Jamie Reflection– The one big thing I felt after Jamie’s talk was a feeling of hope. Jamie seemed like a guy that was really passionate about and invested in the food business and would go to almost any measures to help out local farmers and make the food industry more sustainable while still getting people the food that they desire. Within Jamie’s businesses, things like oil from cooking are reused as things like biofuel that companies like Susquehanna Mills and Maine Standard Biofuels will buy to use. He provided a lot of insightful information on things that many people don’t realize, such as the term “cage-free eggs.” Many people, including myself, did not realize that although cage-free sounds better for the chickens, it is actually, in my opinion, a less humane way of keeping the chickens, as almost 40,000 of them are kept in a large warehouse with little to no roaming space, which causes the mortality rate to go up due to injury and trampling by other chickens. A lot of people don’t realize that the “milkman cycle” or cycle of when a milkman milks his cows and drives around delivering milk and collecting empty bottles is actually not sustainable. This is because if people decide they don’t want milk, then the cycle gets disrupted. Overall, I feel like if more people had the outlook on food and food production that Jamie did, the food industry would be much more sustainable and better for small farms and businesses.
(photo from http://bkkgreenie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Cage-Free-Eggs.jpg)
Eportfolio Reflection
I thought the eportfolio was a creative idea to get all the projects we received at the beginning of the semester in one place. It’s a nice overview of the class and for the most part was fairly easy to add to. There was definitely a learning curve since I have used Google Sites all my life for blogs and online portfolios and journal entries. My eportfolio could definitely be more organized as it was hard to separate all the different entries for all the different projects we did.
Project Management Software Tool Review
-Sam and I chose to use Asana because it was easy to sign into and easy to navigate and we had already used it to assign tasks for our STARS Assessment project. We tried Trello and Mindmeup but we felt that because we already new how to effectively navigate Asana that we should just stick with it and keep all the tasks for all the assignments all in one place. It was also helpful to have access to other pages made by our classmates (as seen on the left of the picture below) to help form our own page.
-One of Asana’s mottos is “all your work, all in one place.” This resonated with us because that was the main reason why we stuck with Asana in the first place. Not only does it allow you to put in several projects into the software, it allows you to also create subtasks, write their due dates, white who should be completing the task and if it is done or not. You can also include in each task who to contact to get more information. You can view the tasks in list form or calendar or other different forms as well.
-Asana is pretty good at doing what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to help a person organize all their tasks digitally and provide specific information on each task like when it must be done, what it is, or who must be doing it. However, I think it could be done in a much simpler way. I feel they tried to add too many elements and made it more complicated than it should’ve bee. I personally am a fan of physically writing down everything I need to do and information about it and setting reminders when it’s due and crossing it off when it is done. I find that much easier and provides more satisfaction when complete.
-It took some effort to actually figure out how to use the simple features. I feel because it is a complex software, it would take a lot of more effort to figure out each tool it offers. But all we really needed was the simple feature mentioned above.
-I wish it was a lot simpler. Otherwise everything else we needed was all included.
-I would give Asana a 4/5
-Though Asana was useful, I still prefer to write things down physically because that is a lot simpler and easier for me to use and see what is due and when and I can always send a picture to my partner on the assignments he has to do, or we can make the same list and cross things off as we go.
Communication strategies with instructor during online instruction
Zoom video chats have been the most helpful. I attended the first check in with Althea to see how everyone was doing and what changes had been made to the class due to the change to online classes. The week following the first zoom chat, my partner for the final project and I scheduled another zoom call to get feedback on out idea for our final project as well as to get answers to all the questions I had about what still needed to go on this eportfolio.
Once we had the individual zoom call I had very clear instructions on what to do. I submitted my first project proposal via email and had a short exchange via email. Email has also been helpful in communicating what assignments are due when. Google Docs has also been helpful in this same way.
Extra Credit Zoom Earth Day movie reflection
I was amazed that I was able to listen to Maggie Stogner who is an environmental film maker with many accolades. I thought it was really cool to watch a movie before it was fully finished. If I could figure out how to become an environmental film maker, I would love to give that a try. The film was very informative and impactful and I think will help people realize all the things they are breathing in every day. The Clean Air Act was one of the most important acts ever put into place, so to learn about how the world was before it was enacted was incredible and shocking how negatively the dirty air impacted the health of people.
It was interesting to learn about Ed Muskie and the work he did to bring about actions that the nation could take to reverse the damage that had been done to the air quality and to achieve “a better and more peaceful life to our fellow humans.” This was one of the first times that the health of people was put above money or technology. The air pollution was getting out of hand and people noticed this and took drastic measures to fix the problem. I believe this is the attitude the world needs to take to live sustainably and stop climate change and maybe have a hope in reversing the damage that has been done.
Hearing about all the different lives that had been negatively affected or lost due to cancer or other respiratory problems from the polluted air put everything into perspective that the unclean air was hurting people too, not just the earth and animals. I felt this was very fitting to watch this film around earth day and during the Covid 19 crisis. Things got much, much worse before it got better
