Month: March 2020

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An average post about designing

Hey! Welcome to another post on my blog! I hope you read all the way to the end of this one too! Enjoy!

This post is based off of our latest project in scimatics; The “Ultimate Design Challenge” this “challenge” was a project where we were to create a 3D design (and print it) in the app Tinkercad™ of course, we were allowed to use other design apps as long as it was possible to find SA (surface area) and V (volume).

Anyway, on to the actual project

Milestone 1: milestone 1 was a chance to think about what we really wanted to design, well what we might design anyway. When I made my “driving question”” as we call it, I thought that I would design a goalie glove for soccer, however, I did end up doing it because it has too many hard calculations.

Milestone 2: this milestone was or once we had decided what we would finally make. I decided to make a wine glass for maximum volume. I chose this one because I thought it would be cool to design something like a cup.

These are the formulas for SA and V for all of the shapes I had at the time

Milestone 3: milestone 3 was the final calculations and measurements for our 3D model. Mine actually had more SA than V which was not my goal.

Here are my final calculations!

Milestone 4: milestone 4 was the final model. We had it sent into our teacher (Mr. Hughes) to be 3D printed at school. Unfortunately for me, my print didn’t work and I had to do without it.

This is a photo of my final model in the app I created it in! Shapr3D!

Milestone 5: milestone 5 was our presentation to the class. This presentation was supposed to include our printed model but only one group had it. My presentation in general was a flop. I didn’t have anything prepared and I think that I can improve on that in the future.

 

Competency time!

Applying and innovating: this one was based around using your time efficiently and working well. I think that I mostly did this well even though I had some distractions in class.

Reasoning and analyzing: this competency was meant to show how well you can show math in an efficient and convincing way while having it make sense. I think that in my calculations and formulas I showed this well because it shows the numbers in an open are for simplicity.

Communicating and representing: thins competency was pretty simple. It was to show what you know about your calculations and providing proof of them for evidence. Although I didn’t do a good job at this during my presentation, I think that I did have the calculations and formulas in an easy-to-read concept.

until next time!

Keenan

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An average post about D.I. regionals

What is DI? DI is a worldwide school-age competition in which teams present a solution to a challenge. There are six categories you can compete in. My school competed in 5 of the categories, they were Engineering, Scientific, Fine Arts, Technical and Improv. I was a member of the engineering group. Our challenge had us build a bridge out of cards and duct tape to cross a gap and barrier. We also had to make a story which Makes our presentation more interesting. Lastly, we had to make a set piece to help explain where we are in the story. Here is a video which explains the basics of our challenge. 

Now that you know the basics, ill tell you a little about the preparations we did for this challenge.

When we first were told what the challenge was I immediately wanted to do it. I liked the idea of finding the strongest shapes and using them to create something that can carry more than its own weight. Anyway into the team we had a team of four members (thats smaller than most) they were: Kate, Jakub, and Randy. We all have different strengths (obviously) so we tried to make them work together as best as possible. The “main” challenge was, of course, the engineering aspect, therefore it is worth the most points in scoring. When we started we tried to generate as many ideas as possible using little squares of paper we called “idea squares” (original name I know). We were given time in class to work out a sorting system and look through all of the ideas to find out what was useful and what wasn’t. For the next few days we completed idea generation forms and such (but thats not all that interesting). We also researched a bunch of architecturally things like the strongest shapes or strong bridges to make sure we were on the right track!

Now, I will be talking about the actual event. DI was a very intimidating thing at first (at least to me) so I was happy that I got to do my main challenge early on in the day. The hallways were packed with kids from the age of around 8 to maybe even 16. The challenges were split into age groups but we surprisingly weren’t in the high school level because grade 8 is still classified as a middle school age. When our presentation started, we didn’t really know what to expect, but, we managed and got through most of it easily. The only part that came with bad luck was assembling the bridge. Some of the pieces didn’t fit together so we were just sitting there awkwardly trying to fit our bridge together while our 8 minutes ran out (which they inevitably did).

That was ours! We got third!

I think that we could definitely do better preparing for the bridge building sequence for the provincials (which we are) and just overall being more comfortable with acting. I do think that we had some strong point in our presentation too and we will be working together to strengthen those already strong points and make them stand out even more!

Competency time (there’s only one)

Research and Understand: this competency is meant to show how you managed to effectively research and understand that research when looking into the challenge/problem/process. I think that I have shown my understanding of the rules because of the product that I created when I presented (we had no deductions YAY). I also think that this is an essential part of completing a challenge successfully in DI.

I hope you enjoyed reading this reflective post on DI regionals!

Until next time!

-Keenan

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An average post about the Renaissance

Hey again! In this post I will be talking about the Renaissance! Our most recent project in humanities was all based off of the renaissance (or at least most of it was).

I hope you enjoy this post!

 

Our task for Milestone One was to create a mind map with the seven branches of worldview; geography, time, beliefs, society, economy, knowledge, and values, then, make branches off of those to show how our worldview has changed during the transition fro elementary school to high school.

Here’s my mind node!

Milestone two:  here’s another milestone not related the renaissance. In this milestone we altered the lyrics to the song “It’s the end of the world as we know it” by R.E.M. to make our own little “parody” however, we were asked to make the song entered around ourselves and to try to make them as closely related to the transition from elementary to high school.

This is the first part of my song’s lyrics

And here’s the second part!

Milestone 3: In this part of our project we finally recorded our final song. Just kidding! Anyway, we recorded our vocals over the instrumental version in GarageBand on our iPads. This was new, but fun and I enjoyed the experience of learning to use a new program. Unfortunately I can’t share my individual song with you but I will share the group one I promise!

 

Milestone 4: this milestone was a little write up about a certain subject from the Renaissance. I chose the emergence of humanism. I thought that this was important because it shaped the entirety of modern science.

Part 1

Part 2

Milestone 5: this was the group song that we created by combining all 3 of our member’s songs. You can check it out HERE although I’m not sure what happened when uploading it to YouTube as it seems to have cut 70% of the song out. I’m not sure what happened when the video was uploaded but I can try to get it fixed. I hope I can so you can hear the full song!

Now that we’ve reached the end of the milestones, its time to talk about the curricular competencies!

Create: this competency is about showing the skills you use to create anything really. I think that I have shown lots of skills throughout this project; many of which were used in the song and many others in the writing and note taking parts as well. Although I didn’t fully complete this project I still think that I did a good job by creating song lyrics which were true to myself and showed a point of view in a somewhat comedic way.

Cause and Consequence: this competency is all about, well, finding the cause of an event, then finding the consequences of said event. I think that I have showed this pretty well because I have recognized and shown the consequences and such for large scale historic events like the emergence of humanism especially in the time of the Renaissance.

Now that we’ve reached the end of the post I’d just like to say that this was definitely not my BEST work as I did miss a lot of school during this and my entire group definitely could have done with a lot more effort put into this project. In other words, I hope I can do better on my next project!

Thanks for reading this far! Until next time!