On Wednesday all of you will be submitting your first major project for grading.  This is always a stressful time in the class because no one wants to be late or miss that all important deadline.  Being on time or being punctual is an important trait to have.  When you are on time for something, it shows that you’ve taken the necessary steps to do what you need to do to be ready at a particular time.  It also shows responsibility.  For this week’s required blog post I want you to really think about punctuality and why this is important in life.  Is it important to follow through on your word?  Is it important to be on time with meetings or deadlines?  If you are late to a meeting or are late with an assignment or task, what does that say about you?  What does that tell your teacher?  First of all, decide whether or not you feel that being on time is important in life.  Then give me three reasons to back up your answer and write them all in the constructed response format.  I look forward to seeing your responses!

Mr. M

Imagine a world without music….no songs, no melodies, no instruments….weird huh?  It’s almost impossible to think about what life would be like without music in it.  Think about how often we hear it on a daily basis.  It’s on tv shows, commercials, in the car on our radio,  and in our headphones on our iPods.  Now try to imagine movies without music.  There would be no suspenseful music to lead up to the climax, to tension or drama that would build.  Music and sound play an extremely important part in movies, probably as much as the pictures we see.

For this week’s blog, I’d like you to think of three examples in which music really affected a movie.  Think back to all of the movies you’ve watched over your 11-13 years of existence.  Which ones stood out in terms of how music was used to affect your experience?  It could be the Emperor’s March in Star Wars where Darth Vader walked down the hall on his way to the bridge.  It could be the music that played leading up to a scary sequence in a horror movie.  It could be the music that the actors sang in a particular part like in “Remember the Titans.”  Think of three examples and tell me about why they stood out for you.

Last week’s blog post asked you what you had the most difficulty with so far in our media class.  For this week’s required blog post, I’d like you to tell me about what you skills you think you’ve mastered or learned how to do well in our class.  It could be the job in the morning announcements you’ve done or your new blogging skill.  Think of anything that you’ve learned how to do so far in media and tell me about what you think you can do well.  Remember that it should be in the form of the 5 paragraph constructed response format.

We’re now past the halfway point in our first quarter of the school year.  You’ve all had a chance to experience the morning announcements, your interviews, transcribing, and script writing for your projects, and now your blogs.  Some of you have even had to do advisory games and radio files.  For this week’s blog post, what has been the most difficult thing to do so far in media?  Is it one thing in particular like the radios, or is it something like getting used to all the work that needs to be done?  We started slowly and now are running at close to full speed.  I’m interested to hear from you as to what has been the hardest thing to do so far.  Remember to write your response in the constructed response format of having 5 paragraphs.

Good luck!

Now that you’ve had a chance to use your iPad for a week now, I hope you’ve done more than just load games on it. Remember that it’s mainly to use as a tool to help you in class and in school.

For this week’s blog topic, I’d like you to tell me about how things are going with your project so far. Are you both on track with having your interviews done? Have you started your transcribing yet? Have you begun to find those 5 really good sound bites to build your script from? How are things going with your partner?

For my blog topics you need to write 5 paragraphs. The first paragraph is your introduction to the topic. You’ll state what the topic is and briefly answer it with three short answers. Your next paragraph is about your first answer. You will explain it in more detail here. Your third paragraph will be about your second answer. Your next paragraph will be about your last answer and then your fifth and final paragraph will be your closing where you restate your three answers and wrap things up. If you want to see some good examples, view past student blogs from Lia or Chyna.

For your second blog topic of the week, I let you choose what you want to write about. You have to write about something related to media in some way. It could be about a cool movie or tv show you watched or some neat video you saw on YouTube. That post only needs to be one paragraph long but you have to fully explain why you are writing about it. Don’t just say you saw a cool video and that’s it. Create a link to it and post a screen shot and explain why you thought it was cool.

Both weekly blog posts are due by midnight on Sunday. Be sure to check your blog settings to make sure your time zone is set to Honolulu so your time stamps match out time.

Good luck!,