Yesterday was the final and live Ted Talk, and it went very well. The times I practiced the Ted talk before, it was okay, but there were some mistakes. I fixed about all of them by the final day, so I am satisfied with my presentation. One thing that I wish I did more was practice looking up, because I looked down a little too much. Also, at first I thought that kids doing a Ted Talk was a ridiculous idea, but I ended up doing after a ton of planning.
Since the start of Capstone, I knew I was going to do a Ted Talk as my final product, so I would plan it in my mind as I did the research for Capstone. When I started to work on the Ted Talk, I remembered some of the ideas that I had come up with like giving a tour of Citymaps, so I made space for it. All of the research that I have done really helped because it resulted in me continuously writing the Ted Talk and not having any trouble. I have made a lot of edits, but just minor ones like adding complex vocabulary and taking out unnecessary parts. When I finished the script, I started to practice just the talking. When I got the talking down, I had to do the hard part: doing the presentation and talking. This is a lot harder because I will have to be doing Citymaps while I’m talking. I’m going to be showing what I’m talking about on Citymaps, for example, when I get to the main map, I will say that this is the main map. I also describe and give details about what I’m showing. The main part of the presentation is a Google Slides presentation, but I won’t be doing anything interactive when the slides are up.
Very soon I will be doing my Ted Talk, so hopefully all the work will pay off!
These are the cards that have the script of the Ted Talk on them.
My main inquiry question for Capstone took a ton of research and learning, but I have it answered. Before the project, I knew some of the “What is Citymaps” part of my question, but not very deeply. I also didn’t really know anything about the part of my question about how Citymaps has grown, and now I know all about it, which proves that I’ve learned a lot from my project. My main source of research was from articles that I found through the press section of the Citymaps website. I also found a video that helped me answer a question, but not as much as the article. Even though I spent the most time reading articles, I got the most information from my interview with the co-founder and CEO of Citymaps. It was a view from the professional level for Citymaps, which made a huge difference because I had the most honest answers and from the person who knew them best.
I just finished my final presentation for Capstone, which is a Ted Talk (I will still probably make some changes). The whole entire talk is answering the main inquiry question so it was all formed from the huge amount of research that I have done.
For the Capstone project, everyone has to make an interview and a site visit. Obviously, it has to be related to the subject that a student is doing, so that students can learn more from a professional. The site visit is important, too, because it can show a lot of behind-the-scenes details of the topic someone is doing.
My interview was at the place where my site visit was: Citymaps World Headquarters. It is the HQ of the company I’m doing for capstone, Citymaps. When I got to the office (it was a main room with about 13 people, and then there were 3 other personal offices for the main executives), I met with my uncle, the co-founder and CEO of Citymaps, and he decided to give me a tour of the office. I saw his personal office, which wasn’t so huge; it was just his desk, a closet, a fireplace, and some pictures. Then we went to the balcony, where the company likes to have little parties sometimes, but it also is meant for it’s amazing view of Madison Avenue in New York City. I went into the main room and met the programmers/engineers, designers, marketing director, etc. I was very excited to see what the programmers were doing because I have always wondered how the company actually made Citymaps. I saw another little balcony that was for Friday night barbecues, and it sounded like it was lots of fun. There was also white boards everywhere for new designs to be made and ideas thought up. There was one thing about the office that really struck me, though – how the environment seemed so free. Most company offices are very serious, which makes the job boring, and people in the company are restricted to do certain things. That’s not the case with Citymaps. An example is that there is a basketball hoop right smack in the middle of the office. The employees are allowed to take a little break and play some basketball in the middle of the day! Some other examples are that one of the engineers was fiddling with a rubik’s cube while working, there is a football, and the employees are allowed to talk, crack jokes, and enjoy themselves! It reminded me of Google because I know that the Google environment is also very unrestricted and serious. I took as many pictures as I could, so I remember every bit of the office.
