Capstone Blog 6

Now I have 2 days until I have to present my Capstone, so I also have a lot done. My final project is done and it’s way too long. 🙁 I’m practicing my script because I need to memorize it. My project is going pretty good. There are only a few things I need to change and I have plenty of time. If I work at home, then I think I will do O.K..  The capstone project is really fun, and I’m having a good time with it. My presentation might be too long, but I don’t have the time to change it because I will be presenting on the 20th and 21st. I’m really nervous my presentation will be way over the time limit and I won’t do good. I’m both nervous and a bit excited as well. I’m a bit excited because of a lot of reasons. First, I can get it over with, so I’m not as stressed. Second, school is almost over. And the best part is… it’s my birthday on the 20th!!!!! So over all, I’m both nervous and excited as well.

Capstone Blog 5

Recently we had to answer our main inquiry questions. Mine was: How has the structures and functions of robots changed over time? I did some research and looked at the really old robots. They were all very slow, heavy and were very limited in the things they could do. On the other hand, when I looked at the newer robots, I noticed a big difference. the newer robots were a lot lighter, faster and could do much much more. Then I compared the 2 categories and I noticed that robots improved in speed, reflexes, sensing its surroundings, and a lot of other things. Newer robots were capable of doing more things, whereas the older ones would just be for out entertainment. In conclusion, robots are evolving really fast, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Capstone Blog 4

For my Capstone interview, I went to the Scarsdale High School Design Lab. I interviewed a teacher and his name was Mr. McDonald. I had some really good interview questions prepared such as:

 

  1. What inspired you to become an engineering/design teacher?
  2. What is the process of engineering and designing a robot?
  3. What are/is the main purpose(s) or robotics?

 

I thought that these questions very good because they got me a lot of information.  Sometimes Mr MacDonald was also asked he’s students from the robotics Club to answer some of my questions. I thought the students at the SHS DesignLab were doing very challenging but also very interesting and fun things. The students at the shs designlab were very smart and very nice. They answered my questions in good detail and today gave me a little tour of what they were currently doing, like their First Tech Robotics Competition Robot and some other robots they had made.

 

After the interview, the teacher gave me some  tips for my project because some of his students have done their capstone’s before.  after I spent a few more minutes there I was really Happy because I got a lot of information. I also had a really good time at the SHS DesignLab. 

Capstone Blog 3

Recently, for my capstone project I went to Google for my site visit. My mom’s friends friend works at Google so we got an invitation to go there as guests. First, we had a little tour of the building, and then we would go to a place, sit down and talk. My brother had interview questions with him so he talked with her for a while. I also got to ask some questions, which helped me a lot with answering some of my questions. Then we had dinner there and noticed that you had a lot of freedom at Google as long as you are getting work done. After that we kept touring so I had a lot of time to do ask questions and learn more things. I thought the site visit to Google was really fun and educational and helped me with my project.

Capstone Blog Post 2

Recently, for our Capstone project we made main inquiry questions. A main inquiry question is a question related to your topic that you want to find out the answer of. For example, if your topic is the violin, your main inquiry question could be how violins have changed over time. My topic was robotics, so my main inquiry question was how the structure and functions of robots have changed over time. After we made our main inquiry questions, we had to make sub-questions. Sub-questions are basically smaller, more specific questions based of of your main inquiry question. We had to make 5+ sub-questions and have Mrs.Robert check them. The process was not very difficult because of a tool called the curriculum wheel. As I explained before, I made a lot of questions and chose a few of them as my sub-questions. But, we had to pick the best questions. We couldn’t pick any question and be done. Then we wrote the questions on a google doc and waited for Mrs.Robert to call you to check your questions. Personally, I’m really nervous because I don’t think my questions are good enough. Even so, things can still turn around.

Capstone Blog Post 1

A few days ago, we were assigned the Capstone project. We had to pick a topic and research it a lot, and after a month or so of preparation, we have to present it in some way. The first step in the process was to pick a topic and a backup topic. We got to pick a topic only we were interested and do whatever we wanted unless it wasn’t approved. I was really interested in robotics, and I also liked gemstones a lot so I picked Robotics as my topic and gemstones as a backup topic. After that we had to generate some questions using a curriculum wheel, which is a circle made up of many categories such as science, math , art, music, economics, and a few more. we had to generate our questions based off of the different categories. If we were done we would wait for Mrs. Robert to check our questions, and then we would pick our favourites. We also did some pre research on our topics. Personally, I’m not very excited about Capstone, but this is just the beginning of the process so things might turn around.