change the world. They are the people who change the idea of globalization to head towards another path for the whole globe. It’s understandable that these people are more important than we may think. For example the Wright Brothers. They went out to seek the ability to fly and that is what they accomplished. Another example of this is Alexander Graham Bell. He started to see the possibility of what you use so often that you don’t think of it as a part of all of this. This is my largest takeaway from this project. The knowledge that there are people out there who set out to make a change in the world as we see fit and accomplish great things.
Collaboration to me is a very important skill to have today. It’s the ability to communicate with others. That’s it, because with that single word we open up a ton of possibilities. Communicating how someone wants to see something done. Communicating ideas from one another to continue the development of the project. Communicating times, dates, deadlines. Communication is the most important thing of collaboration and in the world as we know it. During this project I was not the best collaborator until I realized that I needed to in order to get the project done. At first I wanted to make a company that would make FNR(Fast Neutron Reactor) nuclear power plants. I was set on this road and I would not swerve from it. The reason was because it was what I wanted to do and was inspired to do and taking that away would almost end the project for me. It would no longer be fun for me. As soon as I realized that my peers were not up to doing what I had wanted to, I lost my road. In one instant I let out in a bit of anger and frustration and said, “I give up!” From there on the project was no longer interesting for me, but my other peers took seize of that moment and found a good opportunity for supplying energy to those who need it. GENergy was created. From there on I did what I could to help the group do what we needed to do to get through the project and get the best possible grade. I learned that you can’t just force an idea on to those that have their own ideas. They wanted to create GENergy and by forcing my idea on to them the group became more and more separated. Next time is going to be a new experience with new experiences and new people. The only thing I can do is apply what knowledge I have now and hope for the best.
This project also included the ideas of both mindsets, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Let’s start with the fixed mindset. This mindset tells us that we can’t do this and will never be able to do this. For example, I can’t do parabolic math. This gives the idea that you will never be able to do that type of math. The other mindset, growth mindset, tells us that we can’t do it yet. For example, I can’t do parabolic math yet. With that single word you have changed that sentence from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Do you get the gist of this? The fixed mindset says you will never be able to do this and will forever fail at it. The growth mindset tells you that you are not able to do this yet, but if you keep trying and learn from your mistakes along the way you will be able to do what you are striving for. How do we get these mindsets? Well they come from those around us. It comes from socialization, meaning our media, schools, friends, and parents. How do they do this? Simply they have to say a few words. For example, if you hear them say something like this, “Wow! that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” That is fixed mindset praised because it’ portrays intelligence and/or skills as a fixed quality. If you hear something like, “Wow! that’s a really good score. You must have tried really hard.” That is growth mindset praise because it focuses on the process. During this project I had mostly a growth mindset. I say this because when I was introduced to it I wanted to become that type of a person because I had been in the fixed mindset from elementary school without realizing it. I was that really smart kid, you know the nerd, until I realized that in doing so I had believed that my intelligence was fixed. Then I saw the video and how I could change then took action. I have been trying to keep the growth mindset throughout this project and I believe I did well in doing so. One time where I said can’t would be when I took leadership over the group. I said to myself, “I won’t be able to put my foot down when my team is getting off task.” However even this changed to being necessary and from this experience I learned that sometimes it is necessary to put your foot down. It can be hard, but I will persevere. All in all I would not change too much of my mindset in this project. I feel I did well keeping over on the growth mindset during this project. This helped me continue to be as efficient as I could be throughout the project and when Stephen said to me after class, “Thanks for the hard work.” It reassured me that I was doing my job and working hard.
At the end of the project we had the exhibition as Animals normally does. It was difficult and awkward for me. The main reason being that I did not have a passion for what we had created for the project. Before the main part of the project started I had watched Pandora’s Promise. A documentary on nuclear power and its benefits. So at the beginning of the project I had wanted to create a company that would start to build FNR(Fast Neutron Reactor), also known as a breeder reactor. This reactor has the ability to give people limitless energy and create much less waste than the current reactor, the light water reactor. There is a ton more information I have on nuclear energy that I would have loved to talk about in exhibition, but the group wanted to head in another direction. After a while of battling my group members to get this company idea through I finally conceded and we went with the creation of GENergy. Thus my exhibition was not up to par and felt strange. Of course I could have put more time in to studying what I could say that was positive about GENergy and put more research in to how to sell the company so that I didn’t leave my team mates in such a bad shape at the beginning of exhibition. However I did practice the elevator pitch so that I could just use that to start off with a bang for the investor. That is what I mainly used. I learned that if you have no interest in what you are selling you are not going to be able to sell it, makes sense right?
