Professional Article Review- Blue Springs Golden Regiment

This is an article on the Blue Springs High School Golden Regiment and their trip to Waikiki, Hawaii for a holiday parade. This marks the third time the band has been invited with previous visits in 2002 and 2012. The band has already been to Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and the Tournament of Roses but Waikiki means a whole lot more to the program.

The author is arguing the fact that the Golden Regiment is having the best season in its history with a 5th place finish in Grand National Championships as well as being the honor band that led off the parade. With the Golden Regiment being one of the best High School Bands in the nation, going to places where not many go is a huge honor.

The main strengths of this article are how the author talks about the past trips the band has done including two of the most difficult parades to get into. Also, the author talked with the director and drum majors on what their feelings were and I thought that was proper to get different viewpoints Some weaknesses were that they didn't explain why they were selected so maybe they could explained that better.

When I read this article I was pretty shocked that they were that big of a deal and author did a good job of detailing of what they do and why they are nationally recognized. It shows that hard work really pays off and seeing them perform in person was very fun to watch.

Overall, I think the author did a great job of recognizing Blue Springs and really showing how they work hard and have fun at the same time.



Here is the link to the article below
http://www.chillicothenews.com/news/20161201/parade-on-waikiki-festive-end-to-golden-regiments-year

Professional Project Review-Blue Devils Drummer 2014

Summary

This is a story about 16 year old Brandon Olander and how he is the youngest in the 2014 Blue Devils Drum & Bugle Corp. CBS Evening News did a story about him and how he got started into drumming as well as show off his skills and what it takes to be a drum corp.

Overall the story was very interesting and it showed how hard it is do make the Blue Devils and show  how Brandon was willing to work at his ultimate goal.

Review

The story was told well, it started out with showing clips from the performance in semi-finals, and then went backwards and talked about how Brandon got to that level. 

One thing I saw that I would apply to my own work is start using more gnat sound as well as get more POV shots. Something I saw that I have been using is the writing was very creative and didn't say the same thing over and over again. They also used videos from the past which I used in some of my videos.

The CBS reporter did a good job of transitioning from topic to topic about Brandon and getting interviews from him and the percussion instructor Scott Johnson as well as changing shots more quickly and using animated transitions. Something I saw in the interviews was that they were in the center more than either the left or right side so maybe move them over just slightly. 

Conclusion

This was a really good story and it shows that if you have a dream and really want it to come true, then it takes a lot of effort into making it happen which Brandon did just that. 

This a video from CBS Evening News reported by Jill Wagner in 2014. The video is up above and no copyright intended

Feature Story: Mr. Carter

This is a video on ONW Math/Percussion Instructor Chris Carter, who is now entering his 3rd year teaching at Olathe Northwest. Carter attended the University of Kansas and was involved in the Jayhawk Pep band and was even mentioned on ESPN. Mr. Carter is very excited to be at ONW and hopes to make many memories here.

HOA Recap

This video is a recap of the Olathe Northwest High School Marching Band winning overall Grand Champion at the 2016 Heart of America Marching Festival at The University of Kansas. This is now the 2nd time Olathe Northwest has won a marching festival with the first one coming last year at the 2015 Neewollah Marching Festival.

ONW Band Story/Mr. Davis Award/Personal Project Review

Scope

This is a story on the 2016 Raven Pride Marching Band and their field show Turandot as well as an award won by the director of the ONW Band for their fantastic performance.

Process

The process started with Mr. Davis winning an award for Outstanding Young Band Director of the Northeast District of Kansas and I decided to do a story about the band and what it takes to be in the marching band. I wanted to do a story on just Mr. Davis but I thought why not do a mid-season story on the band and their season. When I started to prepare to do this story I couldn't film the footage because I am in the marching band, so somebody else was willing to film for me and I was very appreciative of that. When I came to edit, I was stuck because writing the voice-overs was very hard to do especially when I didn't know how to start it. When it came down to critiquing my video I didn't realize my audio level was not even, so I had to go back and fix later.

