Capstone Blog Post 3

We completed our research and did the interview so we had all the information we needed. Then it was time to decide what type of format we were going to share our Capstone in. I chose a video! I chose a video because I like the style most. I am also more familiar with videos than any other option.

From start to finish of my video, I really enjoyed putting the slides with the information. It was fun to see all your work make one big thing.

I didn’t really face any major challenges while making the video, but I did face one decent challenge. I realized my slides had to be shorter to keep the watcher interested. It wasn’t so hard to fix, though. I just said some of the things I wanted to say on that slide and moved the other things to another slide.

I am looking forward to sharing my final project because when you work at something you want there to be a result to share.

 

Capstone Blog Post 2

Recently I interviewed Juan Uro to help with my Capstone project. He was a former Executive Vice President of League Finance and Global Strategy of the NBA. I chose him because he worked with a lot of General Managers (GM’s) and he understood a lot of it relating to basketball.

It wasn’t so hard to set up the interview because he used to work at the same company my dad does so we had all of his contacts. He was also my dad’s friend so he would more likely do a favor for him.

I asked a lot of questions about what the most important skills were for a GM and why. I also asked a lot of questions about NBA GM’s, especially Danny Ainge. It was hard to come up with questions at first and as he answered my questions I kept thinking of more and more questions. Those questions I was thinking of were answered anyway. 

It was a fun experience having the interview and thank you for reading this blog post!

 

Capstone Blog Post 1

A little while back we started a Capstone unit. It is where you pick a topic you’re interested in and you do research, conduct an interview, and then you make a slideshow out of it. Today I will be talking about the research portion of it. 

But before I could start research, I had to find a topic. I love basketball but I already knew so much about it so I went with something that interests me and I didn’t know so much about so I could do research. What I chose was General Managing. I still wanted it to relate to basketball and that was fine. Because teams are managed and the NBA is managed.  

Now I had to come up with my main inquiry question. After some thinking my question became, “What are the six most important skills for a general manager and how does Danny Ainge apply them to managing the Boston Celtics?” I chose to relate it to the Boston Celtics because they are my favorite team and the most successful team in NBA history. It wasn’t super hard to come up with the question but it was still relatively hard. 

Something that helped is my teacher because we brainstormed ideas together and we kept narrowing it down until we found the one. Something that was a challenge was making it something that was exciting to me, not just good for the topic. I made sub questions and researched about them and now I have a lot of notes on my topic. 

Come back for the next post on Capstone!

 

 

Immigration Unit Reflection

We recently studied immigration. We interviewed an immigrant and made a video out of it, this is my reflection. At first the process was really boring, we had to study a lot and no one likes studying. At least me. We had to answer questions, watch videos, read articles, and finally we were ready. We started planning are interview with questions and taking what we know. This process was a lot more fun than studying, but still not the best. Finally we got to do the interview. I interviewed someone I knew and then I made a video. I liked making the video more than anything in this unit. I think this unit was a good idea and it got a lot more interesting towards the end.

Martin Luther King Jr

Since Martin Luther King Jr Day is coming up, I wanted to make a post about him. In this post, I am going to talk about how he persevered through challenges. Like hate and negativity.

There was so much hate on what Martin was trying to do with all his marches and speeches. But he kept on persevering. Eventually, in may 1954 U.S. Supreme court made a change to make school segregation unconstitutional. Martin kept going though. Just because of that accomplishment, it didn’t mean he would stop. He wanted to abolish segregation completely. He kept making speeches and protests against segregation. His most famous speech was “I have a dream”. This is how the most famous part of that speech went. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” 

Eventually U.S. Supreme court abolished all of segregation! This was thanks to Martin and the people protesting. This was a huge accomplishment for Martin! This changed the future of the nation. Thanks to Martin and his fellow protestors, today in the U.S. everyone is equal.

Final Reflection of Rocketry

I really enjoyed this unit and this is my favorite unit I have ever done. I really liked it because I think it was an interesting topic. I also liked the process that we had throughout the unit.

Specifically the building process. I have always liked building stuff that I was interested in. This was one of them. I liked how we had to make decisions about how to make the rocket. It created a more creative environment to work in. I liked making decisions like what to make the fins out of, how many to make, a thick or skinny body, how big the body and nose cone should be, how much tape to put on the nose cone, and much more. I also liked thinking through how are decisions would benefit us and the process of thinking through it.