After the exploring the offices, I interviewed my uncle. At the very starting of the interview, we were kind of fooling around and laughing, especially myself, so I tried to calm down a little. I took some deep breaths, which made it easier to stifle the laughing. Each answer took some time because my uncle went into deep detail so that I could learn as much as possible. My mom took a video of the interview, but my uncle is also going to write out the answers to the questions so that there is writing. When I left the building, I knew a whole lot more about Citymaps than when I walked in.
I have already made my research and sub questions, and now I am in the midst of coming up with my interview questions for Capstone. My research question was a little hard to come up with because it has changed many times, but I finally settled for this: “What is Citymaps and how has it changed since it was first developed?” At first, I came up with the question, “How has Citymaps evolved over the years?”, but after a short amount of time, I changed it. Our class was given a chart that rates questions one through four, four being the best, and the chart would list different aspects of a question rated one, two, three, and four. My question was rated a two, so I decided to make it better. I changed it to this: “How has Citymaps evolved and how can it keep growing to compete with major mapping companies like Google Maps?” I decided to keep the subject of Citymaps evolving in the question because I know that my uncle, the founder and CEO of Citymaps, has come a very long way. This question was a great question and would be rated a four, but there was a problem. Citymaps is not a famous comapany that has tons and tons of research, so the only way for me to figure out how Citymaps can keep growing is the interview, which isn’t enough. Also, out of the research that I found, I could only find how Citymaps has evolved and about Citymaps, not any clue of how it can keep growing. This led me to changing the question to my current one, which will be much easier to research.
Coming up with my sub questions wasn’t very challenging. The questions are:
As I came up with the questions, I thought about the actual app, the business, and Citymaps’ role in society. I came up with ten questions, but as I read over them, I realized that some of them don’t fit as a sub question and could only be answered by someone who works at Citymaps. I decided to switch five of the questions to be interview questions because the interview will be with a someone who works at Citymaps.
All of the fifth graders in the district are doing a project called “Capstone”. This project is the last major project of the year, and it is the most important.
My main topic for Capstone is Citymaps, a mapping company. Citymaps is a map of every city in the world (it shows all of the stores restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, etc.) that gives information about whichever place you want to learn about. Citymaps can also give directions anywhere, but that’s not all. There is also a social media component. Users make custom maps of different places, can follow other users, have followers, and can follow maps to see the interests of other people or learn about new places.
I decided to choose Citymaps as my topic because my uncle is the founder and CEO, and I really enjoy using it. Also, I know my uncle has come a very long way and totally changed Citymaps, which really inspires me. When I was writing my main research question, something that was very helpful was my research and talking to my mom about Citymaps. My main question is, how has Citymaps evolved and how can it keep growing to compete with major mapping companies like Google Maps? I researched what Citymaps looked like when it was created, and then I looked at the current Citymaps, and I noted differences. One challenge of capstone so far is that Citymaps isn’t a huge, famous company (it will be), which makes it hard to find so much research, but it isn’t such a big challenge. The biggest challenge so far was finding my topic because there were so many things that I wanted to do, which made it challenging. Some successes were organizing my interview and site visit because I can go to my uncle’s office and interview him, and that won’t be hard. I am gathering resources by mostly looking at websites and articles online because there is only one print source: a newspaper article that was about Citymaps. My next steps are to talk to my uncle and find more online resources, and after that, I will do my site visit and interview. I will need help finding more resources online because there are probably only a few.
