CTESS Interview Thank You Note

Recently I have been interviewed for an internship. The very last thing I did was send a thank you note. Below is what I sent.

Dear Ms. Olivo,

          

      Please forward this message to Ms. L, one of the interviewers on 3/26/18 in ITHS. Thank you for taking the time to interview me. It was a great experience for me to know how job interviews play out in the real world. Going back to the internship, you should hire me because I have a fair amount of skills using Adobe software as well as Word and Powerpoint as I stated in the interview. Additionally, I would be a great in the workspace due to my organization skills and problem solving skills. Again, thank you for interviewing me and I hope to hear back from you.

                                                                                                                   Sincerely,

                                                                                                                   Jawad Rahman

Project Brochure Reflection

     The theme of this project was respect for all. Respect for all week was going on in our school so for this project we choose a topic we thought was a problem going on in the world and wrote a brochure about it. We started by drafting a layout of a brochure on paper. No real content went into this draft but we were figuring out what we would put and where we would put them. It was during this process the major framework of my brochure as developed. On the cover was going to go a cover photo with large lettering for the title. Inside on the second page would go my introduction. After my introduction was my first story which extended on to the next page. On the page next to the second page would also be my data which would extend on to the page after that and finally another story. The back panel was planned to have all my sources listed and on the third page on the back would be my solutions page. Then we planned out the content we were going to put in to those sections of our brochure. These were specific fact in specific sections of our brochure. This is where we chose a topic to write about and then researched facts for our sections. I decided to write about climate change which changed a lot of my draft. I had renamed sections so they fit in line with the approach of how I would present the material. The first story became an explanation of the greenhouse effect, the data section became the causes of climate change, and the third story was broken up into 2 sections about the impact of climate change. The last section on the back became a message to the reader about what they should do to help. The choosing of my topic and the facts I researched forced me to change a lot of the draft since the first draft didn't help me present my material in a logical fashion.
     Then we were up to the part of creating something in InDesign. We transferred the draft of our layout to InDesign and put in our content we planned. We obviously used the text tool heavily to do this. Many of us, however, had typed our content in a word document and were copying and pasting back into InDesign. We would frequently end up with overset text which was easily fixable by linking text fames but for some sections that was not possible. This is where I discovered the story editor which allowed me to see all the text in the frame and told me where the overset was. I was also able to edit my text from the story editor to make scetions that were too long fit within the space alloted. There was also the matter of creating a background. For this heavy use of the rectangle tool and the associated tools was required. Some of the text did not look good aginst the background color so the color of the text needed to be tweaked frequently. The typography was tweaked a lot for spacial issues, these issues almost always being that the text did not fit. So font size, leading, and tracking were some of the things that needed to be tweaked to conseve space. To inset images and data tables we used text wrap so the text wouldn't overlap the image and vice versa. Finally, the printing part. After we printed our brochures for the first time there was an obvious problem with folding. The spacing between the three panels was wrong and the brochure did not fold properly, some of the content was creased. So it was back to InDesign where we learned about gutter and margins/bleed. Gutter and bleed are areas the printer need to grab on to which means nothing is printed in those areas. Taking into consideration the gutter/bleed we fixed the spacing of our brochure and called it a project.

CTE EXPO Reflection

     

I'm in the middle

     Recently we've had our first CTE Expo for our VD course. A CTE Expo is an event where students interested in joining a CTE Academy meet and talk to students already in the academy to gain information about that specific academy. The objective is to help students be more informed about the academy. This is to ensure when the student makes the decision about which academy they want to join their decision is informed. This also increases the chances that students will want to join said academy. There were many things done in preparation for the expo. Last time we did a project it was making logos. What we did after was make 9 business cards with 3 specific layouts and 3 of our best logos used in every version of the layout (3 cards share the same layout but have a different logo). Those business cards were then but on a tri fold poster board along with some writing to be our presentation for the expo. These cards were meant to show what we learned throughout the first six months of VD visually. We also practiced how we would talk to the students. Things like handshakes, appearance, and what we would say to them are things we practiced. I looked back at my notes to refresh my mind about what the course it self was about and memorized specific concepts so I can mention them. I didn't want to explain my project rather the course itself and what we would do and have the board as a visual example of what we do. 

     During the actual event we did what we prepared for. We greeted the students as practiced and we mostly stayed on script to what we planned to say to the students, MOSTLY. Some of the presenters, including myslef, needed to switch to plan B. I practiced handshakes and greeting but no student would come to me. So I went searching for students and used a strategy to bring them to my board. I would tell them intersting things about the academy as well as an overview of the course and used their interest to see more to bring them to my board. How well did that go, it only worked on 2 students. Most students didn't even want to talk to me as they had already seen other presentations. I realized I wasn't a big attention grabber but others were. Others also did not give some information that I knew. So plan C was initiated. I would wait for the attention grabbers to get the attention of the students. Then after they were done giving their information I jumped in and gave additional information. This included info about career opportunities and challenges we faced. It didn't bring students to my board but I could still say that I informed students. 

     Many things went well during the expo. The content of our presentation was one thing that went well. The presenters were able to keep the students interested. They may've decided not to join our academy our any academy long before the expo but by their facial expression I knew what we were saying was still worth their time. As a matter of fact we were able to change the opinions of some of the students that already decided. The presenters themselves was another aspect that went well. The presenters were all well behaved and respected the students. The attire of all the presenters was good, everyone looked nice. The presenters were able to show that they knew what they were doing in the academy and were able to answer questions thrown at them. Not all went well and things can be improved. The layout of the expo was very packed. It made it difficult to navigate and search for students. It was also difficult for some of the students to figure out where they can find out certain info. So the next layout should be easily navigable and the students should easily be able to figure out where to get specific info. The projects we did for the expo also need improvements. We did a lot of writing for the students to read but none of them were interested in reading them. Since the students were more interested in seeing than reading we could've used the time we spent writing on things of interest the students would've enjoyed seeing. Some of the freshmen also acted poorly. Some of them were rude and insulted the presenters. They would play on their phones while we were talking to them. Next time the freshmen could be told to act better so they don't decide he expo is a free period and no rules apply.

     My overall feeling about the expo is that it was a success. The presenters were able to successfully give meaningful information about the academy and keep the interest of the students. We were able to convince some students to join our academy and we helped reinforce the decision of the students who decided to join our academy before the expo. The environment was professional just like our academy. There were a few nicks here and there but overall it was a success.