First Week for Pinhole Photography

On Friday 13th, we had our first session of pinhole photography. We began the lesson with a short and detailed demonstration on the physics behind pinhole photography and the origins of this type of photography, giving everyone a better idea of what we could expect to come and how this type of photography works. 

Pinhole photography dates back to the 5th century B.C., in China."The philosopher Mo Ti (later Mo Tsu) was the first – to our knowledge – to record the formation of an inverted image with a pinhole or screen. Mo Ti was aware that objects reflect light in all directions, and that rays from the top of an object, when passing through a hole, will produce the lower part of an image ." (See reference below) 

Later, we began to try out our first photo, with Mr. Lockwood, initially giving us step-by-step instructions on the process to produce a successful photograph goes. Once we were confident enough, we moved on to taking our own photographs. I started off with taking a simple picture of a stuffed falcon, that I found in the art room, thinking it would be suitable for a picture.

Each of us timed the duration we exposed our tin can (our camera), and proceeded back to the black room to produce the photos. The initial photo was decent in my opinion, as I was able to capture the falcon quite well. However, Mr. Lockwood pointed out that I would would probably need more exposure time to make the picture more sharp and a bit darker (increased awareness for areas of growth). So taking his advice into account, I later tried the same shot, except with more exposure time (Results shown below). There was a problem with the production of the photo along the process, as clear line smudges started to appear, and I have yet to pinpoint the problem (increased awareness for areas of growth). 

First Attempt at Pinhole Photography

Second Attempt gone wrong

I haven't done anything like pinhole photography before, so it is quite a new experience for me and something that I am relatively unfamiliar with, but I also think this is a great opportunity for me to develop new skills and undertake new challenges, and push myself out of my comfort          zone.

Work Cited

 Grepstad, Jon. "Pinhole Photography History and Guide from Photo.net." Pinhole Photography History and Guide from Photo.net. Photo.net, 1996. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.

Service: Last Few Encounters for the Semester

For the last couple weeks, Kevin and I have been continuing our Sinhala classes with Pre-School and Grade 3 kids. It has been quite a success for both, us, and the kids. And we hope to continue these lessons into the next semester  (showing perseverance and commitment for activities), as it is a good learning experience for both of us, and we can continue to help cultivate language and culture in our community and give back to our community (engaged in issues of global importance).
We have continued to become more comfortable with the kids and vice versa (work collaboratively with others), thus giving us the opportunity to teach more challenging lessons for the kids. We also got to improve on leadership skills (developing new skills), which is a great as we hoped to take this opportunity to improve on this particular quality, mentioned in my previous post on service. Over the weeks we planned and initiated further lessons and taught both classes various words. Grade 3 learned more about fruits, animals, basic sentence structures, pronouns, etc. While we taught pre-school about Christmas, animals, the senses, etc., incorporating them through various games like charades and pictionary to keep the lessons entertaining ad well, as we are teaching young kids.
Overall I think it was a great semester for both us and the kids, and we look forward to the next!

Basketball....After while!

The last couple weeks, I've been participating in basketball (planned and initiated activities), a continuation from last semester (showing perseverance and commitment in my activities). 

This semester we only have half the court, so mainly we have been playing half court basketball, a variation of full court basketball. One consequence of this half court is now the area is more crammed with people, thus it is more difficult to play, and requires a lot of skill and teamwork to succeed. While last semester I focused more on leadership skills and basic skills (like lay-ups or three point shots), this semester I have been and will be focusing more on more intermediate skills and teamwork and communication within the team, as that is what I feel needs more work (increased awareness of areas for growth and development). 

Through the past few weeks, I have mainly focused on improving on my teamwork and communication with my team, so that we could make better plays and make more points.So far, I have seen more improvement in the communication within my team and myself, which lead to more points, which my team and I were pleased about (developing new skills). Also I think this improvement in communication has also improved my overall leadership skills. In the meantime, I have also been trying to improve on skills, however, this is a bit harder than communication thus the results are a bit slower. Yet, I think with enough perseverance it will be possible! 

Service: The First Couple of Encounters

The last few weeks we started our first service 'encounter' with the primary kids on Thursday 23rd and Monday 27th, with Grade 3 and Pre-School D respectively. Making us engaged in issues of global importance, as mentioned in previous in my previous service post, since language and culture are dying in the modern world, and although we are not influencing the encouragement of language and culture on a large scale, we are doing it on a small scale and every small bit counts. Also we are giving back to the community we live in.

Our first session was with the Grade 3 on Thursday, Kevin (my peer and co-worker) and I we quite unfamiliar with type of service work, especially since this service is relatively new within the community, and we had to exercise high leadership skills since the kids were much much younger than other candidates we had led (example: me in after school basketball), but we saw this as an opportunity to develop new skills on this particular quality (undertaking new challenges). But, overall, I think it went pretty well, we focused on introducing ourselves and getting to know the kids a bit better, while giving them a feel for how the Sinhalese classes will be like. We planned and initiated to teach them how to say 'my name is...,' 'my age is....,' and the basic colours all in Sinhalese, and the kids caught on surprisingly well; I think one the main reasons being we, as a group gelled really well (working collaboratively with others), and also since the kids were really good group.
Later, next week, we had a session with Preschool D, Kevin and I had a similar plan with Preschool as with Grade 3, get to know the kids and introduce some basic terms (but a little less due to the younger age). However, when we arrived it was a lot tougher than we thought, as the kids were a bit active and yet extremely shy of us. So we had take the lesson a bit slower than anticipated. However, we taught them 'my name is...' and the basic colours in Sinhalese, however most of them could not remember. Thus Kevin and I decided we should refresh their memories about things we had learnt the week before, every week. But we saw real potential in all the kids, from both Grade 3 and Preschool D.
Judging from all the excitement and fun from these last previous two session, I can tell there is a lot of good things to come from these kids and our service!

