Hey!! I finally found the topic that I want to base my capstone around: The dangers, dependence, disconnections of phone use essentially. It will be a social campaign tackling the large social issue of phones and especially society's role. I really chose this issue because I am always seeing people on phones when they are around other people, instead of just talking to them, and it really bothers me because I know the power a conversation can really have. I myself have also started to realize how much time I actually waste on my phone, and it makes me feel like I'm wasting my life away on my phone sometimes when I can be doing things much more helpful.

As technology is simply becoming a more and more prevalent part in the world, the issue will only get worse I feel, if light isn't brought on how excessive phone use is a real issue. It is an addiction at this point and part of the worse thing about it, is that not a lot of people notice how bad it really is. I want to provide that outside perspective for people to see how they are being affected mentally, socially, and even physically and possibly be motivated to change and improve their ways and habits to find more self control. With that being said, my narrative of this social campaign will be that people need to live more fruitfully and develop habits of self control so that they are not being so dependent on a cell phone and aren't wasting precious time in their life that they can never get back. I do not want this behavior and toxic habit to spread to the younger generations even more than it already has due to how obsessed with technology kids already are.

Hey guys! I am finally in the beginning processes of my Capstone Project. I have already created a proposal and calendar for my campaign project so that I have a deeper understanding of what I want to do for my project and how I organize and structure everything to make sure I am working diligently and responsibly.

When it comes to beginning processes, I am talking about my FIRST project which will be a documentary campaign video > 5 minutes. This video will highly encompass the rhetoric of pathos with some instances of ethos and logos (through experimental and statistical evidence) because my main goal for this video is to show the audience (phone users) that outside perspective that they lack when their face is in a phone. I want to highlight how fast and how much time passes when they are so much on their phone, and I want to especially show the social effects that occur when one is on their phone so much. This would mean highlighting how disassociated one becomes from others, how zombie-like and the world and how they don't even notice. I want the audience to feel the need to improve their habits so I will make sure to include how this toxic habit of phone use have negative affects on people around you also.

In this documentary, I plan on including interviews because it'll be really important to hear the perspective of others in how phone use has affected their lives dramatically and differently but both in negative ways, for both teens and elderly especially. This is mostly because this video is mostly for bringing awareness through a strong sense of perspective. I want the audience to be able to hear what it is like when put into words and when someone actually realizes the problem.

Hey everyone, it has been a busy week! As you all know, the first project I am working on is my short documentary, so I have been spending this week dedicated to finding footage and doing interviews for my video, among other things. I wanted to start with this so then that way, I can shape the footage around the interviews. It's going to be difficult to try and create a video with the limited resources in this time of Corona, but I have high hopes that it will come out great and still fulfill the purpose of getting the message across. I will most likely start working on my other two projects and just work on all of them at once because I have a feeling this video is going to take a while. With the limited time given, I think it'll be best to get started on everything altogether so that I can be finished in the month of March as expected. On top of working on my video, I have been working on an infographic that is a good overall representation of my campaign, complete with a symbol for my campaign, a title for it, its mission statement, values, and objectives/goals (which are all new things that I have fully defined throughout this week). I am really proud of my symbol because I feel that it, in itself, greatly represents the campaign. It is a complete apple logo, differing with the bitten apple logo of the Apple Company, to show the fulfillment that self control from phones will bring. My title is iLive as a play on words from iPhone, to represent the message that phone users should prioritize living over using their phone so much. The infographic in general is a great way to get people and myself to present a full understanding of my campaign. I will continue to finish up my interviews as soon as possible and cut the videos to what is needed by the start of next week since as soon as that is finished, I can hopefully begin putting everything together.

Hey guys! This week has been really exciting for me because I was able to start the process of editing! I love editing because of how it allows you to express your creativity. I said in the previous post it was bittersweet because of all the limitations and I still hold onto that. It makes the process harder because I've had to rearrange the way I planned to edit many times because it didn't work out or I couldn't do what I really wanted to. However, I will make sure no matter what that the product is something I am proud of. On top of editing, I also made sure to complete my lower third graphics to identify who I was interviewing, so that is now out of the way. I am slightly worried though because I'm afraid the documentary will be really long, which I am not sure would work out with presentations of the Capstone projects, but we will see about that one. I am also proud of myself because this week I finished all of the research I had, so completing the website will take much faster now. I planned to accomplish much of my editing by the week, and I have gotten all my interviews edited, and a beginning that I am proud of. Sometimes it can be creatively blocking trying to edit with limitations, so ;et me ask you guys, what documentary techniques and strategies do you find the most interesting and entertaining to watch? I will continue to try my best editing the documentary into something I can be proud of, and also something no too long. Hopefully, I can finish editing by next week.