I also liked how there were teams so you could experience teamwork and it could be more fun. I liked how you worked together to do everything. I also really like how you chose your jobs during the launch. I thought it was really fun to launch the rocket and record the data to make improvements. I liked experiencing the actual launch itself.

I thought this unit was really fun overall and that it gave me a deep understanding of rockets. This was my favorite unit I have ever done and I really hope to do a unit like this again.

Designing and Building Rocket #3

When we designed our third rocket we went back to our old first design because we relized that it would do the best out of all our designs. The only changes we made was making our rocket a little bit smaller and everything ingeneral. We thought this would help so it can rise up quicker and faster in the air. We think this will make our rocket set a record of height interms of our group.

The design had parts like sturdy nose cone taped in electrical tape, sturdy skinny pipe body, sturdy cardboard fins and more. We want to keep the same design as the first one  except improve it a little to set a record for our group. This will be our final launch so we want to make it count. I think the sturdy nose cone, body and fins will play a huge role in our success. Simply because it balances out the weight of our rocket.

When we started to build our rocket we tried to make it very precise. We wanted the measurments to be exact for top of the line performance. Even one foot could make a difference for us. Who knows? It might be the foot that makes the record for our group. We made our nose cone just like the first time (as that nose cone fitted our slightly smaller design) and made the body a little bit smaller and exact and we hot glued on the slightly smaller cardboard fins than last time. I always have liked building what you thought of. So I enjoyed building it.

I think that we had really good teamwork during the design and build proccess and I really enjoyed designing and building our third rocket. I think overall our group did really well and I can’t wait until our next launch!

 

Launching/Graphing Rocket#2

We launched our second rocket on a monday. I was really excited for this to launch to happen! I thought the launches were the best part of the unit and so I was always looking forward to them.

 We switched up our jobs during the launch a little to get a different experience. Although my job stayed the same, I was still happy about it because I liked it. I thought we did a really good job working together and making decisions based on each others opinions. Before we launched we were kilometer readers for another team. That means that we had to measure how high their rocket went.

When we launched I pumped the air pressure to exactly fifty for our rocket to launch well. After the launch our rocket didn’t do close to as well as our rocket last launch but it still launched pretty well. We changed our nose cone a little bit to experiment and It looked like It didn’t work out. On our next design we will go back to our old nose cone design and make everything else a little better. We are going to make our body a little bit smaller and try to balance every thing out. I think this will benefit us because it can go higher in the air faster and this can create a higher total.

Overall I think our team did really well working together and I am very excited for launching our next rocket. A few adjustments here and there can make our rocket a lot better and that’s what we’ll try to do. If we work well together and stick to our plans while building we will do great. I hope we can and have a very successful launch!

Designing and building Rocket #2

When we designed our second rocket we kept pretty much everything the same except for making our measurements more precise, making our nose cone a little more sturdy and trying to make the slightest good changes to improve our rocket.

We were sort of a holiday squad because we used Halloween colors for our last rocket and for this rocket we used Christmas colors. I really like that we did that though. I thought it looked pretty cool. We tried to implement all the good ideas that we had into our design. We had a sturdy paper nose cone rapped in tape, we had a skinny pipe body, we had three fins made out of cardboard and much more.

While building this rocket we tried to be very precise and I think we built it very well. We made the rocket a little more sturdy overall including the nose cone. The nose cone plays a major part in the rocket so we really wanted to perfect that. We used paper for the nose cone rapped in tape and paper around our body. But for the fins we used cardboard. This played a major part in balancing out the rocket. All of this benefited us tremendously.

Overall I think we did really well working together and making decisions and hope we can continue that! I really enjoyed building and designing our rocket. I hope we are very successful again.

Launching/Graphing Rocket #1

We launched our rockets on a Friday and ours went 192 feet in the air! This was our first attempt at building and launching the homemade rocket. We were really proud of that. Overall our rocket did the best. Because of our weight distributed throughout the rocket we did really well. I think that was a huge factor in our success.

We had certain jobs while launching the rocket and we all did super well at each of them We worked really well together as a team and I think that benefit us tremendously. I was a kilometer reader at one point which was pretty cool. I got to measure how high the other teams rocket went. When we were launching I pumped the air pressure to the exact point it needed to launch. I got it exactly on the mark which was weird but cool.

My group partners had different jobs than me. one was counting down when to launch and another was pressing the button to launch the rocket. I remember seeing my rocket launch and go so high, higher than all the other rockets. I was so excited when I saw that happen and I thought “That was only our first launch and build! How did that happen!

Overall I thought our group did really well and I am very excited for our next build and launch!