Steve Ortiz 5/25/13

I have grown in my ability to investigate the world through Mr. Dewaeles Art Analysis project. For this project, my class and I had to choose a piece of art from the Renaissance. The art could be an artistic, musical, or literal piece of art. Since I chose Niccolo Machiavellis The Prince, this projects main goal was to analyze The Prince. In order to analyze the literal piece of art, I was taught how to analyze through the use of an acronym. The acronym was PIRATES, which stands for political, intellectual, religious, artistic, technologic, economic, and social. The acronym is used as a means to remember these aspects of society in order to properly analyze a piece of art or historic event. Take The Prince for example. The Prince has politically affected our modern society due to every leader since Napoleon has read it, using some of its strategies to obtain or stay in power as a ruler. This sentence can be used to further evaluate The Prince by listing real-life examples of his strategies in use. PIRATES is a very useful skill that can aid in ones growth in investigating the world. It requires one to research more information on the topic, giving a much deeper understanding of the topic and how it affected our world, at the time and to this day. In addition, it helps us receive insight on the creator of the piece of art, usually giving one the creators view on a subject. One can assume that Machiavelli views humanity in a realistic/pessimistic view from the following quote, this is to be asserted in general of men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous Through my trip to China, I have grown in my amount of knowledge. Although the trip was during the summer break, I had to make a power point when I came back to present what I did to the rest of the school. The main focus of the trip was to represent V.I.S.A. at the Shanghai International Youth Science and Technology Expo, where different schools from fourteen countries presented their science projects. At the expo, I learned many things from the students projects, such as the concept of piezoelectricity and how solar panels can be creatively implemented into toys, saving parents money that would have been used for batteries. There were also presentations given by the students, where they showed ideas that would benefit our future. After the main event, the hosts sent us to two museums, the Shanghai Baoshan International Folk Arts Exposition and the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. At the Baoshan Folk Arts Exposition, I learn a lot about Chinese culture and of many other cultures of the world. At the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, my knowledge grew as we watched an informational movie about the Earths Permian era, and learned about machines at the robotics wing of the museum. As we visited these and other places in Shanghai, we learned more about Shanghais past. We visited Yuyuan Garden, the former home of Shanghais minister, and learned about the Ming dynasty. We also visited a rustic town outside of Shanghai, named Water Town in Chinese, where we learned how much of an effect the towns location had on its economy, due to it being located on a canal.