Proactive or Procrastination?

People of all ages are struggling between the line of productivity and procrastination these days. Are you proactive or a procrastinator? I, myself am a procrastinator. Though, I like to make sure I have things done beforehand and even do extra, but when it comes to certain things, school, I tend to wait last minute when doing essays or bigger projects. I push work to the side telling myself I have time and I can do it later. For some people when they do this they really won't get it done, but doing this actually helps me more. I become more motivated to do this project than I would've been had I done it beforehand. I also run into other things that I need to do, when I'm home I have chores to do and sometimes I need to help with errands. So, I get distracted and end up pushing things to the side.

The amount of free time I have depends how proactive I am. Before the weekend comes I try to be as productive as I can, that way when the weekend rolls around I can do what I want. But, sometimes my free time gets taken away because of sports or extracurricular activities. This also pushes back on me getting my work done. Sometimes I don't get home till later and just want some time to myself without having to do any work.

Honestly, I would like to change my habits so that I can get my stuff done earlier. I want to try to do my work before I try to do or think about doing something else. Sometimes it's hard for me to stay focused and I end up switching halfway through doing one thing and going to another. I'm going to try to stay more focused with my work and make sure that when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I will try my best to be more productive and stop procrastinating.

Lessons Learned

As you know we are working on our Hiki No projects. My partners and I have chosen the topic of the effects of technology. I think the most interesting part of this is seeing how others think of technology. Everyone we have interviewed has had different opinions, for example we interviewed a parent who spoke of both the pros and cons of technology. Being that she is a mother she shared a few cons of how she thought it was a con exceptionally because, " I've noticed that children, young people, tend to spend a lot of time by themselves on a device instead of doing things together in groups or just going outside and hanging out. I think the main con of all this technology is this constant interconnectivity where its really hard to have downtime away from work or away from others that are not the main family because you're always accessible." - Bridget Collins. Though she believed this she also believed technology is a modern tool in society that is being used at work and at school. She also shared the thought that technology is helping and being used productively when needed.

Although I would like to say that this project has been going smoothly, I can't because we have hit roadblocks that we are still trying to overcome. One of the biggest road blocks we have faced is B-Roll. We all have different things we do after school and so we haven't been able to plan a day where we can all meet up and film outside of school. So, most of our B-Roll is filmed in school and in our classroom, but we needed to have more B-Roll outside of school. As a conclusion to this I took a camera home and tried to film some sequences applicable to our video. And filming by myself and having to be in the camera shot at the same time is harder than I thought it would be.

Personally I think planning is the most important part in the film process. Before you can go out and interview people or film B-Roll you need to know what you're going to say and do. If you don't know what you're going to say or do you will end up wasting your time and others time. So before you go out you must plan questions, ideas, and sequences. For one this will make it easier on you and others. Two it can help you think and add to your film. The planning will help you know and remember what needs to be done and how you will do it. And as long as you plan things out you will be able to know when you and those you work with can meet up and work productively.

Back To School

On 8/4/14 I started the beginning of 8th grade. Luckily this year I have Advisory with all my friends. So, the first thing that we did was compare classes. We all got into most of the classes we wanted. We have a few classes in common, including G.T., Honors English, and Honors Math. Most of us were lucky enough to get the elective class we wanted. I got into the elective of art with my old Advisory teacher Mrs. Sanderl.

So far everything was been going well. There have been some challenges that I have faced. Given that we are 8th graders now more is expected from us. Over the first week of school we have already been given homework and class assignments. And with different classes and different assignments it's a bit hard to keep up with some of the work. Though we've had a lot of work it's a nice start off for the year because now we know what is expected and how hard we have work.

This year since we have Mr. Sanderl as our Advisory teacher, who is also our G.T. teacher, we get to start the morning announcements first. This year we have different equipment and have the system Black Magic to work with. I got the job of audio. I watch the audio levels. Make sure the audio isn't too loud and at the same time isn't too soft. Overall, this has been my favorite moment this school year.

To be successful this year I'm going to stop procrastinating, do my homework early, and make sure I understand what is being taught. In 7th grade and 6th grade it was easy to procrastinate because the teachers were more laid back and didn't give us as much work. Now, just being in school for a week I can tell that the teachers are not laid back and when they say something is due. It's due, no exceptions unless maybe you were sick and not in school.

