What did u do TODAY?

Today I accomplished revising my webliography. There wasn't much to revise but it was good to see the little things a peer pointed out that I might have never thought of. In my proposal, I consider myself to be very close to finished with it. I have filled out my timeline chart which goes along with my proposal and gone back several times to add on to my proposal answers. My next step is to get in touch with my counselor to see if he has any resources or contacts that could help out my project.

Update....Questions

I have my essential questions finished and my foundation questions:

"What is the success rate of high school drop outs compared to non-dropouts?"
1.Why do they drop out of high school?
2.Who is dropping out? (particular gender, race, wealth status)
3.Where are they going when the drop out?
4.What are they doing once the drop out?
5.When over time has this become an issue?
6.What education options are open to dropouts?
7.How are most of them making a living?
8.How is the dropout crisis costing America?
9.What is being done to decrease the number of dropouts?

I also have finished the annotations for my webliography and after doing that I now realize that I need more sources and more information. Today i started my pre-writing questionnaire for my proposal and its going quite well.

It just came together

I have finished my collage for my project and I am surprised with the outcome. At fist when I was told about this assignment I was worried because my photoshop capabilities aren't that great. Once I got started though it looked much better and it all seemed to just come together! Also, I've been doing my essential and foundation question list and that's coming along well but I know I need more but...I'm not sure what other questions to ask. Things are moving along great and you can take a look at my collage at the bottom of my page.

1. Some project requirements that students had to meet in others schools are: research paper, a display board, presentation to a judge panel, and a creation of project, have a community mentor, minimum 25 hour of requirements, and possibly an explanation of why they're ready to graduate.



2. Students like Jubal Brown at Wood River High School went beyond the 25 hours that the project requires and spent 87 hours and 20 minutes on it. His project was repainting and rebuilding a bike. That's how he took his project beyond the research component. Steven Brickell also took it past the research by performing an actual embalming, video taping it (with commentary), and presenting it to the judges.



3. From the ideas listed in the articles, I've brainstormed possible ideas for the embalming project that were probably taken:

--finding a mentor

--research the history, facts, and information

-- watch and/or perform embalming

--present learned information to judges

4. Some ideas/concepts that may help the thinking or planning of my project are having passion for the topic I choose because passion leads to inspiration and more interest in what you've chooses and that will help you produce the best results. Also, one student says that staying motivated and being patient is good as well as staying on schedule which is obvious.

Today...

Today in class, I worked mainly on finding key terms using my sources from my webliography. I have also added a list of a few of my web sources so that everyone can see the path that I'm on. Also, I had the great idea to add a list of organizations and their abbreviations so that in the future when I mention them, everyone will know the full name of the organization. Annotations have been added onto the sources I have on my webliography because now that I have so many(10) its hard to remember which is which!! One of my links is now requiring I make a log in ans sign up for a subscription just to view that article, I guess i visited it too many times for free. I feel a lot got done today.

There's no words anywhere!

I am trying to go through my articles and pick out some key terms that I find are important and that others might not know. The one problem is there aren't any...there are some words here and there that are good key terms but I don't have enough of them. Besides that things are coming along, I have found 10 great websites and completed my webliography with the exception of the annotations.

Am I there yet?

I thought I was stuck and didn't really know where next I needed to go but right now my main goal is to make sure I have a lot of information and enough information to answer my questions. I found a great website, Child Trends Data Bank that had facts that even surprised me. This is a good start.

I wanted to take a closer look on Pittsburgh, to see locally what dropouts are doing and if there are any organizations dealing with that. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette had an article called "Dropouts to Doctorates" and I think may link me to other connections. Check it out!

Slowly getting there!

Yesterday I finalized my official essential question for my project. "What is the success rate of high school drop outs?" That question would be in comparison with those who did graduate. I don't have a clue what my action is going to be, but i am looking into if there are any organizations who help those who dropped out. I do have some web sites though that have some great information that i will SOON be posting!

Okay....i have finally settled on my topic but i just hope it doesn't turn out being a report because i want it to be WAAAAy more than that . High School Dropouts is my decision as of now and here are my questions i have for my topic.

• Why do they drop out of high school?
• Who is dropping out? (particular gender, race, wealth status)
• Where are they going when the drop out?
• What are they doing once the drop out?
• When over time has this become an issue?

These are my basic questions for this topic and they aren't real special. I'm trying not to get too worried that my topic isn't good.

It's getting so tough to decide a final topic because nothing really...is a motivating me or exciting. I am interested in the topic of "high school dropouts vs. non-dropouts" and "people in prison/jail". Those topics seem okay, but that's it. Pharmacy is the career i want to go into after college so that is always and alternate topic. Sooner or later I'm going to have to choose one of these.

Some ideas i have for my graduation project are:

• people in jail/prision
• how do high school dropouts comapre with non-dropouts
• obeasity in america
• career in pharmacy
• world hunger issue
• crack babies

Those topics seem just okay to me and none of them really interst me too much. Those are just ideas though!

Constant blogging indicates an unhealthy obsession because when it interferes with time with your family or money it has gone too far. I would want to read someone elses blog if it actually had meaning or was interesting to read.

Bloggers should follow rules like:

• only enter once a day
• limit how much you write
• dont constantly check
• dont let it become an obsession