Kevin and I with some of the Preschool D kids!

First Couple Weeks of Ping-Pong

The last couple weeks I have started to participate in the Ping-Pong after school activity, on Wednesday. This is something I have never done before (undertaking new challenges), so I thought it would be a great area to try out, especially since many of my peers play Ping-Pong (developing new skills).
When I first started, Ping-Pong was really difficult, which was unexpected since it seemed like a ‘relaxed’ sport. This really proved me the English saying: “Never judge a book by its cover,” which I really took to heart.
However through the sessions, I have quite a lot about Ping-Pong and its techniques and skills. I learned the rules of Ping-Pong quite quickly and easily, which was a good start. I also learnt more about, from my peers (collaborating with others) how to hold the Ping-Pong racket, how to serve, and how to direct and handle the ball. Soon I was able to play matches better, and win some as well, in both singles and doubles games.

Starting the serve and game

One thing that was really difficult about Ping-Pong, was strength and control of one’s strength. Since the Ping-Pong ball is relatively light, it travels really quickly, quite randomly, and further than one expects, so this took me by surprise, since in most other sports I play strength is quite necessary, and thus I lost quite a number of points. Although, through the sessions I have improved on this skills of control, it is still something I need to improve on further (increased awareness of areas for growth and improvement). 

Me in 'action.'

The New Beginning of Service

Recently, unfortunately, I have discontinued TFC due to some ethical issues there were with our topic (considering the ethical implications of our actions), thus it was difficult to involve any 'real service.' Thus I have joined a new service called "Mother Tongue Literacy," where our objective is to spread language and culture across of our community, since we do learn in English it is difficult for students to incorporate their languages into their day-to-day life and forget their languages. This problem is that something that only takes place in our community, but in a global scale, thus we hope to better the problem at least locally (engaged in issues of global importance).

We hope to start with the primary students, as we believe there are the most affected and still the easiest to help (since languages are shaped and developed when younger), thus we have started to plan our activities that we hope to carry out with them in the future. 

Firstly, we set ourselves goals as a group that we hope to achieve in the future of our service, and we had all wanted to:

1. Give back to our community 

2. Make community more culturally aware through language and various activities 

3. Spread language throughout our community. Which is, hopefully, what will be happening throughout the course of this service.

Secondly, we created a shared document through Google Docs for the group from the primary teachers' request, where each language group had to fill out a table regarding: 

1. Who we were (what language group)?

2. Whom we wished to work with in the primary school?

3. How will we spread language, and what will we do with our audience (the primary kids)?

4. At what times we could work together?

Kevin and I (the Sinhala Language Group) had filled it out saying we wanted to work with primary kids who were native to Sinhala in grades 1-4 (since this way we could further develop their Sinhala skills through various games and activities that weren't too difficult for the students), and with non-native speakers in grades 3-5 (we aimed for higher non-native audiences since we thought it would be difficult to teach younger students from the very beginning). We wanted to achieve this through various games and activities such as UNO, board games, or sports, etc., or through food (since this is an activity that everyone would enjoy and learn the basics as well). For the non-native audiences we wanted to introduce basic material such as: alphabet, colours, animals, etc. through various fun activities (planning activities); this way we hoped we could work collaboratively with the primary students. (A picture of the Google doc is given below with our answers as well). 

After the teachers replied to our proposal and we agreed on times and such, the teachers had replied back saying that we could start right after the break. I have worked with children before in the past, but nothing in such context as this, therefore it is a relatively new experience for me, where I can undertake new challenges and improve and grow in terms as a person and leader, which is something that I look forward to within our service!

A Screenshot of the beginning of the Google Doc Page

Top: Our part (Sinhala Group) of the Planning Doc

Drawing Club First Few Weeks

This semester I joined Drawing Club, as I thought it is a great opportunity to improve on my drawing skills further more from last semester/year, but in different areas of drawing (ex: Pokemon, Francis Bacon artwork, etc.), (undertaking new challenges).

This semester I have decided to focus on Greek mythology characters (ex: Phoenixes, Minotaurs, etc.), as I feel this is something that I am truly interested and fascinated by, and a great way to explore and learn about an older part of history and also improve on my shading skills (improving and developing on skills). 

So far, I have been produced a phoenix artwork drawing seen below, and hopefully I can produce more pieces with more mythological characters later in the future (planned and initiated activities). My objective, is by the end, combine the pictures and characters I have drawn into one big picture, which can explain that part of history to people who may not know about it or tell a story about Greek mythology to others through the use of pictures (planned and initiated activities), which is skill I hope to develop and improve (developing new skills) on by the end of this Drawing Club activity, since it is something I have never done before.

You can learn more about the Phoenix and the stories about it, which is something I personally enjoy reading, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(mythology). You can also learn more about the Minotaur here: http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/minotaur.html, and other Greek mythology characters and stories here: http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/europe/greek/

The Phoenix that I drew.