Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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.

Monday, October 20, 2008

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.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

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.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008



  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.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

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.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

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.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

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!