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 LND Landscaping spends every snowy morning on the road keeping their costumers happy.

The plow truck drivers are out by two each and every morning. During the plow season the drivers have to not only plow, but salt and shovel too.

Snowy mornings are not fun for all drivers. The driver in this video, Mason Kuhn, also works at the company's shop that is open five days a week.

 Mason, is the head Technician at State Street Gulf. Some days he has to leave his house at midnight, plow until eight in the morning than go into the shop. If the storm is big enough he than has to go back out and plow after he gets out of work at six.

Many people think that it is easy to be a plow driver but when you work for a small company that also runs a shop you are out all the time.

Work in the winter can add up to seventy hours a week. But the plow drivers love the pay checks.

Final Project Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwA911e_Kf8PM0hJcHBucnhJTW8/view?usp=sharing Check Kendra's Blog for the rest of it!

Final Project Proposal

For our final project we plan on interviewing students about one specific teacher at Lyndon State. We are going to get their opinion on the teacher and than have them write down one word that they would use to describe them. With that one word we are going to make a word cloud. With the interviews we are planning on doing a video project. Depending on the responses of the interviews will determine if we also use a podcast. We also plan on having a writing component to it as well. We have not decided what each team member will be doing for the project. We know that we will conduct the interviews together. When we figure out how the interviews go we will figure out who will complete each step of the project.

Video Idea

I plan on following a plow driver for a morning when they go out to plow. I don't plan on using an interview because I am going to use a lot of natural sound. I will be following my boyfriend around and his company for a day so I will not be able to interview him but if someone else is willing to talk I will. The interview part will be up in the air until the day it happens. I plan on using my camera to shoot everything. I will be getting the footage over Thanksgiving break.

Dorian McGowan

http://hosting.soundslides.com/vbk9c/iframe.html

Dorian McGowan has a love for art. The artist worked here at Lyndon State College at a professor for many years. And some say that he was the one that started the art program here. Dorian is not just a drawer; he is also a painter, sculptor, garbage picker and bargain finder. When he creates art he uses the things he finds to create the art around. But, Dorian’s love is drawing people’s faces. He says even the ugliest person has something beautiful about them and that is what he makes known in his art. Dorian loves looking at people’s eyes and ears, and says that has a lot to do with beauty. Mr. McGowan has been an artist all of his life. He remembers being a little kid and climbing up in his grandmother’s oversized chair to draw with her. We asked him if his grandmother was an artist as well, he said, “No, No she was not,” with a chuckle. He said that once he got really good his grandmother said she was not going to draw with him anymore because he was too good. So he stopped being good at drawing because he wanted his grandmother to draw with him. Dorian does not like photographs, even though some would argue that it was true art. He thinks that too many pictures are taken these days and they don’t capture the special things. That’s why Dorian’s family photos are drawings he has done. They hang on his wall at his home. The drawings include his late wife, children and grandchildren. His grandchildren are some of the most important things in Dorian’s life. And like his grandmother did he also create art with his grandchildren. In Dorian’s latest showing at the library in town he has the King and Queen Sliver Chins. These were named this way because in one of his bargain runs he would these silver pieces he thought would look great as chins. Him and his grandson worked on these pieces together and even wrote a story to accompany them. Dorian enjoys when his grandchild want to help him with his art because he believes they are all artists as well.

iReport

I had never been on the CNN iReport page until I had to for Dan's class. It is interesting to see the different stories that are put up on the website. CNN offers to give you a tour around the site which was good for me because I had no idea what I was doing. At first I looked at the pictures from Halloween night. They were great pictures but I wanted a story. there may have been a story but I could not find one. CNN ireport reminded me of pintrest The welcome page says you can like your favorites and connect with new people, well I do this on enough social media sites I don't need another page to do that on. The welcome page also allows you to join a group. When I think of CNN I think of the news not a way to find people that are like me. As of right now I am not really a fan of CNN iReport, maybe some day in the future it will grow on me.

Sound Slides Project

We plan on interviewing Dorian for our sound-slide-project. Dorian is a professor who draws student’s portraits and displays them in the theater lobby. He and his sketches are a well-known fixture at Lyndon State. Many students and have been the subject of his art. It is our understanding is that he has been at the college for many years and therefor would have plenty to say. For images we would photograph the portraits, parts of his process (easels, pencils, clipboards etc.) and if possible, Dorian sketching. We would like to record some nat sound of shuffling papers, pencil on paper, and other art preparations. Of course our main sound will be the interview. We our most interested in his process. How does he choose his subjects? What his favorite part of sketching? What about his other work? Does he work with other mediums? How did he begin sketching portraits and why does he continue? We also hope to get sounds bytes about interesting stories over the years. Who are some of his favorite subjects? The most rewarding experiences he has had with his art? Of course for all this to happen we first need to find him but once we do it should be all down hill from there.

