Brianna Lamoureux 2/28/17

Today in class we could either work on our critical review or our senior paper. Our senior paper is on the lens that we chose and we must use evidence from at least 3 scholarly articles and one film. We can also use the organizer that was due to help structure our paper. Mr.Rivers has also been meeting with students throughout the period to help craft our essays. These are due the 22nd of March and should be about 5-7 pages long. The other option is to work on our critical review. This can be on any movie, show or series we choose. After practicing using WeVideo it is now our turn to make our own project. We started by finding film segments on you-tube and uploading them to media and must now begin making our review. This is due the 20th of March and should be about 5 minutes long.
Below is a link to a critical review on Harry Potter-

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h2XDoY81TcNMObRsMxqrjtgkJ2UBOtBJWE0S0xJ_GVI/edit

This is to help us make our review and give us some guidance and an idea of what it should be like. Students will continue to have the choice of what they wish to work on for the following weeks.

Terrell Smith 2/27/17

Today in class we worked on the two main projects we’ve been working on. We either picked if we wanted to continue with our senior paper or critical review of the film you chooses to review. If you were working on the senior paper you should be working on improving your outline by conferencing with Mr.Rivers. The students that were ready to conference with Mr.Rivers put their names on the board. After the students conferenced with Mr. Rivers they continued to progress and moved to the next step for their senior paper. The students that didn’t volunteer and put their name on the board should have been working and eventually Mr. Rivers will pick on whoever pops up on his list. For the students that chose to work on the critical review should have uploaded their clips to wevideo. Also for the critical review we had to pick what we will be analyzing about the movie. The critical reviews should express what you are trying to say clearly. Another thing is we were informed that the due date for the draft was pushed backed, but we shouldn’t stop progress but continue as if the due date wasn’t changed.

Claire Vreeland - 2/28/17

Today in class we had the choice of working on our senior research paper or working on our critical review. Mr. Rivers also continued to conference with the people he has not yet discussed their outlines with. The conferences for outline and/or critical reviews are being done for those who wish to conference first, and then Mr. Rivers icks from his google drive. But, many people have volunteered because they want feedback on their outlines. Once they receive their feedback and tips, they are ready to continue onto the next step- the drafting of their senior paper.
Because of the detail that comes with the senior paper, Mr. Rivers was kind enough to push our due date back until Wednesday, March 22. this gives us almost three extra weeks from the original due date (March 2).
Although the due date was pushed back, Mr Rivers stresses that we should use our time wisely in and outside of class in order to do as well as possible because great essays come from writing and rewriting.
The critical review is due on Monday, March 20 and is also a summative. Our critical review should be about 5-6 minutes long and should be on a movie or a tv episode/series. Mr. Rivers stressed that we need to be very specific in order to get a lot of content into our reviews in a short amount of time.
Below is another tutorial fro wevideo.com which is the website we are using to create out critical reviews. Although this is from a different teacher with a different assignment, it still shows some basics from wevideo that could be helpful in our assignment.

wevideo tutorial

2/24/17
Mikey Botta
Today in class, we had the option of either working on our film critical review or our senior paper.

Critical Review: today, those who chose to work on this used their time to find and download video clips from youtube using keepvid.com. To use keepvid, you simply paste the youtube url of your video into the box, click Download. Once the video is uploaded to keepvid, you need to right-click and then click "Save link as..." to save the highest quality version. From there, you can upload the clip to WeVideo. If you forgot the password to wevideo, it is 123frodo for most.

Senior Paper: Those who worked on their senior paper mostly improved upon their outline so that it will better help them write their essay. This could be done by adding or elaborating on things, organizing it a bit better, or consulting with Mr. Rivers on it. The due date for this assignment was pushed back but everyone should still work on it as soon as possible!

Stephanie Chalef 2/24/17

Today in class we mostly just worked on our critical reviews. Everyone took the time to start downloading their video onto Keepvid.com. If you haven't figured out what you're doing for the critical review, you need to talk to friends or Mr. Rivers to get some help. Also we could work on our senior papers today. Once you've conferenced with Mr. Rivers, you can start on the actual essay. Since this the big paper of the year, it's probably a good idea that you get started on it now. The due date for the senior paper draft was pushed back to March 22nd. Thank god for that!! Because our critical reviews are due March 19th and since these are both huge, huge grades, everyone wants to do super good on them. So if you haven't conferenced with Mr. Rivers about your outline or figured out what you're doing for the critical review, definitley get on that. He also talked to the DECA kids that were out the past couple days, so I'm sure if you were out or need help, just ask and you'll get it.
If you need a march calendar :)

Stephanie Chalef 2/23/17

Today in class we worked on our critical reviews and conferenced with Mr. Rivers about our outlines. So some people were able to completely figure out what they were doing for their critical review, what the were reviewing and what they were going to focus on. We also learned a new way to download videos from YouTube to put in the reviews. It's called keepvid.com and you're able to find a video on YouTube, copy the link and paste it into that website. From there you can save it and it'll be in your drive for you to be able to find it again. As long as you make sure the YouTube video is good quality, it should be able to download perfectly. So while we were all doing that, some people were also able to conference with Mr. Rivers about their outlines. You were able to discuss what you did in your outline, things you could fix, if you needed help, basically anything that was in your outlines. You can also ask to stay after school, come in before school, or meet him during lunch if you're impatient and really want to get it done.