My family (other than my dad because he was in China) was at my grandparents’ house for spring vacation in Florida. We have been at their house about a million times, except there is something that I never knew until this vacation: my grandma LOVES to play cards. “I don’t know what to do now that I am out of the pool”, I said to my mom. “Maybe we could…play cards”. “Okay”, I said. We asked my grandma if she wanted to play with us, and she said yes. “What game should we play?”, my mom asked. “Why not we play Gin?”, I asked. My mom didn’t know how to play, so I taught her, and then my grandma came along, after one or two games, my grandma suggested that we should gamble, so we did. The three of us gambled on quarters, (my mom gave me quarters), which made the game much more exciting and made me want to play even more. My older sister joined in, so there was a smaller chance of winning, which made me nervous. After I earned three dollars, I left, leaving just my sister and grandma because my mom finished way earlier. My sister and grandma went on to play for about two more ours, and then everyone was done for the night. The next day we also played cards and I earned another $1.25! As we played, my grandma told me about how she always plays cards with her friends. Overall, one more thing was in my mind after spring break: my grandma LOVES cards.
Our class has an all-at-home project where we have to make a Rube Goldberg machine. If you are wondering what that is, a Rube Goldberg machine is a a chain reaction that results in a simple task being accomplished.
My partner and I are still in the process of making our Rube Goldberg machine. We haven’t started building yet, but it is okay because we have made our final sketch of the whole machine. At the starting, our sketch was very different from now, but very recently, we totally switched the starting, making the machine and steps much more realistic. We have almost all of the materials, so after we get the last few, we can start building and testing. As we are building, my partner and I will probably make a few tweaks, but it will probably end up very similar to our sketch. Our machine is around 9 steps, and is on multiple levels, which will make it very interesting.
Energy plays a huge role in Rube Goldberg machines. Some types of energy that are in these machines are kinetic, mechanical, and potential energy. In our machine, an example of kinetic energy is a ball rolls down a very long and steep ramp, which causes acceleration, resulting in a lot of kinetic energy. An example of potential energy is at the starting, there is a marble being held by a wedge, which keeps the marble in place. An example of mechanical energy is the marble at the top being held by the wedge is released when the wedge is pushed up, causing the marble to accelerate and go.
A few months ago, our class was challenged to make a story with all of our spelling words in it. At first, I thought to myself that this would be an extremely hard task. It took some time, but I ended up finishing and making it interesting, which I am very proud of.
Part 1
There was meeting taking place at a zoo. 7 people were meeting there. There was an optician, a clinician (they also studied animals), and 5 animal scientists. Many topics were talked about, including hibernation, reproduction, and adoption of animals. They also talked about the reduction of the population of some animals. “The population of lions are reducing and will still reduce if nothing is done about it,” one of the scientists said. All of the people meeting had foreknowledge about what they were talking about, so the conversation made sense to everyone. After the meeting was over, the doctors and scientists went over to look at some of the animals. They performed an inspection on the animals. The men and women took in a sense of flawlessness as they found nothing anywhere close to bad in the fanciful looking animals. Exhaustion was starting to fill up the scientists’ bodies, so they decided to call it a day. The optician went to a pharmacy to show the pharmacist a new medicine for the optic section, the clinician went back to his medical clinic, and the scientists went back home to study animals.
Part 2
That night, something terrible happened. There was an intrusion at the zoo. A debate for the presidential election was on television, so the intruders thought that this was a good night to commit a crime. The criminals, (named Billy and Mark) who were brothers, were so confident in themselves, that there was some thoughtlessness; the two men forgot that security would be at the zoo! One smart thing that they did think of was to have a good sleep the night before so that they could stay up late at the zoo, being tireless. The intruders had brought phones so that if one of them needed to tell the other one something, transmission would be easy. The brothers got into the zoo, which was very lucky, but not for long. Billy emitted a louder-than-ever burp. “The emission of that burp might cost us time in jail!” Mark texted. The criminals decided to make a run for it, and just as they ran out of the zoo, they were caught by security. This was when they realized that they didn’t predetermine enough before the crime.
