Week 10

It's finally arrived - the last week of the WLE. I have been looking foreward to and dreading this for, well, about 9 weeks. Mr. Wells should be dropping by today at 2:00 or 2:30 and then Julio, Eric, and I will give our presentation to him. I am kind of nervous because I don't know how much we got done, and also because I don't know how much he wants us to have done. Everything will probably turn out fine, but I have the right to be a bit nervous all the same.

I arrived at about 8:45 today, maybe a little later as the bus was running a few minutes late.

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I just got out of the presentation, and it was a lot longer than I thought it would be. Mr. Wells showed up at around 2:15 and it took us a few minutes to get everything up and running.

Then we talked about PNN, less because we thought he didn't know about it and more because Jennifer told us to, and then we showed him the interviews (we didn't get past Angela's because it was so long, but oh well).

There was a lot of reflecting on this and that, and talking about what we learned, and it was somewhat annoying because Julio and Eric would talk before me and take all the good topics, so I had to come up with something impressive-sounding after they stole my topics.

It didn't go too badly, though, as we got some pretty good reactions, I just wish that I'd had some more time to figure out how to have flash tell the audio to start or stop or whatever when the user wanted it to.

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The blog prompt got posted, and so apparently I am supposed to write a letter to my mentor about my experience. So, here it is:

Dear Jennifer,

    During my time as an intern I have learned a lot about how dot coms are on the inside as well as news-ish organizations. I feel that much of what I have learned, particularly on the news side, is due to your assignments that you would give us. I have learned, for example, that interviewing people is harder than I thought. When Julio and I were wandering around the first week we asked something like 15 or 20 people if we could interview them and got maybe 3 who said yes.
    Even hanging around the... room... has even taught me aqbout the inner workings of dot coms. Richard always seemed to be working on some sort of problem that he needs to fix, so it occurs to me that tech people are much more important than I thought (I thought that it would be 'make this' and then just fix the occasional bug that people report).
   Two of the biggest ways that I have grown because of my experiences at PNN would be my writing skills, since whenever I had nothing to do I would write another story, and my interviewing (etc) skills, since we did so many interviews. Because of those two things I am now much better at just starting to say something, whether that something is written or spoken, and that will greatly help me as I go off to college in the fall as well as afterwards.

                               Sincerely,
                               David Albert

Week 9

This week I showed up at 8:45 as usual, and I left at 4:25, which leaves me with 7:40 hours today and 70:10 hours total.

Today I poked around online trying to find some contact info for Jason Jones, one of the big guys behind Bungie (and, by extension, the Halo series) but I couldn't find any as he seems to be a bit of a recluse. Just look at his profile on Bungie.net - every section except 1 is"classified."

As far as the final project is concerned, I think that I had better put in some more work on the flash part, but I am not completely sure if we are still doing the dvd thing since I haven't really heard much about it recently. Plus, I am not sure if a flash menu will be compatible with a dvd player, so (if we do use a flash menu) it might have to be a .swf file you run off of your computer.

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I just finished editing the audio from when we interviewed Susan, and I  think it sounds pretty good, other than some clinking in the background from her dog and the occasional click or pop from ... I don't know what...

I did it, and I think it's pretty good, but doing that just now reminded me of why I don't particularly like to edit audio, so I think that now I will work on the menu for a while so that I am doing something and, therefore, don't have do do more audio editing.

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I just finished the basics on the flash menu, now all I have to do is get some pictures from Eric to use in the slideshow I set up, and I also need to make the menu look pretty ... somehow ...

I am  thinking about leaving an hour early since nothing much is happening and I think it's down to me, Lauren, and Julio, though I might have to put in some work during the week. Then again, I might have to do that anyway....

Plus, it's really hot - my weather widget says that the temperature in Petaluma is 91 degrees, and there is no AC here (but it sounds like there is since there are two new servers here that have some noisy cooling equipment). I guess I will leave early, though I am going to try to time it so that I don't have to wait at the bus stop more than a few minutes since it's in the sun.

I think that our project is turning out pretty nicely, and all we have to do in order to have something is just throw our stuff together (which shouldn't take very long), though we probably won't have much other time since I heard our presentation thingy is at 2:00 next week (leaving me with about 5 hours to do stuff and Julio and Eric with maybe 4 or 4 1/2).

As for the presentation, I suppose we will have to talk about our experiences here and connect them to stuff... I have learned quite a bit; more than I thought I was when I was actually learning it. There have been all those interviews, those wierd assignments on the web that Jennifer often makes us do, and of course the writing. Jennifer mentioned earlier that I have pretty much written the most out of everybody on PNN, and I guess I plan to continue to add to that after the internship ends. After all, I have to stay ahead of the pack, don't I?

Week 8

This week I haven't done much, I spent a little while writing, right now I am moving some of my articles to a separate page tso my main one doesn't take a long time to load. A little while ago Jennifer had us picking a topic off of some list she gave us and answering various questions about it (how many results on youtube? What do people say about it in their blogs? etc). I don't really know what it's for, I think it involves them (the pnn staff) having more information to use in getting new users.

