Capstone Blog Post Final Project

My final project was a Ted Talk but recently switched to a screencastify.  A screencastify is something when you have a box in the corner of your screen with you speaking LIVE.  And your screen is being recorded too.  IN this project my favorite thing was by far doing the research.  I learned so much more that I thought I would have about birds of prey because of this.  But of course they’re were downsides.  Every time I would record I would mess up and have to start all over again.  I took my aides advice and kept going with the video even if I messed up.  Then it all was over and I had my full video.  Click here to go to my final video.

My project had one main question that we called a main inquiry question.  My main inquiry question was what is the impact of deforestation on birds of prey.  When I answered that I wrote birds of prey are badly impacted by deforestation as you saw through all my research.  Deforestation can take away something necessary to birds of prey like hatchling, their own lives and their whole territory.  Click here to see my script.

In the end this project did get frustrating but wasn’t the most annoying one ever.  It took me a long time to make this video so I hope you will enjoy it.  See you next time on Grant Amazing Blog!

 

Capstone Blog Interview

Welcome back to another blog! A few days ago I finished an interview with Anna (VINS nature center).  It was a quick interview and was kind of fun actually.  The interview was meant to help understand your topic more and also get more notes.

All we did was ask VINS and they agreed to doing the interview.  They also put one of their best people for me to interview.  It was hard at the beginning.  OUr interviewee was late.  But when she came it was easy and pie.  I got lots and lots of notes from this and it was fun! 

Like I said at the beginning my interview did go as expected but at the same time it didn’t.  My interviewee was late to the meeting and that set us off track.  Other than that nothing else set us off course.  I learned about the spotted owl and its story.  Its a bird that survived deforestation and also other birds of prey.  It was pressured by barn owls invading territory and also deforestation.

In the end the interview was very very successful and it was not exasperating at all.  It was actually kind of fun!

Rube Goldberg Blog Post #2

Welcome back to another blog! In this blog I will talk to you about a Rube Goldberg machine. This project is a chain reaction of things that will end up completing a simple task.  My project was fun I guess.  The reason I’m not sure if it was is because it was A LOT of hard work.  The final contraption was extremely difficult.  The fun part was experimenting.  I would experiment to see if the dominos would hit a metal cube down.

With my Rube Goldberg I used many materials.  These materials include nerf guns, books, soccer ball toys, dominos, metal cube, long white pipe, outlet cord thing, a blog up thing, ramp ex.  Some of my simple machines were two ramps and a lever.  Many things worked well.  The skateboard, the blower and the soccer toy all worked well.  Some of them didn’t like books and the metal cube.

At the beginning I started in the bathroom (regretted that quickly). There was NO space for my project.  It was like working inside of a car.  My dad told me that I would have no room and he was correct.  I restarted the whole thing (keep in mind this is a Saturday).  Then in two hours and a half I finished.  In the basement we had trouble with the books.  The nerf gun was not strong enough to knock down a hardcover book that was an inch and a half thick.  So I needed to improvise.  I used a hardcover book that was skinny.

Now I have finished my Rube Goldberg. In the end it was not easy and was very difficult. Here is the link to my Rube Goldberg on YouTube

Capstone Blog Post #1

Hello welcome back to another blog.  The project this blog will be about is CAPSTONE!  Capstone is an end of the year assignment.  You chose a main topic and a question for that.  After you figure out those two things you will find a question for your question.  That is called a sub question.   I am extremely excited for this project because I love projects that have lots of choice in them.   

The topic I chose was birds of prey.  It didn’t take long to think about it because of all the steps and documents we were filling out. I chose this because I think birds of prey are very interesting animals.  I didn’t do tons of research on them like I did with cats.  I enjoy watching hawks and vultures fly.  

We went through many processes to come up with our main questions that I talked about earlier.  Something we did in the process was a curriculum wheel.  This shows a bunch of subjects you could choose your question to fit.  Categories were math, art, history etc.  After that you would brainstorm some more and put it in a document.  After all of that you would find your favorite one.  I chose What is the impact of deforestation on birds of prey?

I did a fairly good job with coming up with sub questions.  You just had to brainstorm five sub-questions.  I came up with three on my own and the other 2 my teacher helped me with.  Challenges I faced were not having enough questions.  Two out of my five are what birds of prey are most victim to deforestation and why? My second one is  what is deforestation?

In the end I’m excited to start the project.  I’ve put much hard work into

Rube Goldberg Sketch Blog

I’ve been working on my Rube Goldberg sketch.  IM doing it in my bathroom because my task is mainly done in a bathroom.

My materials are going to be household items that most people have.  Baseballs, dominos, basketballs, books, tennis balls, RC car and controller, a stuffed animal, a big ball and more.

When doing my sketch I made sure that all of my steps were detailed.  Including my task, my project will be ten steps long.  I start by rolling a baseball down a ramp (aka inclined plane) this will hit lots of dominos.  The dominos will topple converting the energy.  These dominoes will hit a basketball and push it down and inclined plane.  The basketball will then hit books.  Converting the energy like the dominos.  The books will hit a tennis ball.  The tennis ball will hit the RC car controlled and will power the car.  The car will hit a stuffed animal down knocking over books.  Then the books will hit a weighted ball and it will hit a toothpaste tube squirting it onto a toothbrush.

WeVideo Immigration Reflection

I think I did a very good job on this WeVideo.  I included lots of information that made my video last long.  Also my pictures matched what I was saying in the text.  I think that if I did that again I would make my voice over more clear.  Also I think I would put more thought into the words instead of “she enjoyed Italian food”.  In the end this was an amazing WeVideo!

Immigration Reflection

I think I did and amazing job on my interview because the answers I got were long and filled with information.  Kathrine went through so much challenges fitting in, learning English and finding jobs.  She was very lucky that her husband already had a house in America because if he did not it would be much more money.  With this whole interview I figured out that people are so brave and are very persistent like Kathrine!

14 and 15 Amendment

I found three good sources for the 14 and 15 amendment.  My sources were History, Brain Pop and ThoughtCo.  I found lots of notes that could barley fit on one page on the slideshow.  I figured out how to make the text smaller and then split it into three different pages.  All of these websites were found on the shared document that was used to find a topic and go to the google form.  In the end it was kind of challenging.

My Social Studies Question

My main topic was voting and my subtopic was 14 and 15th amendment.  My question for my for it is what were the benefits and consequences of the 14th and 15th Amendments?  I chose this because out of my three it was the most interesting of my three questions.  Another reason I chose this is because there was a lot of consequences and benefits in the amendment.

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