Extra-credit Project: Nutrition

Important note. You should do this project in teams, and teams that you get to choose. So, create teams of four members each, as long as they’re prepared to really participate. Hint: don’t invite teammates who won’t help you! Make sure that each presentation answers–in words and pictures–the eight questions below. The key purpose of this project is to learn about good nutrition while earning up to 100 bonus points in all categories.

This is a quick-research, share-information  project. Let’s say that your department manager asked you to do a quick presentation on diet and nutrition because she thought the department looked tired and worn out and could use a lesson in eating well.

Here are the questions to feature in your PowerPoint presentation:

• Are donuts, cookies, muffins, (e.g. Krispy Kreme) good or bad for you? Why or why not?
• If there are healthy and unhealthy muffins, what makes a muffin healthy?
• What is the dirty little secret about fast food?
• Why is Subway considered to be healthier? Is it true?
• How do you eat to have sustained energy?
• Name the top-ten healthiest foods.
• Design a healthy (but tasty) menu for one day. This includes breakfast, morning snack, lunch, after-school/work snack, and dinner.
• Some people don’t like to eat much in the morning. Is this good or bad? What is a good light breakfast? If you eat a large breakfast, how do you make it healthy and long-lasting energy-wise?

Don’t forget that pictures and graphs are the heart and soul of a good presentation, but don’t hesitate to put key points (bullet points) in easy-to-read titles and lists.

Have fun learning how to eat well and be healthy. Due on May 26th and shared after the Memorial Day 4-day weekend.

Nailing Down the Popular Culture Project Due Dates

• The magazine article’s due date has been set at Friday, April 22th, and the article’s required length has been changed to 3,000 words.
• I’m changing the poster turn-in to Friday, April 15th. Any team that turns all of them in early — with good creative design and content — will receive higher work ethic and collaboration points.
• The Popular Culture presentations are scheduled for the week of May 2nd. Any time a team is ready to present, they can do so for extra credit — if they’re really ready!!
• I’ve given 100 bonus points for being professional and living up to our New Tech expectations, following our BEST behavior guidelines. BUT…if you don’t want those points, act unprofessionally. I’ll be glad to remove 50 points for each wrong choice. Be professional and win…
• We’re giving you Catch-up Fridays every day there is an Advisory to do Spatial Studies work. Do that and catch up with your work! Don’t do work for other classes without direct permission from me or Mr. Paisley. This is a gift, this catch-up time: use it wisely.
• Your Adrive.com back-up system, with all your files backed up, is due Monday, April 4th. If you showed me today that you’re already done, you got 50 bonus points added to your BEST Achievement grade. I’m going to ask you to show me on April 4th on the work stations.

That’s all I can think of for now. Any questions? Just ask.

Focal Points of Popular Culture

Here are some ideas (yes, I expect you to add this kind of content to your articles and presentations) to consider about popular culture (and youth culture):

Who is this “It” girl, and what decade is she from?

 

Our American society has had many icons of popular culture, usually from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and fashion. In fact each of our categories have one or more persons that epitomize our culture at the time. An “It” girl is one such icon.

Can you name an “It” girl for each decade from the 1890s until now?

Who is this “leading man,” and in which decade was he most popular?

 

Leading men, or the man with the lead role in a movie or play, have been icons of entertainment and style. They epitomize (are the leading symbols of) the decade in which they were popular.

Everyone has their favorite, and each decade has produced a movie star that wins over the public’s heart.

When was this man the greatest in baseball?

 

Some athletes are so admired that they become symbols of their age. Many Americans remember the sports stars of their youth and compare all that come after with their heroes from childhood.

There are always several sports heroes in each decade.

Who is this person, and how did he change the world — and in which decade(s)?

 

Some people change their culture just by having good ideas or knowing how to sell them. Some things just make life easier. Other things change the way we live.

The inventions through the decades have greatly affected popular culture. Youth culture thrives on new technology.

Mary Quant was famous for something. What was it, and when was it?

 

Very few people would remember that the woman above is Mary Quant. Many would remember her name is associated with a very important contribution to fashion.

Who are other people who influenced fashion? What are other styles from different decades called?

When was this sheet music the only way to play the song?

 

Decades ago, composers made their money by selling sheet music (hint: there weren’t even records yet). The composer Scott Joplin was also a great pianist. When was he “all the rage?”

Who are other composers and performers who shaped their time?

This was the “war to end all wars,” said Woodrow Wilson. Turns out it wasn’t.

 

This war, the “war to end all wars,” led to a time of the “lost generation.” Sometimes history influences the art — and mood — of the people who live through it.

