Curation 3

     This week I have collected much more information and things for my curation project. I found a website that has many different dairy free recipes that I enjoyed very much. I also found a gluten free blog that a woman who has been gluten free for years has created for other people's use. Both of these have been amazing additions to my curation project. 
     Even though those two additions were great I still think that my best addition this week was a blod that I found where a man turns all different kinds of normal recipes into allergy free recipes. He uses recipes that I never thought could be made allergy free. It amazed me looking through his information. 
     The biggest obstacle that I have to overcome is still including a hyperlink because right now all of my links are just text... I will fix this problem by asking Mr. Allen about it ASAP because I keep forgetting to ask him about it in class. 
     The next three steps I have to do are very similar to the last post's next three steps. I am still going to have to collect more dairy free recipes, gluten free recipes, and egg free recipes. Then I will search for recipes that deal with different combinations of allergies. That is pretty much all I have left to do for this project. After I finish curating information I will then go through and make sure that the things I have are the best of the best in order to make sure my project is an 'A' worthy project. 
     So far this project has been going pretty smoothly. I think the directions were very clear and I have been able to understand the concept since the beginning. The only problem I'm having is creating the hyperlinks, but I should be able to figure that out eventually. 

Curation 2

          This week I was able to get alot of information into my curation website. I actually added many website links to all of my categories. I found a few great pages that really enhance the website. One of those was a blog that had so many dairy free recipes. 
          My most interesting link was one that had over 100 different allergy related recipes on it. I was amazed when I found this link. My biggest obstacle is still geting the links to be able to be clicked on. Right now there is no way to interact with them without copying and pasting the link into the search bar. This is a huge inconvenience for my users so I need to get this straightened out ASAP. 
          The next 3 steps while moving forward are pretty simple. First of all, I need to find many more dairy free recipes. Next, I need to find more gluten free recipes. After that, I need to find egg free recipes. After all three of those are complete I will then begin searching for recipes with multiple allergies. This project is going pretty well so far. My feedback is that we should have more time to work on this in class because I find it harder to complete out of class. 

Curation Update #1

            I began earlier this week curating and creating my very own webpage about living with food allergies! I thought of this idea because I am allergic to dairy, eggs, and gluten so I thought that I could give my knowledge and other people's knowledge of preparing food without those ingredients to people with similar allergies. 
            When I first began I just designed the layout and put everything where I wanted it to be, then came the difficult part, finding the best information to put on my site. This is when I decided that instead of curating specific recipes I would curate places to find those recipes. This made it simpler for me and also simpler for the users of my website. 
            My most interesting piece of information so far is probably a blog that I found that has tons of gluten free options on it! www.glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com is the website that I found it all on. I am having trouble inserting hyperlinks into my website, and also this blog. That has been my most difficult challenge so far with this curation project. 
            Next, for this project, I need to finish up finding places for gluten free recipes then my next step will be to find dairy free recipes! This project is exciting for me since I actually have these allergies. It's helping me realize that there are tons of recipes out there and I'm hoping it will help other people too! 

Carry It Forward: Ted Presentations

            These past few weeks we have heard tons of Ted Presentations that have really made us all think. But one in particular made me think extra hard about what I was doing with my life and how I could actually be changing the world. It was actually Allie Sonneborn's Ted presentation about water. After her presentation that day I realized that I could be doing so much more to help preserve water. It was that moment that I decided to carry it forward (hence the name of my post) and do all I can to help preserve water. 
            This was also the moment that I started obsessing over the amount of water I was using on a daily basis. I made sure to take the quickest showers possible and I always turned the water off when I was brushing my teeth. I also washed my hands quickly and made sure the dishwasher was very full before I ran it in order to run it less. But I still felt like I wasn't doing enough to change the world. So I decided to explain this problem to my family and get them in on it too. 
            This was when I began to take charge of my families water usage. I would remind them often about what other people are going through without water and how we take water for granted every day. After a while my family started being just as conscious about their water usage as I was. I finally felt like I was starting to make a difference. 
            I am going to continue to be conscious of my water usage for the rest of my life because of the presentation that Allie gave to our class. It made me aware of how much I take water for granted everyday and how thankful I really should be for my water. I plan to spread this idea and knowledge to as many people as I can in order to truly make a difference in this world.

