Team
ElisabethApple Valley High School, CA, United States
AlisonRoybal High School, CA, United States
Raul Los Angeles High School, CA, United States
Alan Manual Arts, CA, United States
Bryan Canyon High School, CA, United States
Age Range
19 & under
Coaches
Oscar MenjivarUSC Upward Bound Math Science, United States
Category
Arts & Entertainment > Movies & Animation
Arts & Entertainment > Television
Audience
Ages 15 and up
Language
English
Site Features
Online Activity / Game
Quiz
Teacher Resources (Lesson Plans, Worksheets)
Photo Gallery
Video / Sound
Team Collaboration
Creating the site was difficult for all of us because more than half of our group has not had any website design experience. For three of our members it was their first time doing intense research and writing, managing Dreamweaver and other software like Photoshop. As males and females we had trouble talking because it is like we are different people.We all talk differently. That was the whole beauty of this experience, the fact that we had to work through our struggles and failures. Our personalities were always crashing because we all had our personal problem. We had mood swings, emotional breakdowns and constant insecurity. The insecurity came from most of the group’s inexperience. We had to develop new skills and grow at a rapid rate in different roles.
Brian as a strong leader had to learn how to hand hold those who are not as strong as him in taking initiative. He had to be very patient and grow as a project manager. Allan struggled in getting a strong hold of photoshop. He had never created a simple image on photoshop and yet alone design banners, buttons, and original comic characters. He spend long hours trying to master the pen tool and at times almost felt like crying because of the frustration. Allan was using his computer and at one of our sessions coffee was spilled all over it and we almost lost our files. We recovered the files but it really scared us to know that we could have lost everything. Allison had to learn how to research and make sure everything was written from an original perspective. She learned how to organize herself and others. She took the role of content manager and kept everything very well organized. Raul for the first time in his life found out what javascript and css were. That was not easy, he spend countless nights trying to figure out why a comma or period messed up the entire site. However he managed to work hard while keeping a good sense of humor. He brought joy to the group by always telling jokes, even when the websites did not work in certain browsers. Raul has a different accent from the rest of the team, therefore it was hard to understand his needs. However, we learned new ways of communicating with him. Elizabeth and Brian were individuals who travel 3 hours to work with us. They not only sacrificed their free time but also the time of their parents. Overall we feel proud of the work we accomplished.
Team Diversity
Our group is full of different characters, personalities and work habits.Our cultures are different because we had Ecuadorians, Mexicans, Salvadorians, Nicaraguans, and Guatemalans. Accents, mannerisms and characteristics made our completion of this website difficult, but enjoyable. Our group composed of two females, Elizabeth and Alison, and three males, Raul, Alan, and myself, Bryan. Because we were all in different grade levels, it contributed to our difficulty in communication. Elizabeth is an incoming junior, Raul, Alison, and Alan are incoming sophomores, and I am an incoming senior.
We believe that this summer we all learned from each other and because of that we all grew up. We became a family, a dysfunctional one, but we did it. Our family was composed of class clowns, hard workers, attitudes, and future leaders.
Diversity to us did not only mean cultures, gender, or any of the other common differences. It meant strength of the mind, soul, and body.
In our group we had people who had a hard time learning in a fast paced environment. For example allan took his time creating images and we needed to understand that his mind worked different. Our spirits were different, some were upbeat all the time(24/7) when others needed motivation. It was frustrating to see some wanting to give up when others kept on learning. Body strength was the hardest, some drove miles just to get together and those were mostly tired. Some were able to stay up late while others wanted to sleep early.
Our diversity enhance our website because we approach the problems we faced in different ways. We saw comic books from a fun, serious, and also critical social issues. We saw our topic as we see each others strengths. We drew ourselves as characters in order to show our personalities. Some of us identify more with our american ways and not our parents cultures, therefore we were challenge to see the issues of comic books from our own culture and discover new issues that we never had seen. Our website was enhance by the fact that we choose a topic that not only challenge us academically but also culturally.
Our differences of ideas made us look at religion when we wrote about our topic. Those who cared about religion a lot made sure that religion was looked at while researching the topic. Those who were strongly connected to their countries made sure that we included diverse characters and not only american comic book characters. We believe that our differences created a more dynamic look and feel in website and our topic.