Sean Drew 2/22/17

Today in class, we discussed a video review done on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". We discussed how the maker of the video used critical review to truly analyze the movie and its details. We described certain parts of the review, like the context of what the reader was saying and citing other movies and authors/creators to help prove his point. We also discussed more on our own video review, and how this video review that we watched in class today can really help us when making our own review. We found out that our review must also be between 5-6 minutes, so you need to space out your time wisely, but not so much that you go over the given amount of time.

Brianna Lamoureux 2/16/17

Today in class we started learning about WeVideo. We signed onto google classroom and then clicked on the link that brought us to the WeVideo website. We first made an account based off a note card that Mr.Rivers gave us and then joined by entering a code also given to us by Mr.Rivers.We first had to make a file then we made a new project. Here we watched a sample video that we then had to recreate using the WeVideo software. They also gave us a tutorial and follow along document that showed and told us how to make our first video. Once you assembled all the clips together you could add music, sound effects and transitions. This was just a practice and did not have to be completed by the end of class. The goal of doing this is to get us familiar with WeVideo and prepare us for making our own video in the future.

Below is part of the tutorial document that helped us make our first project and provided steps and guidance:

Start to build your story

In this demo project we’ll create a visual story called “Candy Knights.” We’ve provided all the pieces you’ll need to create the video. Before you start creating the story, take a moment to identify the video footage.

Identify and sort the footage

Get to know the footage we will be working with. This will be helpful as you assemble the story.

1. In the media library locate the MEDIA tab
2. Then select the Project media folder from the folder tree.
3. To easily sort the media, click on the sort icon and select Name to sort by name.
4. All the clips begin with a number and should now be sorted in numerical order.
5. To preview the clips, click on one to select it, and then click on the play icon under the preview window.

Our organizer for our senior paper is also due by the end of Friday.

Jack Valentine 2/14/17

Today's Class

Plain and Simple:

- Learned about creating strong transitions
- Continued working on paper outlines

Class summary:

Today in class we transitioned back into our research papers from a day off during Valentine's Day.  Mr. Rivers opened up with regards to the progress of each individual student on their paper, considering how much they have gotten done and how much time that have left.  Then Mr. Rivers introduced the "Transition Guide".  This document can be found on google classroom where each student can view.  Emphasizing on strong transitions within our paper the "Transition guide" helps do just that.  It brings each student through the different elements in which need to be considered when creating transitions, etc.  While Mr. Rivers explained this thoroughly, this document provides examples and a format in which effortlessly guides each student.  Finally, with about 25 minutes left in class, we were left to continue our outline. This also provided each student the opportunity to conference with Mr. Rivers.


* No notes were taken during today's class

Transition Guide

2/14/17 Devin Gozdenovich

Happy Valentine's Day! Since today was a holiday, Mr. Rivers decided to structure our lesson around Valentine's Day. And, since it is a film class, we looked at the genre romantic comedies, and discussed the aesthetics of different things. We started off by evaluating the "Google Doodle" that pops on Google when you first open it. We discussed why there was an animated cartoon heart on the doodle instead of an actual picture of a heart. We decided that the animated heart was more aesthetically pleasing, and the real heart was just plain gross. Then, we started talking romantic comedies. We took a look at a few different movie posters/covers. We discussed what they all had in common, which was a strong female lead with a man almost always next to her. They were both very attractive white people. The traditional rom-com almost always includes a white male and a white female that fall in love at the end of the movie, and act solely based on emotion and not logically. Then we moved on to analyzing the song "City of Stars" from La La Land. We first read through the lyrics, then listened to it, and then watched the scene. For each part, we discussed what made it romantic and sensitive.

Jack Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day Class

Summary:
Today in class we took a side step and took a break from our research papers.  With Valentine's Day being today February 14th, Mr. Rivers created class around the holiday.  It first started with an image of googles logo today.  One version contained an animated heart in which we are used to seeing in most images.  Then in another, Mr. Rivers replaced the heart with a real heart.  This lead to the question, why use one rather than the other?  Students then pointed out that the real heart did not look as visually appealing as the animated one.  This lead to todays class topic: Aestjetics.  Throughout class we talked about the different aesthetic appels that are seen in romantic pieces of work.  We first began by lookiing at movie covers of romantic comidies.  The class relized the common look of a wealthy, white, and good looking human apeal that each image portrayed.  We analyzed why this wold be put in place and discuesseed accordingly.  Finally we evaluated "City of Stars", first as only lyrics, then as a song, and tehn through a film.  This allowed us to analyze the aesthetic apeall to different forms of media.  Last, we ended class by discussing the common structure between romantic stories, going along with Valentine's Day.