Hello to the person reading this! This was the last full week before the first draft of our first project is due, so my documentary will be submitted by the end of next week to be critiqued and improved, which is pretty exciting. What I have left to do is add in all of the quotes and statistics in my documentary since right now there are just placeholders and such. I'm also debating if I should write some of the questions I asked and put it before some interviews as a way to transition, but I am not sure. I feel like documentaries don't have that but I don't know. I also have to edit the sound for every single clip and video and make sure it's not too low and not too loud, that the music is at a decent volume, and that you can properly hear the interviewees at all time. This will be a little tough considering that people don't all talk at the same volume and that people's voice pitch and everything can change throughout a single sentence. I'm also debating how loud I want the music, if I want it to be subtle or more obvious. I was working on the documentary from 5 pm to 1 am last night to try and finish getting all the interview clips placed within the documentary so that's finally done. I still have to add more footage and clips into the editing and over a lot of the interviews to give a more dynamic video so the people watching aren't just looking at the interview the whole time. I hope I have enough clips to use. I also have to re watch The Social Dilemma and take notes on what is said so I can add some of that into the video. There's some things I may go back and change in terms of sound effects and such, but once all of that is done, I believe my first draft will then be completed. My final draft won't be able to completed though fully until I am able to get the screen time of one of the interviewees, which will need at least a week or two of consistent data.

Hey guys, good news! I am coming in the final closings of my first Capstone Project: my documentary. I'm excited with how it turned out and am looking forward to starting my next project which will be my website. My first draft of my documentary was critiqued a little while back. There were comments about the sound needing to be adjusted and about the lack of diversity in the video. In trying to solve this issue of the lack of diversity in the video due to the lack of the diversity in the editing platform itself, I realized the cause of the problem. The stock videos of the editing platform I was using directly identifies and names the videos by the race of the people in them. For example, it would have "Asian woman..." or "African American woman..." and the videos that just had "woman" without an indication of race were the white women. I didn't notice this until I had to dig deeper to find more diverse videos in which I then noticed the pattern. It is pretty disappointing and unsettling that one has to point out the race of the person in order for minorities to be able to be actively shown and presented through the stock videos. It should not take that much digging just to find a single means of diversity on the platform. The good thing is the problem is now solved in my documentary and I was able to find videos that capture everyone and a sense of diversity in a way it didn't do as much before. I'm glad that was pointed out to me because I wouldn't have realized that there were other options to use otherwise. In general terms, I've just about finished the quotes needed to fill in the documentary placeholders, adjusting the sounds and audio, and finding and replacing footage. It is now time to work on my proposal for my second project so I can get that started.

Hey peoples! It's now the time to move on to the next Capstone project, very exciting. We are almost reaching the end. For this week, I have really just been working on my proposal for my second Capstone project where I reflected on what I wanted my purpose of this project to be and a sort of timeline for me to follow. This will help ensure I will get what I need to get done, done on time. I'm ready to get started on this project, and the very first step will be to choose which layout and theme of my website that I want. I'm very into designing and creating things so doing this website should be fun, especially creating and organizing it. In the website, I plan to have many resources and stories about gaining self control for your phone/technology. I also plan to have a lot of information about why people become dependent and addicted to phones, how to overcome it, how to be aware of it, and the physical, mental, and social effects of it. This website is really meant to be informational and a way for people to get started on the track of self control, understand the issue and understand the campaign as well. I will have many of my other creations in the website also like the infographic I made and the documentary I made, to bring the campaign all together. I plan on having an entire section of the website dedicated to the infographic and just explaining and outlining my campaign, its purpose, its goals, its narrative, etc. This will help my campaign become more understandable to the audience, and will give a focus to the website, as well as a call to action to spread and partake in the information expressed in the website. I also plan to contact some people to, along with myself, participate in an experiment and journalistic reflection of going without social media and limiting phone time. I'm excited for the process and this experiment to see how hard it might be, and this would give the audience and viewers of the site an idea of how to start and what they might feel or go through in the process.