Educational Auto-Biography
Artist Statement/Picture of Art
“In war there are many truths behind the smoke that no one likes to tell, but to learn from those mistakes we have to retell these instances of horror. The hidden war stories are yet to be told.”
My drawing/painting is very dark and shaded. The reason for this is that my perspective statement connects to this. The smoke connects to the explosion in the background. Making the question of what is behind that cloud of fire and explosion? They you could say why are they bombing there? Will we ever know? No, not unless the man in the cockpit told us his experience with this bombing.
My refinement was not too long the main idea was to just have enough rough drafts to complete the project honestly. My main revision part was in my perspective statement. I made a whole lot of other perspective statements on another document it was a free write. Basically I wrote whatever I wanted on the paper made revisions to my favorite one, and came up with the one you see at the top.
My main inspiration was from the carpet bombings in the war. When they bombed the trails of Ho Chi Minh. The plane on there is Cessna A-37 Dragonfly. It was mostly a scout drone for bombing they generally didn’t actually bomb the areas though it could carry a bomb. The cool thing about it is that in the cockpit there are two seats that look as if they were placed in a car.
My drawing/painting is very dark and shaded. The reason for this is that my perspective statement connects to this. The smoke connects to the explosion in the background. Making the question of what is behind that cloud of fire and explosion? They you could say why are they bombing there? Will we ever know? No, not unless the man in the cockpit told us his experience with this bombing.
My refinement was not too long the main idea was to just have enough rough drafts to complete the project honestly. My main revision part was in my perspective statement. I made a whole lot of other perspective statements on another document it was a free write. Basically I wrote whatever I wanted on the paper made revisions to my favorite one, and came up with the one you see at the top.
My main inspiration was from the carpet bombings in the war. When they bombed the trails of Ho Chi Minh. The plane on there is Cessna A-37 Dragonfly. It was mostly a scout drone for bombing they generally didn’t actually bomb the areas though it could carry a bomb. The cool thing about it is that in the cockpit there are two seats that look as if they were placed in a car.
WWI Creative Historians
All Quiet on the Western Front One of the parts that really struck at home was when we started talking about how this book opened up our own viewpoints so that we could see what happened during WWII and formulate our own opinions. Later on in that day we went to biology and discussed bias. Everyone found out they have their own bias about certain things. Where do we come up with these biases? We get them from our own experiences. Since I have shot a gun whereas others may have not and because of that it can be different for me than to a “gun virgin”. There are so many different opinions out there on so many different matters and even some we may not even know about. Due to this none of us could come to the conclusion of what the truth of war is and how we can find it.
I think that the book we just read could go both ways. It could go from agonist to for war. You can see how war is good for the soldier that lives through it, “your food's found every day, or else you kick up a row; you've a bed, every week clean underwear like a perfect gent, you do your non-com.'s duty, you have a good suit of clothes; in the evening you're a free man and go off to the pub.” an example from the book. You don’t have to worry about finding food you have a bed, good clothing, and then after hours you are free to do whatever you please. Sounds like the life right? Well lets look at what you have to endure to get this luxury. You have to get through large amounts of heavy shelling, hope your last breath of air is not filled with mustard gas, survive the onslaught of enemies, tanks, and flamethrowers. That is where we can see this side that is against war. “A surprise gas-attack carries off a lot of them. They have not yet learned what to do. We found one dug-out full of them, with blue heads and black lips. Some of them in a shell hole took off their masks too soon; they did not know that the gas lies longest in the hollows;” Last year while there was snow on the ground I got to fire my first shot off of a full on AR. Let me tell you it was an exhilarating thing just to hold for me since I was so small that if I stood up next to it I would be twice it’s size. I don’t know exactly what the name of the rifle was, but when I fired it gave me a nice kick back. Generally I fire what the men in WWII were firing a semi-auto/bolt rifle. It is a good starting weapon to train in shooting down sights, but there is not too many uses for it seeing as it is not very powerful. Where as if you take the machine gun of WWII would be able to take one whole line of men down in one instant. Though the rifle was more effective in taking down single enemies, and tend now a days to be used for doing so in sniper situations, the machine gun had less accuracy, but in that day and age that would not really matter if they enemy is blindly charging. Another question why would the enemy charge like that? If they knew that the other side was death and despair why would they just charge at it and say “For Honor!!!”