October 28 - November 3

Organizational Skills

            I was not able to do much work on my project this week because this was the week of the spiritual retreat for my grade, as well as the students from grade 9 and 12 (it was amazing, by the way). As we were hiking in the mountains (that is where the retreat was), I came across a pretty flower that I took a picture of. I was thinking about using it as one of the calendar pictures, in the Plant Conservation section. There are also some other flowers I took pictures of on the retreat as alternatives so I would have some selection. None of these have been edited in Photoshop yet, by the way.

Communication

            There was a Personal Project meeting with my supervisor last week. I was told by my supervisor and the other students in my group to change the title font of the calendar and the background color as well because it looked a bit childish. Apparently the font was too curly and looked a bit like Comic Sans, which I definitely do not want. The background, on the other hand, was too bright. As I was making it, I was not actually sure whether to use this background because I also noticed that this was so.

Information Literacy

            There was a parent meeting for the 10^th grade parents on 

Friday, which was the day my classmates and I got back from the 

retreat. My mom went to the meeting, and afterwards told me

about the Progress Exhibition next PP meeting. Apparently it is a

“big deadline”, for which I have to get a lot of work done. I aim to

finish at least half of my calendar by that time near the end of 

November. Initially I was thinking that I would just relax and only 

do a bit of my Personal Project because the Progress Exhibition is 

only to exhibit one’s progress (hence the name). A particular point 

in the Project, such as 50% done, is not actually specified. After 

hearing what my mom had to say about the Exhibition, I realized 

that I should try to get as much done as possible before the 

Progress Exhibition so that I have more to show for it, as well as 

less work to do over the winter break. During the supervisor 

meeting last week, I was also told that my pictures for the calendar 

may not be professional enough, and they might need some degree 

of similarity, such as the same filter on all of them or something 

like that. This is so that each picture of each environmental issue 

will relate and be unified with all the others.

October 21-27

What I Did This Week

            I continued to work on some of the calendar pages, such as the month of December (which will be focused on energy, mostly light energy, conservation).

I also changed the background of the February calendar page because I realized it looked quite boring. Now it looks a bit childish so I may change the background again later.

Difficulties I Faced

            I sent my laptop in for servicing a few weeks ago since it had a virus. I got it back about a week ago and found that they deleted all my files and reinstalled the operating system: Windows. Fortunately, I had backed up most of my files so I did not lose much. Except my photos, which were all gone and I am very sad about. Anyway, the Windows operating system that the people at the shop reinstalled turned out to be a fake. Microsoft informed me of this after a few days of my having my laptop back. I did not know what Microsoft would do to my laptop if I kept on using the fake operating system; maybe shut it down, forever.

How I Solved the Challenges/What I Learned

            I solved this challenge by backing up my files and pictures, taking my laptop back to the store, and telling them to reinstall the genuine Windows operating system that I had before all this happened so that I could get back to living my life without any more problems. So they did, and reinstalled some of my programs as well, like Skype, Google Chrome, VLC Media Player, iTunes, and others. Then I had to go to the other store where I bought Adobe Photoshop and InDesign and ask the people there to reinstall the two programs. Now I have it, a genuine version of Windows (I hope), and all my files on Dropbox instead of in the internal storage of my laptop. I am not letting this happen again. What I learned from this experience is that not everything one downloads from the Internet is beneficial to one’s laptop (the virus that started this whole thing was part of a download link). I already had been told that by many people, but it never really stuck in my head. Now that I have had this experience, I can safely say that it is stuck in my head. I have also learned to constantly back up my pictures in a safe place. I lost all of them, and only have the ones that I put on Facebook. Those are not even very good quality, but it is all I have. Hopefully things will look up in the near future and this will not happen again.

October 14-20

Organizational Skills

            Fall break is here! Now I have a lot more time to work on my Personal Project and get some other work done. To start off, I looked at the calendar dates (2014 to 2015) that I found last week.

http://annystudio.com/calendars/2014/2014-calendar-row-mo-portrt.gif

http://annystudio.com/calendars/

            I also found a list of Indonesian public holidays for both the end of 2014 and all of 2015, which I can use as a reference for my calendar’s red days.

http://publicholiday.org/calendar/indonesia-public-holidays-2014-calendar/

http://www.printablehub.com/indonesia-2015-printable-holiday-calendar/

Communication

            I asked the woman at the program store if she knew how to use Indesign, and she told me that she did. In addition, she was going to show me a few of the tools and how they worked, but when she opened the program I realized that it was just like Photoshop with a few tools added. I did not want to waste anymore of her time since she had other customers waiting, so I told her I would just look up some web tutorials to figure out how to use the tools that were not in Photoshop.

