Multimedia Finished

Today, we finished our multimedia presentation by adding more information, pictures and music. I chose the music called "Look what you've done" and my teammates picked the song "Funky town" for the credits. I reckoned it worked really well, hopefully my teammates thought the same thing as me. Now, all we have to do is to think of a way of how to present our multimedia.

Finished!!

Today we finished our presentation, we have compiled it into a media player file. We have submitted it to Mr Arcaro. He expects us to talk about GM during our presentaion. We will have to run toolbox sessions during the next week, which I don't like. At ;east we are ready for our presentation.

William

Work

We extended our multimedia presentation to about 120seconds it took us ages but in the end we still got some work done. That was because we couldn't decide on a subtopic, we tried to do an informative one but it was too boring, so we changed it. Now we have got the gist of it so I feel that we will finish it quickly.

Abel

Multimedia Presentation

Today, our history teacher, Mr Harris, assisted our team with some newspaper information on GM foods. I reckoned its important, so I printed a hardcopy and started to analyze it by underlining important points, such as the pros and cons about GM food. I found out that Modified food can help cure thousands of people, but the government wants to stop farmers from using GM products. After i've underlined, I started to ask William to add things on the Multimedia Presentation.

Presentaion

Today I added some length to out presentation. It is now now about a total of one minute and twenty seconds. We made the presentation include both side of the GM argument. Those for it and those against it. I feel that we are ready to finish it tomorrow. We only have tomorrow to do it.

Our presentation now only requires some background music, which Andy says he is going to get. I hope the music is OK, not too fast, not too sad, just right. WE only have tomorrow to finish off the presentation. By the end of Friday we have to have put the music on, finished the main body of the presentation, put the credits in and make it a Windows Media Player File. We have to do all that tomorrow in three periods. I feel we can do all thos tasks.


William

restart of presentation

This morning in periods one and two we had a guest speaker who talked about sex Education, it lasted for two entire periods. The truth is that I found it a bit boring. And my legs were a bit stiff after sitting on the same chair for one and a half hours.


In the last 2 periods of the day, Mr Cantwell told us about concentrating in particular on GM food. He told us how the proteins are made and even brought us a poster describing the gene and what it does.

After lunch we decided to (re)start our presentation on GM food. Andy logged in (with five dollars of recharged credit) and we did the presentation on his computer account. We have done about 40 seconds in total on the presentation. We got news yesterday that we had to do the presentations on Monday, now we have three days to finish off the presentation, I think the presentation needs to be about one and a half to minutes in length.

Today we changed the Gantt chart to have our presentations on Monday.

In the middle of the day we had electives so we did not have Xplore. Tomorrow we only have 4 periods in Xplore and on Friday we only have 3 periods in Xplore. So in total we only have 7 periods left to finish off our presentation. That may seem as a lot of time but we still need to add more length to our presentation and music as well as explanations. So we will have to work hard on completing the presentation over the next 2 days. Hopefully we will finsh it by then.

William

Multimedia Presentation

We began on the media presentation (again) today, our whole group decided on focusing mainly on GM Foods. Instead of doing a bit of everything, we felt focusing on one thing will give us a deeper understanding on what we were more interested in. We all decided on using Movie Maker because we all had some experience over it. We gathered lots pictures, and began the 1st 30seconds of the clip. We still haven't decided on what song to use as the background music but we've decided that Andy should choose the music cause he claims he has "better" taste.

Abel

Guest Speaker

This morning we had a guest speaker his name was David Sollberger, he talked about Osteopathy. He explained the uses of Osteopathy and provided a hands on demonstration of Osteopathy. He explained the different uses of Osteopathy and what his job is like in his clinic. I found the demonstrations especially exciting as they provided a visual point which we were able to see how and why he does it.
He explained that Osteopathy is not just treating the problem area, its treating the entire body, if one body function is not working, its not just one part that does not work but the entire body is unable to function properly.
I found it informative, especially about the uses of Osteopathy.

William

Super size ME!!