Hey everyone! There has been a sharp change in the Capstone Project schedule for me. I know I said before I was going to get into the process of doing my Campaign website, but that has changed. I did start the website though. I chose the layout and am almost finished with creating and decorating the homepage, and I named the other pages of the site. Other than that I haven't gotten far. Anyway, while I was working on the website, I was working on the page for understanding the campaign as a whole, and I really wanted to include my posters that I plan on making, just as I included my documentary. With that being said, I thought it would then be the most logical to leave the website until the end to do and start working on the posters so that I can have them done already when I work on my website. So, for this week, I have also been working on my first poster. I had the idea of presenting people as lifeless beings who are on their phone 24/7 and aren't getting the experience and liveliness of life. I also tied in my slogan for my campaign; I am wondering if I should put my logo and hashtag for all the posters or if I should just leave that on the website. I can maybe use the logo so that it's recognizable with the campaign, but I'm not sure. I got to play with some photoshop for my poster which was pretty exciting. Outside of my poster, I was also working on the rules for my social experiment/challenge of no social media. I think I'm naming it: Less <--> PHONE <--> Less, with a play on words with less phone and phoneless, but that is a work in progress. I participated in this challenge and journaled for the week and I honestly felt that it worked. So far, I have 3 other people who agreed to do it, so I will work on getting more people for the next week.

Hello! This week wasn't too eventful in terms of my capstone project because all I was doing was working on my second poster for my campaign. I completely finished my first campaign poster and I really like it, but I made multiple drafts because there's some design decisions I am not too sure about. I'm not sure if I said this in the last blog post, but I also am wondering if I should put a hashtag on each poster or if that is something that should just be on the website. Anyway, my second poster is coming together. I finished it but same with the first one, I have multiple drafts because of different design decisions. I had multiple ideas for what to do for my posters before I started working on them but I now realize that they may not be the best for a poster and I'm not feeling those ideas anymore. The poster needs to persuade the people seeing it to try and embark on a journey of self control away from their phone so much. So, I need an idea for my third poster, but I have no idea what to do. I might ask around to see if anyone has ideas to share that I can maybe gain some influence off of. I'm really excited to work on my website after I finish these posters because it was looking so nice and after I finish my third poster, I will have all the other parts of my campaign complete and can add it to my website. Next week, I hope to work on and possibly finish my third and final poster with a good idea. To reference the last post, I've gotten really good feedback from my self control experiment, with multiple people coming back with positive and impactful feelings. I will definitely be trying to get more people to try it out!

Hey everyone! This week has been very productive but also very busy. I have had multiple projects to work on this week and tons of meetings to go to. It was a bit difficult to focus on this project, but I still managed to get all three posters finished. I really had trouble with my third poster because creatively, I had no idea what to do. I'm not too happy with my third poster because I feel like it could have been a better idea, so I am really looking forward to get my first draft reviewed by Mrs. Bedir and Ms. Otero so they can maybe help me make the third poster better. I was really thinking about making my third poster have a more positive pathos because my other two posters were more negative pathos in terms of influencing emotions of fear and such to try and make people stray away from using their phone so much. For this third poster, I wanted it to influence emotions of showing a better reality away from your phone so that the viewer will be motivated to have more self control and experience life more fruitfully. All posters follow the main message of self control and not wasting time in life. The good thing is that I am able to change or fix my posters at any time, if anything. For next week, I hope to get started again on my website and start putting all my research and artistically designing the website so that all viewers can have easy access to information and will want to stay on my website. I'm looking forward to commentary as well.

Hey guys! Today there isn't much to update because like I said in my last update, I finished all of my posters finally. I also mentioned that I was going to start working on my website which I have. My website is looking so cute! I wanted to make it pleasing to the eye but also very simplistic, as I think I've mentioned before. I have finally been able to work on my campaign page of my website where I have all the elements of my campaign shown and explained, because I have completed everything. However, I might be adding one part to my campaign. This is because I am taking the Designing Media for Global World class and in this class we are going over data visualization. One of the assignments is to create a data visualization and I had the thought to make it a part of my campaign. There are many logical facts and statistics that have to do with my project and my topic so it'll be the perfect addition. So, I'd also have to add this to that page so that page can be started but not completed just yet. So for this week I have been working on that data visualization as a new addition to my project. I also have been working on my home page more so I can at least get that complete. I'm really excited about my website because there's still a lot to be done but it's coming together. My goal for next weed is to continue working on my data visualization and working on the research and information page of my website since that would really take the longest. I also want to start inputting the documentations and journals of the people who participated in my experiment which is also very exciting. Until next time!

