Final Blog Post

This Hooulu ia Kamehameha project was something different for me. At first, I was very scared at the difficulty of this project and the amount of stress I would have trying to meet all of these deadlines. However, as the quarter went on, it was a big relief to me of how my group was on it and knew what we wanted to do. I think doing this project was a great idea, especially because we get to improve our school for the years to come. It doesn't hurt to make this school a better place, and with several groups working on different problems, we're bound to make a difference. A lot of things went well for our project. First of all, we decided on our problem AND solution early on, which to me is the hardest part of the project. Along the whole way, we were meeting our deadlines and knew what we were doing. There's nothing that really happened that strayed from the plan, but there was one small problem we encountered. It was just brainstorming on the actual design of the stand because we couldn't find an affordable, decent sized stand available to purchase. However, this problem was immediately resolved with the help of Lehua's dad because he let us use his saw horse. From this project, one of the most important skills I have aquired is the ability to work with my peers. At first I wasn't really comfortable working with Lehua and Pono, but I got to know them and learned how to work and compromise with them. This was vital so we could effectively communicate. This project wasn't too strenuous nor easy, so there's nothing I could really think of right now to improve it. Looking at the big picture, this project was for Physics class. Honestly, I didn't feel like I was working on Physics at all, or anything really related to science in general, but that's okay because we made a positive impact in our school!

Final BlogPost (:

Overall, I felt that this project turned out really well. All groups were able to successfully identify a problem they wanted to create a solution for and worked toward implementing it. Things that went well for our group was quickly proposing a problem we wanted to create a solution for, brainstorming a simple solution that we believed could still make a large impact, and implementing ideas and coming out with positive feedback. To attain our final victory, we also encountered difficulties along the way. We didn‘t plan on not being able to purchase a A-Frame Sign Stand, but luckily we were able to compensate for that with my dad To attain our final victory, we also encountered difficulties along the way. We didn‘t plan on not being able to purchase a A-Frame Sign Stand, but luckily we were able to compensate for that with my dad‘s sawhorse. Although our solution wasn‘t extremely complex or involved many materials, my group still found our project to be highly effective. By participating in this project, I learned that sometimes the smallest ideas could have the biggest impact. I also learned that cooperating gets the job done quickly while dictating gets you nowhere. In the future, I would like to see this activity require more students to be successful in their solutions rather than just giving it a try. This may be a little too much to ask for, but I believe the students of Kamehameha have the potential to find a working solution to campus problems. I felt that we were actually doing science because as Mr. Blake says, “Physics is everywhere”. Therefore, I felt that we were still working from a physics point of view throughout our entire process.

Personal blog post

I personally thought the project was a great thing to do. It helped us to problem solve better together as a group and was an awesome experience. I think we worked well together as a team and i think our project was a success. We saw a need within the school that needed to be solved, and we did it! i also think that jezus, lehua and i worked really hard. I thought it was good that we all worked hard because that way not one person was doing all the work. we did not plan on a bunch of things happening. During the process we changed the design of the sign several times. Also, our sign fell down and all the inserts flew out. this called for some change of plans, but it all worked out in the end. I learned how to work in a group, i also learned ways of problem solving. I think this is a great activity that does not need to be changed in any way. I didnt even think we were doing science until i had to analyze the physics relation to my project. I enjoyed it more because i did not know we were doing school work, it just felt like we were doing a senior project or something. I thought this was an awesome project and i hope that every senior at school gets to do this.

weekends blog post

So on friday we had our presentations. I thought we were going to do worst, so thats a good thing i guess. There were a lot of good projects and it seemed like everyone was really into their projects. I found it amazing that everyone was very enthusiastic about their projects. As teenagers we arent very enthusiastic about anything, school especially. A lot of the ideas like the senior lounge and the stream clearing were very good ideas. The senior lounge would be a fun way to get kids out of Midkiff so kids can study there. The stream clearing could provide a stream for other groups like the aquaponics to create their ideas. This stream could produce fields of fruits and vegetables. Also it would be astheticly pleasing to those entering our campus. It could also open the old lava tubes that once connected to Pearl Harbor. So many things are possiable in these ideas. I really loved all the projects and just hope that they can be continued in the future years.

