9/18/13 Scarlett Betancourt

Title: Dream deflated: American ends quest to cross Atlantic with helium balloons

Newspaper: CNN

Have you ever watched the Disney Pixar movie “Up”? Well now there’s a real-life Carl Fredricksen, by the name of Jonathan Trappe. He’s a IT project manager from North Carolina. Mr. Trappe has been preparing for years. He was attempting to cross the Atlantic ocean only with helium balloons. He left Caribou, Maine early Thursday with 370 balloons. He crashed landed in Newfoundland, Canada, 12 hours and 470 miles into his trip. When he landed he posted this comment on Facebook: “Hmm, this doesn’t look like France,”. He ended up having to stay over night on his landing site. Mr. Trappe was the first man to cross the English Channel with a balloon cluster. Five people have died already trying to cross the English Channel with a ballon cluster.

I believe that Mr. Trappe didn’t necessarily think about the reality of the situation. He was foolish to think that he could cross the Atlantic with helium balloons. On the other hand he was brave to attempt something nearly impossible. I explained the situation to my mother and she said that if she didn’t have family to take care of she would attempt this adventure. Even if the chances were slim.

Our video was the combined effort of Olivia Sichele, Diaber Farrukh, and myself. It is a recording of the first few scenes of The Hitchhiker. I played Adams’s mother, Olivia played Adams’s mother, and Diaber played Adams. Get ready for the spine tinglies…

Darkness

You stand by my bed

You can be as soft as velvet

Or as sharp as glass

Deep as a valley

Long as the Golden Gate Bridge

Your name is darkness

You scare people at night

You are as black as the midnight sun

Or as bright as the milky way

You can be everywhere

Or one place at once

Your name is darkness

Are you an essence or a color

Are you here or are you there?

You can fill my soul

You can fill my heart

Your name is darkness

Fire

Bright as the sun

Hot as the desert floor

Burns like a candle in the night

Embers

Dear OTA Student:
Your personal Learning Journal is designed to help you create a record of your quality work (and your growth over a year) in the 8 OTA Core Learning Strands— Music, Science, Math, Seminar, English, Art, History, & Outdoor Ed.

The Categories available in the sidebar are set to match those 8 Strands and you should mark every post with one or more of those categories.

Why Create An Online Learning Journal?

• Blogs are very powerful content-management systems: which means they allow you to create a beautiful, multimedia record of a year’s worth of work and retrieve it instantly when you need it (by just clicking on the category of posts you want to see or by using the SEARCH Box to find all posts with the word “music” or “football” etc.)— but only if you use the Categories!
• Publishing your work on your Web Log ( = “Blog“) will often be the last step in earning a Passing Grade on a Project, or extra credit.
• When you are ready to apply to high school (choice programs like IB or an art magnet, or a private school) your Blog will be a Portfolio of all your best work that might just help you get in.
• You work hard to earn a passing grade on your OTA Projects, why throw them away? Now you can keep them, share them, go back and improve them as you learn more. If the work’s worth doing it’s worth keeping.

To Create Your Learning Journal You Will Have to Learn to:

• Scan, convert, and upload Text and Images (working with .doc, .pages, .pdf, .txt, .jpb, .png, inspiration, etc. files). Note: before you can upload word or pages documents you must convert them to pdfs or images.
• Create Slideshows and manage image databases.
• Edit and convert movies and music or sound files (working with .mov, .wmv, .qt, .mp3 etc. files), and
• Use the WordPress dashboard (content management system) to create, edit, categorize, and publish posts)

Things You Can Change On Your OTA Blog:

• The Header–from pre-selected photos in second quarter (Q2). In Q3 you can customize it with your own photography or artwork.
• The Picture of the Week–you add a new picture every week… from your own or classmate or teacher’s photos or scans or artwork.
• Continue reading →

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