What other historical events have played an important role in how we feel about our lives?

Once it gets dark, it’s showtime!

 

Here’s a leisure activity of an era gone by. Can you guess? Would your parents remember? Your grandparents? Would Mr. Ross? (Oh, no!!)

Hint: It was really fun. And guess what? The last one in the Napa Valley was in American Canyon — long since torn down.

Here’s an example of leisure, food, fashion, and a decade (or two) gone by.

 

This is WAY before Taco Bell, or Ben & Jerry’s for that matter. But here’s some snack food (and date food) from a by-gone era.

What are the great snacks throughout the decades?

Bonus: What’s his hairstyle called? What kind of sweater is he wearing? What kind of food place are they sitting in? Where did this couple just come from?

Every decade a book summarizes the popular culture. This one was right on target for _____.

 

This might not be “your cup of tea,” but it really showed a time of great innocence. Booth Tarkington was also famous for another novel that Orson Welles turned into a famous movie. Can you name it and the decade it came from? What was the decade in which Seventeen took place?

The artist who painted this (or did the silk screen) really represents his decade.

 

Art varies from decade to decade, but usually one style follows another in an evolutionary fashion. Sometimes art makes great leaps forward and becomes a huge piece of popular culture. The artist who created the multiple portraits above was one such artist. Picasso is another. Jackson Pollack was another. When did they produce their art? Who is the iconic actress in the portrait above?

Cars can be as emblematic of a decade as people can. 

For many people the first car they ever had is a big symbol of their youth, especially of their first taste of freedom! In my case, it was a Rambler Cross Country Classic station wagon, which is about as nerdy a car as you can get. Fortunately, it was so nerdy that I was a bit of a folk hero with my college friends. Styles can be that way. What was the coolest car of the 50′s? What was the first car most people could afford?

The Charleston was pretty wild!

 

Dance — which can be part of art, entertainment, or leisure — has styles that come and go. The dance above was hugely popular in the 20′s. No wonder they called it the Roaring 20′s.

The very popular magazine with a cover featuring what has become known as the Greatest Generation.

 

Magazines come and go. Life is still occasionally on the news stands, but back in its hay day (most popular time), it was second to none. What war was featured on this cover?

Late Work Turn-In

The Popular Culture project is so big and important that I expect you to dedicate all of your class time to it. Therefore, you need to do catch-up work at home, at lunch, or after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Also, I will not answer any questions about how to do the actual work. You had plenty of time to do it and can get any answers you need from the blog or your teammates.

Here is how to turn in the late work:

1. Online portfolio: Read the blog, do it right!!, place it on Google Sites according to directions, and then email me. If you improve your site, email me and I will update your grade. Remember: Your portfolio needs a home page, a sub-page for each course and at least two projects with descriptions and attached files or placed work for each project or assignment. Put it in “spatial studies” category and make it public to the world.
2. FLW bid report: Print it, put it in the report binder and submit it. You need a cover page with your company name and team names. I will help you print your windows in color. Everything else you do yourselves.
3. FLW individual windows: Submit 5 PDFs and 5 JPEGs to echo and then email me. I will not grade any late work in echo without this email.
4. FLW tools and equipment sheet: print and turn in to me. This is one per team.
5. Sketchup Nets and Prisms, I will look at on your computer. Let me know so I can check them.
6. Cost and Price spreadsheets for the Prisms project: Print, staple, put team names on a cover page, and hand in to me. This is a team assignment.

That’s all I can think of now.

Popular Culture and Youth Culture through the Decades and Generations

The “Product:” one 2000-word article (Publisher or Word) and one PowerPoint Presentation /w video, audio, and any props you want. I anticipate presentations to begin in late May. The articles also will be due at the same time.

There is also a graphics piece to this project. Each group will make an 8.5×11 poster for each decade of popular culture (with youth culture blended in). We’ll do the image work posters in Photoshop, and so we’ll turn the posters in as JPEGs. We’ll print the results and redecorate our windows with the art.

You’ll produce a total of 12 posters, one for each decade. You can’t put everything about the decade’s popular culture on one poster, but you can capture the spirit and show the highlights of a decade pretty well, using words, phrases, and pictures in a collage-style work of graphic art.

Please take care to use your artistic sense to have balance, contrast, clarity and excitement to your posters. Make it so people get a good sense of your message from 6 feet away.

I want us to learn about the history of Popular Culture. Most of the time history teaches about dates when stuff happened, like wars and revolutions and when man first walked on the moon. That’s important stuff, don’t get me wrong. I live in Sonoma, and I like the fact that it was the first capital of California because of the Bear Flag Revolt in June of 1846. Of course, it lost out to Monterey, which became the capital in July of the same year. Oh, well.