What I learned/What can I do better

What I learned was to make sure audio is consistently level and even as well as be more articulate on my voice overs and make sure to be careful of editing the background music. What I would do differently is make sure I am framing the interviewee more in the frame and make his shoulders are both in the shot. Maybe getting interviews with students. I was very proud of my sequencing and timing as I thought that went very well. 

Experience/Conclusion

This was a good experience for me because I learned what it was really like to do a news story mostly by myself and I know what to expect for next time and plan on what I am going to do before hand as well as being more flexible if something doesn't go my way. I hope to get better each and every day and keep moving forward.

Photo Composition Responsive Site

Scope:

This is a responsive web site about Photo Composition that I have been working on. The purpose of a responsive website is so you can view it on any device at anytime. A responsive website is able to adjust the CSS to fit in the browser. The overall idea of this is to make things a lot easier to view instead of just on a PC.

Process:

As a started making my Photo Composition site, I had to figure out what rules I wanted to show. Over spring break I took different photos for 12 different rules. Below are some of the pictures I took....

Making the site was going very smooth; until my banner didn't want to go in its place. I spent a long time trying to figure out why it would it not stay in the header div. I finally figured out that I had extra spacing in the div and that's what was making it expand to the wrap div. Once, I finished the regular Photo Composition site, it was time to make a responsive version. For this all I needed to do was add media styles for a tablet, and mobile device. Overall adding them wasn't too difficult, but I had to make sure that I could tell them apart.

What I learned:

What I learned along the way is that you REALLY need check your code quite often because any extra space in the CSS will throw the whole thing off.

What I would do differently/same:

What I would do differently next time is make sure my code isn't very confusing because it took me a while to figure out what was making my website very funky. What I would do the same is keep working hard on detail because I pay attention the most to detail and perfection.

Conclusion:

Overall, this was a good way to get an experience with a responsive website, because almost all website have to have responsive websites or their company is in trouble. Getting the hands-on experience will help me later if someone needs help trying to get their website to view on their phone, and I will know exactly what to do. This was a really stressing, but fun project to work on and now I get a glimpse of what real web designers do.

Responsive Web Design Intro

This is an introduction of Responsive Web Design. Below are some answers to what Responsive Web Design is really about and how it works.

FAQ's

• What is responsive web design?

Responsive Web Design is being able to resize or create a viewing of your website by making your layout, code, images and content of your web page easy to read and make it flexible so that any device can view it.

• Why has responsive web design become so important?

This has become very important for any website because it just makes it easier for companies to make one whole website as a responsive rather than making two separate websites, one for desktop, and one for mobile.

• What are media queries?

A media query is a CSS3 module which allows the content of a website to adapt to different conditions on different devices (i.e. PC vs Tablet vs Mobile Phone).

• What are breakpoints?

Breakpoints are intentionally stopping or pausing a program. They mostly used for debugging purposes to make sure the system is functioning. 

Example Site

Below is an example of a responsive website with 3 different screen captures from a desktop view, tablet view, and mobile phone view. All from the home page.

Name: 3200 Tigres

website URL: http://3200tigres.wwf.fr



First the desktop view, it has the regular links of the different pages up at the top with the image sizes being more on the larger side. It also has the very wide layout a side bar and the content stretches very long. Also the text is smaller. Overall, it's like what you mostly see in a website.

Now if we look from a tablet view you notice that there are a few differences.  The links to the different pages are now in a bar going vertically instead of going horizontally. Also you can you tell that there is no sidebar on the right side anymore? It shifted down the page and the new sidebar is the links on the left. The image sizes also got larger and the text got larger as well, and the content length got shorter. The layout of this is much more narrower but still is very organized.












Finally, the mobile phone view. This view makes most sites all scrunched up and very disorganized, but that's not the case for all mobile sites.  If you noticed, the image of the tiger is gone and the page is mostly made up of the links to the different pages and the content is once again much larger. The page is also more narrower than before, that's because as the screen becomes more narrower the images and links all are moved because then they won't fit in the screen at all if it stays in the same place. 



Overall, responsive websites are important for any device especially because not everyone has the desktop computer on them at all times, so they must be able to view it on a tablet or mobile phone.