New Directions Alternative H.S. Program is a cooperative program in Cedar County, Iowa. Kirkwood Community College sponsors the program and partners with area school districts including Tipton, North Cedar, West Branch and others. We aim to help students who struggle in a traditional high school setting become more successful by offering a variety of instructional strategies for a variety of learning styles.
If you have not written your Autobiography or your Interview Questions, you need to get those done ASAP to receive credit in this class.
We have 21 days left in the quarter. There will be 2 more BIG writing assignments that you must complete in order to receive Composition credit. Those assignments will be posted here on this blog by the end of the week.
REMEMBER that part of your grade includes participating in an online community. You need to visit everyone's blogs, read what they're writing and make comments.
If you are feeling pretty good about where you're at with the Autobiography and the Interview, then write about our Punctuation Game topic from last week: What do your parents/grandparents/guardians do that embarrasses you and why does it embarrass you?
First, go back and finish any unfinished business (like your autobiography if it's not done, or your interview if it's not done.)
Second, read these If-Then options to figure out what you should do today:
If you are not done researching and writing interview questions in a Google Doc, then you should keep working on researching and writing questions today.
If you have your Google Doc done, then you should figure out to how to make sure the subject of your interview gets the questions (find their agent, their manager, see if they have a Skype account, find them on Twitter or facebook...ask me for help.
If you have sent the questions and are waiting for a response, then you should choose one of the topics below to blog about.
If you finish blogging about one of these topics, then you should pick another topic to blog about (from this list or from your brain.)
Blogging Topics
If you were a falling raindrop, what would your three wishes be?
If genetics permitted an octopus and a hippopotamus to breed, what traits/skills/capabilities would their offspring have?
How do you know if a frog is asleep or can dream? What dream might a frog have if he dreamt?
Urban legends have become more popular because of the accessibility of email/technology. They appeal to fears, hopes, doubts, etc. Visit one or both of these sites: Urban Legends or Snopes and read at least three urban legends. After examining three urban legends, write one of your own.
After the big game, reporters flock to interview the players. Like here:
When the new album comes out and musical artists go on tour, talk show hosts interview the artists about their music or their tours. Like here:
If you own a business and you want to hire someone, you conduct an interview. If you want to get a job, you will most likely be interviewed. NOT like here:
Interviews are everywhere! And for this assignment, you are going to write and conduct an interview.
1. Think about the world. What questions do you have? What do you wish you knew more about? Your topic is only limited to what can be discovered on the Internet--which means there are endless possibilities. Choose a topic or person for your interview andmake a list of things you wish you knew more about or a person you wish you knew more about. The topic can be anything; the person can be a celebrity or an average person who you know in real life. You can interview a resident at a nursing home, a grandparent, a business person or a movie star.
2. Use Google to find information, video clips, blogs, news stories, and images about that person or that topic. Read the articles, click the links, copy and paste information into a Google Doc if you want to save it. (If you really want to get fancy, make BOOKMARKS to save your websites.) In other words: do research about the person or topic you chose in #1.
3. Imagine that you could ask an expert about your topic. If you chose a person, imagine that you could talk to that person. What questions would you ask? Create a Google Doc in which you list your questions on that topic or for that person.
4. Learn about how to conduct an Interview.This link takes you to a GREAT page about how to make phone calls to someone in the community, how to introduce yourself to an adult, how to organize your questions. Please visit this site and read the information! For students: How to Interview Someone for a Paper
Or if you want to interview a celebrity, read this eHow article: How to Interview a Celebrity It gives information about how to get in touch with celebrities' agents, how to figure out what agent belongs to what celebrity. Very valuable information!
5. Figure out how to conduct your interview. You can use the phone, email, your blog, visit someone local and in person, get on Skype, use Google Phone, or send a letter...EVEN IF you choose a celebrity, you will make contact and conduct an interview. You need to do research about how to contact the person who is an expert on your topic or the celebrity you want to interview.
6. Double, Triple, Quadruple check your interview questions. Have your peers look at them (you can share your Google Doc) have your parents look at them, have your teachers look at them. Make sure that your questions make sense and are appropriate.
7. Schedule the Interview. This may take some effort. You may have to email or mail questions to someone who may never write back. If that's the case, you'll need to get creative and either interview someone else or be prepared to write about why you think this person wouldn't agree to an interview. You may need to plan in advance for an interview that won't happen until next week sometime. Don't worry. We can be flexible. Just go through the motions and try to get an interview scheduled with someone.
8. Practice. If you are conducting the interview in person, by phone or via Skype, you need to practice asking your questions aloud and taking notes about the responses. If you are conducting the interview in writing, read your questions aloud to make sure that they sound good and are clearly stated.
9. Conduct the Interview. Remember that you are representing our school. You are representing yourself. Be positive, confident, and SHINE! Don't forget to take notes if you are interviewing someone in person, on the phone, or via Skype.
10. Add to your Google Doc. Write in the responses the person gave to your questions. Copy/Paste email responses or type up responses to the questions you asked out loud/in person.
11. Paste your ENTIRE Interview in a blog post on your blog. Then write a reflection on your blog: How did your interview go? Are you proud of yourself? Did you like the way it turned out? What would you differently next time? What did you learn?
When your interview is posted to your blog, you are officially done!
Here are some examples of Top 10 Legendary Celebrity Interviews
They are just for you to watch while you are thinking about the assignment and wondering how you can do it :) AND YOU CAN DO IT!!!
