Progress Report #5/CAP Hollywood Review

 

This is my CAP Hollywood movie.  It's called The Ticket.

As of Wednesday, the 29th, CAP Hollywood is officially over - and the best part is that we successfully completed our film!

It was actually exported last Friday, so we didn't work on it at all this week.  Wednesday night everyone in CAP, and most of our parents, arrived at school dressed up.  The kids all walked the red carpet and students who did CAP Hollywood last year acted as paparazzi and took our pictures.  We then all went into the auditorium where we watched all the films.  Then the nominations for the different awards were read (the awards were the typical Oscar ones - best actor/actress, best director, best editor...) and the awards were given out.  Our film didn't win anything, but we were nominated for best actor.

I think that this was a really fun and clever project.  I liked how we incorporated what we did in English to what we do in Media.  Also, I think that the time frame the we were given to do this project was perfect.  Were it any longer, no one would have felt pressure to try to get it done and so on the last day everyone would realize time is up and the videos wouldn't be good.  Were it any shorter, no one would have had time to produce a quality video.  It was very helpful that we could stay after school any day to edit, we could come in on the weekends, and we could come in before school.

My group's video, The Ticket, is at the top of this post.  It is about a boy who finds a lottery ticket and then has to decide what he should do with it.

Enjoy!

Progress Report #4

We finished our film!  We came in early, stayed late, and came in at lunch.  We had some crises along the way:  Clips getting overlapped,  music not rendering, random black frames, realizing we didn't get every shot we needed so trying to work around that....  We did, however, fix all of those problems to make what I think is a really great short film.  It is definitely not the best one out of all of my peers' but I think we did really well considering the prior editing and film experience the members of my group had (none before this year).

This week I came into school early to edit all the days our editing sweet was available.  I also came in at lunch a few days during the week to edit.

CAP Hollywood is Wednesday night and I'm really excited to watch the other groups' films.  I should have our up on my blog next week.

Progress Report #3

Our film is still progressing at a steady pace; however if we want to have a quality film by THIS FRIDAY (which came a whole lot faster than I thought it would) we really have to buckle down and work.  We have a solid rough cut but we need to add more cutaways and shots that clarify what is going on.  Also, we need to do a voice over of lottery numbers being read and we need to pan the audio.

This week I was responsible for making a group's movie poster which I think turned out pretty good.  I also did some editing.

This week we need to finish our film!  Each person in our group is choosing a day or two to come in and do some extra editing.  I am planning on adding and perfecting the extra cutaways.  I am also planning on making the transitions smooth.

I should have our final film up on my blog at the end of this week or the week afterwords.

 This is a picture of some members of my group and I filming our video.

Progress Report #2

On Monday of last week we finished watching all our clips (which there are a lot of but we forgot to get some shots...oops) and we sorted them into folders to make it easier on ourselves when we are editing.  We also got a rough cut of the first half of the film.  Currently, we have some random piece of music in our film that we are probably going to switch out... who knows though.

A challenge that we faced this week is that some shots we just didn't get, but its easy to work around those so that's okay.  The real challenge that we've faced during editing is making sure there is continuity.  Some of the shots we have our actor facing one way and then all of the sudden he is facing the other, or his hand is in one spot and then we switch to a close-up and it is in another.  These shots are hard to work around.  We are cutting as close as possible to make it look like everything is continuous but sometimes I feel like it is kind of obvious that their is not great continuity.

Again, like last week, we didn't each have a specific job.  We switch around and take turns doing the editing and such.  I sorted our clips into different folders and did some of the editing.  I also chose and imported the music, but, like I said before, we are probably going to end up switching songs because ours doesn't fit as well as I originally thought it would.

At the end of this week, my goal for our group is to have a rough cut of the entire film.  I think that we can definitely get that done.  We only have one day of class this week because of AP tests but we will now be able to start staying after school to work on the film.

CAP Hollywood Progress Report #1

So turns out our first progress report was supposed to be done this weekend, not last weekend, so I turned last week's post into a pre-progress report and this week's post into the first real progress report.

This week we got all our filming done.  I was a it concerned about how the filming would go, but it went great!  Tuesday, the first day we filmed, was a dreary day so not too many people were at the gelato place where we filmed, which made filming a whole lot easier.  Also, the guy working there was super nice and really into our film.  Wednesday was a really nice day, but luckily we were pretty much filming outside the gelato store so it didn't matter that it was crowded.

