Assignment 17

Old Town High School Chemistry teacher Ed Lindsey has taken a different approach to teaching his students. He is giving them a hands on learning experience, one they are really enjoying.

Parking Standup

Assignment 16 Redone For the Web

Mercury levels in some areas of Maine are higher than other areas of the New England region. University of Maine Assistant Research Professor Sarah Nelson says that mercury travels to Maine in the air and is found in the emissions from factories. A large source of the problem comes from factories in Asia whose emissions make their way to our side of the globe.


The levels of mercury found in most people in the U.S are not near dangerous levels. They are usually below one part-per-billion which is not enough to cause any major concern. Women who plan to become pregnant or are pregnant need to be extra careful though. There is concern that the mercury will pass from a mother to her fetus. Mercury research is still fairly new and the side effects are still being studied. Researchers find that high levels of mercury in children can lower their IQ’s.


Seafood lovers have no reason to panic. Everything in moderation is still a good idea. It is still smart to enjoy seafood as a part of your diet. To help people, both the EPA and the state of Maine have guidelines on their websites as to what levels or mercury are deemed safe in humans. The websites also provide the levels of mercury that can be found in different types of fish. Also provided is some information regarding mercury spills and leakage into the environment.

Assignment 16 VO-SOT

Assignment 14: Why I want to be a journalist

Some people wake up every morning, go through their morning routine and know what to expect from their day. It could be a typical boring day in the office, or a job that never changes from day to day. This sounds like an awful way to live life. I don’t want to wake up and know what to expect from my day. I want surprises and changes; I want to learn new things. This is where being a journalist comes in. As a journalist you may be heading to the same “job” each day, but what that job offers you is different everyday. Journalists get to collect, organize and deliver the most important current events and news to the public. This news is new and ever changing. Journalists need to be on the ball at every moment; they never know when something breaking is going to happen. As a result the journalists job offers some sense of excitement. You never know what’s going to happen, therefore you never know what you will get to report on and learn about.

When I first came to college it was for engineering. I quickly learned that just because I didn’t enjoy English classes in high school, this didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy communication and journalism classes at the college level. I quickly ran away from engineering and right to the communication and journalism department. I realized that journalistic writing is very different from the writing an English major would do, or the writing I did in high school classes. It’s not studying classic literature, or reading long novels, but being up to date with the world and knowing about important issues that are arising everyday, being up to date with the current politics, the information that journalists study and gather is endless.

Regardless of what happens in the world, there will always be a need for journalists. It is a field that is very competitive and demands potential candidates be the best they can be. This includes having great writing skills, but also an extensive working knowledge of important technologies and equipment. The better rounded a journalist is, the better there chances for success. This means adding new bits of knowledge and information to your brain everyday. With jobs in newspapers on the decline, jobs in newspapers, radio and T.V are doing well. This means that journalists must have an extensive working knowledge of technologies and be able to create packages for various mediums. to This is something that seems like a fun job, a job where you can remain up to date and current with everything going on. There are still job offerings in the field, they just require the best possible candidates. This is why an aspiring journalist must be the best that they can.

Please take a minute to answer the poll on the top right of my page regarding journalism.

Check out this graph. It is a coloration between the jobs in manufacturing and jobs in journalism.

Some tips from an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nigel Jaquiss

Just to prove the journalists are regular people, here are some comical bloopers:

Assignment 13

This is my edit of assignment 12 using Final Cut Pro.