Capstone Three

Hello readers! Today I will talk about answering my main inquiry question. For those of you who have not been reading my posts i suggest you start or nothing i say is gonna make sense. But anyway my main inquiry is under what circumstances do unions form and are their strategies effective in getting what you want. This phase was pretty easy to do because I did way more research than I needed to and my sub questions were legit. Though the only complication was my final project. Capstone overall was a breeze.

When I was creating my final project I faced some pretty annoying complications. One was that my project was partially screwed up by Wevideo repeatedly. For example, one time it shifted all my images 4 seconds up so I had to rearrange the whole thing. Also my narration was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay longer than  expected so i had to shorten and find tons of images. Another complication is my green screening in my video. I had to do about 4 takes because I was in a basement and random noises kept sounding off. Also the Green Screen was wrinkled so that was annoying too. Overall this part was kind of annoying. But as they say, “If a man wants to grow a garden,he’s got to get his hands dirty.” If you wish to see my final project click here Link

So in conclusion unions are formed when an economic crisis affects the workplace or when there is a need to obtain special benefits. Their strategies become effective only through the power of numbers. Alone they fail but together they succeed. Unions have been the defender of the American dream and the helper of all those who have lost sight of it. Whether unions are good or bad depends on what union it is. This struggle between unions and employers is beyond good and evil in my opinion. It has become a profit versus morality struggle. A battle is coming soon and it has come time to choose one’s side. Which side are you on?

Here is my script for reference. It is not what I used in the end though.

Awesome capstone script.

So all in all if capstone was a baking recipe it would contain the following ingredients.

  1. Obsession
  2. Aversion
  3. Depression
  4. Numb acceptance
  5. Annoyance
  6. Enjoyment
  7. Relief. 

Warning:

This product contains many failures and close calls. If you wish to make capstone open with care do to risk of obsession ingestion.

Capstone Two

In capstone we use interviews as one source of research. At first I was freaking out because I had no idea how we could contact people concerning my topic. Thankfully, we had an organizer that helped us find out how we could contact someone which brings us to the next section.

The process of finding my interview was kind of annoying at times and fun at others. Like once we began the interview part of capstone I was contacting AFL-CIO, a major union in america. In had made this big email about what to say and everything and sent it fingers crossed. I thought that they would just ignore me but to my surprise, they responded. I thought that was great but what they said was not. They completely misunderstood what I was saying and when I tried to clarify they ignored me completely. So I went back to square one and found another person to interview. Then suddenly my dad forgot about it and we were unable to do it on the intended day. So we bumped it ahead one day and when it happened it was perfect. All my questions were answered and everything worked out. So that brings us to the next section.

The interview was very good and it did not go as I thought it would. I learned a lot about the everyday life of a steel worker and how the unions have helped him. I found out a lot of stuff but the one complication was that the recording was weird. It kept pausing itself and it also disappeared but luckily we were able to find the recording before school started. Other than that the only complication was that the person I interviewed had bad connection so some parts of what he said were barely audible. 

Overall the interview was very fun and nerve racking as well as interesting. If I could do it again I would probably have asked better follow up questions. I hope that my capstone will turn out good and that people will actually watch it.

Rube Goldberg two

A Rube Goldberg is a chain reaction consisting of simple machines that performs a simple task. So far I am enjoying the wonderful world of Rube Goldberg. My project is pretty fun to make and it took some time but in the end it was totally worth it. When creating my machine I used marbles as well as everything from bowling balls to catapults. When I built this machine I included levers pulleys wedges as well as inclined planes. The problem that we kept having was that the bowling ball was so heavy that it knocked over the garbage can. We fixed this by putting the can against the wall and filling the ramp with forty pounds of lead. Another problem was the marble was not triggering the super catapult. We fixed this catastrophe by realigning the marble track. When we were testing out the machine the main thing was the bowling ball could not be held in place by a basket so we switched it with a wedge made from old wood. This help by stopping the ball from completely destroying the whole Rube Goldberg. All in all the creation of the Rube Goldberg was sort of tedious but in the end the fruits of our labor were very good. So I encourage any of you to build a Rube Goldberg at home. Here is the video.

Capstone One

Hello dear readers! The time has come to begin capstone. Capstone is the most important project in my entire time at the Scarsdale Schools. In capstone, we will choose a topic to study and basically study till we can’t do it any more. At then end we will have answered our main inquiry question. I  feel pretty hyped about capstone because I  will finally be able to study stuff I  actually like and still get credit for it. The problem is there was so much to choose from, which brings us to the next section.

Had to think long and hard about this question and it did not come to me easily. Kind of like a smack in the face when you know you deserve it. But anyway, we had to think about what interested us and we filled out this long long organizer (for some reason all big projects have a long long organizer in the beginning.)about what interested us and what was something we knew a lot about. But in the end I  chose to study unionization.

When I  was coming up with my inquiry question the main challenge I  faced was opinions. For one reason or another, all my questions had an opinion in there. But that got solved when I  took a gander at the four levels of questions. I  then refined my topic so that I  got to say what I  wanted to say. So I  decided to ask under what circumstances do unions form and are there strategies effective in obtaining what they want? I  chose this because it is open and leaves a lot of room for my fabulous sub questions.

For sub questions I  basically broke down the main question into six other miny questions such as what laws has the government created concerning unions? And what strategies do big businesses use to bust unions? I  chose these questions because when I  answer them I  can sort of group that knowledge back together and answer my main inquiry question. A challenge I  faced was wording. You could word something weirdly and then you fail Capstone. Which in my opinion is the ultimate humiliation. So any way I  am pretty happy with my sub questions because they came a lot easier than my main inquiry question.

So in conclusion I  am pretty excited to do capstone and I have very high hopes about the fruits of this project. But as they say, “Famous last words!”

Rube Goldberg one

We in the online 5th grade class have come to the Rube Goldberg projects. I, personally, am not a big fan of Rube Goldberg but I think that I will enjoy this project. The objective is to pour milk in my cereal.

I have written down all of the materials I need but have yet to collect them. I will need some marbles. I will also require dominoes as well as pulleys. I will also need a small lever that I will role warble off of. I will then need to somehow get some milk and cereal. Then finally, I require a right angle inclined plane with a slant to it. this could fail in an immeasurable amount of  times. but to understand why this ten step mechanism could fail you must observe the process yourself.

It will start with me releasing the sling so the marble can roll down a ramp into a long row of dominoes.the the dominoes will knock a second marble in to a balanced pulley there by lifting the back end so it lifts part of the lever which releases a car into a marble which then falls into a second balanced pulley which knocks the milk into the inclined planes so the milk slowly pours into the bowl of cereal. as you can see, that seems like a waste of time. but isn’t that what Rube Goldbergs are for?

I really hope that this machine does not result in the destruction of my whole house. But instead, In sort of a useful machine.

Wevideo immigration reflection

I think I did good on my we video because i think i incorporated the answers that i got fairly well. Some things I did well were that i was clear and that my pictures made sense. If i could do this project again i would include a more detailed description of what a coyote is because my definition was pretty short term. Some areas I need to improve in are not just skim over things to save time in the video.overall I thought the presentation was decent. Here is the link to my presentation for those of you who would like to see it. My project.

Interview Reflection

My experience left me thinking that we need to do something about the quality of immigration. I think this because Angela had to go through so much trouble just to get to america. I also think this because hundreds of people are being deported just because they can’t afford to get into america. This Is important because it has broadened my view of the world and has made me realize that we have to do something about the terrible service in the US immigration services meaning that we must help all in need and not discriminate on the bases of class, race, religion, or political opinion.