Field Log
Journaling
October
· October 12
My first proposal letter was not approved on the count of the lack of a mentor, combined with the lack of detail about our website and learning curve. When the website gets done, I will immediately add that to the proposal.
· October 14
I explained to my parents what we were planning to do for our project.
· October 15
I was able to finally get a mentor who was willing to help my partner and I with our project. He is a member of the Bristol Parks and Recreation Committee. Now that we have a mentor, I can move on with the research on my topic.
· October 16
My proposal letter was not approved for a second time because I included my mentor info, but completely left out all the info about the website.
· October 18
I printed my 3 sources for my research paper about recycling. The sources all have interesting statistics about the relationship between recycling and residential atmosphere, which is the basis of my essay.
· October 24
Our website is almost ready to be put online. We have included a large amount of info about what we stand for and our goals. Onto other news, we have set our first clean-up date for November 2 at Charter Oak Park in Manchester. We decided to have our first two parks be in places we are familiar with, our hometowns, to accustom ourselves with the cleaning process. Also, we have been able to get the word out about the cleaning enough to have approximately 10-15 people there. This might be a little low, but is a good starting point for our ongoing process.
· October 25
We plan on getting all the materials we need for our first cleanup the upcoming weekend. This includes enough gloves and garbage bags for all of the participants. We are also thinking about making a video about proper attire when cleaning a park.
· October 28
My partner and I try to figure out how we should go about the first cleaning. After we discussed during our capstone period, we decided we would start off with a minimal number of participants to see how we would fare. We also forgo our idea of a website and replaced it with the idea of making a video explaining our goals and uploading it.
November
· November 2
Today is our cleaning. The individuals that were there were Lance, me and Mr.Mckay. It was a small group for experimental purposes, so we picked a small park to clean.It turned out that cigarettes were by far the most common piece of litter we would, so we started to put
· November 4
After cleaning our first park, it was clear that cigarettes were the most prominent piece of litter we had. So I decided to do some research about it for my research paper.
· November 5
This was the first day that I actually started to focus on my research paper. The first thing that I wanted to figure out was what I wanted the topic of my paper. The two main ideas I had were “What factors effect a person’s perception of litter?” and “What are the most commonly littered items and why?” I am personally leaning towards the former because it allows the reader more background about the subject and gives me more insight while we are cleaning parks.
· November 8
I talked to Lance about his essay today and it turns out that he was writing his essay on one of my topics, making my decision a lot easier.
· November 11
I have always had difficulty writing the introductions to my essays, so I went straight to the first body paragraph in hope that it would be easier to write.I don’t know whether you put facts in the body paragraphs or the introductions in research papers. Also, cleaning a second park this weekend has really helped us to understand how what we are doing is helping the community. While we were cleaning, a pedestrian walks by and asks all of us if we are being forced to do this. After answering no, he congratulates us and says he appreciates what we are doing. Ithink little things like that make all the hard work that we are doing feel like it is worth.
· November 14
I have finally finished my first paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. It all ties together and makes sense.
· November 16
I talked to Mrs.Boutilier about how many parks would be a good goal to set for ourselves. We decided that we should aim to clean 10 different parks.
· November 19
I have finally finished my second paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. It all ties together and makes sense.
· November 20
We wanted to be able to have a way for citizens to be able to contact us in case there was a park in need of cleaning and recycling help, so we
· November 21
I have finally finished my third paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. I have been pacing myself to make sure I have enough time to make any corrections needed in order to get the best possible product.
· November 22
I have finally finished my fourth and final paragraph. I believe that I came out very well, but I am still going to have Lance look at it. I will also look at his to help him out.
· November 24
We gave each other back our essays and were both shocked at the number of corrections. But on the bright side, this gives both of us plenty of time to fix all of our mistakes.
· November 25
We wanted to clean a park this weekend, but it ended up snowing. So we rescheduled it for next weekend.
· November 27
Even during my Thanksgiving break, I’m thinking about this Captstone project and I don’t know if this is a good thing or not.
December
· December 1
My partner and I knew that we would be slowed down because of the wintry weather that we would be encountering. We are trying to be proactive and thinking of what we will do after winter passes. This way we don’t lose precious time trying to plan what we will do after. Also, according to weather reports, it seem as if the weather is threatening to cancel our previously rescheduled clean-up from last week.
· December 2
As I feared, the snow came down and we were unable to clean up the park. As a group, we have decided that we will resume cleaning and recycling after the snow stops falling for the season.
· December 6
I had an odd idea today about trying to integrate the snow into our project somehow, but it has escaped my memory at the time of writing this. If it comes back to me, I will make sure I record it at a later date.