Yesterday afternoon we watched a 'documentary' called Super Size Me. It follows a person who volunteers to eat McDonalds for on month. At the end he gains a lot of weight and gets very unhealthy. The documentary tells us about the problems with fast food advertising especially McDonalds. The test volunteer eventually got very sick from just eating McDonalds. He finished the whole month but damaged his body (especially his liver) permanently.I found the movie a bit disgusting (especially the vomit on the street). It was also informative, providing figures, such as the amount of money that McDonalds advertising uses (It is 1.4 billion) compared to healthy eating campaigns (a measly 2 million compared to the fast food advertising).
The documentary explores the whole subject, not just McDonalds, and the entire problem of fast food. They tried to get an interview with McDonalds but McDonald did not answer.

for more information on Xplore either go to http://xplore.balwynhs.vic.edu.au/Healthy%20Living.htm (if you are on the Balwyn High network) or go to our other Xplore blog at http://www.xplorekyotoblog.blogspot.com/


William

Super Size Me

Yesterday afternoon we watched a movie "Supersize Me" it was more like a documentary. It was about a person deciding to eat Mcdonalds for a week. to find the consequences of the thing. It was too informative telling us things we really didn't want to know putting us off fast food. Though we didn't manage to finish the movie completely, but we all got the general gist of it.

Abel

Osteopath

Today, we had a guest speaker talking about the roles of osteopath. It includes treating the patient by making them feel better. They don't ask their patients to rely on their treatments, instead, after a few treatments they allow the patient to heal itself. Their patient's structure and functions tells the osteopath what's the problem. If one of them does not work probably, neither do the other one.

Sketch Up

Today we went to a toolbox session to learn about the basics of Google Sketchup a 3D drawing software where you can draw buildings, cars practically anything. It was fun to learn about something different especially because it was 3D. Even better was the fact that it was free and also extremely easy to use. We had a great time afterwards experienmenting with the software.

You can find this software at: http://www.sketchup.com/

Abel

Guest

Today we had a guest who talked about chiro (he was a chiropractor), he talked about the way our backs can be damaged. He also taught us breathing exercises and how to slow and calm ourselves. He also said that chiro is not just the back, its also about the head. He said the most common treatment he made was just simply popping peoples backs into posotion.I find these guest visits useful as they tell us the different treatments available to different sicknesses and injuries.

In the first 2 periods we were taught how to use Google SketchUp, a program designed to let you draw 3D Diagrams and pictures. I find it especially useful as if is also freeware. There are many tutorials for this program. You may find it at http://www.sketchup.com/. The program allows you to add pictures from Google Earth.

We then had a survey for half of period 3. The survey was about how we feel at school. Everyone had to do it. Now the rest of the classes in Xplore are doing the survey, so he have plenty of computers at our disposal (for half of period of 3). It also feels eerily quiet.

Andy ran out of credit for internet. He is using that as a excuse to NOT log on. He has -21 cents credit.



For more information see our other Xplore blog at http://www.xplorekyotoblog.blogspot.com/

The Gantt Chart

Yesterday, Our Xplore teacher, Mr Barbadonis, lectured us about how to do a Gantt Chart. It works by putting tags on a certain day and you try to finish the things on that day. It is a good chart because it works very flexibly and effectively. So far we are trying to finish our PMI on Gene Genie next period.

Guest Speakers

So far we've had two guest speakers come in to talk about different therapies. Natural Therapy and yoga. Each took almost a period, it was extremely interesting to see that the two guest speakers infomation linked together even if they came on different days.

Abel

Brain Workshop

Yesterday morning we had our brain workshop, i felt it was pretty interesting if not a bit slow paced. We spent most of the morning doing small activities like exercising our brain, watched some videos and did a memory game. It was fun but everyone in the room was waiting for the main part: "the dissection" It wasn't really hoped for it was pretty rushed and unhelpful. The brain they used for the demonstrations were different to the brain we had to dissect so it was all pretty confusing. In the end i felt it was still a very enlightening experience. We learnt mainly about the parts of the brain and how it functioned.

Abel

Gene Genie's meaning

After few explainations from my teammates and the teachers, I get some idea of what is Generic Modification - it is a manipulation of genes.

second rotation

This is our second rotation in the Xplore program. Our group now consists of Abel, Andy and me. The three of us will be working on the Gene Genie task in the next few weeks in the the Xplore program. This week we have started on the PMI chart (A plus Minus and Interesting chart). We have done quite a bit of work on that.
In the past few days we have had AIM tests and the brain workshop so in the past few day we haveonly had around 6 periods (excluding Monday) total in Xplore. Its not much, I know. But we still have been productive during that time.
This morning had the Brain workshop, So that was 2 periods of the 6 period day gone. Seeing as out theme was healthy living, the teachers organized the Brain workshop. We were provided wiht a brain (not human!!!) and we dissected it. We got a faist hand experience of what the human brain would look lika nad feel like. It was a great experience. Some people felt a bit squeamish at the sight of the blood, but other than that it went quite smmothly


William

Blog Moderators

Abel
William
Andy

The Moderators for this blog!

Begin

Finally we have decided on what project to do. "Gene Genie" We've begun on the PMI chart and completed the Mindmap.

Abel