Google image in which we evaluated...




Notes:

Valentine's Day

First start with eh question of why google uses animated heart vs real heart in logo
And why… Mike points out that it looks disgusting

Aesthetic- the appreciation of beauty

Romantic comedies
Wealthy
White
Good looking
Woman seems to be dominant in titles

Beauty and romance go hand in hand: Feeling> Reason (not Practical)

Romanticism- valuing that feeling 

Evaluation of song “City of Stars”

Aesthetic Beauty 
Symbols → not rational 
Love is everything 
Rhyming is romantic, shows the idea that rhyming is a match 
No logic- Mystery 
Audio: 
Back and forth→ Rhyming 
Laughing → seems very real, adds layer to 
Not as sad→ soft voice→ sensitive 
Movie: 
Sky and lights→ city lights
LOVE flows and throughout time 

Tradition
Structure: death or marriage?
“Boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy gets girl”

Juliana Oelkers 2/13/17

Today we started off class by getting our laptops and logging on to google classroom. Although it was a shortened period, we got a lot done. Once we were all settled Mr. Rivers began talking about our organization for our senior paper and reminded us that they are due on Friday. To help us get a better idea of what our organization should look like he showed us a student's outline as an example. Her essay analyzed the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with a psychology lens. In order to evaluate the outline Mr. Rivers gave each group two note cards with topics on them. As a group we had to find one good thing and one bad thing in the outline about each topic.

My group's topics were synthesis of film and research and explicit connection between analysis and topic sentences. After discussing as a group Mr. Rivers split us into different groups to further discuss different topics and better analyze the outline. In our groups we were all able to agree on what needed improvement and what worked well in the outline. After that we discussed it as a class. There were six topics and each of the six groups had to pick one topic and share a good thing and a bad thing they found with the class. As a class we agreed that overall her use of scholarly evidence was good because it was directly related to the thesis and topic sentences. We also agreed that her use of film evidence was not specific enough. If she used quotes or paraphrased a scene as opposed to just stating what happened, it would have been more specific, which is always better. This was very helpful because we got to see what to do and what not to do and how to fix our own outlines before we hand them in.                          

2/13/17 Devin Gozdenovich

Today in class, we started as usual and found our laptops and then signed on. Since we had a delay, we had a shortened period and only had about 30 minutes of class time. Instead of working on the current part of our senior paper, the outline/organization, we looked at a student example. In each of our groups, we had two things we had to analyze in the sample outline which included scholarly evidence, layout, film evidence, etc. We as a group had to find two things in the outline they did well and two things they could improve upon, and how they could improve it with each note card. Then, once all the groups had finished doing that part, the groups were randomized and we were put in new groups. With these groups, we discussed what we found for each note card. After a few minutes of discussion, Mr. Rivers called our attention to the front of the room and asked each specific group to explain one of the note cards. And since we had shortened periods, time ran out at the end of the period and we were cut off by the bell.

2/10/17 Brianna Perfetti

    Today in class we worked on our outlines the whole class period. In the beginning of class Mr. Rivers explained to us about structuring an essay. He also explained the lengths of our papers should be. He said that it could be up to 5-7 pages. During class I had a decent amount to type out a couple of strong topics for my essay

Jeremy Dericks 2/10

Today in class we continued working on the organization component of the research paper construction process.  To begin the period, Mr. Rivers spoke to us about “Paragraphs: Building blocks of the essay.”  He explained that topic sentences must have a strong verb and an explicit connection to the thesis statement.  He also spent time explaining how to structure an essay.  The structure he recommended is to make a point, start a new line, and indent any supporting sentences.  I have been using this technique in my outline.  I started out with my thesis statement, created a new line and indented once and made all four of my topic sentences.  Under each topic sentence, I indented again and inserted my evidence.  Under each piece of evidence, I indented once again and wrote a 1-3 sentence analysis of the evidence and related it back to both the topic sentence and the thesis statement.  Another thing that Mr. Rivers spoke to us about was the length of our papers.  Our papers must be 5-7 pages.  This really changed how I am working on my outline because originally I had 3 topic sentences set up to be my 3 body paragraphs.  This affected my strategy because if I only have 5 paragraphs, that means they will have to be page long paragraphs.  Mr Rivers said that page long paragraphs are going to be too long because they will be too broad.  So, instead of having only 3 body paragraphs, I split each topic sentence into 2 paragraphs.  One paragraph would be evidence from the movie and the other paragraph would be evidence from my databases.

Brooke O'Malley 2/8/17

Today in class, we continued working on the organization and preparation of our senior papers. We also assigned ourselves specific days in the third marking period to blog, making sure that the days we chose only had one or less classmate assigned for that day.