Today I was here from my usual 8:45 'till 3:15, which gives me 6:30 hours, leaving me with 62:30 hours.

Don't have much to say this week as the prompt is kind of... odd. I think that the internship has been fun and educational overall but as with anything there are boring moments and noneducational ones, too. I'd have to say that most of the education happened when we (or rather I as I can't speak for the others) were actually doing stuff, and the fun tended to go along with it (although some of the online tasks we got were a bit boring and repetetive, though edicational and probably useful to someone).

Week 7

This week I was here Monday from 8:45 to about 5:15, so I am exactly back on track. Today Julio, Eric, and I interviewed this one woman whose name I can't remember. She runs a store called the HeeBe JeeBe Store and it's a pretty cool place with lots of random things in there. Since the store was kinda noisy and the hallway area right outside had been pretty quiet when we were wandering around earlier, we decided to have the interview out there. Of course, as soon as we start the noise kicks up.

Since the blog prompt isn't up yet I will add more later.

I don't really know much about my final presentation, but I can guess with reasonable certainity that it will involve some or many of the interviews that we have done, probably edited into a final piece, and I might show my pnn page. It will almost certainly feature something that I made in flash, since the dvd ... thing... that we are making is probably going to have somethingin flash, and I will (of course) be the one who has to make it.

It will probably be here at pnn, but possibly MSAT since I know that both Lauren and Jennifer know how to get to MSAT, and if Richard decides to come they can probably tell him. I kind of hope it will be semi-early just so I can have it over and done with, but I also kind of hope it will be relatively late so I have more time to prepare. I don't know if Julio or Eric have scheduled it, but I know I haven't and I know that no one has told me anything about the final presentation.

Week 6

Today I found out that Eric, Julio, and I are going to interview Mr. Fox and probably some other staff members. We spent maybe 15 minutes thinking up questions for Mr. Fox, and we were about to do the same for the other staff members but we remembered that the questions we asked Mr. Wells were pretty generic so we just dug that out.

As far as leadership skills are concerned, the first one that comes to mind is collaborate productively. Since there are 3 interns here and we all have basically one project we must work well together or we will fail.

Next is Manage Projects Effectively. Again, I reference the project that we have here - at this point we have (I believe) 3 weeks to do the rest of our interviews, edit the audio, and throw it together with pictures and things (and a menu).

Then we have that one about communicating effectively. The first thing I think of for this is the questions in interviews - we have to come up with questions that will have the person being interviewed provide us with good answers, and we have to ask them in sucha way as to do the same. Also, but not as big, is the communication between each other. We have to communicate effectively so that we let each other know what needs to be done, who should do it, etc.

I just got back from interviewing people around MSAT, I didn't do much of the interview stuff but I did get a little experience with the sound equipment. It was also interesting to hear what people had to say, since many of the questions Julio asked were similar.

We interviewed Mr. Fox, Ms. Banks, Susan Gottschall-Maxon, and Angela and it looks like we will have a lot of good stuff to fiddle with.

This week I was here Monday from 8:45 to about 4:15, which means I have another 30 minutes until I am totally back on track.

Week 5

This week I am back at my internship making up all the time I lost on other weeks, so I will probably end up coming 3 days this week to make up all the hours, probably Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday since that is simplest.

Today Jennifer told Julio and I about what will probably be our official project: to make an audio yearbook-thing for MSAT, with Eric doing the graphic stuff (since it will have photos that appear while the audio is playing), Julio will do most of the interviewing, and I will probably make something in Flash to throw it all together.

So far, Julio and I have started brainstorming a list of people who we will probably want to interview, and we will probably use some or all of the audio from when we interviewed Mr. Wells.

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I also came on Tuesday (today) and I will come one Thursday, since I need to make up some hours. I clocked it, though, and it seems that I get here at about 8:40 or 45 and leave usually at 5:15 or so, so I could (theoretically) leave a bit early every now and then (probably 4:20 or 25 so I don't have to wait long for the bus), something like every other week.

Basically it boils down to 8:30 or so each week, which means that I can leave early something like 3 times out of every 4 weeks.

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I left a bit early on Tuesday since almost nobody was here and I wasn't getting much done, and as I waited for the bus I added everything up and, assuming I stay the whole day Thursday I will be about 15 minutes behind schedule, which I will promptly make up on Monday morning since I seem to get here about 15 minutes before 9:00, and then I will be exactly back on track.

Since my part for the big project (for lack of a better name) is probably just going to be a few interviews and the Flash stuff, I will probably not need to do much, though on the other hand I don't know how much Flash stuff there will be or how hard it will be, so I don't know how much time I will have to work on things other than the project.

One of these days I am going to get around to bringing my camera so that I can take a few pictures to post and spice up this page, though quite frankly I don't see what would be so interesting about them...

I suppose they would be more interesting if you didn't already know what this place looked like, so I will have to remember to bring that camera sometime.