Slideshow Critiques

In this slideshow audio is used. The beginning did not have sound and the pictures were not very interesting so the start of it is pretty boring but if you get through the first part the rest becomes interesting. The middle is Van Gogh talking about the house that he lived in for a short period of time and it was interesting because at the same someone was talking about the house as they were touring it. I would have to say that if this story didn't have an audio I would have not finished watching it.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/audioslideshow/2014/may/02/van-gogh-london-house-artangel-audio-slideshow

I found a gallery that was about a NFL game. These pictures were self explanatory and did not need audio with them.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-sternoff/29-great-lytro-illum-pict_b_5713193.html

I did not find a slideshow with no audio, just more photo galleries that were put into slide shows.

Press Releases

To show the press releases that we get in one week we decided to use a word cloud. In the cloud you can see what the different violations people do. You can also see the age of people and the different towns that these people did the violations in. It was interesting to find out that younger people were the ones that had the most violations. It was also interesting to see that there was a girl from my hometown that was trafficking heroin. But the thing was there was also another person in the same week trafficking heroin. I was not surprised to see that DUI's were the highest crime rate. I was surprised to see that there was over twenty DUI's in one week. I like using word cloud because it is an easy way to visualize what words occurs the most. This is how you can figure out what crime is more likely, which towns have a higher crime rate and the age of the person committing the crime. The problem that I did have with the word cloud is that it would not show one important word, male. There were twenty three males that committed a crime in the past week that showed up in our press releases but even after writing that word in that many times it did not show up in the cloud. It showed female though, which did not make sense to me because there were many less females that committed crimes. I think that word cloud is useful when it comes to trying to figure out press releases. It would have taken much more work and much more time to try to use a pie chart or bar graph to visualize the information. Below is the link to bring you to the word cloud.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/8229250/Press_Releases_

Data Journalism Critique

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/sep/25/comparing-the-minimum-wage-across-europe-using-the-price-of-a-big-mac

I picked this story because I thought that it was interesting that the Guardian uses a lot of visuals to help tell there stories. I like the way that they use the graph to show how many big macs you can purchase while on minimum wage. It is interesting to see the difference from the top of the list to the bottom. I do not like the way that the map is used, I just don't think it really adds to the story. I think that if they had just used the table that would have shown the reader more than the map does. Once I saw the map I lost interest. The table did a better job than a video would have because you could see the comparison of the big macs and minimum wage. I think that data visualizations really help stories that need to show comparisons and such.

Thanksgiving Traditions

Families have many ways to celebrate Thanksgiving.

This blog post is a glimpse of what my family does for the holiday every year. We believe that traditions should be traditions.

The very first thing we do on Thanksgiving is watch the Macy's thanksgiving Day parade. We have done that since I can remember.

Than when Santa Claus comes to town we had to my aunts for dinner!

Some families like to eat different meals every year but we stick with the normal things like turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, rolls, stuffed celery, deviled eggs, and cranberry sauce. I like just about everything but...the cranberry sauce, that goes to the dog.

An interesting fact is that American's will use about 46 million pounds of turkey just on Thanksgiving.

But the most popular part of our Thanksgiving meal would have to be desert, which included pumpkin pie and my mom's famous chocolate mint pie (okay, maybe not famous, but it should be)!

We also play games on Thanksgiving. It is a tradition to play games anytime our family gets together. Usually on thanksgiving we play rummy for quarters.

But...the biggest tradition would have to be the shopping that comes along with Thanksgiving. When my sister and I were younger we would go to our grandparents house after Thanksgiving dinner so our parents could go Black Friday shopping.

When we got older wee have to joys of getting to start our own Black Friday shopping. It gets earlier every year since shopping now start after dinner time on Thanksgiving.

It is hard to keep these traditions going because my sister and I are growing up, but I hope to keep some of these traditions for my own kids.

Podcast for Class

How Hard is it to Count to Ten

Online Writing (Just a Test...Not real)

The search is on tonight for twelve year old Zachary Lee who never made it into his foster home after he was dropped off in Sunderland. Police believe that Lee’s mother could be the one who has taken him based on a documented history of such attempts.

Lee has only been in the United States since August 29^th and is unfamiliar with his surroundings.

Zachary has been described as a white female standing about ten feet tall and weighing 95 pounds. 

He has brown shoulder length hair and brown eyes and has a French accent.

His mother, Patricia Kane is 49 years old with white or blonde hair and brown eyes. She is about six feet tall and weighs 125 pounds.

Her route of travel is unknown.

Police are asking anyone with any information to call  802-442-5421 or submit an anonymous tip to www.vtips.info. 

It's week three back at school and this year could not get any crazier. It seems like all I do is go to school and work. I have no idea how I am going to make it through this semester. I am supposed to be getting married in less than a year but I have no time to even see my boyfriend. For example this weekend I have to work almost 30 hours after going to school all week and not seeing him at all. So what we had a couple hours to see each other not including sleep time. That really puts a damper on our relationship. Thankfully, he supports me in every way and hopefully we will make it through. So here it is week three...two reporting shifts to go, a producing shift, one NewsLinc shift, eighteen credits to work at one shift at the hospital, one work shift, and a wedding to be part of. Holy crap it's going to be a long week.