Oh the splendid wonders of time, the complex working of a somewhat imaginative concept people have conjured up. Time is such a fickle thing, the more you want to cherish it the faster it slips through your hands, but the faster you want it to go is when it decides to attach itself to you, seemingly indefinitely. Speaking of time, I have finally arrived to the "dreaded" senior year of my high school career, and within this senior year is my final year that I will invest to the Northgate HelpDesk and now that our HelpDesk has been around for three years it wasn't too difficult to get into the swing of things. We started the year off with a simple Scratch themed Digital Breakout, a good way to reboot our brains after summer. The next assignment was an introduction to the basics of Helpdesk: those who were new to the class were shown how to create their own websites and once they completed that we were put into teams of five to create our first App Review. Naturally, I was put in charge of my own team for my amazing technical skill and abilities, or at least that's how I like to see it... In reality, the veterans were put in charge of their own teams, but hey, that doesn't mean the latter statement isn't true. Moving on. My team and I selected to review the app Mathway: an amazing math tool that can be exceedingly useful for both students and teachers. To learn more on Mathway, check out the App Review section of my website.
Finally, we have caught up to the present day, and although the first quarter has gone by, we've still got three more quarters left in this intense sprint to the finish, plenty of time to do amazing things in the Northgate HelpDesk. Like I mentioned before, time is such a fickle thing with its ever-changing fluidity, you can just never anticipate the course it will take.
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Inventors, dreamers, entrepreneurs, all of these people have something in common that takes place in their lives. They have all gone through a phase of the Shark Tank, so to speak. If someone has a dream, a goal, that they strive to achieve, then their path will never be an easy one, " A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step" Lao Tzu. I really admire this quote and the meaning behind it, my understanding is that no matter how skilled or talented a person may be, their journey will always start with that first step. Last week the Northgate Help Desk hosted its own Shark Tank, where us "entrepreneurs" pitched not a business nor a product, but our Genius Hour Idea. Now, you may remember Genius Hour or ILE (Individual Learning Endeavor) as it was previously, which was basically a program that we at Help Desk used to give us 20% of the time spent in class in order to focus on a project of our choosing. Last year I took up the ILE of learning how to draw and, if possible, take those skills into the world of digital art. In hindsight, I probably should've given myself l a less daunting of a task because learning how to draw and applying that digitally? That was very taxing, especially when I only had four months which sounds like a lot, but time flies by when you're having fun. Back to the present, though, this year I have chosen to complete last years ILE and start digital drawing. My pitch to the shark was simple, I started with what exactly what I was doing and, as I mentioned in previously, I will be transferring my skills of traditional art and taking those to the realm of digital art. Now, why exactly am I Doing this? As a kid I adored art, I found the notion that anyone with a pencil and paper could create whatever they desired just think about it, all of those imaginations you had in your head could come to real life! I never truly got into art until last year when I was inspired by a friend and an online artist known as Viria. As for exactly how I was going to go about doing this, as I stated heretofore I will be using Photoshop as my canvas accompanied by the Wacom Intuous Pro as my tool. How will I be able to tell success from failure one might ask? I'll tell you exactly how. As of now, I use references for my art, whenever I need to get a pose or facial expression right, I would look up the said reference and apply it to my art. I am hoping to reach the stage of mastery in which I don't have to look at references and it can all come from my head. Lastly, I want to be proud of my work, not that I'm not already, but I want to be able to look back at the masterpiece I've drawn and say, "I drew that". At the end of my presentation, I was invited by the school's art teacher to use their graphics monitor tablet and was offered to join the advanced digital art class. All in all, I was able to get the sharks to my side, and now have their support to continue my art. This is my present summary, thank you for reading, don't forget to click the links to check out all the subjects featured in this blog, and I hope to see you guys in the next one.
Other than breakout, we have been also focusing on the class's 20% time. A couple days ago we read an article on purpose, this article explains that without purpose, you will not be able to move forward. Reading through this article really got me pondering on my previous misgivings, it got me thinking about my purposes on previous ILE I’ve produced, why did I do those ILE’s? I realized that it was mostly just a whim in the beginning, that I was just trying to think of anything I could get done. In the article the teacher talks about how he learned from his failure, he talks about how he had a fixture on creating his very first book. He goes through the steps needed, gathered all his data, and even did extensive research on the topic, then he stopped. The purpose just wasn’t there, his passion started the engine but he had no more purpose to fuel it. This relates closely to how my first ILE’s went. My first ILE involved me using the Autodesk Inventor program in order to 3D print requests I got received from various teachers I would ask. My purpose for doing this was just for the sake of having something to do, not an actual purpose that motivated me to push forward, and so in the end, I just basically stopped. My second ILE involved me learning how to draw and use that ability to digitally draw on Adobe Photoshop with the Wacom Intuos Pro tablet. I had a greater motivation for this project because I actually had a passion for art, especially drawing, the only problem was that I still did not have a purpose to carry me forward. At the finish line of that ILE I ended up slightly procrastinating and not pushing out as much work as I’m sure I could have possibly done. However, this year will be different, I am positive of this, seeing as I have motivation and a purpose for my ILE. In the article the term “GRIT” is introduced which is, in short, not seeking something for novelty and overcoming obstacles that have become a hindrance to you. I know that this time I will have enough GRIT and purpose to see my Genius Hour till the end.