Well, it's the end of Thursday, and in about 5 minutes I will leave and be only 15 minutes behind on my hours. I have gotten a lot of stuff done this week, though to be honest I will be glad to have a 3-day weekend in which to relax and sleep in.

Week 4

This week I was sick and so couldn't come to my internship. However, I do have a quote to talk about. (If you want to read this quote, it is under week 4 at http://www.es-msat.org/Academic_Seminar/).

I think, first of all, that Marshall McLuhann needs to be more specific about what he means by classroom. Because if he means first grade, which is what I think of, then I disagree with him fairly strongly. I have a half sister and two half brothers (7, 6, and 5 years old respectively) and while they do some stuff on the computer before they are in first grade, it is mostly just games, and nothing that I would call "data-processing on a large scale."

Heck, now that my sister is all of seven years old, she still just wants to play games on the computer, and I have yet to see or hear of her doing any kind of data processing.

If I could summarize this quote in one sentence, I would probably come up with "These days, children have so much information avalable to them online that our current school system is obsolete and we must make a new one that teaches them pattern recognition."

As far as serious informaton is concerned, you could debate the definition for hours and not come up with an answer that makes everybody happy. My defnition of it, however, is information which is somehow more useful than what you would find everyday. As an example of such information, I reference the fact that YouTube and similar sites use a programming language known as Ruby (I found this out at my internship), and the fact that I am now learning the basics of Ruby.

When it comes down to it, though, I believe that it would be extremely useful for students to know how to find information online, since a bit of searching in the right places online can yield just about anything, from a place to download the episodes of your favorite tv show to the information you need to write your paper on quantum mechanics, and all you need to do is find it.

On the other hand, since so much can be found online, students will develop the ability to search the net on their own, and the skills that should be taught are the ones that allow them to find information in other places, such as libraries. After all, you can go online and find the information you want spread over fourteen sites, or you can go to the library and find one or two books that tell you the same information in one or two places.

My experience as an intern has been that it tends to be something of a "here's your area, now start figuring out how the stuff works" kind of situation. I believe that, if done properly, this is an excellent way of teaching students since it allows them to learn by experience, by actually doing the thing, rather than listening to someone else tell them about it.

This week I was unable to come, leaving my total at 16 hours and leaving me 16 hours behind.

Week 3

So far today I have worked on my page mostly, but I also did this audio interview thing for Jennifer (don't know what that'll pop up on...), I did a little mini report/quickwrite thing on whatever book looked most interesting out of a short stack of books (I have what I wrote in the 'miscellaneous' section), and Juilo and I interviewed Mr. Wells.

We got a new intern, Eric Nazarian, he seems to be more into the graphic side of things to I think that we are pretty well balanced, what with me being into the programming, Julio basically being a reporter, and Eric being a graphic ... guy ...

Today I got a little closer to figuring out a project; Jennifer said something about them maybe needing a flash ... thing (I don't remember exactly what it was), but that made me realize that I could do something in flash, perhaps a tutorial or something. Then again, I might try to do something with ... that code Richard uses... can't remember it's name... but whichever of those I choose it should be interesting and useful, so I guess i can't really go wrong there... maybe.

Week 2

This week I actually found an internship, and it was
surprisingly fun. I am interning here at pnn.com, which is based out of Petaluma. I went up there on Monday and poked around on their site setting up a profile until people started arriving, at which point I talked to them and started seeing what everyone does around there. Then, around 11:00 or 11:30 they sent Julio and I out to interview people about the topic of our choice (we chose whether people preferred cats or dogs). We soon realized that, of the few people in Petaluma at that time of day, few of them (if any) were willing to be interviewed. So we started driving around and eventually ended up at Julio's Dad's work and interviewed a lot of people there (including Sarah's Mom). Then we came back and started trying to import the footage and edit it but various technical problems delayed that so we just worked on out profiles for a while.

I still have to pick what I am going to be doing there, more or less, but I am leaning towards working with a guy named Richard, who serves as the general tech guy and also writes and manages the code that keeps everything together. He seems cool and the code that they use (I think it's called ajax) is supposedly pretty simple, so it would be nice to make ... something.

I got there a little after 9:00 and left a little after 5:00, so I was there for 8 hours, which leaves me exactly one week behind.

Week 1

Today I was at school, busy trying to line up an internship. Of the 4 companies that I was considering at the beginning of the WLE experience, 2 had already backed out by today, a third backed out when I called them, and I realized that the fourth is based out of san Francisco and (therefore) not very feasible.

I went online today and found the phone number for Factor 5, but when I called them they said that if they had internship positions available they would be on their web site (which said they had no internship positions available).

I then spent the rest of my time looking for new companies to contact, and found several interesting ones. The most interesting right now is called Telltale Games and they have an office in San Rafael.

During lunch, Damian told me that I could simply go to craigslist and search for game design to call up a list of (supposedly) hundreds of companies that make games.

More recently, I went on craigslist and searched for computer-y jobs, and I found a massive list of jobs available. I then looked at all the Novato and San Rafael ones. A major pattern I noticed was that Autodesk wants a lot of people so I will probably contact them and ask for an internship.