DONE!

In my opinion, overall this project was all right. I completely understand why it was important for us to do this project. It is important to know how to apply what we learned into our daily lives and that is what this project was basically about. However, this project was difficult because it was hard to find a good problem that we would be able to fix in such a short amount of time. Although it was difficult, my group worked really well together and shared each task fairly equally. The work that needed to be completed for this project was done by each member of the group in some way. We had a rough start to our project because of the many rejections and proposals that we had to go through. In the end we were not able to implement anything on school campus. We are not absolutely sure if Mrs. Cooke and her staff are going to install the metal strips in the near future because we never really got any clarification on it. However, I for one, have learned many lessons from this project. I learned that sometimes it takes a lot of work from more than just one person to get something done. Before starting this project, I didn't think that it would be all that hard considering we would be working with a group. I thought that we would just need to contact a few people and get some approvals. Well, we quickly learned that this project was much more difficult that we predicted. We thought that since we got approval to put the strips on the stairs that it would get implemented. But, we were wrong. Although many things weren't great about this project, I wouldn't change anything about it because it is different than sitting in a lecture and taking notes. It gets students to think more for themselves like we will eventually have to do in the real world in the near future. I hope that the upcoming Physics students that have to do this project will understand the real purpose of this project and really take it to heart. Although we were supposed to maybe learn more about science through this project, I feel as though I learned much more life skills than anything else. And that is not such a bad thing. 


  

Last Blog

 Overall I thought this project was all right. The one thing I had in mind is that the more years this project is done the harder it is going to be to find tangible problems around campus to fix. The project itself was a good idea and it fixed many problems we had this year. The things that went well in our project was communication. When we went to get our project approved by faculty and staff, we did it fairly quickly. We also were able to communicate well amongst our group to get things done. Some of the things that did not go according to plan is how many ideas we went through. We ended up going through two projects before getting one finally accepted. And at the end the project we chose did not get fixed by the end of this year. I think this activity is fine how it is. It is up to your group how you want things to be done with little help other than the acceptance of the proposal to Mrs. Martin. I did not really think I was doing physics. It was a little difficult to apply physics to some of the problems we were trying to fix though. By learning physics and doing this project it makes you realize how much science we deal with in our everyday lives.

Final Blogpost!

Overall this project was okay. I understand that applying what you learn to real life is important and that’s what this project promotes. But this project was fairly difficult though in the sense that solving a problem on campus can be done in the time given. With that being said, not being able to solve the problems in the time being kind of defeats the whole purpose of bettering the school. My group worked really well together and we took on the tasks fairly equally. The work assigned for this project was very reasonable and we were given a plethora amount of time to accomplish them. We had many, many rejections as far as proposals and ideas go. And we were unable to implement anything. We don’t know for sure if the metal strips are going to be implemented for sure. I learned that it takes a lot of work and approval to accomplish one thing. I also learned that deadlines in the real world aren’t flexible. I thought we would just have to talk to people and the process of putting the strips on would take less than a day and we’d be done. Little did I know that, that wasn’t going to happen even this school year. I wouldn’t necessarily want to change anything in this project because it is a nice alternative to learning and have to take another final. I would just hope there are still things to better Kamehameha after all these groups tackling tangible things to solve. There was some science involved in this project but I mostly learned life skills this past quarter.

DONE SON!

YAY! Today is our last monday schedule of Physics.  Yes! I'm so glad it's basically done! :)  I felt that this project was definitely a learning experience.  We learned multiple things that we can take with us in life.  The first thing I learned is that "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."  I got that quote from The Lorax because we needed to watch this movie at the beginning of the quarter.  From this quote, I learned that many people are unaware of problems in our world.  If we see a problem, we should point it out and let others know about it and attempt to fix it.  If people don't know of these problems, nothing will be done.  I also learned about teamwork.  Everyone in my group needed to finish their part of the project to get things done.  Without there efforts, we would have majorly failed.  I felt that the best thing that went well of all the things that happened in this project was that I got to work with people in my class that I don't really talk to, and we got to know each other better and see each other excel during this project.  We all were very helpful when needed.  Even though our project could not be implemented on time, we know that it will be fixed in the future! We are happy to see that Kamehameha is growing to becoming a better place because of students who care and want to see things being fixed.  This project was kind of difficult in trying to find a problem to solve and then going through all the little steps to getting there with approvals from administration with deadlines.  It was very stressful.  I don't really have any other opinions on how this activity should be fixed.  I felt that we were doing science, but in a different way then normal sciences do their work.  I liked how the 1st 3 quarters we learned about actual science.  Then, in 4th quarter, we needed to relate something in the real world to physics, learn about it, and then explain it to our fellow classmate.  This was a really interesting quarter for Physics.  I'm so glad we're done!! :)

The Weekend After

Since yesterday was basically the finale of our quarter and our various projects, we don't really have homework!!!! THANK GOD! Our only homework is to blogpost and to edit our final paper to turn it in on Monday. Tomorrow morning our group will edit out paper and then we are done! Monday we need do our final blogs and then it is finals! I'm so happy we're done.  Hopefully we got a good grade on our project even though it didn't quite follow through.  I think we deserve a good grade because we gave our best and tired MULTIPLE problems to solve but even with our best given out, we couldn't get the conclusion we wanted.  We did learn good lessons throughout this project that we can take with us in life.