But there’s another kind of history, and that’s about culture. Culture is “all the knowledge and values shared by a society.” A society is “an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and economic organization.” Mostly we think of society as being all the people of a country–American society–but it can be a smaller group like “San Francisco society”or “hip-hop culture” or “gang culture” or even “police culture.” Every group and subgroup can have its own culture.

Sometimes what goes on in a country is more interesting on the “street level,” such as “what kids are doing these days.” What music influences them, what movies do they like, what art do they enjoy, what books do they read? How do they like to spend their time? What do they like to eat?

Each team will research, examine, and learn about culture through the decades and generations. I want us to divide this culture into the adult or grown-up culture, that is “what people did” during their lifetimes. We’ll call that “popular culture.” Then I’d like us to look at their time as kids or teenagers, what we call “youth culture.” Youth culture is described as “young adults (a generational unit) considered as a cultural class or subculture.”

I’d like us to research the last 120 years of popular culture. We can study by generation, but we can also study by decade, i.e. the “Roaring 20′s,” the “me decade (the 80′s),” the 1890′s (La Belle Epoque), and so on. You can do either or both to organize your presentation as you choose. I’ll give higher points for organizing your info by both decade and generation.

When you talk about the popular and youth culture of a generation or a decade, use these categories: Art, Music, Food, Fashion, Sports, Leisure, Entertainment (Theater, Radio, Movies, TV) Inventions (technology), and Literature.

A great place to start is this Wikipedia entry called Generation/List of generations/Western World. Here’s the link.

The start document with the First Steps is here.

Essential questions:

1. What is popular culture?
2. Does it have a history?
3. Why does popular culture change?
4. What is more important, “real” history, political history, economic history, or popular culture history? Why is one more important than another?
5. How are they connected? What influences popular culture and how it develops?
6. Let’s understand youth culture through the generations and decades in the same way.

We can write our article (2000 words) in any program you want, although I recommend Microsoft Publisher so you can learn how to use it, but Word is fine, too. You can create columns that look like a magazine in Word. You can create charts and graphs if necessary (this time just do them in Word or PowerPoint), and you’ll get more credit for any special features you use. The BIG PRESENTATION will be created in PowerPoint, so you can share with the class what your group has learned. And as I said, you’ll make a poster for each decade for a total of 12 posters.

We’ll do this project in design teams. Each team will be chosen by the leaders. Each team should first write a contract that commits each member to live up to their responsibility, and then sign that contract.

Our goal: To understand how popular culture is another way of finding out how people lived in different generations or eras. It’s a way to understand the human story. It also helps us develop our cultural literacy. Cultural literacy can be defined as the “knowledge of and ability to discuss the history of and major concepts underlying a culture, particularly one’s own and those of one’s peers.”

Another way of putting this is that when someone says something, you know what they’re talking about.  For example: “Someone pulled a Kanye at the Oscars last night!” If you saw the MTV Awards, you’d be culturally literate enough to understand “doing a Kanye.” Another example: “Yo, dog.” What’s that about?

Have fun, make great reports and presentations, and learn about our culture.

Work While Mr. Paisley and I Are Gone

First, go to this website to see what you need to do to set up your…

…Online Portfolio!

Next, check out echo to see what work you haven’t done and do it. You’ll have one day when Mr. Paisley and I get back from Washington DC to turn in this work or let us know that you’ve turned it in. Check the previous two posts on this blog to know how to turn late stuff in.

Of course, we’ll be here today — Tuesday, February 22nd — to walk you through this work. But the important thing is:

1. You need to create and finish your portfolio website and set up your archive file system — with backup system — to get the grade for these two projects. Your Portfolio needs a home page, a sub-page for each course and at least two projects with descriptions and attached files or placed work for each project or assignment. Put it in “spatial studies” category and make it public to the world.
2. Cooperate with your substitute teachers. We want a good report when we get back.
3. Dr. Brown, Digital Media 2 teacher across the hall is available to help you with the portfolio.
4. There will be a brand new major project to begin on February 28th when we get back, so let’s get the old work done. We may not accept late work after Feb. 28th.

