Genius Time and my Passion Project

Well, it is the end of week two of digcit and i have to say that it has been a very productive week. A few days this week our teacher gave us "genius time" which is essentially a period or part of a period to brainstorm and generate ideas about what our passion project will be and all that it encompasses. Last week I already had a good idea about what I was going to do for my project. I was going to do a "Hoodies for the Homeless" drive and collect sweatshirts hoodies and jackets and give them to an organization to distribute them to the homeless people of my city. After talking to my teacher, she told me that I need to make it bigger and bring more awareness to it. I had some time to think during this weeks genius time and I decided to do a winter and spring drive. However that wasn't enough. I needed a way to make it more of a global or national issue. I need to raise awareness some how. My teacher suggested that I make some sort of video. At first I was stuck and couldn't think of how I could make a video to raise awareness before the actual drive. Then it hit me that I should go talk to and video tape an interview with actual homeless people. I think it would be a great way to connect with my project. 

This project is really important to me because it breaks my heart to see someone sleeping on a bench or begging or digging through trash just to get a meal. It also makes me sad to see people shivering in the cold outside during the winters. There are some places people can go during real cold weather but not everyone can and they can't stay there forever. Eventually they will have to go back into the brutal cold of winter. Everyone needs a good jacket to survive winter. I also talked about doing a drive in the spring. The issue you here really isn't as bad but it still lays on my heart. Although homeless people have clothes for spring and summer. There are hundreds of kids in my local school system that are homeless. Kids when they go to school, they don't want to be where the same clothes every day or every week. If kids also had the opportunity to get new clothes for spring as well it really brings satisfaction to my heart knowing they can have a few more cool outfits to wear.

For the number of jackets and clothes are will be collecting, I don't really have a set goal for how many I will collect but I do want at least 200. It would be great to get that many for each but if I don't it's ok, some kids will still receive them, and if I exceed it, that's even better.

First Week and My Heartbreak

Well it is the end of the first week of digcit, and I have to say that it is going to be a great year. Even though we really didn't really start getting into the juicy parts of this class, we got a nice overview of what we will be expecting the rest of the year as well as learning how to be good digital citizens. We actually learned how to blog. Not one person including the teachers had ever blogged before and it was a learning experience for everyone. Even though putting all of my thoughts out there for the world to see isn't exactly in my comfort zone, I know it will just help me and give useful new experiences. I am excited to see what responses I get back.

One of the first challenges of this class have been trying to find a passion. I know that there are plenty of people that have a passion for things but before this class I was not one of those people. I hadn't found something that I really felt strongly and passionately about. One of the big parts of this year is a passion project. We have to find something we are really passionate about and either volunteer or raise awareness or something like that and we will do a presentation at the end of the year. Since a lot of people had trouble finding a passion, my teachers explained to us that sometimes to find your passion you have to figure out what breaks your heart. At first I was a little confused about how something that makes you sad can be a passion. It was then explained to me that if something really breaks your heart it will cause you to want to make a difference. To really find out if something breaks our heart, we made a heart break map.

Our heartbreak maps were basically three different size hearts inside of each other. The first level would be what breaks our heart. The second level is what about it breaks our heart. The third level is what we can do to make a difference. This was really great in helping me find what I am passionate about and I never really realized it until now.