Profile Project Progress

Grandma Glenna has been out interviewee for our newest project in G.T. Grandma Glenna is my partner Chazz's grandmother and our latest project has been "Elder Words of Wisdom" interview. We chose Grandma Glenna because we believed what she had to say was important. The focus statement we chose for this interview was "Grandma Glenna Focuses on fun". We filmed everything in her shop, the Sea and Art Gallery. We combined the idea of her having fun and her shop. Doing this we were able to make the interview more interesting than we thought.

For our B-roll we mostly got shots of the different things in her shop. Some of the B-roll was of her and her grandson Chazz having fun in her shop. Though even before we did started filming we had to plan out some of our shots, but we also got extra shots that we did not plan on getting because when planed the B-roll we did not know what exactly she would say specifically. The other part that we needed for a great interview was the voiceovers. I felt bad because I was supposed to do the voiceovers, but last minute was not able.

During this project I do admit that my teammates and I have not agreed on everything that we thought we should fix and/or add. Still we got threw everything nicely. We listened to each others suggestions and all ended up agreeing on a solution. My teammates and I have been getting along better and are seeing eye to eye. So if we we run into any other problems we will fix them as they come.

Recently we have done a critique on our rough cut videos of this project. We now know the things we need to fix and improve on. We had to get more B-Roll, which we did and now we just need to redo our voiceovers. There a few parts in our video where you can see where we had cuts and we need to put pieces of video over the voiceovers, but we will soon fix these mistakes to make our video better. Lastly all we need to do is put it all into the video and make it perfect!

Practice Story Reflection

Our latest project has been interviews, but before we started on the real thing we did practice interviews. For my partners and I practice interview we did "Maya loves Books". For this project we watched many different types of interviews and learned what to do and what not to do. First off we had to come up with a story, "Maya loves Books", we then needed to plan out questions, what kind of B-roll we needed, what was our intro going to be, where would our transitions go, and what would the right sequencing be. When got all of that done we needed to start filming. Filming was the easiest out of everything. We got shots of books, Maya reading, and the actual interview.

After the filming we needed to edit. And like I said, filming was the easiest. We were actually one of the first teams to turn in our project, but that doesn't mean we didn't have difficulties or disagree on anything. We had some arguments of what should go where, if we should have cut out certain parts or what we could have added. In the end we came out with a not perfect video, but something a video we were happy with. We should have added some more B-roll and and made our cuts smoother, but we did only have about two or three days to film and edit.

At least now we know what mistakes we aren't going to make again. Chazz, Maya and I know that we can can make a better interview than our practice. With the help of our classmates we did a critique and now know what to improve on. We just need to remember we shouldn't be stressed. We need to stay focussed and do our best.

All about me!

Hola people on the internet! My name is Sophia Rodriguez if you couldn't guess. Here I will be telling you all about me!

I go to school at Kappa middle, and I originally created this blog for my G.T. class. Our school is located on the island of Kauai in the state of Hawaii. This is my second year here at Kappa middle school and that means I'm in 7th grade! Next year I'll be in 8th grade and then off to high school. Isn't that exciting.

Right now filming is taking up my life. Since 6th grade (last year) me and a few other kids in G.T. have been filming football games for Hawaii Stream. So this year our principles wife, Mrs.Aiwohi, has invited the few students that had filmed the football games to accompany her and her students to a STN competition in Florida this coming up March. So we have been having to do lots of training which takes up most of our Saturdays. And when were not filming were fundraising. Other than that, right now I'm focusing on school.

Some of my interests other than filming are drawing, painting, writing, and reading. I don't paint as much as I draw, but I still try to paint. Most of my art is creative, sometimes I look at other peoples art to get inspired and if I do try to copy a drawing or something I try to put my own twist on it. Right because of school I don't write as much as I would like, but I still do. I mostly write fiction story's I don't do non-fiction very well. For reading right now I'm reading the "Divergent" series by Veronica Roth. Some other books I have read that personally I think are fantastic are "The Fault In Our Stars" by John Green, "The Sisters Grimm" series by Michael Buckley, the "Paranormalcy" series by Kierstin White, and the "Hunger Games" series by Suzanne Collins.