Presentations!

Today in class we didn't really do much because it was a PM Modified day, so we only had 40 minutes left.  Because we had shorter classes, and mostly everything was already turned in, we just rehearsed what we were going to say during our presentations and what order we were going to talk in.  We decided to write our notecards in case we needed to refer back to them.  None of us were really that scared of presenting during the day.  After the school day was finished we met as a group at 4:30 to rehearse one last time.  We all looked so good in our formal wear!  Right before our presentation I was kind of scared, but it wasn't too bad.  I realized after we were finished with our presentations I was fiddling with my cards and my hands.  I'm not the greatest at public speaking.  Well, we are all just glad it's basically over! Woohoo!

Last Block Schedule :(

Today was the last block schedule of the year!!!!! Wow this quarter and year flew by so fast! Anyways, today in class we worked on our final paper.  We added our conclusion and made final touch ups.  We also turned in our PowerPoint to Mr. Blake for tomorrow's presentation.  I hope we are ready and prepared to present it in front of Administration!  This should be interesting.  I'm glad we are going 5th of the 12 groups.  "Perfect! That's right before the time everyone gets bored" - Cory.  Haha he kind of said that to himself after we found out we were going 5th.  Tomorrow in class we need to rehearse what we are going to say so we don't screw up! Tomorrow should be interesting.  I don't want to dress up, but to get full points we have to.

Final Paper is almost due!

Tomorrow our final paper is due...well the first draft of it at least.  We've been working on this paper for most of the quarter, starting with the proposal and now ending with our reflection and conclusion of the project.  We are almost finished typing this paper.  Since we did not have class today, our group decided that we should assign different parts of the paper to each person.  In doing this we will get our paper done more quickly and more efficiently.  We are almost done completing this on Google Docs.  We have about 8 pages finished so far. Hopefully when we are finished, we will have a good length paper that covers everything!  Tomorrow is our last block schedule day for physics! :( How sad....

Working on the Final Paper

Today in class we turned in our PowerPoint draft.  Mr. Blake took a look at ours to see where we were in the process of getting prepared for Friday and what he felt needed to be changed and/or added to our PowerPoint.  After viewing our slideshow he told us just to add like a little reflection and how we felt before/during/after the project.  Tonight I will add this to our PowerPoint and add any last minute pictures and then our PowerPoint will be done!! :)  After showing Mr. Blake our PowerPoint, our group thought it was a good idea to start working on our Final Paper since it's due next class.  We got a fair amount of work done in class today.  So far we have about 8 pages of only words.  Yay! We just need to finish up the paper and conclude it, then add our pictures and we are finished with the paper! Woooo! 3 more days left of the week!

ALMOST DONE!

YES! Just finished up our first draft of our PowerPoint.  It's due tomorrow, and we're ready to turn it in! This is basically the last week of school, and we are all so stoked for summer!  All we have to do now is hand in our PowerPoint and get it revised, and turn in our Final Paper then present on Friday and we are good to go! This quarter went by so quickly!  I think I can say from all my group members that we just want this project to be done! It was kind of frustrating trying to find and fix a tangible problem at our school with a money budget.  I didn't think it was going to be that difficult at first, but as the project went by it seemed to get more frustrating.  Well, now that we are almost done the burden of getting things done on time is easing off.  Only 2 more block schedule days, 2 monday schedules, and a Final day and we're off! Yay!

In class yesterday we discussed as a group that we will work on our final paper and the PowerPoint to get it finished up.  Since I have the PowerPoint on my laptop, I will be finalizing it and adding all the pictures, information, and transitions of the slide in order so that by next Friday, it will be good for our presentation!  We are almost finished with this project and we're so happy! I think we're going to be stoked after we finish presenting on Friday.  Even though we were super bummed that we couldn't deploy our project on time, we are happy that we know it will be fixed in the future. Hopefully we don't get too much point deducted from that part of the project because we worked really hard on trying to get it finished and we did all we could to put it out there.

Putting it all together

Since today was the final day to have our final project deployed and we couldn't deploy ours, we decided to just have a simple work day in class to put all our work together.  Half of us worked on the paper and the other half of us worked on our PowerPoint.  We had to collect all the pictures that we had taken previously to put into the PowerPoint and the paper to show the process of what we had to go through.  After working on these two things in class, our group talked about what we will be doing for next weeks' classes to finalize this project and put it to an end!