Information Literacy

To make my first calendar page, I used a tutorial on Youtube by “btscreativesuite”.

It helped greatly because I learned a lot about making tables in Indesign, coloring them, and resizing the different columns and rows. The color scheme I am planning to use for each calendar page will be according to the color scheme of its corresponding picture. Like the issue of Wolf Conservation:

            Since the wolves in the picture are grey, I decided to make the rows of dates grey. Also, the background is mostly green, so the title row is colored green. I decided that if they were switched (the title being grey and the dates being green, the green may be too dark for anybody to write their important events on, rendering it useless). I also drew some calendar designs. I had created some before, in the beginning of the school year, but I realized that the main focus of the picture page of the calendar should be the picture itself, not the short paragraph and tip. So I made the space allotted for the picture bigger, and the text space smaller.

This is the first rough draft of the design of my calendar.

This is the second draft. It puts a lot more emphasis on the picture, which people will probably pay more attention to anyway.

October 7-13

Organizational Skills

            I realized that Wednesday, the 9^th of October, is the last day before our fall break. This, I am very happy about because I can finally relax somewhat. I plan to use most of the time to work on creating my Personal Project product, the calendar, and getting some other projects done. I also found some pictures of 2014 and 2015 calendars so I will know which date goes on which day of the week (I searched for both 2014 and 2015 calendars because I decided I would make my calendar months different than usual: instead of January to December, I will use July 2014 to June 2015.

Communication

            I communicated with my mom about how to balance my social life and my studies during this coming week-long break. She told me to prioritize the studies over the social life, but not completely block out my friends. So I went out to a waterpark with my friends on the first day of the holiday (Thursday), and focused on my homework and Personal Project the rest of the time.

Information Literacy

            I changed from trying to do January to December 2014 to July 2014 to June 2015. This is because I realized that if I did the whole year of 2014, by the time I was finished presenting it and giving it to people, half of the year would already be gone. This would mean that my calendar would only be good for half a year and not a full year as I planned. I also flipped through a book about photography, called Click: The Ultimate Photography Guide for Generation Now. The authors are Charlie Styr and Maria Wakem.

As I was looking at the photographs in the Nature section, I read that using a wide angle is the best thing for shooting landscapes. In addition, Aperture Priority Mode should be used when taking photographs outdoors.

This way, the camera chooses the optimal shutter speed for a certain setting while the person chooses the aperture so that the picture will not be too bright or too dark. I also learned that silhouettes of subject matter instead of brighter, colored subject matter looks good in sunset scenes. Lens flares as well.

I learned not to be afraid to use monochrome coloring for photos; it actually makes them look really good. Also, fog in a picture gives an eerie feeling to viewers, as shown.

            I should not use monochrome in excess, however, because most of the time colors are what bring out the character in the subject matter. I noticed that a lot of the pictures in the book use the rule of thirds. So I decided to try.

            All the above pictures are my own, just in case any readers were wondering; except for the monochrome one of me (my friend took that one).

September 30-October 6

Organizational Skills

            I organized my time this week by bookmarking website tutorials on how to make calendars in Adobe Photoshop. I also found a website from WWF (World Wildlife Fund) that helps one calculate their own personal carbon footprint; I filed it carefully into my Personal Project folder in my list of bookmarks in my Internet browser. The URL is http://ecoguru.panda.org/#/intro. In addition, I joined the Photography Club at school so I could learn more about taking good photos for my calendar.

Communication

            I talked to my supervisor for some tips on how to make calendars in Photoshop because she was my Digital Art teacher last year (my classmates and I made art pieces using Photoshop). She did not give me any tips about it, but instead she told me to use Adobe InDesign, a program that I had never heard of, instead.

Information Literacy

            Initially I did not want to take my supervisor’s advice into account because of how much extra work it would be to go to the store and install Adobe InDesign, not to mention the amount of time it would take to learn how to use it. But then my laptop got a virus on it, so all of my files and programs had to be deleted because they got contaminated. This meant that I would have to bring my program disks to the store and have them re-installed. When I got to the store, I realized that I could just buy and install InDesign while my other programs were being installed. When I got home with my new programs, I opened InDesign and found that the tools were quite similar to Photoshop. This was a blessing because now I do not have to learn how to use all the features in the program; I already know about most of them. In addition, I tried out the website that calculates one’s carbon footprint. I am sad to say that I am currently using the energy and resources of 2.3 planets.

