Curation Progress 3

During this week, I started my actual website, I started posting my different entries and I have already put on some videos as well. I found pictures of all my entries and posts and that is allowing me to have a nicer, more complete look to my website.

At the moment, my most interesting link is a YouTube video of the newest soccer shoes that haven't been released to the public yet. Some people get pictures of them and they post them on YouTube for everyone to see.

The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was actually breaking the lock of doing my posts. I really did not want to, but when I did, the posts came out so much easier and more fluidly than I thought. This was tough for me though because I really dislike doing homework. Especially now since we only have 3 more days of school left.

My first step is to post more entries about soccer shoes. I need at least 25, and I need to get going on that. My second step is to find more videos and pictures in order for my viewers not to get bored on my site. People love videos. And lastly, I have to make my website work fluidly, no dead links, no problems with the navigation of the site. It all has to work perfectly.

Now that I have started my entries, it's easier for me get those done. But I still think we should have much more class time to work on it. It still is very tough to work on it outside of school.

Curation Progress 2

During this week, I chose my template and I have started to create the website. I haven't written any posts yet, but I will start on that very soon. I have done more research on the latest shoes to come out and the latest technology and details about those shoes.

I just bought some shoes of my own, so I am going to do complete a review on them from my point of view, plus, I'm going to describe all the details and technology of it to the best of my knowledge and ability.

The biggest obstacle I have to overcome is that I must sit down and start writing about shoes and reviewing them, and rating them. I must tell myself to overcome the lazy, second semester senior mentality and do it.

Next three steps must be, to write some reviews and posts about the latest shoes to be released. Next would be to completely integrate my website so it looks good and appealing to the audience. Thirdly, I have to make sure that my website is user-friendly and easy to navigate.

What is not working with this project is the ability to complete this, and work on it, in class. We need time to be able to work on it in class. This would allow pretty much the whole class to get a good days work on this, because we all know, that this doesn't want to be done outside of school. Considering we all have senioritis.

Curation Progress

During this week, I have looked up a bunch of soccer sites. These sites, are mostly just selling merchandise, they aren't really explaining and telling the details to the fullest extent of the shoes. I have found some sites where they do give some information, but they do not rank or rate the shoes. Plus, they don't categorize the shoes for the different types of players or different abilities a shoe can have.

The site that I have found that has the most useful information is www.soccer.com, they have a huge selection of shoes to choose from. But they just want to make money, they give a brief description of the shoes and then say "Buy them now!" They don't give the complete details of the shoe, and that is what I am aiming to do with my curation site.

What I have to do next is start building my site, adding some posts about the most popular shoes out right now, and make my site an appealing thing to look at. I will start working on all of these as soon as possible, because I am very interested in creating a website where people can research the shoes, before they buy them.

This project is working very well, I think the aspect of us doing a thing that interests us is a great idea. This is because we would actually enjoy doing this project instead of dreading every second of it.

Connection: Street Art and Freestyle Soccer

We just recently watched the movie "Exit Through the Gift Shop" and it was all about street art. This movie showed me that street art is nothing like the art you see in a museum or an art gallery. Street art is made by the a citizen trying to spread the word or trying to express themselves. They write or draw on walls, signs, sidewalk, anything they can find. This reminds me a lot about soccer and how there is another branch to soccer, called freestyle soccer. 

What I realized while watching the movie is that the street artists of course have a love for art, but they may not have the money to become professional or famous. So they do things on their own. This is pretty much equal to what freestyle soccer players do. They love the sport and they love the technique and everything, just like how a street artist would love art. But they may not have the ability or the amount of skill to become professional. Instead they take time just learning skill moves, moves that look very appealing and are also very difficult to achieve. 

Also I saw in thought to myself while watching the film, "I bet most famous artists can't do some of the stuff these street artists can do" and I really do believe that. The same goes for freestyle soccer. These freestylers, they can perform the most crazy and ridiculous moves I've ever seen! Most professional soccer players can't do all the moves a freestyler can do, they are beyond amazing!

I just thought that these 2 things could be related to each other pretty well, and I think they can go together hand in hand. They are pretty much identical cases except the subject is different; one is a sport, and the other is art. 

Metacognition: The Mashup Process

           While creating my mashup assignment, I realized 2 major things. 1 being that it may seem easy just to put together a bunch of stuff together about a certain topic. The second being, in the topic you are creating a mashup about, there are sub-levels to that topic and you can recognize them as you are creating the mashup.

