We're Not Clowning Around

About Our Project

Believe it or not, this project actually took A LOT of time to complete. It took almost a month to come up with the actual topic! We were going to do our ThinkQuest topic on schools; like, the differences between private schools and public schools. But we thought that was going to be boring for readers, and we still kind of wanted to do something closer to home. And that is the reason we chose the circus; because we thought that this topic would be a lot more interesting to the readers, and it’s a lot closer to home considering where we live is pretty much the "circus city." And, the circus really is amazing, you’ll find out as you read our site. Our goal is really just to allow people to experience the circus right on their computer screen.

What We Did

Well, in order to really get the information we needed for this website, our team went on interviews. And guess who we got to meet? Dolly Jacobs! Who, if you don’t know, is a famous circus performer who co-founded Circus Sarasota. So, that was really cool and exciting for us. We asked as MUCH as we could squeeze into her time schedule, which you will find in Circus Stars. We also talked to Tim Hernandez. Tim is a teacher for all ages, and teaches at Ellen Meade Studios in Bradenton, Florida and was previously a performer with Ringling and Barnum & Bailey circus. We also went to the St. Armand's circle in Bradenton, Florida and saw the Ring of Fame. But our day wasn't over yet. We also got to go and watch a show at Circus Sarasota! Then, our day was over... after we had pizza, of course.

What We've Learned

During this project we have learned a lot. We have gone to interviews, and shows... the hall of fame and a circus school.... and during the process we have learned that there is more to the circus than just fun and games. These performers put so much time and effort into everything they do. All of the preparations behind the scenes... and we got to get in on all of the scoop. We learned not only about the circus but also we learned how to work as a team and to build the website.. of course. I'm sure if we had to do this project again we would be a lot more confident in what we could do to make it the best website it can be.

We all had diferent roles in this projet and we switched off to help use our time the best we could. We learned all about Dolly Jacobs, Tim Hernandez, Chuck Sidlow and more. It was a really great experience for all of us that we enjoyed and got lots of good information out of. It can help us so that in the future we can be more confident that we know what we are doing with interviewing, designing, creating, and writing the conent to make this project the best it can be.

Problems + Obstacles = Solutions

Of course, in projects like these, you occasionally will have obstacles you need to jump and problems you need to fix. Well, we had more than the occasional obstacle or problem:

1. First off, we just COULD NOT come up with the right topic! That got us way behind, to the point where we figured out that we going to do our project on the circus only a month or two before the project was due! That meant we had to do some MAJOR working time, which we did, and we caught up with the clock.

2. Then, we had problems scheduling a tour and getting interviews. See, our team are the ones doing the project, which means that our team is the one who has to call and arrange the interviews and outings. That was really scary and embarrassing for us, because we’d never really called a museum and scheduled a tour by ourselves! We weren't really sure how to get adults to take us seriously, but we worked the problem out by having a parent helpl with some of our scheduling, and we we able to interview some amazing people and see some amazing things!

3. We ran into yet another problem: The project was due in just a couple of months, and all we had gotten done was our topic! But, this problem easily got fixed because soon after, our team met up to talk about the project and we got an outline done of what we wanted to do for our project, which really helped us along the way! Things were soon back on track and we were OK again!

4. But then we had a Copy & Paste sickness running all around our group! Yes, it’s true, we couldn’t help it! Instead of putting things in our own words, we were doing some copying and pasting until we realized you can’t do that. We rewrote the things we thought were finished, but really weren't and it was over with... phew!

5. NEXT, we had even another obstacle! Well, our team had just been learning this really cool program call Microsoft Visual Studio. So we were typing all of our stuff and what not, getting our site done, NOT SAVING. Then of course-since we have so many windows open--the screen freezes. We tried to un-freeze the computer, but couldn't. So the only option left is to shut the computer off. Well, we shut the computer off and that’s when we realized that we had saved NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. So we had to do that work all over again, which was a blast...

6. And finally, we thought we had done a lot, but when it was finally time to put our work on our website, we kept thinking of new ideas! Pretty soon we were running out of time! So, pretty much what our team had to do is work after school every single day until at least 6 P.M. We had to work as a team. Some of us researched and typed things up and then we would take turns. Whenever someone had to go, we had to finish their work. The people who left would work from home and email stuff to us. The next day we would copy it all into our site.

7. There were some places that we wanted to go and see, but we never had a chance--time didn't let us. So we decided to just tell other people where to find those places.

So, yea, as you can tell we had A LOT of obstacles, but our site is done and it’s lookin’ good! Because we didn’t give up! We tried (and we did) solve almost every single one of our problems and obstacles we had, and look at our site!