. Sounds to me that these soldiers were suicidal and no longer wanted to live through this war. It was a normal day. Shells going off so on and so forth, but today was special we were going to charge at the enemy on the other side of no mans land for what I do not know. Anyway when we stop firing our shells we run. All of the sudden it's quiet until our officer says ¡Vive la France! Then everybody climbs the ladder up into no mans land then I myself climb and run, something special happens I trip in to a shell hole with a dead German soldier well I fall in and on to the body and all of the sudden I feel another movement below me and right after that a sharp sting in my abdominal, the German was alive. Suddenly I react in a shudder and fall over on my back as to keep me from getting infections and dirt in the wound. The German then retreats to the other side of the crater and sticks his helmet out which is flung out of his hand as a bullet hits it. All of this thinking has made me tired and I fall asleep. I later awaken to the German looking straight at me which scares me and I try to scream, but all that comes out is blood and a gurgle sound. After a little while he starts making his way towards me and I try to move and say, "Stay back!", but get no where and with that and realize my pain trying to move. The pain surges through my body and I gurgle up some blood. When he gets to me he opens my shirt and looks at my wound he puts his cloth on it to clean it and holy matromony does it hurt, but I can tell he is trying to help me so I let it be. He covers it up and gets me some water, which I thirstilly drink. I do not know where he gets the water from, but I am thankful for it. A while later I am out of energy and fall to sleep again. I do not wake from this endless dream this, endless sleep, this never ending loop of death. Though in this dream I am with friends and family forever, endless bliss, but this is not life. |
In this project we wrote our own short story on the many truths of war. We first read books lie All Quiet on the Western Front, a WWI book, and Slaughterhouse 5, from WWII. These helped us form our own opinions on the truth of war. After reading each book we also had Socratic Seminars.
In my short story I thin that my strongest suit was historical references. "Our army was basically captured by the Russian forces on the 31st of January 1943. A bit over 100,000 of us went in to the prisons, and 6,000 came out to see their families again." This quote tells the reader when they went in to the camps and how many out of all of them came out. Out of all of these things the most challenging was the show vs the tell. I did not fully understand the subjects and how it worked. I have near to no experience with this style of writing either. There are still plenty of examples just look for the words is/was. The two most important revisions I did was on my plot and round character. The main problem with my plot is the climax. My climax was, well to be honest, not really a climax. It was more of the last crisis he has in the book. My main character was definitely not round until I added two more paragraphs. My Presentation: https://docs.google.com/a/animashighschool.com/file/d/0BzC_UOuSnuHjUnBucmZKRTBfaXc/edit Slaughterhouse FiveOn page number 26 at the very last paragraph there is a beautiful quote, “The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.” This is one of the main points the book portrays. The funny thing is that I quoted this in the seminar. Anyways the quote is about life, you have a past, present, and future. It also points at the idea that we have a predestined future that we can not change. Later on in the book the Tralfamadorians tell Billy how the universe is destroyed. The Tralfamadorians were trying out a new fuel and one man presses the red button and then there is nothing. The Tralfamadorians tried to stop him from doing so, but to no success. He always presses the button no matter what and they had to just accept that.
One of the really puzzling questions Stephen answered was, “Are you Billy Pilgrim?” Everybody was silent and we had a hard time coming up with any answers or thoughts. I will admit this was a a very hard question, but if we really got down to it we would be able to see that yes we are Billy. I don’t mean literally, but figuratively. No we don’t have the same experiences, features, or DNA, but we all live our life like he lived his. We have our experiences, we have our own features, and we have our own DNA, but through our experiences we live like him. We stay in the happy moments of our life and I personally think that when Billy time-travels he just goes back to a good memory especially when he is in a bad situation. A little while back when I was having a really hard time. Then I went to my room and escaped to another world aka Borderlands. I think this is what Billy does. When he time travels he tends to travel away from a bad situation and go to a happier one. For example when he was about to crash in that plane he simply time traveled so he would not have to go through with that feeling. Maybe this whole time travel thing is just him going away to another moment where things are nicer so that he does not have to go through pain and suffering. AQotWF and Five are a very different pair of books. The writing is different and Five is definitely not linear in time and he moves from one place to another point in time, but there are some similarities like how brutal war is. In WWI there was bombing, but nothing like the bombing of Dresden. We used a lot of the same weaponry as in shells and planes, but by the time of WWII we had mastered these things. Our shells were much more accurate and our planes were more powerful with machineguns and better aerodynamics. Another thing we see in the two books are tanks, although the tanks in WWII were more advanced and powerful they were also seen in WWI. |