EDUCATION HACK

Interestingly enough, I read something about the word "hacker" over break and where the term cultivated from. The term was coined by a group of programmers and networking-computer geniuses as early as the first minicomputers came to be. There is a misconception about that term. When people think of the word "hacker" they immediately point them out as people that breach security, breaking into computer systems and such. These people aren't hackers, they are crackers. Hackers are the ones that face challenges by building things from the ground up, they were the ones that transcended the idea of computers by making it their own and making it public. Hackers build, crackers destroy.


So, in my quest, hacking my education is going to be both brutal and donkey-kicking. Yes, it is going to be through my own guidelines and my own rules, but even then, things will still be brutal. I'll have to keep my mindset clear, keep myself from seeing the benefits of making it as my own. I'll go out with a bang. By doing that, I'm going to have to think smart, think differently. I'm going to start prodding holes and looking at passages and poems and literature like an art critique looks at an abstract art for the very first time. This means that I have to think outside of the box, look at things sideways or even upside down, to get different meanings out of one work. I'm going to become more active in my blogs, writing about anything and everything, and going to start to get more involve in school and outside of school.          

Siddhartha Note #1

• awakened; newly born 
• doesn't know where he belongs (feels alone)
• on a journey to find himself 
• we see an evolution occur; things are becoming clear to him
• he compares himself to every one, and then finds himself stepping away from what is expected of him 
• Brahman to self-journey 
• tone: depends on who is interpreting it; might be seen as bold and adventurous OR can be seen as terrified and confused 
• symbol: snake (might symbolize a terrible occurrence because snakes are poisonous and often interpreted as bad omen; snakes are able to paralyze and cause fear) 

Creative Writing: #1

prompt: In a world where water is used as a global currency it rains again for the first time in thousands of years.

the woman felt it first, a foreign drop of water on her cheek, then another, and another, until the droplets dropped faster and faster still. the feeling of cool water upon her skin made her gasp. tears threatened to fall, and her lips, oh, how they quivered. she looked up, saw the beauty of rain for the very first time. she was drenched now, from head to toe, her clothes clung to her, but she had no care. this was it, it was unheard of, to actually see it, feel it, experience rain for the very first time. she crumpled to the ground and looked up at the sky, laid on the mud with her eyes wide open, staring, just staring. she was a dreamer, but this, this was something even she didn’t think, dream, would ever occur. she first heard about “rain” when she was in her history class. she had been doodling on her notebook instead of taking notes, eyes glazed over, figure slumped against her chair. she had only been half listening until her teacher, an old grouch, started talking about rain, actual water falling from the sky. her interest had peaked when she heard the words “water” and “falling” and “sky” in the same sentence. money falling from the sky? that’s even more crazy than money growing on trees! arms raised all over the classroom, she remembers it like it was yesterday, how everyones minds had been sparked by the topic of rain and how her own had been buzzing in wonderment. a flurry of questions were asked.

“so what happened? why did it suddenly stop raining?”

“was it global warming? i heard from my parents that thousands of years ago people didn’t have to wear mask, or not all of them anyway, to breathe”

“was it some crazy scientist? government plan gone wrong?”

         

(totally incomplete, continuing later, i’m planning for this to be at least 800-1,000 words so i still have need about 400-600 words lol ; yes i will edit and capitalize things later, i just got lazy)

Network and Our Topics

Jayce: dance and medicine → dream job and hobby (main interest) ; make videos to represent medical terms (a “spoof” video of sorts, use humour and dance to explain complicated medical terms; think “crashcourse”) OR how dancing changes the body, medically (tense muscles, which muscles and joints are working), and how dancing helps improve health

→ subtopics: time travel ; sociology

Lupe: literacy (reading) and communications, might include animal cruelty → start a reading program for kids (collaboration work with the public library plus community involvement) → students can sign up to help kids read (read to them or essentially teach them reading skills, pronunciation, book recommendations, etc) ; implement a video to show how the program started and progressed, while also showing the world that kids ARE reading and ARE interested in learning how to become more literate

Yesi (collaborating with): language, history, and community involvement (topics) → she volunteers at the Dune Center (museum-ish) ; the community wants a translated version of a published book on the history of Guadalupe (English to Spanish version) which she wants to undertake (but will need permission from the author first ; communication underway) → doesn’t want monetary payment (if she receives money from the book, the money will go towards the community, as donation, for future projects) ; if the book translation doesn’t go through, then the project will take a more community involvement turn aka hiking trails → community outreach

→ collaboration with me: HONY portion of the project as translator  

Danielle (collaborating with): we are working together for the cultural awareness and unity project → incorporating social media to the project (#spreadthelove15)

Masterpiece: Next Step

Topic: cultural awareness and unity through transmedia ; collaboration work with Danielle Cadena

[description and how it came to be]:

The topic essentially speaks for itself. Danielle and I played with the idea of showing unity and love, bringing light to cultural awareness. At the start of the school year, when we first learned about the concept of “the masterpiece” (a project beyond that of just a senior project), an idea crossed my mind right away. It was a simple idea that cultivated through my love for photography and technology. Seeing as it’s the 21st Century, and social media/technology centers our generation, my idea cultivated as simply that of a HONY twist. This essentially means that I would be using photography as a means of showing people in our community that we are all the same, but we’re also very different from one another (unique would be the word). This idea is a means of showing people that we are like snowflakes, microscopically different from another but similar on a largely scale, or different patches of colors/patterns/textures quilted together. Not only that, but I found my topic to be widely appropriate in a sense that we live in such a small community. We don’t exactly live in a metropolitan area where it is heavily more accepted to be different from another. We live in an area where being different is shunned upon, where we are so closed off from the rest of the world.

Collaboration with Danielle (and possibly Yesenia) led to a more widely spread project. We will be using a mixture of photography, arts and crafts, social media (tumblr, facebook, twitter, instragram, etc), and video to complete our masterpiece. We collaborated with Laura Ritchie and her musically talented students to help create a music track for our video (and hopefully some of their stories) to create and show an even more diverse project. Apart from the hacked HONY portion of the project and the video portion of the project, we will be using social media with the hashtag #spreadthelove15 to expand and trend the love and unity. The hashtag and media post will include a creation that the person will create with love. The creation can be anything (a drawing, poem, heart/dove portrayal), it just has to be made with love.

Hopefully, our project will show cultural awareness, and create a more open and hate-free community.

[academic discipline/skills required]:

There’s really no academic discipline needed to help out with the project, we just need more love and less hate, more openness and less gate, more knowledge and less ignorance. You don’t need to be artistically amazing or great, you just have to create something that shows how hard and how much you put towards it!  

(maybe a little bit of technological skills aka you need to know how to use social media)     

[tools/resources needed]:

video editor - we have

camera

camcorder

exposure (aka advertisement/help from people to spread the word)

social media

website/blog

basic art supply        

Poetry Slam: Somewhere In America

"But we were taught that it is better to be silent than to make them uncomfortable"