Final Paper Time!

Today in class we spent the entire time working on our final paper and keynote. Mel and Kawai are working on the keynote. Cory and I are working on the final paper. But we are all collaborating on what to put in each of the two things. We’re kind of worried on how we’re going to make the final report 15 pages long. Looking at our final paper though, it’s taking shape. I don’t think we’re too worried about the oral presentation. If anything we’re more so worried about making the time for that.

Working

Yesterday we continued to work on our presentation and final paper. We are still sad from learning that we are unable to have a solution to our problem. I saw the group’s sign for lunch and I was jealous that they were able to have something implemented before Friday. It would be my luck to have our project being taken to a higher authority. I just hope it doesn’t affect my grade too much. Yesterday we also took pictures with all the people we interviewed. That was fun because we got to update them on our progress and the whole projects progress.

Bad Luck

Today in class Kawai received an email from Mrs. Cook and unfortunately our project has been submitted as a request through KS’ capital program to have metal nosings installed. In other words, our project is out of our hands and will not be implemented this school year or even this year probably. Metal nosings are sturdier because they can withstand Hawai’i and Kapālama weather. The adhesive strips peel off after moisture gets beneath the adhesive part of the strip. They also noticed that because they lose their moisture, they tend to curl up and become even more hazardous due the strips curling upward. It is really unfortunate that we are not able to have a project implemented out in the open but at least we tried.

Almost there!

Today we are still waiting on a response from the department head of the grounds people because our project is due Friday. Tomorrow we’ll probably either email her again or call to see what’s the status on the approval of our project. We also have to work on a post-test for our project. We don’t want to make a survey if we can’t go through with are project though. Also we have to find a way to be able to do a monthly subscription to use surveymonkey in order to be able to see more than 100 responses of data.

This week

This week we are hoping to get more done on our oral presentation and our final report. We are expecting to hear back from Mrs. Cook soon if not this week then hopefully early next week. We need the adhesive grip tape on the stairs because we still have to get more data from possibly another survey we will give to the students. If we don't have enough data then our project won't seem as reliable and may not seem to have made any change on this Kamehameha campus. We really need to get this done otherwise we won't get the data we need by the time we really need it. 

Doing work

In class we did a physics test so we did not have time to talk to each other about the progression of our project this weekend. So, we have decided to continue working on our final report that is due in the next two weeks. At first we were afraid that we wouldn't have enough to say to fill up 15 pages worth of words. But, we figured that talking about all the trial and errors we went through would be a good thing to do. We have had many good ideas most of which didn't work for this project. Hopefully including those in the final report will make our end result better. Right now we don't have much to talk about besides that because we haven't been able to actually get the adhesive tape on to the stairs yet. We are expecting to get a final decision very soon. 

Due Dates

Because due dates are approaching and we have not gotten verification from Mrs. Cook, we thought that it would be a good idea to begin on our oral presentation and final report that are due in the next two weeks. We will not have a lot of class time to do much of it, so we started more GoogleDocs to begin the process of finishing our project. I created another GoogleDoc for our final report and also a Google Presentation for our oral presentation. It is much easier to make these because all group members are able to work on the composition of each assignment. We have gotten started on the oral presentation; however, we were not able to do very much because we have not gotten verification from the people that we need to in order to get the adhesive grips put onto the stairs. Until we get notification, we will most likely not be able to do much to the presentation. 

Prototype

Because we cannot really do a prototype by this Friday, we asked Mr. Blake if making a survey would be a good idea. Thankfully he said that it was a good idea to make a pre survey and get some data before we actually place the adhesive grips on the stairs. So, a couple of days ago one of our group members, Melody, created a survey on survey monkey and posted the link on their Junior Class page on Facebook. After she posted it on Facebook, she received may 60-70 responses from students. We thought that we would need a lot more than that so I took the link and posted it on Facebook as well on the Senior Class page. To our surprise, the number of responses went up to 395. That is a good number of responses however, we are only able to see 100 of them because of the restriction that Survey Monkey has. Therefore, we are going to have to purchase a months worth of Survey Monkey so we are able to see all of the responses and also be able to create a post-survey when the project is completed.

Making Progress

Today we had a very short class period. We were not able to do very much especially because we were let out early to go down and eat our delicious hawaiian food that was being served at the Akahi Dining Hall. However, with our limited time that we spent in the classroom, I was able to respond to Ms. Cook's email. She spoke with Mr. Blake this morning at our assembly and asked if the deadline was too hard to complete the project. Mr. Blake told her that the actual deadline is next week and not this week. Therefore, I responded and thanked her for all the work that they are going through to help us complete this project and that we as a group really appreciate what they have to go through to help us. She said she would let us know when they will be able to work on the stairs and if it will be before the deadline.