           Putting together a mashup is not just putting random stuff together in a random order with random meanings. That is chaos. I realized while creating mine, about love, that you couldn't just put completely random things in no specific order, there is a meaning behind what you are doing and just adding something just anywhere ruins that.

           I also realized while creating my mashup of love, that the different types of love should be incorporated into my mashup. Their is more than 1 type of love and these sub-levels helped me sort out and order my mashup for it to make sense. My recognition of this really allowed me to understand and to organize myself and how I will try to structure my mashup. Structuring the mashup is what gives it it's meaning, it is what gives the mashup a purpose. Otherwise, it would just be words and pictures scrambled together with no sense behind it at all.

           Although the mashup was hard and time-consuming. It was one of the better assignments I've done for a book in a English class. I really enjoyed the freedom of use of things. I also enjoyed the whole, "not writing a paper" thing. I would actually enjoy doing this type of project instead of a essay or paper any day. I am glad that we were able to do this assignment because I really did not want to write another 1000 word essay.

Connection: Cubism and Frank Gehry

While watching the Frank Gehry documentary in class, I realized a lot of his buildings and designs were very strange. Beyond strange actually. They were nothing like I've ever seen before in a building or a piece of architecture. He just does what he wants with the buildings he creates and doesn't care about the laws of physics, or how real the building will look, or the judgments he will receive. He does what he wants, and that allows him to enjoy the final product in the end even more.

I found this very similar to a lot of cubist paintings. When I look at a painting of cubism, I first think what the heck the artist was thinking. It just looks like a bunch of shapes or objects put together in a random way. It doesn't make sense to me. But in the artist's mind, he has a perfect vision of what the painting is supposed to mean. This is the artist's way of expressing himself, just like how Gehry does for himself. They have a vision, and once they complete it, it means the world to them, and it is a spectacular piece of art. Cubism also is very unique for different artists, they each have their own style of cubism that shows who they are. Just like in architecture, every architect has their own style of building, and Gehry's is the most unique I have ever seen. These 2 things are very unique and I enjoy looking at these baffling and marvelous pieces of art. They are extremely interesting.

Blogging Around

After reading some blogs, I ended up commenting on Victor's and Brittany's blogs. I enjoyed reading them.

In Victor's post "Connection: Once and Love in Highschool" he compares the love we saw in the movie "Once" and the love we see everyday here at GBS and in high schools across the country. He uses the word "selfless" to describe the love in "Once" because the love between the 2 musicians was strictly musical and friendliness. You could see they both did care for each other a lot. But they didn't do anything sexual like how you see in the relationships in high school and here in the US. He uses the word "selfish" to describe the love here in high school because we are only in it for the sexual pleasures we receive from them. This is the comment I made on his post:

Hello Victor, I completely agree. In the movie "Once" we saw that love wasn't just bodily pleasure. It was fun-loving, and happy feeling with one another. Although they didn't do anything, such as kiss or sex, they still enjoyed each other's company more than anyone else. They loved each other in that way. I also agree that relationships in high school, is all about pleasure, like sex. It is very rare to see a couple in high school love the way they did in Once. You made a great point that the love here is selfish and the love in "Once" is selfless. I also hope to be able to love like those 2 in "Once." 

I enjoyed reading your post and I'm looking forward to reading more!

In Brittany's post "Captured Thought: Saying Good-Bye" she tells us her views on saying goodbye to the people in our lives. This really interested me because I too will have to say goodbye to some of the classmates I've seen here at GBS for 4 years. It will be hard, but if I want to keep these people in my life, I will not say "good-bye," I will simply say "see you later" because I know that I will see them again and that they mean more to me than some other person. These people mean something to me and I don't want to forget them forever, I want to keep them in my life. This is the comment I wrote on Brittany's post:

Hey Brittany! I completely agree with what you are writing about. We shouldn't say good-bye to people because that means forgetting them forever. I don't want to lose all the memories and moments I've had with them. I don't want to forget high school, but we have to leave and we have to split ways with lots of our classmates. But we still remember. Forgetting is unnecessary. If we want to remember something we don't say good-bye to them or it. We continue with our lives with them still in it. In our memories and thoughts. I also won't say good-bye to anyone anymore if I want to keep them in my life. 

I really enjoyed reading your blog post Brittany! I look forward to reading more!