On Thursday we started watching all of our footage and there is so much.  Its kind of overwhelming.  We've been deleting the ones that obviously won't work as we go through but there is still a lot.  Hopefully what we end up with in the end is good.

This week I went to the gelato place to make sure that they were okay with us filming there.  I also filmed with my group on Tuesday and Wednesday (my technical role is director but I did some of the filming as well and other people in my group did some of the directing).  Additionally, I helped my group go through our footage.  There wasn't really any individuals doing one task, so far all the work has been pretty evenly split.

By the end of our next class (Monday) I hope that our group will have finished watching all the of the footage.  By the end of the week I am hoping that we will have each of the clips in a very basic line-up so we can see the order of them and establish what we have.

CAP Hollywood Pre-Progress Report

Our latest CAP project is titled CAP Hollywood.  In English we wrote short stories, then we got into groups and are turning those short stories into short films.

The story my group is doing is the classic "Someone finds a lottery ticket, what do they do with it?" story.

So far my group (Katherine, Jacob, and Ross) has done a lot of pre-production planning.  We have a script, actors, costumes, props and so on.  Yesterday, I went to a gelato store near our school to ask if we could film there in this up coming week.  The lady I talked to said yes, so that is really good news.

We are going to try to get all of our filming done on Tuesday and Wednesday so we can maximize our editing time.  The films are being shown May 29.

I'll post another progress report next week!

 

Image Source: Lottery Tickets

My Feelings About the Spring School Season

Sometimes school sucks.  Not always though.  I like seeing my friends and being around people and even learning on a daily basis.  This post will talk about some negative and positive feelings I have about school.

1.)  Negative - This is probably the only time of year I would write a statement like this and that is because right now the stress level related to school is really high.  Teachers keep piling assignments on us.  In one class I have three long-term assignments and in another I have four.  APs are coming up and exams are starting to creep into the forefront of my mind. 

2.) Positive - Like I said earlier, all my friends are at school.  There are some people that you see in an out-of-school context but there are others whom you only really see at school.  Its nice to just hang-out with your friends and have social interactions.

3.) Negative - I ask a lot of questions and I'll admit sometimes they may not be the best questions.  But sometimes I think they are pretty good questions.  Frequently I'll ask a question during class to help clarify.  I rarely ever get an answer.  Instead I get a dirty look from the teacher because either they don't know the answer or they don't understand my question or the teacher gets angry and repeats what they just said - not answering the question.  (This happens when I ask both good and bad questions).

4.) Positive - Learning can be fun.  School gives me something to do with my time and it teaches me things.  School is a privilege and an opportunity, so why not take advantage of it?

Now you have read some of my thoughts on school.  Maybe you agree or maybe you don't... I have included a picture of a school to compliment my post. 

 

 Image Source: School House

I'm Back

I haven't blogged in awhile because of spring break (which was fantastic) but, quite unfortunately, break is over... so I'm back to the blogging.

Over break, one of the books I read was The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin.  This book is about Rubin spending a year working on her happiness.

Rubin is married and has two children and had a happy life.  One day, however, she decided to spend a year devoted to her happiness.  Each month focused on a different element of her happiness and had different resolutions.  For example, in January Rubin wanted to focus on her energy level.  She found ways to include more exercise into her day and go to bed earlier.  One month, Rubin started a blog, also called The Happiness Project.  I liked this book, and if I were older, I would have probably have been inspired to start my own.

I also saw a French Canadian movie over break called Starbuck.  I really liked this movie.  It had lots of really great lines and really memorable characters.  The one thing about the movie that kind of bothered me were that the subtitles are in white and sometimes they were hard to read because there would be an off-white background underneath them.  That is just a minor thing though.

Anyways, I recommend both The Happiness Project and Starbuck, so go to your library or the movie theater/video store.

Why I Am Fed-Up With School Computers

So I know that last week I said I would be posting my documentary on my blog but when we were trying to export it the computer freaked out.

This wasn't the first time that I have had problems with a school computer while working on my documentary project, or any project at all for that matter.  While some of these problems may have been my fault/someone in my group's fault, some of them were also computer malfunctions.

Problems I have had that have not really hurt me include the computer just not logging me in, the computer taking a solid 20 minutes to log me in, the computer not logging me out, or the computer taking at least 10 minutes to do absolutely anything (open a document, go to the internet, go to a given website...)