Hey everybody! I have been exciting for today's week because I have been looking forward to working on my website, even though this week has been extremely hectic. This week has been filled with many at least 3 projects, at least 2 essays, at least 5 meetings, at least 5 tests/quizzes, so much other work on top of that, plus studying for AP tests, plus my mom's birthday. Anyways, you get the point, it was chaotic. It has been very stressful trying to get everything done but I did find time to work on my website and it is so exciting seeing it come together. It is looking so cute and I feel like it really reflects my favorite aesthetic so it feels like I'm putting a little bit of me into the project which is great. The website is going to take a lot of work, so it's going to take a lot of time management to be able to get it all done. I'm still trying to get more people for my experiment, I want the results page to be filled so that someone reading the website can get the full picture and idea of what the challenge is like and how freeing it is being away from your phone, even if it is for a small amount of time. To be more specific about what I've done this week, I've completely finished my home page, so that includes all the design aspects, the writing aspects, and the technical aspects like linking everything together and stuff. Then, I got to working on my campaign page where I talk about the meaning behind the name of the campaign, the campaign itself, and where it shows all the goals, purposes, and missions for the campaign. I think this is really important for getting the audience to properly understand the campaign. I haven't done the challenge page like I wanted to because I'm stuck on how I want to format the site for those pages, and I also want to wait until I have a little bit more to add. Next week, I hope to finish the documentary and the poster page of my campaign, to get my posters looked over, and possibly start my resources page that will include a lot of the "How-to's" for having more self control, as well as helpful apps, tips, and websites and helpful social media pages that can help people be positively impacted by social media rather than the other way around.

Hello! This week was pretty busy, as I have been working on two different aspects of my project at the same time. I have been working on the data visualization mainly because I really do think that will be a great addition to my project and making the meaning of my project more credible as well as the purpose of my campaign. It will help people see, in very simple ways, how important it is to have self control when it comes to using technology. Other than working on the data visualization with multiple different charts and graphics, I have also been continuing my work on my website. More specifically, I have been working on the challenge page in terms of the rules and stories more. I am waiting on the research aspect of the website because I'm not too particularly sure yet how I want to put it in. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be information in articles or simply listed or if it simply just does not matter. So, with that being said, I am waiting to meet with my teacher to ask her some opinions or recommendations on how I should do that and once that happens, then I can start working on the research aspects of my website in terms of placing all of the research in. I want to start working on my resources page where all the apps, advice and such would be on. I have already somewhat formatted how I want to that page and how it would look, so that's exciting. My data visualization will be done by today and I will add it to my research page, and I'm thinking of putting it right at the top or maybe in the middle of the page as a way to either introduce some basis information or to allow people to get a sense of what the issue is first before the data visualization is given.

Hello people! This week was revolving around my website. I was working on the challenge page more, in terms of writing and sharing the stories of people who have done the challenge and the results of it. I was figuring out ways that I can make it more presentable and easy to access. I hope for next week to work more on my reflection essay that I also have to do for the Capstone class, as well as if completely done with my challenge page, then work on my research page. I'm still not completely sure about what to do with that page in terms of how to organize the information but I'm thinking of doing it in a picture x writing form to so that it doesn't seem like too much reading and the website also isn't made too bland or boring. This week was also successful because I was able to get feedback on my posters and I'm more confident about them because it was my third poster that I really wasn't feeling, but I was able to just do the other two, and those I actually do like. There was an issue with the logo in one of my posters but I feel like when put together with the website, the logo would be so much clearer as a symbol for the campaign. I'm excited for presenting to see everyone's project and how they are choosing to creatively express their ideas because I know that while it isn't always easy for me to do, it is still a very rewarding feeling when you accomplish something like with this project. I am feeling confident about my challenge page, I was just dealing with some technical difficulties with the website itself and what it allows for me to do. I also worked on my poster page since my posters are pretty much finalized, so all around I think it was a good week.