Working with Glass: Phase 2.1 and 2.2, and then 3.0

Here’s where we are in our glass projects:

1. Look at the post below about the stained-glass window project to see what you need to turn in and how. I’ve made some changes: I want all your individual windows (5+5) turned in to echo from now on — if you don’t like your current grade on that. So, talk to me or email me if you’ve turned in late work and want credit for it.
2. Phase 2.1 — nets — are done in Sketchup with names like triangle 1 [firstname] [lastname] and rectangle 1 [firstname] [lastname]. Then add 2.2 — folded nets — to the same file just like I showed you.
3. Phase 3 is to make a solid version in the same file using the Push/Pull tool. Now all 3 shapes on in the same file. Phase 3 shapes represent solid prisms, and you must get ready to price their production differently.
4. Using Excel (or OpenOffice Calc), make a spreadsheet that shows the total perimeter, total surface area, and total seam length of each phase 2 shape. Then cost out the production of each prism, showing the unit cost of clear glass, copper tape, flux, and silver solder. If you multiply each prism’s dimensions times the unit cost, you’ll find your net costs. Then add in 30% gross margin for each prism. Finally, come up with a cost to the distributor of each prism.
5. Phase 3 involves a different kind of costing. So far, I haven’t been able to find a source of materials for making the solid prisms. So here’s the challenge:If you’ve made all your model prisms in Sketchup (your “C work”), I’ll give you an B if you find the perfect material for low-cost solid prisms and give you an A if you tell me the correct manufacturing method to use. Finally, I’ll give an A+ to anyone who can also find a wholesale source for the material. Happy critical thinking, and happy hunting!

Frank Lloyd Wright Turn-in Details

Procedures:

1. Turn in your individual PDFs and JPEGs to your [lastname] [firstname] folders when I open the turn-in window. Make sure they are named correctly — you know how by now — and are in the correct file format to receive top grades.
2. Your best 8 window JPEG illustrations need to be turned in to the Print FLW Windows in DigitalMediaRoss so I can print and give back for your Bid Report. You can print cover and spreadsheets separately and add to your report. Use your special cover I gave you. Think neat, clear, and professional!
3. Turn in your Tools and Equipment lists separately to me. I want this to be a printed page. You will get a separate grade reflecting your team participation on this.
4. Stained-glass window project teammate evaluations will take place this Thursday, Feb. 10. Everything is due Feb. 10!

New Glass Product Opportunity

A company you’ve done work with, Mystic Materials,  lost a group of products from their catalog because the contracting company stopped making them. Now, you’ve produced stained-glass products for them in the past and they’ve been happy with your work, so Mystic Materials decided to ask you if you could produce these products at a cost that would meet their pricing scheme.

These products are made in a very similar fashion as stained glass but are 3D rather than 2D. They’re known as prisms — which are polyhedrons with an n-sided polygonal base, a translated copy, and n faces joining corresponding sides — and Mystic has a bunch of woodblocks they can provide that are the exact dimensions of each product.

What you need to do is measure them and recreate them as hollow glass prisms held together with silver solder, very much like your stained-glass windows that use lead solder. Also, Mystic will provide you with some filler materials, such as sand and shells, beads, and other objects that add to the nature of the product.

You’ll need to create “nets” using Google Sketchup that will be the exact dimensions as the wooden block templates, only in 2D. You’ll be working in centimeters.

Steps to follow:

1. Measure the blocks.
2. Build the nets in Sketchup, using centimeters.
3. Each member of your team will do a rectangular prism and a triangular prism.
4. When the standard shapes are properly finished, each team member has a D. To move from D to C to B to A, each team member must correctly create nets for the advanced shapes.
5. At some point, we’ll need to cost out each shape to know the final cost after we add our 30% gross margin. And, at some point we’ll learn a cool trick for converting these shapes to 3D.

This is Phase 2 of the Stained-Glass Window project. As you already know, there have been some changes to the teams. The first team configuration remains for Phase 1: Finish the project together, for better or worse.

Phase 3 will be introduced in about a week. Enjoy learning more about Google Sketchup, our CAD program.

Update. You will need to calculate the perimeter of all shapes in each net to determine how much copper tape you need to purchase for each prism. Also, the total surface area must be determined to find out how much clear glass you need to buy for each prism (and then total for total glass purchase–use Excel??). This is a team activity. Later, after Phase 2.1 — coming soon this week — you’ll be able to calculate the total seams to determine how much silver solder you’ll need for each prism (and then figure out total amount–again, Excel?). Mr. Paisley will help with calculations, and I’ll give you tips for using Sketchup to speed up your calculation.s

Stained-Glass Window Opportunity

You are a stained-glass window artist — trust me, you are — and you and your partners own a little business in Napa. The other day a woman, Bettina Richardson, came into your shop and said that her company is building an upscale housing development out Hagen Rd. toward the old Napa Valley Country Club.

