Progress Blog

I have finished Death and the Maiden, I am almost finished with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I plan on reading The Great Gatsby over the weekend, for I will be reading at the beach the entire time :). I have my review finished for Death and the Maiden, and I plan on writin g the rest easliy. I dont have may over projects due, so I can dedicate a lot of time to working on the reviews. I also plan on asking around and possibly getting soem quotes from upperclassmen to sum up their opinion of the books, not just mine. Otherwise I think ym pace if pretty decent - I also dropped Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because it is a Junior book and I am already covering Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Proposal Blog

For my last piece in the Tower Review this year I am going to do a few book reviews based off of the assigned summer reading lists. For freshman, I will be reading The Great Gatsby. For sophmores, I will be reading both The Mysterious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Pride and Predudice and Zombies. For seniors, I will be reading Death and the Maiden. This a large assignment, and I think I can handle it. If not, I will be eliminating Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from the list, for it is longer than the others. I think I will read Pride and Prejuidce and Zombies first, for it seems the most interesting and I have a feeling I will read through it quickly. Then I will read Death and the Maiden, and then The Great Gatsby. Gatsby is on my summer reading list, so I want to read it last so it is freshest in my brain. I don't plan on making the reviews all that long, but brief and summary-like. I also want to include the length of time it takes to read it in a cram, and rate it with stars.

Progress Blog

I have finished my child prodegie article and I am somewhat pleased with the results. I plan to further my revisions over this weekend and Tuesday in class. While I believe I used the right amount of information, the organization is a little scrambled. I plan on rewriting someportions and reconstucting many of the sentances. Overall it was a difficult article to write, since there was just so much information on the topic out there. It was hard to sort through all of it and find tidbits I thought would help my piece. I also think I may link to some of the article I used in the end for those who are curious to other sources on the topic. I wish I had gotten in contact with the guy you mentioned in the last part, but I was just so discombobulated this week I just used information I found online. I still don't know my article's over all message, so I hope editing it a lot will help me find it.

Proposal Blog

For this wave, I will be writing a piece about extremely talented children. From child prodogies and geniuses in the real world to their representation in the media, I want to cover a wide scope of the enitre subject. I believe this will be more of an opinion piece, for it isn't really about any certain event and I want their to be humor. More of a magazine article then a hard news article. I want to include information from one of my favorite author John Green's books, An Abundance of Katherines, Doogie Howser MD, child stars like Drew Barrymore and Lindsey Lohan, and several other accerlerted children that have graduated college young or something substantial like that. For this I plan to do a massive amount of research so that I make the piece through and without many bases uncovered. I plan to do several days of research before compling the piece, and I don't know any child geniuses or superstars so I will not be doing any interviews. I believe the piece will be interesting and many students will find it to be so, therefore making it a great contribution to the website.

Last Blog for Quarter :)

I enjoyed this quarter because I got to do 3 entirely different pieces, and I really developed as a writer, as I have the earlier 2 waves. When I first entered this class, I didn’t have many expectations. I had just transferred schools, and I had a lot on my plate so I didn't concentrate much on the work beforehand, but on how much I would need to catch up on. I had thought there would be like an editor in chief, a copy editor, a news editor, a sports editor, a feature editor, and numerous reporters, but then again I also thought it would be a print newspaper like the paper at my previous school. Obviously, I didn't know much about the class. What I did know was that it would teach me to write better than before and I would get more reporting experience. In this aspect, the class has defiantly gone with my expectations. My other expectations would be ideal, but as a web newspaper and a new kind of collective school blog, I understand how an “Editor in Chief” position wouldn’t be relevant. Also, the fact that this is a class changes things. The skill that has been most valuable to me is defiantly the format of an article and our earlier lessons on media bias. Our normal class activities, specifically when I had the opportunity to leave class and interview people, helped me gain better reporting skills. The information that has been least valuable to me... doesn't exist. I truly believe that all that we have learned this year was very important to the overall goal of the class. Even my least favorite activities were helpful, like the class peer review and the blog, for they enabled us analysis our own work and others, which helps us apply their mistakes and achievements into what we could write in the future. The blogs also helped me stay focused on the goal of a piece a week after I started. I would still like to practice more reporting, and I don't really feel unfulfilled in this class. I plan on writing for the paper again next year, but as a contributor since I won't be taking this class as my elective. I would still like more practice with reporting, and The Asbiry Park Press activity will defiantly help me in doing this. I’m really looking forward to next quarter and to our final 2 waves with The Tower Review.

Proposal Blog

For this wave I am working on two pieces; one with Emily on students who look like celebritys, and another of the blood drive that RFH held about a month or so ago. The celebrity lookalike piece will be a contest that we will be holding for all students who think they have a celebrity twin. The other piece will be an informational article about the drive, the process, the organization and the state of blood drives in the area year round. I hope to have some fun and creative freedom with the first piece and again try to be very reporter-like in my 2nd article for this wave. I had more time to interview people when it had been held, so I think I will have mroe quotes from people, which I think that last piece was lacking. Overall I will probably be busy with all of my other schoolwork and this, so I am glad I have Emily to help me out.

Progress Blog

Since the group editing session, I haven't conducted any interviews to add to my piece. I did email Dakota a list of questions so that he could answer them whenever he had time and I could use direct quotes that arent shortend due to the lack of fast handwriting on my part. I have made some minor adjustments that were recommended by my classmates, and I hope that with Dakota's interview my story will have a better insight into the thoughts of the students on the trip. I hope that he emails me back soon, so that I can work torward finishing the article. Otherwise, I couldn't ask about any other students I could conntact on Friday because I was absent so I'll have to wait until this week.