Altruism Through Music: Our Own Project
For the Generosity Project, we worked with a partner to design a project that would increase our personal generosity, and/or the generosity of our community. My partner Fatuma Fadhil and I designed a week-long ukulele after-school program where we taught students at Explorer Explorer Elementary how to play the ukulele, aiming to improve our own generosity and make an impact on the kids there. During school, Fatuma and I practiced different songs, I played the piano, and she played the ukulele. We performed those songs at Liberty Station to raise money for the charity Malaria No More. To find out more about our project, check out our blog at http://altruismthroughmusic.weebly.com.
Altruism Through Music - Photojournalistic Essay
The Life of a Puppy
The life of a dog can be quite exciting, especially a puppy. This story shows what my dog Luna, goes through throughout a day. Luna is very willful, and sort of stubborn, so each day is quite interesting with her. She's an 11 month female doberman and is very smart, but she gets bored often and gets herself into trouble.
|
|
Night Light Photojournalism
Cleaning up the Bay Photos
This is the raw photo I chose. The reason I chose it was because I really liked the lighting. Typically, back lighting isn't used very often in photography because the subject is often dark, and this creates an effect that isn't usually desired. However, I really liked the effect back lighting had on this photo. The back of this photo is overexposed, which creates a "depth of field" look that's almost impossible to create with an iPhone.
|
This is my edited photo. I didn't do anything too extreme, but I did boost the contrast and saturation up so that the grass is more green. I also raised the overall brightness because the shadow on the mushrooms was a little too strong. I cropped it a little because I didn't like how the sidewalk was showing in the original photo. By raising the exposure, the rim light effect that back lighting often causes is accented, another thing I like in this photo.
|
This is the final, edited photo! The photo is supposed to invoke the feeling of a bright, sunny day. When we first walked out to the bay, it was unusually warm for February, and very bright and sunny. I immediately felt a warmth and contentedness as we walked around the beautiful park. The reason I included the grass in the photo, is because it shows how sunny the day was. The sunlight seems to bounce from one piece of grass to the other, and I really like the bright background.
February 6th. The Ronald McDonald House + Physics
So far, I'm unsure where this project is going. Similar to the last project, it seems like we're making many things that aren't related. This week, we've done mini-assignments at our table, usually relating to altruism, and most recently: economics. It isn't my preferred way of learning, but I enjoyed making a poster about a topic and presenting it. I learned quite a lot about economics and altruistic behavior in humans.
The highlight of this week was going to the Ronald McDonald House. I haven't volunteered at many places, and this was a great opportunity to help others. We made cookies and brownies for people whose kids' are sick in hospitals. The Ronald McDonald feeds those families for zero cost, and it felt great to contribute to such a wonderful cause. One thing that I dislike about this project is that we haven't learned much physics yet. The integration in the last project was flawed in my opinion, because the project was largely humanities based. We learned very little physics, and the physics aspect of the project seemed poorly planned. I like humanities, but I would really like to learn physics, because so far we've only watched movies on altruism which doesn't have to do with physics or engineering. However, it's only the first week of the project, and I'm excited to see it unfold. |