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Wednesday, March 25, 2015

20% Project

I want to introduce the 20% project we will be doing the 4th quarter.  This project will be something you do either by yourself or with a group of up to 5 people.  The project will be your final presentation and grade for the semester and you will be doing this in place of a semester final...this is your final.  

What is the 20% project? 
 Basically, this idea was taken from Google and is an experimental project idea.  At Google, they decided it would be a great idea to give their employees free, creative time to come up with their own ideas.  These ideas became part of their company and Google was able to expand what they do in terms of offering services through their company.  Some of these ideas became things like Google search, translator, maps, sites, etc.  

Your goal is simple.  You have 20% of class time from now until the end of the year to create anything of your choice.  Yes, you will get 1 class day per week to research, develop, create, and implement any creation of your choice.  At the end of the year, beginning May 11th, you will present what you've came up with to the rest of the class, to other classes, and possibly to administrators (yes like Mr. Stoker).  Your main goal is to have created something, researched something, or done something of significant value that you can present.   Some ideas that may help you get started are: 

1. An in-depth research of a topic of interest like the effects of carbon emissions on the environment and future impacts.
2.  A video documentary about poverty and homelessness in Westby...in La Crosse County...in the state of Wisconsin...etc.
3. A task force you have created to help solve a problem like hunger....I know some students are currently doing this and yes this will work.
4. A study and follow up interview on the mentally ill in society and what we are doing to help or hurt them.
5. A demographic breakdown with visual charts, graphs, and organizers of any reach of society like why people vote the way they do or why people consume certain products in society.
6. A personal experience of you and your group volunteering at any organization for a certain cause.

***The possibilities are limitless

Grading

The grading criteria will be as simple as I can make it
- Your presentations will account for 100 points and will be based on clarity and dynamic speaking.  The presentations can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes.  Your content will reflect if you've actually done the project.
- You will post a weekly update on my blog (current events blog) on your groups progress (1 paragraph) for 10 points per week
- Group planning and reflection sheets completed at the beginning and at the end of the project for 50 points per completion of each

In the end this is really a wide open project that you can do whatever you want with it.  I'm doing this because you are the generation of collaborators and thinkers.  In your future you will be working with a variety of people on a variety of different tasks and your creative knowledge will be called upon; so I'm calling on your creative knowledge right now to think and act on your own.  To complete this task you'll need to simply find something you are interested in and act on it to the best of your ability.  If you procrastinate and blow the project off, you'll get an easy F.  If you put your full effort into this you'll get and A+ without a doubt.  I'll be able to tell in your presentations.


30 comments:

  1. I mean yes, I would be lying if I said that I was excited for this assignment. With that being said, I think that you and your teaching style could have what it takes to make it enjoyable and fun for the class as a whole. I am scared to start, but with support from home I think I can overcome my underlying fears.

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  3. Victoria and I are doing a healthy lifestyle project. We will not eat fast food, pop, or sweets for a whole entire week. We will write down what we eat for that week and see what progress we make during that week. When we present our project we are gonna make food with all the fattening stuff in it and without it, and we want to see if our class can really tell the difference between them and know that there is a way to eat healthy.

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  4. Sammy O, Brett G, Ashley, Kylie and I(Patricia) are working on an older project where we collect food and clothes for people in need. Ashley and Brett started this last semester for Social Problems. It was finished over Christmas break, but we're going to be reviving it a little by bringing in our own items and donating them to Bethel Buttik or somewhere like it.

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  5. Brett, Chase, Luis and I are going to do a project on the River Watch in LaCrosse along the Mississippi River. We will have pictures and a video to show that we were there and get information about the river, how many people are around the river and people involved with the river. We will spread the word to others to show how important that this program brings to the community.

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  6. I would like to concentrate on a more hands on experience getting a real life experience to what know what poverty and hunger are like. Some students suggested on trying to live on $1.25 a day for food, another suggested taking action towards the water crisis. Time will tell but I do know what direction I want to take.

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  7. Mariah and and I are doing the Shoe Drive.We already talked to Mr,Stoker and we also Emailed him. Mr.Stoker approved it. we will also have kathy have it on the announcements. Finally we will bring a couple of boxes and put them in the middle and High school by Donating shoes we can help to make a difference and help those in need.