Other problems that I have had have more affected my work.  During the documentary project, our project got saved to some random folder and it took us an hour to find it (this problem was probably self induced.)  Also, during the documentary project, we would try to render what we had made so far and it would take anywhere from 45 minutes to and hour.  Another time, I clicked on a document to open it and then all of the sudden the most high pitched, obnoxious beeping anyone could possibly imagine started happening.  We finally got it to stop by unplugging the computer - which obviously made us lose the most recent work we had done.

The most recent experience I had - which is why I am not posting my documentary on my blog this week - is that my group mate went in at lunch to export our documentary.  The computer said it would take an hour, so she left and went to class.  The next day, I went in at lunch to try to upload it to my blog and my group mate was still logged into the computer and there was a message up saying the export had failed.  Not only was this extremely frustrating, but I had to make sure that the documentary was not altered in anyway.  I know that maybe had she stayed something could have been done - but everyone in our group had class.

This entire experience has been very frustrating, but for some reason I am still looking forward to our next video project.  I will probably begin posting about it soon so...

 

This is a picture of a Final Cut Pro screen - the program we use to edit our videos

Image Source: Final Cut

A Not So Short Reflection on My Documentary

           This post is a reflection on the documentary making process.  We will have ours finished and exported by Thursday, so expect to see it on my blog next week!  If you click on the documentary project label that I put with this post, you can see all the other posts I have done on it.

            My group filmed a documentary about the closed lunch policy at Blair.  Blair has always had a closed-campus, meaning students are not allowed to leave campus during the school day.  Recently the school engaged the support of the restaurants near Blair to enforce this policy.  Now the restaurants will not serve Blair students during the school day.

            We interviewed the principal and the head security guard at Blair, as well as students.  Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to interview many of the managers of the restaurants in the nearby Woodmoor shopping center.  We did interview an employee at Santucci’s Italian Deli, however he did not want to go on camera; and we did not have time to interview employees at the other stores.  Our documentary would be stronger and more complete if we had been able to include the stores’ perspectives.

            From making this documentary I learned how much pre-production planning really needs to be done.  Before making the documentary I did not have any idea about what to expect.  We knew what our topic was and who we wanted to interview, but we had no idea about what direction to go in.  While we were planning what to ask in our interviews we did not consider how the questions would play into our documentary.  While we were editing, we still had no clear idea of what we were doing.  I think that we would have had a much easier time had we dedicated ourselves to more planning.

            I also learned the importance of selecting a topic, as well as group members.  I was not particularly interested in the topic of closed lunch and I feel as if the topic was a challenging one for first time documentary makers to take on.  In relation to group members, I learned that sometimes it is not necessarily easy to work with your friends.  While in the end we did complete our documentary, at times we got distracted.  Not only that, but the work load was not evenly distributed.  It would have been more advantageous to me to choose a group that would have worked well together to complete the project.  If I were to do this project again, I would have chosen a topic that more so captured my interest.

            Aside from our lack of planning, general confusion, and various computer malfunctions throughout the project, we only really had one major problem.  We planned to test the enforcement of Blair’s closed lunch policy and film it for our documentary.  We had approval from our principal and our parents.  The plan was to go to one of the local restaurants for lunch, filming ourselves through the process of leaving campus and either being served food or denied service.  Our teacher was going to accompany us.  Unfortunately, the assistant principal did not allow us to do this.  We instead filmed ourselves pretending to leave campus.  It would have been more interesting had we actually been able to test the policy.

            All in all, I think our teacher did a good job of helping to guide us through this project.  There are, however, a few things that could be done differently next year.  In pre-production it may be helpful to have each group submit a script of what they anticipate their documentary to look like and then submit a revised or updated script during the production phase.  Also, during the production phase it may be helpful to establish stricter checkpoint deadlines for the students, for example, music by X date and a rough cut by Y date, and to be more readily available after school if the students need to borrow a camera.  I liked that there was time for research in class and that checkpoints were given to us with the research (three note cards by Monday, for example).  During the production phase, I appreciated the feedback we received on our documentary, including the advice on things like what shots to keep or not keep and where we should put different pieces of b-roll.  I also appreciate that we are allowed to continue working on our documentaries on our own time for an extra week.  It is really helpful to make up for time lost because of technical difficulties and such.

            All things considered, I think this project was a good experience.  It taught me the importance of planning and making sure everyone is dedicated to the project.  Even though the topic of our documentary was not my first choice, I still enjoyed learning about something in my school and hearing different people’s opinions.

Saying Goodbye To The Ombudsman

 

This is Patrick Pexton (Sorry if this doesn't show up very well/at all on my blog)

Earlier this morning I read Patrick Pexton's final ombudsman column in The Washington Post.  He has been working there as ombudsman for around two years.