Metacognition: Mashup Process

          My thought process during the mashup process is difficult to describe. I felt like during the process my mind was EVERYWHERE! I was unable to focus on one specific thing until about half way through the time I spent working on it.
          It all started with the word love. I am exposed to this word every single day in many different ways, and yet when I was asked to create a mashup about that word I was stumped at first. I spent about an hour searching the internet for different love quotes and things about love, but I then decided that I couldn't take that route and decided to start somewhere else.
          This time I started by looking through the book, Letters to a Young Poet. I thought that this would be a better place to start because then I would have a foundation for what to base my other quotes or pictures around. This is when my thinking began to steer in the right direction. I think I just needed to focus in on a specific thing in order to really get my thought process working correctly. And the topic of love was so broad that my brain didn't really begin to work until I specified my search area to one book.
          After picking about 10 different passages from the book I decided to try using google to find other quotes and pictures. This time it worked! I was able to be more specific in my searches because I knew what the book quotes were specifically about. Now that my thinking was on track it made the process go much quicker and smoother. I found the other key aspects of the mashup easily after finding the book quotes.
          I realized from this project that my mind needs something specific to focus on before it can really get good work done. If given something very broad to explain, like love, I have trouble wrapping my thoughts around it. I really do like how I think though, I find that if given the right opportunities my mind can accomplish pretty much anything.

Connection: Decision Making to DMwD

            This week we have been working on our buildings. It has been extremely stressful, yet it has taught me a few things about myself and other people in my group. I've realized that I am quite a good decision maker and so are the people in my group. All it takes is for Mr. Allen to tell us that we need to make quick decisions for all of us to immediately begin working like that. We all gave our input and somehow we mixed every idea together to create one amazing final project. Working together and making tough decisions quickly reminded me of my decision making with data class that I am currently taking.
            In this class we do many things related to decision making (hence the name). One major unit that we studied was the voting process and how those decisions are made all over the world. It was incredible to me learning that the process can be so simple in one country and so complicated in the next. I did enjoy learning about it though. We also learned different methods of making a decision. Ranking, for example, is a step in many of the methods where the different objects that are being chosen from are ranked by importance to the chooser. Many of the methods get complicated and require many many steps until the decision is complete, but that just goes to show how complicated making a simple decision can be.
            Back to class this week... We were able to create something with all of our input because of this decision making process. Without decision making we would not have been able to name our place, decide who would do what, and much less build it. But we were able to do all of those things and more because of the process that we decided to take. It's crazy how much someone telling you to make quick decisions can affect the actual speed of your decision making. So, thanks Mr. Allen!

Blogging Around

Shayne Turpin:
This connection is amazing. I am so jealous that you figured this out! I agree 100% with all of the comments above, and with your original post Shayne. The connections between Alberto Knox and Mr. Allen are right in front of our eyes. They both have ways of putting thoughts into our minds and having them stay there. They both word things in ways that make it easier to remember. Thank you so much for posting about this Shayne!

Rachel Blackman:
I totally agree with what you are saying! I think that modern houses and buildings are just plain and boring. I love the creativity put into creating postmodern houses and buildings. I think that, for me, postmodern houses are just more aesthetically appealing. If I were to ever design a home I know that I would take the postmodern route. Thank you so much for the insight into what you think about modern and postmodern architexture!

Best of Today: Modernism vs. Postmodernism

             The other day we spoke about the difference between modernism and postmodernism some more in class. I found quite a bit of the information to be interesting, but I had one specific favorite part that stood out to me the most. I loved the differences in the architecture of the modern and postmodern buildings.A modern building looked like this:

            While a postmodern building could look like this:

            I find both types of buildings appealing to the eye, but for different reasons. The modern building is simple and easy for look at with its straight lines and simple rectangle pattern. On the other hand, the postmodern building makes the viewer think about what is going on. It looks like a lot is going on and incorporates many different aspects of architecture.

            I thought it was very interesting learning about the different types of architecture because I had never had the opportunity to learn about the difference between modern and postmodern in architecture. I enjoyed learning about it and that is why I chose to use it as my Best of Today blog :]

Connection: MLK to John Lennon

            This week in class we read Martin Luther King's letter from Burmingham Jail. While we were reading this I couldn't help but connect him to my favorite musician of all time, John Lennon. Both men stood up for what they believed in in a time where people weren't necessarily doing so. MLK stood up for the rights of African American people and John Lennon stood up for peace. 
            These men are two men that will not back down from something until they are listened to. John fasted and stayed in bed for weeks in order to make sure that people knew he was fighting for peace. MLK made speeches and used non-violence to make sure that people knew he was fighting for equality between races. Both men were fighting for peace just in different ways. John Lennon was fighting for peace because of the Vietnam war and MLK was fighting for peace between races. 
             The similarities between these two men jump out at me from all angles. Including the way that they both were killed. Both were shot and killed. All the way to their deaths, both of these men never stopped fighting for peace, which is why both of them are people that I look up to.