Friday night, we all finally presented our projects in Konia 108-109. I thought it was going to be in the Auditorium but there was something going on in there so we were forced to present in the classrooms. I didn't really mind, especially because it made talking in front of everybody a little bit easier. I honestly thought that our presentation was going to suck really bad, but it turned out much better than I expected. I'm actually proud of how well we presented and how we nailed the time limit. I also though that it was funny how we were the only people who didn't go all out on our attire, and how we rocked the uniforms. Honestly, all the presentations were really boring and I didn't know how I was going to survive all night listening to them, but it was interesting finding out about what all of these other groups tried to solve. I felt a bit proud that we were one of the few groups who had a successful deployment.

thursday may 17

Today is the day before our final presentation and we are working on the final touches. We have implemented our project and it has turned out differnetly than i expected. The A frame we had to hold up the signs were suppose to be the most durable. But even the strongest sign blew down against the kapalama wind. Our sign got tossed around a couple of times and a little beat up. It has held up to the end though so i think we did something right! this was an awesome experience and i am glad that we have done this project. i hope that the future classes get to do this same experiment or something similar to it. it has really changed my perspective about how i look at problems and how i look at solving them.

Although our solution has been working well, we have encountered several problems along the duration our project has been up and running. One problem we encountered is that our sign isn't so stable. One of the signs has fallen off one of the sides because the tape has given in. This isn't a major problem, but if this project were to be recreated, I would highly recommend a much more stable design to be used. Another problem is that of people messing with the pockets which is much bigger deal. I was afraid of this kind of thing happening, but it was inevitable. At first I was amazed at how our sign was standing with no tampering, but now the entree signs are being messed around with. I don't know why people go out of there way to mess with our sign because it doesn't benefit anybody.

tuesday may 15

Today in class the draft of keynote or powerpoint is due. We are making all of our deadlines and i am very happy about that. Also our sign has been up for about five days. The one problem we have now about the sign is people messing with it after i set it up every morning. People have been taking papers out and putting their own papers in. It is fustrating but i do not know yet how to solve this problem. Me and my team will have to think of a solution to this. Also our presentation is this friday. I am nervous because this is like our final and is worth a lot of points. I would like to do good on this and get a good grade. I am a senior so, i just want to pass.

The end of the quarter is coming up and deadlines are coming up faster than I expected. I can't believe this is the last week of school and this Friday we're going to have to present in the Auditorium. I'm not really ready to do this in front of everybody, but it's something we have to go through. Right now we're working on the keynote presentation and thinking about things we're going to talk about in the Auditorium. I'm a little worried about presenting, but at the same time I'm kind of looking forward to see everybody else present their projects.

So far, so good. Our solution seems to be working great and seems to be giving a positive impact upon the students at upper campus. It seems that there is (because there is) a significant increase in the amount of people that know what's for lunch during the couple of days our signs were displayed in comparison to days prior to our project deployment. Although our solution is fairly simple, I actually think this is one of the greatest tweaks to student life that make our school a little much better. Although we'll only be keeping these signs up for about a week more, I wouldn't be surprised if I see administration following our example next year seeing it's effectiveness for its ease of maintenance.

Final Presentations

In approximately one week, my group and I will be giving our final physics presentation in the Auditorium. This presentation has to be in either Keynote or PowerPoint form, up to 10 minutes long and contain the following information:
-A description of the problem faced at Kamehameha and how our group identified it
-Our solution to the problem, including the relevant theories of physics
-Our group design, construction, and implementation process
-Description/pictures of our project in use and an attempt to convince the audience that this project is a good thing
-Conclusion about what we learned
-Diagrams and figures
It seems like a lot to put together, but I think our group can get it done. This is the last step in our project process and I honestly can‘t wait to get it finished!!

Deployed

Today is March 10, 2012 and we have finally deployed our project! Out of the 6 groups, we are one of the two that was actually ready to set up our project. I am pretty happy that we're right on track and I can only imagine how stressed all of the other groups would be. Just having the sign displayed makes me feel like I'm a part of something. I feel like I'm making a difference in my school because people are benefitting from something I helped to work on. Although it looks a bit small and blurry in this picture, it's much easier to see personally.