For those who you who don't know, the ombudsman is the  person who works for a newspaper that communicates with the readers and responds to their questions/complaints in a weekly column.

Pexton is leaving The Post because they no longer have the money to keep an ombudsman - so with the leaving of Pexton is the leaving of the ombudsman column at The Post.

Pexton's salary was that of a senior editor - so a good chunk of money a year - but with the rising popularity of the internet and new technologies and the decline of people actually reading newspapers, it is harder to keep funds coming in.

The ombudsman is special to the readers as well.  The ombudsman helps the readers get their voices heard.  They respond to readers' concerns.  They talk about different moral issues from the newspaper's point of view and can explain certain decisions the newspaper has made.

As a side note, that is sort of still on topic: Earlier this year, Patrick Pexton came and talked to the CAP Program that I am in about his position.

Click here to read a short description of Pexton and his ombudsman position.  It also has links to his articles underneath.
Click here to read the some of the reasons why The Post ended their ombudsman column.
Click here to read Pexton's final ombudsman column.

Image Source: Patrick Pexton

The Oscars

Tonight (Sunday, February 24, 2013) are the 85th Academy Awards (a.k.a. the Oscars)!  I'm really excited!

Here is a link to the Oscar website which tells all the nominees, a little bit about the movie, and a trailer for it.

I though I might try to explain the voting system for the Academy Awards.  Members of the Academy are the ones who vote (pretty much everyone who is part of a movie is a member of the Academy - except for extras).  The members are given a list of all the nominees in each category and then they rate the movies/actors/directors/things in the other categories in the order of preference (favorite to least favorite).  Let's say that the votes for Best Picture are being counted:  all the number 1 votes are distributed to their respective movie.  Then, the votes from the number 1 movie with the least votes are redistributed to the movie that the voter put as their number 2.  This continues with number 3, 4, 5 and so on until there are only the top two movies left.  Whichever has more votes wins.  The Washington Post made a really good sample of this where it takes you through the process with your votes.  Here is the link.

There may also be some potential firsts in tonight's Oscars.  At nine years old, if Quvenzhané Wallis wins Best Actress, she will be the youngest person ever to win an Oscar.  At 86 years old, if Emmanuelle Riva wins Best Actress, she will be the oldest person ever to win an Oscar.  

The video below is called Paperman.  It is nominated for Best Short Film - Animated.  It is made by John Kahrs.

 

Cabin In The Woods Horror Story

*Warning: If you do not like horror stories in the slightest, stop reading now!*

The other day I heard a horror story that I found rather weird and rather horrifying (probably the point of it being called a "horror story").  Anyways, I thought I would share it on my blog as my weekly post.  Sorry if this is not as scary as you are hoping - I'm horrible around scary stories so this one is super terrifying to me.

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Cabin in the Woods

One day, four friends and their dog decided they would go up to a cabin that one of them owned in the woods.  The friends really like going up to the cabin and they go around once or twice a month.

They stopped at a gas station on their way up to grab a few snacks.  When they were paying the cashier struck up a conversation.

"Where are you girls off to?" he asked.
"Just up to the woods.  I have a cabin up there," answered one of the friends.
"You better be careful," he warned, "A guy recently escaped from an insane asylum and is said to be hiding out up there."

The girls laughed, thinking that the cashier was just messing with them - trying to have some fun by scaring four young girls.

They went up to the cabin and went to bed.  The next day it was beautiful out and they spent the day hiking and swimming in a nearby lake.  That night, they each retired to their bedrooms and fell asleep easily, worn out by the day's adventures.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!"

The friend in the far bedroom woke to the most horrifying shriek she had ever heard.  She thought it was just a dream, but then she heard

thump, thump, drag.  thump, thump drag. Then a moment of silence, and another scream.

Now she was getting nervous.  She heard the sounds again.

thump, thump, drag.  thump, thump drag.  And a scream.

She was really scared now.  If there was someone in the house, the only person left to scream was her.

She heard the sounds.

thump, thump, drag.  thump, thump drag.

She put her hand down next the bed to pet her dog to give her courage.  She petted his matted head, got out of bed, ran to the window, jumped out, and ran screaming.

The next day, she arrived back at the gas station and told the cashier what had happened.  They called the police who went up to the cabin and found her three friends and her dog all dead.  They also found the man who had escaped from the insane asylum.