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  8. We've considered talking to the newspaper about our project, but considering the fact that we're not really going to opening it up to anywhere other than this class/our school, so we might be talking to Mrs. Tainter one of these days. We have to decide who is going to bring what and when we plan on taking it to donate. So far, we (Patricia, Sammy, Brett G, Ashley, Kylie) haven't really accomplished much but Ash has been working on our presentation, so we've got a little bit done.

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  9. Holla' City Escuala!
    Week two of current events consisted of collecting money for the world hunger week event that had just went on and making sure everything got where it was supposed to, but now I must focus on my next project which consists of some ideas I had previously listed.

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  10. Mariah,Brittany and me are succesfully doing great! Mr.Stoker approved the posters, we will also announce the Shoe Drive in the Announcements. We are done making our poster's now we will be putting by the hallways so everyone in the school is aware of the Shoe Drive. We will have boxes in the Middle school,Highschool and Elemtary schoo. However i have not got a chance to talk to MR.Wenninger however i will take crare of it. and Mr.Hults dollar is me! :)

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  11. Lexi, Sally, Victoria and I have chosen the dates that we will be eating clean, which is the 18th to the 25th of April

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  12. Brett, Chase, Luis, and I are still working hard on the project we are still waiting on the leader for the River Watch to call and if nothing today we will call him tomorrow.

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  13. I"m still working on the working on the Shoe drive.Since mariah is gone to the Kalahari for the Fccla state Leadership Conference i will make sure i have the boxes and everything else organize.Next week is when the Shoe drive starts at this point will be getting the boxes and go from there :)

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  14. Ross, Lucas, Brett, and I are still diligently discussing and preparing for our 20% project. We will be volunteering to help homeless people in our area.

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  15. Starting tomorrow we will start our diet. We will not eat fast food, pop, or sweets for a whole week. We will write down everything we eat in that week.

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  16. Week two and its pretty much the same. Just gonna eat trashy food for a week. Im pretty pumped.
    -Collin

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  17. Brett G, Sammy O, Patricia, Ashley, Kylie. Progress on our presentation is going along well. We're pretty close to being done, we just need the results from the drive. We still gotta talk to Tainter about setting up bins and stuff but everything is just swell.

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  18. Brett, Chase, Luis, and I we have not heard back from River Watch yet. We will try again to get a hold of them this week. Our project is going good, but we need the final piece to be completed.

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  19. Ross, Jake, Lukas, and Brett Ch, have been making amazing progress throughout the days. We have been working on our powerpoint, and have decided that it would be cool to volunteer at good will to help the needy and greedy.

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  20. Kylie, Sammy, Ashley, Brett, Patricia have been making amazing progress throughout the days. We have been working on our powerpoint, and have decided that it would be cool to volunteer at good will to help the needy and greedy.

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  21. Brett Cade, Chase, Luis, and I have been working hard on our project and we need the guy to call us and give us information and see when we can volunteer.

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  22. So far we are all on our diets and will stop on Saturday.

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  23. Still brainstorming what it is I really want to do, don't worry, there will be more causes coming along in the future to donate your money to here at school. As for living off 1.25$ a day, Hell 2 da' No.

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  24. So far Brittany,MAriah and i had a chanve to the put the boxes in the High school and middle school office but we havent had a chance to put them. However,we had not have a chance to take the last box to the Elementry.

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  25. So we got done with our diet and now we are working on our power point and figuring out which sweet we want to bring to class.

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  26. Done!! And after a week of nothing but unhealthy food I feel like trash. So yeah, now I'm working on the presentation stuff.

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  27. Ashley, Ky, Pat, Sammy, And Brett G
    We have completed our community service act. We collected food and clothing and sent it to the trinity Lutheran church in Onalaska and Harvest Lane Treasures in LaCrosse. All we have left to do is make our powerpoint longer

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  28. At this point the Shoe Drive is doing ok, However we extended the shoe drive to may 14th because we do not enough shoes in the boxes!

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  29. Brett, Chase, Luis, and I got the call and we will be down by the river this Friday at 11-1 at night. We will try to provide an interview and some footage of us.

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