· December 11
I am putting the finishing touches on my final research essay. I wasn’t able to have Mrs. Zamorski look it over because I didn’t have enough pages at the first draft due date, but I was able to get feedback from other people.
· December 13
Today, I handed in my final essay draft. It is all about the surprisingly accurate correlation between the quality of living and the amount of litter in an area.
· December 16
The idea I had with the snow came back to me, but with some important aspects missing. From what I remembered, I believe that it had to do with us going back to the parks we already cleaned and making comparisons (possibly the effect of snow on litter?)
· December 20
Our winter break is going to start soon and I believe that my partner and I are in a good position with our project.
January
· January 3
Back from winter break and ready to work more on project.
· January 5
Another idea I had is that we make a video to show individuals how easy it is to try and recycle in their own neighborhoods. This would do two different things at once; allows us to help the community we can get actual travel to while we help the communities we can be present at. I will talk to Lance when he returns to school (he’s absent today) to see how he likes it.
· January 8
I am worried about Lance. I know he is sick from his texts, but it doesn’t seem he is getting any better based on his phone calls. I can tell he still wants to help with the project. Hopefully, he will be back over the weekend.
· January 11
I finally have gotten the chance to run my ideas by my partner, but he is having difficulty understanding the two ideas. It was only until I explained to him that they were two separate ideas, he then got the gist. But even after that, he really didn’t believe that the we necessary. So, in the end, we compromised and are planning on going back to check the pervious parks after the snow melts but not make a video.
· January 15
The snow is showing no sign of stopping soon. I know that we are barely halfway through the season, but at this rate the ground will be either really hard and frozen or really wet and muddy. Neither make it easier to clean parks.
· January 22
I have been looking at the rubric and I have made a promise with myself. The ePortfolio for the project, where I put all of my logs, journals and components is due in early April. The promise is that I will not wait till the last minute, but instead be proactive and start it as soon as possible.
· January 28
Unlike when I recorded my journals a few entries ago, the weather has gotten incrementally better. So we are preparing to clean parks soon.
February
· February 18
It has been a while since I have wrote any journals about my progress. Since I last wrote, I got an 89% on the research paper, started to figure out how Weebly works so I can put all the needed components on the ePortfolio and have helped Coleman, Jason and Travis with their capstones in various ways. For all three, I visited their websites that they were creating and gave them creative ideas to add. For Travis, it was less about creativity and more about what instructional lessons he should talk about and how to get the lesson across.
· October 12
My first proposal letter was not approved on the count of the lack of a mentor, combined with the lack of detail about our website and learning curve. When the website gets done, I will immediately add that to the proposal.
· October 14
I explained to my parents what we were planning to do for our project.
· October 15
I was able to finally get a mentor who was willing to help my partner and I with our project. He is a member of the Bristol Parks and Recreation Committee. Now that we have a mentor, I can move on with the research on my topic.
· October 16
My proposal letter was not approved for a second time because I included my mentor info, but completely left out all the info about the website.
· October 18
I printed my 3 sources for my research paper about recycling. The sources all have interesting statistics about the relationship between recycling and residential atmosphere, which is the basis of my essay.
· October 24
Our website is almost ready to be put online. We have included a large amount of info about what we stand for and our goals. Onto other news, we have set our first clean-up date for November 2 at Charter Oak Park in Manchester. We decided to have our first two parks be in places we are familiar with, our hometowns, to accustom ourselves with the cleaning process. Also, we have been able to get the word out about the cleaning enough to have approximately 10-15 people there. This might be a little low, but is a good starting point for our ongoing process.
· October 25
We plan on getting all the materials we need for our first cleanup the upcoming weekend. This includes enough gloves and garbage bags for all of the participants. We are also thinking about making a video about proper attire when cleaning a park.
· October 28
My partner and I try to figure out how we should go about the first cleaning. After we discussed during our capstone period, we decided we would start off with a minimal number of participants to see how we would fare. We also forgo our idea of a website and replaced it with the idea of making a video explaining our goals and uploading it.
November
· November 2
Today is our cleaning. The individuals that were there were Lance, me and Mr.Mckay. It was a small group for experimental purposes, so we picked a small park to clean.It turned out that cigarettes were by far the most common piece of litter we would, so we started to put
· November 4
After cleaning our first park, it was clear that cigarettes were the most prominent piece of litter we had. So I decided to do some research about it for my research paper.
· November 5
This was the first day that I actually started to focus on my research paper. The first thing that I wanted to figure out was what I wanted the topic of my paper. The two main ideas I had were “What factors effect a person’s perception of litter?” and “What are the most commonly littered items and why?” I am personally leaning towards the former because it allows the reader more background about the subject and gives me more insight while we are cleaning parks.
· November 8
I talked to Lance about his essay today and it turns out that he was writing his essay on one of my topics, making my decision a lot easier.