He had no legs.  The thump, thump was him putting his arms on the ground and the drag was him pulling his body along.  The surviving girl never pet her dog.  She pet the man on his head.

The End.
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I hope you enjoyed/are scared by this horror story.  Here is a picture of a cabin the woods so you can get some sense of where these girls are supposed to be.

 

Image Source: Cabin in the woods

Gross Feet!

 

Last week CAP hosted around 14 foreign exchange students from England.  During their stay we were assigned a project where we had to make a 60 second film in the one week.  The catch is that we had to use a random prop.  Ours were these huge, gross, disgusting feet. 

When we first saw the prop we got we were all freaked out.  If the feet look horrible in the film, they looked even worse in real life.  Then, we had to start brainstorming for out video.  It took awhile, but eventually we all agreed on an idea.

The premise is that there is a new girl who has normal feet and everyone else has the weird feet.  The new girl thinks that her new class is strange and they think that she is strange.

From this project I learned how to crop the screen on final cut pro.  I didn't know how to do that before and I think it is a good skill to know.  I also learned how important it is to plan your script in advance (ours didn't have the greatest detail which made filming difficult) and how important it is to take multiple shots (we had to go back and redo one or two shots and some we didn't have time to redo so we just made the best with what we had).

I thought this project was pretty fun and I also liked how it was different from everything else we've done.  Originally I thought we would not finish, but we did, and I am happy with the results.

A list of our shots:

-Setting the scene that this is a classroom.  We are trying to make everything seem normal.

-The new girl comes in and seems a little bothered.

-The class sees the new girl and seems bothered/grossed out.  Sorry that the camera is a little shaky.

-Close-up of the new girl's face.  She is really freaked out now.

-Shots of the gross feet.

-Girl's face being freaked out.

-More feet.

-The new girl's "normal" feet.

-The class being freaked out about the girl.

-The teacher introducing the new girl.

-The teacher's weird feet and then the new girl's "normal" feet.

-A student asking the new girl what is wrong with her feet.

-The new girl being totally freaked out.

A Fascinating Post on Asbestos

Today is kind of a dismal day.  There was snow on the grass this morning but its all melted now.  The sky is gray.  Its cold out and the minor flurries are just making everything wet.  The reason I am telling you this is because the dismalness (sorry - not a real word) is making it hard for my brain to think of an excellent and entertaining topic for a post. So unluckily for you, I am going to write about something that will most likely be quite dull.

The topic of this week's post is asbestos (it took me a while to figure out how to spell that.  Sorry if it still isn't right)!

I got the idea for this post because we are getting our kitchen done and our tiles tested positive for asbestos so now we have to find someone to remove them properly.

So for those who don't know what asbestos is in simple terms it is pretty much this stuff they used to put in tiles to prevent them from catching fire.  According to the EPA, asbestos is "a mineral fiber that occurs in rock and soil.  Because of its fiber strength and heat resistance asbestos has been used in a variety of building construction materials for insulation and as a fire retardant..." and then it goes on to say more stuff.  If you really care about what the EPA says about asbestos, click here.

Unfortunately,  you can't tell if something has asbestos or not just by looking, it has to be tested.

Asbestos is really bad for you, but if it is in your tiles or anything it will only hurt you if it is disturbed, like if the tiles are ripped up or cracked.  If you breath in asbestos, you can get lung disease.  If you want to know more about breathing in asbestos, click here. If it is undisturbed, nothing will happen.

Asbestos tiles and such can be removed, but probably best way to deal with them are just to cover them up with other non-asbestos tiles.

 So now you may be wondering "Well, if you have asbestos tiles in your kitchen, why are you not just covering them up?" and the answer for that is, I'm not really sure.  It has something to do with the floor being too high already and if they add another layer of floor its just going to get higher (I guess I do kinda know the answer).

Hopefully, you are still here.  If you're reading this, I assume you are.  I guess that wasn't actually that bad.  I thought it would be worse, so you got lucky!  I'll try to write about something more entertaining next week.  If you have any recommendations...

 

Apparently these tiles have asbestos in them.

Image Source: Asbestos Tiles

Works Cited

"Asbestos Health Effects." Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry. Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2013. <http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/asbestos/asbestos/health_effects/>.

"Learn About Asbestos." United States Environmental Protection Agency. United States Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 3 Feb. 2013. <http://www.epa.gov/asbestos/learn-about-asbestos.html#asbestos>.

Living in DC

Our newest independent video assignment was to create a video between 60 and 90 seconds that shows what it is like to live in this area.  We also had to make sure that there is background noise, like people talking.