One More Week (Blogpost for 5/9/12)

As the photo above shows, the days of our Ho‘oulu iā Kamehameha project is coming to a close very quickly. It‘s already been 6 days since our prototype was to be deployed, today is the day for our final project to be implemented, we have 8 days until our final presentation in the Auditorium and lastly, 11 days until our final project paper is due. As of now, our group has been able to deploy our prototype and implement our final project. The last two things we have to worry about is our final presentation in the Auditorium and turning in our final project paper. I‘m not too worried about our final project paper because as Mr. Blake said, if we did well on our proposal and detailed design, most of our final paper should already be done. I‘m more so nervous about our presentation in the auditorium. It will be in front of all the other classes, so I hope we have enough information to create an entertaining presentation.

tuesday may 8th

Today for class me and my team have gone down to the SPC to finish up our signs and hopefully we will be able to deploy them later on today! We are really excited to be close to finishing. I am kind of worried about what we are going to do for the data and the speech at the end of the year, but i guess we will cross that bridge when we get there. I am happy about how well our team is working in comparision to the other groups. i feel like we work good together and get a lot of things done. Here is a picture of our near finished sign. the way we incorporated physics is be getting an a-frame for the sign. This will help keep it more up right because it has more friction on the ground, and the pressure pushes on each other to the top of the sign, which will help keep it standing.

Crunch Time

As selected in the picture, today is May 7, 2012. Our working prototype should have already been launched, but due to minor set backs, our project is not yet working. Mr. Blake confirmed that things could get in the way of us meeting this deadline, but he said it‘d be fine. We are working as hard and as fast as we can to get something up and running and surprisingly it‘s not as easy as we thought it‘d be. Being within such a secure and strict environment, a lot of different people needed to be spoken to in order to get our project approved. This is what has been slowing us down.

Deadlines

Here is a photo of the deadlines we must meet during this project. So far, we‘ve developed an idea, created a proposal, submitted a budget, created a detailed design, turned in a Mid-quarter peer review, and attempted to launch our project prototype. We haven‘t been able to fully finish our signs just yet because we ran into some closure issues with the SPC and needed to take the signs down to Mrs. Yamamoto in the student center to get them approved, which also took some time. We really need to pull this project together and have our invention working soon.

On Friday I went to go pick up the signs after school. As I expected, they were approved and all good to go. However, I am still wondering why they made me wait until after school for them to approve the signs. It would only take a few seconds to glance at them and inspect the entire thing. Anyways, I'm glad we finally got them approved. We're a little behind schedule though, because we didn't get to make the pockets yet for the signs but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. We have to get our stuff together though because we're supposed to have the prototype ready very soon.

Today for class we walked to the spc to grab the signs so mr. blake could sign them. after mr. blake signed them, than we made our way down to the akahi student center to get mrs. yamamoto to sign them. She said that she would sign them later. so all in all it was a great day were we did some important things. I realized the importance to a system, the system we encountered today was getting it signed and approved by two people that are higher than rank than us. mr. blake and mrs. yamamoto. but now we have that figured out were ready to post up the signs around school. This is the sacred pen that signed both the high ranking people signed.

As deadlines are coming up to meet I finally decided to start collecting data. We meant to do this earlier, but it was pretty easy for us to get off track and worry about it another time. However, today I realized that I should start now and break my bad habits. I went around today during the first two periods before homeroom/lunch. I simply asked the question "Do you know what's for lunch?" and tallied up the responses under "Yes" or "No". This task wasn't too difficult and was a pretty ideal way to collect data. Personally asking people ensures you that you'll get data, and makes it more convenient for students to answer the question.

Deadlines Coming Up

According to the screen shot above, the deadlines for the launch of our project are coming up. This friday, the prototype of our project is due and right now Iʻm just a little bit nervous. Our group is almost done creating the signs for our project, but we kind of still have things we need to take care of. The boys emailed Mrs. Yamamoto about getting our signs approved and she said that in order for her to approve our signs we needed to get Mr. Blakeʻs signature verifying that this was a legit project. Even with this information, they still havenʻt talked to Mr. Blake about his needed signature. At this point it looks like our project will be ready to be launched, but if we don‘t get Mrs. Yamamotoʻs approval then there is not much we can do.