Welcome back!

Update Wednesday 4 May 2011
Besides the more obvious goals of this project, including improving research, presentation, and getting more personal with the content, I hope you understand there are other goals. It is my hope that you will have had a chance to connect with the community, either local or global, though doing this project. One way of accomplishing this is by posting some of your information on one of our blogs. A blog allows you to have an authentic audience, which means readers beyond your usual teacher. This could include other students at our school, people in your family or community, our country, or other countries.

It’s my intention to ask you to put your writing and/or Power Point information on to one of the blogs. I feel others should see the results of your hard work. Please let me know if there is any reason not to do this. With that in mind, things in the individual papers would be more likely to be things not posted online, I’d expect. Let’s assume for now that the papers will not be posted unless I specifically ask, and the information in the Power Points will be unless you say not to.

Here is cool website called "Bibme" http://www.bibme.org/ It is awesome, because you just set it to MLA format and type in the title of the book, and it does the rest. It will spit out a bibliography for you!

What you create is yours. It is your choice if it is put on a public forum such as a blog or not. I am encouraging you to do it, though, because I feel your work is praiseworthy, from what I can see of it. However, I do want to see the Power Points, for example, before they are posted. I hope you will get a good feel for the "authenticity" of it after more experience using the medium.

If you have worries about the schedule, or trouble accessing the school's e-learning platform, please let me know. Enjoy your upcoming days!

Sunday 1 May 2011
I hope your last two weeks was interesting! Perhaps you can write about it, and put the key points on your blogs (just a little, maybe with a photograph). Save most of the writing for later, as we will be doing autobiographical writing in the third marking period of this semester (6^th term of this year) and the last two weeks can be used as practice. This week, I hope you can share some impressions or information with me and your classmates in class.

We have material to cover in our readers this week, and quizzes and homework to go over from before the two week you were gone. And this week you must hand in your writing for the projects. For that I said I want one or two pages of writing with at least one reference. Now, to be more specific, I want MLA format. Use default margins, Calibri 12 point, and single spaced papers. You need at least 600 words.

The presentations themselves will take place next week. Follow the guidelines given before or email me with any questions, or ask in class this week. I am looking forward to seeing the results of your work!

Also, after you have prepared videos or Power Points for your projects, I would like to have access to them, meaning I would like the files transferred to the computer in our classroom. This part is for viewing and assessment purposes. Please discuss it among your group if it is OK to share it with future students, teachers, or on the Kang Chiao Creates blog, if worthy. I encourage you to post group efforts such as movies and Power Points to your personal blogs. When making such productions, keep in mind your global audience, and ask yourself what you have to say to them about what you have learned and can now do

Project ideas

Here is the update, which can also be found on e-learning:

10B

Group A (Jack, James, Diana)

Stresses on Modern Life – Single Parent Families

Essay topics:

Jack- Compare and contrast traditional families to single parent families.

Diana- The difficulties and situations that single parents and the kids have to face.

James- The cause and effect of Single parent families.

Ways of presenting:

Power point- combining all three of our essays into slides including a video clip or two from websites like youtube.com.

Poster- a chart based on Jack’s topic of showing the difference between single and traditional.

Speech- written in palm cards by Diana and will be about 7-10 minutes long and will be presented with the power point slides.

Role Play - team up with the other group and do a play linking both our ideas.

Group B (Cecilia, Sarah, Jasmine, Nini)

Topic: Divorce

-        Causes and effects of divorce, compare rates in different subjects, and how to prevent divorce.

Works:

-Cecilia: how to prevent divorce, power point (suggestion – third presenter)

-Sarah: affects, poster (suggestion – fourth presenter)

-Jasmine: rates, poster (suggestion – second presenter)

-Nini: causes, power point (suggestion – first presenter)

Play:

-Cecilia: dad (male)

-Sarah: child (female)

-Jasmine: mom (male)

-Nini: third person (male)

This class has been talking about doing something related to The Curious Incident Book. The class expressed a lack of desire to do an autism/Asperger's related topic. So, I have identified another theme in that book which is how stresses of modern life affect families. Christopher's family (the main character) has an absent parent, and when one parent needs to take care of a son, especially with a mental challenge such as Asperger's, it is very difficult. Some families could experience divorce in this kind of circumstance. We mentioned divorce in Taiwan as a possible topic or subtopic.

I hope to divide the class into two groups as follows:

A: Jack, James, Diana
B: Cecelia, Sarah, Jasmine, Nini

The groups decided what to focus on, and I will try to post more information here later in the weekend. Group A is doing stresses on single parent families. Here is the document I gave you in class called stresses on single parent families, and here is the PDF file I found that may help you. For group B, which is focusing on the causes and effects of divorce, besides lending you two John Gottman books (The Seven Principles that Make Marriage Work and Why Marriages Succeed and Fail) and The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: a 25 Year Landmark Study by Lewis and Blakeslee, I made a causes of divorce document for you. I hope these links help!

Remember, the project must have creative, presentation, and writing components. I expect that each student will produce a short written part and that the group will make a power point or a video and then have a presentation together. It is my strong wish that each group also have either a dramatization or a game for the class to enjoy as part of their presentation. You must at least do reflective posts on your individual blogs about your projects (perhaps multiple times), but if there is a Power Point or video, I hope you will link it to your blogs as well. Grading will be discussed clarified later, but expect an individual grade for your writing and a group grade for group effort. There may be some self and/or peer evaluation involved.