I learned to be more energy conscious and to watch what I eat, how much I recycle, what kind of transportation I use, the distance of the places I go on holiday, and how much energy I consume. What is good about the website is that it does not only tell one how much they are consuming, but also what they can do to consume less energy. This could be a good website to tell people about in my calendar because it helps them be aware of just how much of the earth’s resources they are consuming and how to consume less. As I mentioned before, I signed up for the Photography club at school, which meets on Mondays at lunchtime. So far there have been two meetings; I did not learn much at the first meeting because it was more of an introductory session and I skipped the second because I needed to take pictures of the Battle of the Bands (a band competition at school) for the school newspaper.

September 23-29

This week I am merely fulfilling the requirements of the next Personal Project meeting, so I only have the "Information Literacy" heading instead of the other two headings ("Organizational Skills" and "Communication").

Information Literacy

-          Development of Personal Thought

o   Research

Based on the research I have done in previous stages such as the Plan stage last month, I have realized that the damage to the environment and the earth itself done by humans is a lot more serious than I initially thought. However, I have also realized that there is still a small spark of hope to stop (but not entirely) the damage being done. This requires just about everyone on earth to be environmentally conscious, not just a few people here and there. This fueled my desire to raise environmental awareness even more because everyone should know about the earth’s problems that they themselves are contributing to without even knowing it.

o   Process of Creation

Since most people do not care about or do not know about the damage they are doing to the environment, I feel that I should take the initiative to inform them. One of my personal thoughts based on the creation process would be that making use of Adobe InDesign for the calendar pages is much easier than I thought it would be. Also, I realized that my first design for the picture pages of the calendar were quite unattractive because the picture should be the main focus of the page (hence the name “picture page”), but instead the space is divided equally with the background information. I made a 2^nd draft in which the allotted space for the picture was a lot bigger than the space for the background information because many people will probably look at the picture instead of the background information anyway.

-          Development of Understanding of AOI

o   Research

I thought I knew a lot about and cared about the environment before I started this project, but I was wrong. Now that I have done some research about my AOI, Environments, I feel that I now know a lot more about the various environmental issues than I did before. Also, since I read through the guiding questions of my AOI in the Personal Project Guide, I realized that these questions will be quite valuable throughout my creation process, so I should keep them in mind.

o   Process of Creation

I learned quite a lot from experimenting with the unfamiliar tools in Adobe InDesign. I now know how to make a calendar from a simple table (with the help of an online tutorial) and create the layout of the picture pages. The tip will be in a small rounded rectangle up at the top of the picture, and the background information will be underneath the picture. By looking at the pictures I have taken for each calendar month, I have realized the natural beauty of the environment and how important it is to save it from the damage being caused by humans. This, I believe, is the essence of my AOI.

September 16-22

What I Did This Week

            As the Personal Project Exhibition is in a few weeks, I worked on my presentation in order to get ready for it. I have been told by multiple people that the Exhibition is quite important, and that I need to put a lot of effort into my 10-minute Powerpoint presentation in order to get a good grade for the Personal Project section on my report card for the semester. So I am currently putting forth a lot of effort into my presentation.

            For the presentation, I have written a summary of my design specifications and what I plan to do with my goal. Also, I have gone over how my goal relates to my Area of Interaction. In addition, I went over each of my resources that I chose for my bibliography and made sure that they were varied and exceeded the minimum number (three). I have 13 right now, so I think I will get an “Exceeding Expectations” grade with that particular section, at least.

Difficulties I Faced

            According to the rubric that I will be assessed with, my PP binder should be organized. I have quite a lot of papers in my binder, and it sometimes can take a while to find a specific page. Also, I looked at the Exhibition guidelines posted on Managebac and it said that I would need detailed ways to test my design specifications. I had not done this because it was not required when the design specifications were created, quite a while back.

How I Solved the Challenges/What I Learned

In order to make my binder more organized so that I can get a better organization grade during the Personal Project Exhibition, I put tabs that mark important documents in the binder for easier navigation for the teachers that will assess me, including my supervisor. For the testing of the design specifications, I brainstormed and thought of ways to test each and every one of my design specifications. I typed up these methods of testing, printed them, and placed them into my binder. I will put a tab on it soon so teachers can see that I have done it. What I learned was not to procrastinate, and take initiative to do work ahead of schedule, because it saves a lot of stress and it feels good to be productive. Looking at the rubric for the Personal Project Exhibition, there is a lot more work to do than I thought there would be. I initially thought that all we (the 10^th grade students) had to do was tell the teachers about how much of the product was finished. It is actually much more than that: process journal entries, timelines, diagrams, sketches, reflections, bibliographies, design specifications, and more.