Hello, once again, this is Motaz Younis. I am now back for another great year of the Northgate Help-Desk. Let's dive straight into what I have done so far in these first few interesting weeks. The NHS Help-Desk has started getting more teachers involved with technology, the students are now up and about, rushing to different classes and helping out all the faculty who need technological assistance. Recently we have installed Apple TVs in practically all the rooms around campus. Personally, I have gone on a couple trips to fix a couple technical problems, e.g., fixing a projector problem, helping a teacher with Wifi, and fixing an Apple TV. Other than aiding teachers with technological difficulties, I have also been putting some thought into this year's Genius Hour. Genius hour is basically the new and improved version of the previous ILE. The ILE was based around Google's 20% Time project. It allowed for students, 20% of their time, to work on a project that was completely different than their current work and more towards what they wanted to do. Last year we had an ILE per semester, this year it will be year long. I have been pondering on whether I should continue my previous artistic ILE, and expand on my skills, or race along a separate road. Either way I choose, I am determined to produce an excellent project. This is my present summary, thank you for reading, don't forget to click the links to check out all the subjects featured in this blog, and I hope to see you guys in the next one.
The next of my new 2016 projects is my app review. What app did I happen to choose this time? Well this new app that I've found is actually a very useful and cool app, the app is called Word Snitch. What does Word Snitch do? well it allows you to find the definition of any word anywhere on your phone. I'm not going to go too deep into the details, I want to leave all that for my app review, but basically what you do is highlight any word of your choosing, click the copy button and the definition will pop-up. Make sure to stay tuned to my app reviews to see the full review on Word Snitch. The last of my recent projects is the Digital Citizenship Presentation. The Digital Citizenship Presentation is a presentation that includes how to safely navigate through the internet. Basically what is included is how to know when to trust a website's information, how to double check to see if it is true, and how to stay true and not plagiarize. After my group finishes with our presentation we will then go on to present it to 8th graders at Foothill Middle School. That about just sums it up. This is my present summary, thank you for reading, don't forget to click the links to check out all the subjects featured in this blog, and I hope to see you guys in the next one.
Once again we are nearing another break. Another chance for me to sit down and think, long and hard. But let's not talk about what I'm going to do, rather let's talk about what I've already done. Well as I have mentioned many times before I am still working on my ILE, which is due during finals week after vacation. I have started on a project at home, I'm going to test my limits and see what I can get accomplished with my available resources. But enough of that let's talk about something more recent and up to date, say for instance my new assignment on a website that we have started called Zoho. Zoho is a website that allows our teacher to hand out assignments called "Tickets". Once we receive these tickets, we go out of our way to see that it is complete. My new assignment requires me to create a screencast on how to turn in assignments on Google Classroom, also a new tool we have started using. We use Google Classroom in order to turn in our finished assignments that we got from Zoho so that the teacher can make sure that we can get our assignments done. I'll be sure to have that screen-cast up as soon as possible. Another topic that I've been postponing, due to other matters, is my Tech Analysis on Sony's PS4. I am deeply sorry that I still haven't posted this on my website after I have posted my screencast, I'll be sure to try and get that up asap. Thank you all for tuning in for this week's blog, and I'll see you all after Christmas in the next one. One more week until Thanksgiving vacation. I have worked quite a bit ever since the last monthly reflection. Currently I'm working on my ILE presentation that I'm going to be presenting to the entirety of the NHS Help-desk. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my ILE involves me creating 3D objects on Inventor and then printing them out for educational uses. Other than that, I've just received my new app for our second quarter app review. My new app is SAT Up. I'll be doing a full review on that, later, on my app review page. Although, if you want a summary, the app basically helps you study for your SAT by giving you test questions that are relatively the same. But that's just a small summary. As I'm sure you noticed, I have also gone and changed my website a bit. It's still a work in progress, but I am liking the way it looks right now, I think that picture header looks awesome! But that's just me. The last project, that I'm still working on, is my ILE. Hopefully, sometime next week, we'll be able to present our ILE presentations, Mr. Tobin has been postponing it for a while now. Be sure to check for up coming posts on my website, I'll be posting new blogs on my Tech Analysis page, I'm thinking of doing one on Sony and their PS4, as well as my app review and Screen Casts. This has been a pretty stressing last few weeks of the quarter, although, compared to students with AP and honors my stress is probably like heaven. Lately I've been refining my idea for the ILE. In the end I've stuck to the idea of 3D printing objects for teachers. I really have high hopes that this project will work out and help a couple teachers. Another recent subject I've been working on is a blog post on hashtags. I've been asked to research how the hashtag is used, and how we would be able to use it for our Help-desk twitter. Which you should totally follow @NHSHelpDesk. As I researched, I found out that the hashtag is used to group posts. On twitter you use the hashtag on your post in order to group it with a strand of other posts using the same hashtag. This will allow anyone who searched the hashtag to see your post. To learn more on the visit my Tech Analysis. |
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