· November 11
I have always had difficulty writing the introductions to my essays, so I went straight to the first body paragraph in hope that it would be easier to write.I don’t know whether you put facts in the body paragraphs or the introductions in research papers. Also, cleaning a second park this weekend has really helped us to understand how what we are doing is helping the community. While we were cleaning, a pedestrian walks by and asks all of us if we are being forced to do this. After answering no, he congratulates us and says he appreciates what we are doing. Ithink little things like that make all the hard work that we are doing feel like it is worth.
· November 14
I have finally finished my first paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. It all ties together and makes sense.
· November 16
I talked to Mrs.Boutilier about how many parks would be a good goal to set for ourselves. We decided that we should aim to clean 10 different parks.
· November 19
I have finally finished my second paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. It all ties together and makes sense.
· November 20
We wanted to be able to have a way for citizens to be able to contact us in case there was a park in need of cleaning and recycling help, so we
· November 21
I have finally finished my third paragraph and it came out better than I thought it would. I have been pacing myself to make sure I have enough time to make any corrections needed in order to get the best possible product.
· November 22
I have finally finished my fourth and final paragraph. I believe that I came out very well, but I am still going to have Lance look at it. I will also look at his to help him out.
· November 24
We gave each other back our essays and were both shocked at the number of corrections. But on the bright side, this gives both of us plenty of time to fix all of our mistakes.
· November 25
We wanted to clean a park this weekend, but it ended up snowing. So we rescheduled it for next weekend.
· November 27
Even during my Thanksgiving break, I’m thinking about this Captstone project and I don’t know if this is a good thing or not.
December
· December 1
My partner and I knew that we would be slowed down because of the wintry weather that we would be encountering. We are trying to be proactive and thinking of what we will do after winter passes. This way we don’t lose precious time trying to plan what we will do after. Also, according to weather reports, it seem as if the weather is threatening to cancel our previously rescheduled clean-up from last week.
· December 2
As I feared, the snow came down and we were unable to clean up the park. As a group, we have decided that we will resume cleaning and recycling after the snow stops falling for the season.
· December 6
I had an odd idea today about trying to integrate the snow into our project somehow, but it has escaped my memory at the time of writing this. If it comes back to me, I will make sure I record it at a later date.
· December 11
I am putting the finishing touches on my final research essay. I wasn’t able to have Mrs. Zamorski look it over because I didn’t have enough pages at the first draft due date, but I was able to get feedback from other people.
· December 13
Today, I handed in my final essay draft. It is all about the surprisingly accurate correlation between the quality of living and the amount of litter in an area.
· December 16
The idea I had with the snow came back to me, but with some important aspects missing. From what I remembered, I believe that it had to do with us going back to the parks we already cleaned and making comparisons (possibly the effect of snow on litter?)
· December 20
Our winter break is going to start soon and I believe that my partner and I are in a good position with our project.
January
· January 3
Back from winter break and ready to work more on project.
· January 5
Another idea I had is that we make a video to show individuals how easy it is to try and recycle in their own neighborhoods. This would do two different things at once; allows us to help the community we can get actual travel to while we help the communities we can be present at. I will talk to Lance when he returns to school (he’s absent today) to see how he likes it.
· January 8
I am worried about Lance. I know he is sick from his texts, but it doesn’t seem he is getting any better based on his phone calls. I can tell he still wants to help with the project. Hopefully, he will be back over the weekend.
· January 11
I finally have gotten the chance to run my ideas by my partner, but he is having difficulty understanding the two ideas. It was only until I explained to him that they were two separate ideas, he then got the gist. But even after that, he really didn’t believe that the we necessary. So, in the end, we compromised and are planning on going back to check the pervious parks after the snow melts but not make a video.
· January 15
The snow is showing no sign of stopping soon. I know that we are barely halfway through the season, but at this rate the ground will be either really hard and frozen or really wet and muddy. Neither make it easier to clean parks.
· January 22
I have been looking at the rubric and I have made a promise with myself. The ePortfolio for the project, where I put all of my logs, journals and components is due in early April. The promise is that I will not wait till the last minute, but instead be proactive and start it as soon as possible.
· January 28
Unlike when I recorded my journals a few entries ago, the weather has gotten incrementally better. So we are preparing to clean parks soon.
February
· February 18
It has been a while since I have wrote any journals about my progress. Since I last wrote, I got an 89% on the research paper, started to figure out how Weebly works so I can put all the needed components on the ePortfolio and have helped Coleman, Jason and Travis with their capstones in various ways. For all three, I visited their websites that they were creating and gave them creative ideas to add. For Travis, it was less about creativity and more about what instructional lessons he should talk about and how to get the lesson across.