On Sunday, January 20, the day before the inauguration, my family and I went into DC for the day.  Even though I don't exactly live in DC I thought it would be pretty cool to film this assignment there.

The day we went had perfect weather.  It was sunny and around 60 degrees.  I tried to capture some of the pre-inauguration excitement.  There were all sorts of people walking around, talking about their plans for the next day and everyone was really friendly - and they were all there for the same reason which sort of created a kind of invisible bond between everyone.

Anyways, I edited this video on wevideo.com which has pretty good editing for a free online site.  I turned down the sound from the clips I filmed because you could hear the wind and such, but no worries Mr. Mayo, you can still hear people talking.  I also decided to add some music which I got directly off of wevideo.  They provide it for their users to use in their videos.  And the music I added doesn't even drown out the sound of people talking!

I hope you like my video (as always, its a bit jumpy and stuff - I haven't quite figured out all that stylistic stuff yet.)

*The first person you can hear singing is James Taylor practicing.  During the merry-go-round scene you can also hear a recording of Bruce Springsteen that was playing through the jumbotrons. 

Challenges of Making a Documentary

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on how we are making a documentary for our media class.

Well, at first I thought this would be really easy - an interview with our principal on she choose for our school to have a closed lunch, what some students think, and some interviews with the stores that agreed not to sell food to students during school hours.  Throw in some B-Roll (secondary footage) of kids eating lunch and the Woodmoor area (the place near our school with all of the restaurants), and, wa-la! we would have an A+ op-doc.

Unfortunately, this is not the case (as you've probably already figured out).  We were on a roll when we got our interview with the principal talking about the policy and her decision (and she agreed to a really good idea we had which I'll come back to later) and the head security guard who came up with the idea of not having businesses sell to students during the school day.  We even got some really good interviews with students.  Things started going downhill for us when our idea (which I mentioned before) didn't work out.  Our idea was to try to leave campus and see if the security guards stopped us and then continue on to Woodmoor to see if the businesses really didn't serve us food.  Our principle said that our idea was great, as long as our teacher came with us (which he agreed to) and we had parental permission (which we did).  On the day we planned to execute our plan, we found out that our vice principal had said no to the idea.  Not only were we disappointed because we wouldn't be going out for lunch, but that was going to be a major part of our documentary.  Then, later that day when we tried to interview the business owners and managers after school, they wouldn't agree to go on camera and we were not allowed to film in the stores.  I get that they want to keep their privacy but those were all going to be important parts of our video.

We are currently making a new plan for our video (we did write down the interviews with the managers) so we can just do voice overs of those but our documentary won't be all that we hoped it to be (I hope this isn't a regular occurrence in film/documentary making).  I think we'll be able to pull it all together and still have a great documentary though!

I think we're going to be done sometime in February so I'll be sure to post it on my blog then!

This is the Woodmoor shopping center near our school.  They have a Starbucks, Chipotle, Subway, a delicious deli, a bakery, and a bunch of other restaurants.

Image Source:  Woodmoor Shopping Center

Change Project

This year, we have a year long project called the change project.  I guess it technically started in the summer when we had to write a proposition for what we wanted to do for it.

Basically, this project requires us to find a way to instill change in our community.  I originally was hoping to do something relating to healthy eating and nutrition but my group (if you look on the right side of my blog there is something that says "Change Project."  If you click on one of those tabs you can go to my group members' blogs) and I instead decided to try to do something relating to books and a library.

We decided that since we obviously are not able to build a library we should expand one.  We contacted Children's Hospital in DC and they agreed to work with us.  Them agreeing was really exciting because it was the first major step in our project that was completed.

The hospital can only take new books though, so instead of doing a used books drive as well as purchasing new books we had to find a way to raise enough money to purchase enough books to actually make a difference in their library.

We had a bake sale at an event at our school one night, and although there was another group there having a bake sale as well we still managed to make a ton of money.  After asking for donations we got even more.

Then, we got really lucky when we contacted Scholastic Books, a book program that we have become familiar with throughout our time in school.  Anyways, with Scholastic we found a really amazing deal where we can get 50 books for $50.  With the amount of money we have raised there is going to be a huge difference in the hospital's library.

So the reason I finally thought to do a post on our Change Project is because we plan on ordering the books sometime this week.  Hopefully it all works out! 

 

This is just a picture of a library in general, not the one we are donating to.

Image Source:  Children's Section