She said the contractor, Better Homes, is building the houses, but her company, Richardson Design, has been hired to provide the kitchen and bathroom design, as well as some specialty windows, which include both skylights and a number of stained-glass windows. The stained-glass windows are meant to copy — directly or indirectly — the style of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famed Midwestern architect. Though he was famous for a number of different buildings, his early fame came from the private homes he designed. He also designed stained-glass windows for the homes.

Each home will need at least eight Frank Lloyd Wright windows. There are going to be 28 houses in the development, so that’s about 8×28 windows. That’s a huge contract. You say to Ms. Richardson that “It would be no problem for my partners and me to do the windows.” (You don’t tell her you’ve never done a job this big before!)

Ms. Richardson says she’s found at least 12 stained-glass window companies in the Napa/Vallejo/Benicia/Sonoma area, and she’s requesting bids for the job. Her company will choose the lowest bid with the best designs. She gives you two weeks to submit the artwork for the windows, along with the total cost to do the stained-glass windows for the entire development.

When she leaves, you call your partners into a meeting to get started, ASAP!

*********************************************************************************************************

Checklist of tools you’ll use and skills you’ll practice (maybe not complete):

1. Illustrator for the line art.
2. Photoshop for the colorization of the window sections.
3. Using the Pattern and Texture tools in Photoshop to recreate a stained-glass-like texture to reproduce the windows to look as real as possible. You can capture these textures and patterns using various techniques.
4. Excel will be used to automate the calculations of surface area, as well as other math involved in calculating the costs of producing each window in preparation of your bid on the project. (Mr. Paisley is in charge of this aspect.)
5. Internet for searching for window images. You’ll also use the Internet to find the cost of materials, as well as how to make stained-glass windows in the first place! Yes, I want you to teach yourself how to make these windows, even if it’s just enough to know what materials you need. You’re only going to “make” these windows in Illustrator and Photoshop. Hint: Where would you go to learn how to do something on the Internet? Also, how could you find out the cost of the materials needed to build the windows? Two words: wholesale and retail.
6. Each student on each team will make all four FLW windows shown on the blog, plus ONE OF THEIR OWN CHOICE, for a total of five per student. That means each team will create a total of eight windows — the original four that you’ll all make to practice skills, plus four different ones each of you do separately. EACH STUDENT WILL CHOOSE AN EASIER OR HARDER INDIVIDUAL WINDOW, DEPENDING ON HOW HIGH A GRADE THEY WANT TO GET. It also affects whether Ms. Richardson chooses your team to win the bid or not, because the winners will be chosen on the amount of the bid and the quality of the artwork.
7. Things you need to turn in for the full grade:

• A list of tools and equipment your shop should already “own” in order to produce these windows (you won’t have to add the cost of these to your bid);
• A list of all the materials you need for each window, along with the wholesale cost of these materials;
• Five illustrations per team member;
• An Excel spreadsheet that shows how you costed out the project for the final bid, possibly including surface area and perimeter calculations;
• A final document that presents the final bid (which includes your profit margin).

Update: Here is the extra information I offered to help you on your way. I still want you to discover a lot of what you need to know and master to do well (you can teach yourselves!):

Real-life dimensions of first four windows:

1. 5 ft. 6 in. x 10 ft. 4 ½ in.
2. r=4 ft.
3. 10 ft. 7 ½ in. x 7 ft. 1 ½ in.
4. 5 ft. 6 in. x 10 ft. 6 in.

Steps to follow:

1. Create your scale illustrations.
2. Calculate areas and perimeters of each window piece.
3. Combine like pieces and see if you can put them together to cut from the same sheet of glass.
4. Search for sources, hopefully wholesale, at glass sites on the Internet.
5. Find the total cost of the glass and the other materials needed.
6. This figure is your cost. You need to calculate a bid that includes 30% gross profit.
7. Gross profit – costs other than materials = net profit.
8. Net profits are what you earn and pay income tax on. What’s left after income taxes is what you use to pay your bills and pay for your personal expenses.

Okay, so that’s the new info.

Update 2: The Final Checklist (and actual stuff to turn in to complete the project):

Required Documentation to Accompany the Bid:

1. The bid itself

2. Breakdown of costs plus gross margin

3. Materials list with quantities and prices

4. Tools and equipment list (you don’t need to buy these; you already have them!)

5. 5 illustrations

6. Work flowchart

7. Excel workbook (done with Mr. Paisley)

Okay!

Update 2:

Project timeline

1. Art is due on Mon. Jan. 24^th

2. Materials list (w/ unit costs) & tools and equipment list is due on Tue. Jan. 25^th

3. Completed Excel workbook is due Thur. Jan. 27^th

4. Progress Check (preliminary post-production meeting) held Fri. Jan. 28^th