Part 3
The next day, the two criminals would be going to a trial. Billy and Mark were miserable (it showed by the impressions on their faces) as they went to court in a police car. They were moving slowly because there was a big procession of cars, which created a lot of traffic. When they arrived, the two men stepped out, and were escorted to the forecourt of the building, where two officers picked up the cuffed men and brought them into court. The brothers were not prepared at all for the trial, which didn’t help. The only thing they decided was that Mark would do the talking. The lawyers for the opposing side (the opposing side was made up of the head members of the zoo) had tons of experience and skill. The skillfulness of the lawyers, and even there being lawyers for the zoo was a big disadvantage for the brothers. On one part of the trial, Mark tried to omit a question, but the omission was a total fail. The security guards that arrested the brothers were at court as witnesses, and were asked to imitate the what Mark and Billy did when they were caught, which really embarrassed the brothers because it looked kind of crazy (which was how they acted when they got caught).
Later, after the trial (Mark and Billy obviously lost) the brothers were imprisoned. Mark fell asleep early that night, and Billy stayed up pretty late. He was delivered a letter from a friend who figured out what happened, and the postscript made Billy much more sad than he already was because it said that his friend didn’t like him anymore. Then, Billy came up with an idea: he would wake up Mark, get out of his cell, which would actually be pretty easy because both of the brothers were small enough to fit through the bars, and try to creep through the darkness and escape. He then decided to forego the idea of waking up Mark because he knew Mark wouldn’t agree with his plan. Billy squeezed through the bars, but as he was creeping through the prison, he was caught. Billy knew that just added around one more year of jail time, which he wasn’t happy about. He ended up getting the extra time and going to a maximum security prison. But after that, the brothers knew never to do anything bad again, and lived happy lives.
The End
My class had an assignment to write a memoir. My memoir is about a lacrosse tournament that I played at sleepaway camp, and I wrote it because I remembered every single little bit of the amazing memory, which resulted in the memoir being filled with details.
“Good morning, rise and shine! All bunks come get your towels and get new laundry bags.” It was time to get up at Camp Androscoggin. “Ahh”, a bunch of kids in my bunk yawned. When I got out of bed, I remembered something. “Tyler and Nathaniel, we have the lacrosse tournament today.” “Oh yeah, I totally forgot. If we beat Camp Caribou, we automatically win CMCL”, Tyler said.
Everyone kept on coming over to the campers on the 10 and under lacrosse team and saying something like “If you beat Caribou and Manitou, we will be the Central Maine Camp League champions!” After breakfast, everyone went back to their bunks for cleanup. Cleanup is usually the worst part of the day, by far, but it was a little better today because we were so excited for the tournament. “I’m a little bit nervous because of Caribou beats us and wins CMCL, then the whole camp might blame it on us and get mad at us” , Nathaniel said. “I mean, Caribou did win CMCL last year”,I said.
When cleanup was over we went to assembly. The camp counselor talks about important events and what we’ll be doing for the day. “Today have 10U CMCL lacrosse, and if we win, we will win CMCL”, the head counselor announced. It wasn’t really an announcement though, because everyone in the camp knew about it. “Go off to your activities and enjoy your day”, the head counselor said.
“Hey Reid”, I said to a lacrosse counselor as I walked up to the lacrosse shed. “Hey, are you ready for today?” “Of course I’m ready”, I said to Reid. As the last players in today’s tournament arrived, I started getting my pads on. After most of us had our pads on, Tim, another lax counselor, took us to the field.
“Everyone get a partner to pass with”, the coaches said. After a few minutes of just partner passing, we did some warmup drills. “Pass it to the attackman, pass it to the attackman!” The midfielder came down the field, passed it to me, and I shot at the goal and scored. We did that again, and again, and again, and when we ended, we did some other drills. The defensemen did their own drills while the attack and midfield did theirs. I was going to play attack in the tournament.
As the team for Camp Manitou arrived, got suited up and stretched, Reid had a pep talk with us. “This game and one other game decides CMCL. It is super important, so we have got to focus.” “Also, we have had practices, but we don’t have any plays. This means that we really have to think when we have the ball. GET PUMPED GUYS! Andro on 3, 1, 2, 3, Andro!”