NOTE: I don't expect you to have this done today. This Interview thing is a process. Until someone tells me they are close to done with their interview, there will be no new ndaltschool blogposts with new assignments.
Google has a lot of apps. When you get on your Gmail page and look at the top left side of the screen you can see some common apps listed and a drop-down menu for more... All of the things listed on the top and in the drop-down menu are Google apps. Here's a link to Google Products that are out there now, but they are making more products each day.
So far, we've learned about Gmail, Blogger, iGoogle and Google Reader. Many of these products are also available on SmartPhones, too. If you have an iPhone, and iPod Touch, a Blackberry or an Android phone, visit the iPhone app store or the Android Market or the Blackberry App World and see if you can add Google Reader to your device so that you can read your news from anywhere, anytime. See if you can add the Blogger app to your device so that you can post pictures or comments to your blog from anywhere, anytime. If you don't have a SmartPhone, you can still look at the app stores, or you can skip down and work on today's real assignment on Google Docs.
What is a Google Doc? Watch this "In Plain English" video from YouTube to find out...
(If it's not big enough, please click here to watch it in full screen.)
So a Google Doc is a document that you can work on by yourself or with a group of people from anywhere. You can work on it any time and you don't need to have any certain program installed on your computer or phone to use it. Pretty cool, eh?
Last time you found news stories using Google News. Now you're going to customize a Google homepage for yourself--called iGoogle--and learn how to use Google Reader to make your very own news feed (sort of like your own online newspaper that only has information that you want to read.) It might get a little confusing, so ask if you need help!
1. Log in to your Google Account (if you log in to Blogger, just go to the top right corner and click "My Account")
Scroll down the "My Account" page to find "My Products"
Click iGoogle.
Now play with this page to set it up the way you like it.
If this is confusing and you need more help, you can watch a video about it here: iGoogle Tutorial, Part 1
When you've finished making your iGoogle page the way you want it to look, consider making it your home page! Any time you get on the Internet, iGoogle is the first page you'll see. If you want to do this, click this page to Make iGoogle your homepage for instant access to search and more.
2. Let's just imagine that iGoogle doesn't give you enough access to news or blogs. You are now a citizen of the world and you want to know about all kinds of stuff. iGoogle doesn't let you see enough about everything you're interested in, it doesn't let you subscribe to all of the blogs you want to follow. You want MORE!!! You are now in need of Google Reader. Google Reader lets you subscribe to all kinds of news feeds and blogs. You can read the news that you choose on a computer or maybe even on your phone. I'm sure you're now saying, "How do I get me some of that Google Reader action?"
Well...here's how: Use Google Reader! Click to watch a video explaining what is Google Reader?
3. Your Assignment for the Day
You've already done a lot, right? You've set up your own iGoogle home page, you've set up a Google Reader account. But there are a few more things I want you to do.
First, on your iGoogle page or in Google Reader, look for a story that really interests you. Click the link to that story and read it. Then click the headline for that story to get the the website from which the story originated.
Next, look around on that website. Do you see the icon for RSS?
It looks like this:
RSS icon
Click it. Click the icon for RSS. You should get a pop-up asking if you want to subscribe with Google. Go ahead! Subscribe! Then look for other websites with the RSS icon whenever you surf the web. If the icon is there, you can subscribe to feeds from that website and see news in Google Reader!
Once you have subscribed to a news feed, there is only one thing left for you to do today: BLOG!
Post a blog entry about any news story you found on your iGoogle page or in Google Reader. Write the 5 W's and H (Who, What, When, Where, Why and How) and then write about why this article interests you.
1. If you are still working on setting up your blog or writing your autobiography, KEEP ON TRUCKIN'.
2. Do this assignment only if you are completely and 100% done with your autobiography.
The Assignment (Read all of this first!)
Here we are in Cedar County, Iowa. Every day I hear someone complain about how boring it is and how there is nothing to do here. But there is a whole wide world out there with a lot happening and it is your job as a citizen to learn about it. It used to be harder to learn about what's going on in other parts of the world, but now it's as easy as clicking on a hyperlink.
Being a citizen of the world really isn't as hard as it sounds. All you have to do is keep yourself informed about things that are going on in other places. News feeds and blogs make that extremely easy. For the next couple of assignments, you'll be using Google applications to discover information from all over the world.
**First, you'll need to make sure you know your Google Account information. Some of you have been having trouble. If you are one of the people who has lost their blog or had other technical difficulties, now might be the time to create a Gmail account and use your other email account as a back-up (in case you forget your password or something.) Please let me know if you need help with setting up a new account.
**Next, check out Google News. This site shows the top stories from around the world! You can use your Google Account to personalize the settings. Just scroll down the page and click on your preferences for news. Then whenever you are logged in to Google and you visit the Google News page, your settings will make sure that your preferred news stories show up. After you've set up your preferences, read some news stories. Get familiar with the layout on Google News. Notice that there are main headlines, but below those headlines are links to hundreds of newspapers that give their take on the same story.
**Finally, it's time for you to blog.
Question: What do I blog about today?
Answer: Any news story that catches your interest. Maybe a story on the coming "Snopocalypse" or the SuperBowl or Egypt.
Question: What should I include?
Answer: Definitely include a link to the news story you are writing about. Then you should have one paragraph that summarizes the news story and another paragraph explaining how you feel about that news story. Is there some action you think people should take? Is there something you wish you could do? Are the people in the story doing what you would do? Should they do something differently? Blogs are personal--show us your personality as you write about a news story. When you share your ideas about what's happening in the world, you become a citizen of the world.
