Capstone – Choosing a Topic Blog 1

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You ever done a big project before? I was just given one of the biggest ones of my whole elementary school career. When I started Capstone, we were all supposed to pick a topic. The teacher told us to follow and do whatever we wanted because this project is supposed to be about what you are passionate about and what you are interested in. I wanted to study a big company like Marvel or Apple because I thought it would be cool to learn about a big company. Marvel and Apple are both so successful and I was interested in successful companies. I was also thinking about studying World War 2. There were so many things to learn about and it is so interesting. But I remembered there was a topic my mom has been wanting me to do since the beginning of the year, which was service dogs. She wanted me to do it because she could set up an interview and she knows I am interested in dogs. I am interested in how service dogs learn how to obey their master. It is fascinating to see how smart animals can be.

Immigration Blog Post #4: Reflection

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I thought this project was a good idea because the person that you interviewed you got to know a lot more about. I got to learn a lot more about my grandfather and I got to understand him more. Some of the overall challenges were making the video and recording the interview. With my final video, I am happy. It took a lot of hard work to make it. If I could make any changes, I would change them music in my video. I picked some old French music because I was running out of time. If I had time, I would go through all the music and see which one I liked the most. I would pick something that would go more of the background of the person I was interviewing. If I could change something, I would also make my video longer because I had a lot of stuff I couldn’t put in the video because of the time limit.

Immigration Blog Post #3 doing the interview

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To narrate the Spark Video, I had a lot of challenges. First I had to come up with a script. During the interview, my grandfather (who I interviewed) had said a lot, four pages worth of stuff. So I had to cut out a lot for the script. It was hard to find out what to cut because there was so much good content. I had to decide on what would explain his story the most. The next thing I had trouble with is that I blew off the project until the last night and I didn’t even finish it. I had put together only 30 seconds worth of content. It was due the next day. The next morning on that school day, we had a few extra minutes to finish the video. That gave me a window of time to finish my video. I ended up working for around an hour trying to finish my video. And I finished it in time for when everybody was going to present theirs. I learned that I shouldn’t have procrastinated until the last day cause then I wouldn’t have as much pressure to finish it on that one day.

Immigration Post #2: Planning the interview

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To get ready for my interview, I had to do a lot of stuff. To get started, I had to call my grandfather and ask if I could interview him about how he immigrated to Canada. He said yes. I decided to work out with him that I would interview him on Sunday March 31st. Then I had to get my questions ready. I looked at a paper I was given that had some questions on it. I circled all the questions that I wanted and then put them on a doc. Then I had to figure out if I was going to video it or use an audio app. I decided there would be nothing to video so I used an audio app on my phone.

 

I called my grandfather on Sunday morning. He told me he was busy and he said to call back at 6, so I did. When everything was ready and I interviewed him, I also took notes on what he said. The actual interview took around 8 minutes.

 

Immigration Blog #1: Getting ready for the interview

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When I was given this assignment,  I had to come up with a person to interview that  immigrated to another country. I decided to interview my grandfather because he would have the most interesting story out of everybody in my family.  For instance, he had to go to about seven different places before he finally got to Canada.  I called him and asked if I could interview him. We worked out that I would interview him on Sunday to get my questions ready. I looked at a paper I was given by my teacher that had some question ideas on it. I circled the ones I liked most and then put it on a doc. So I am excited to see what he says.

Rube Goldberg #6

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My overall experience with Rube Goldberg was enjoyable. I learned so much more about Rube Goldberg than I knew about before. When I went to camp and we did Rube Goldberg machines, we did small machines, like 3 steps. I had never done 8 or more steps before. That required a lot more work. At camp, the materials were already there for us. At home we had to buy materials and find materials. Also, at camp, all you did was make the machine. You didn’t have to design or verify the steps before building. At school, we had to make and design 8 verified steps.

 

What I liked about Rube Goldberg was how fun it was – it was not a boring school project. I liked building the machine and trying to make it work. I also thought that working with a partner would be better than working solo. With a partner, you can get more work done with two people doing different things at the same time. My partner was a good partner because he did his share of the work and we didn’t fight about the ideas we wanted. In conclusion, me and my partner’s Rube Goldberg machine did pretty well because it worked on the 12th attempt. And if you are interested here’s our video:

 

Rube Goldberg #5

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I faced some problems during our Rube Goldberg project. The first problem was finding times that worked for me and my partner Alex. We decided to work on Tuesdays and Thursdays because we wanted to work before we went to hockey practice. But it did not work out because I got sick and then Alex got sick. We had to work on the project whenever we were both available. The next problem was finding the materials to match our design. We were not able to get all the materials so we had to make changes. We couldn’t get a certain type of hot wheels track so we borrowed a different hot wheels track from somebody else. We also needed a big tube cut in half, but we couldn’t cut it in half, so we had to work around that. Another problem was building the machine. The first step took half an hour to build because it involved home made materials and lots of tape. We also had problems getting the right type of dominos for the machine. I learned from these problems that if you don’t have exactly what you need you can always work around it.

Rube Goldberg #4

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After we finished designing the machine, we started building it. It was hard. The first step we needed to build a tall starting point and that took thirty minutes. It was hard to figure what materials to use and how much tape to use. It was also hard to know how tall to build it. We were able to build it because we got help from my brother and my partner’s mom.  Building the rest of the machine was easier because we didn’t have to use tape or homemade materials like we needed for the first step.

 

After we built the machine, we started trying to make it work. It didn’t work until the 12th attempt. In some steps we had too many dominoes. Or in one step, we didn’t have the right type of material. Balls that we needed for the project were too light so we switched and we made changes. All of our changes were changing materials. We did not change any of the design.

 

Rube Goldberg Blog #3

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For my rube goldberg project  things that have been going well are how me and my partner Alex  have not been arguing about stuff we want in the project. We have been able to agree on mostly everything. what was challenging that one week I got sick so me and Alex were not able to meet up and do the project. Now Alex is sick so we are not able to meet up now ethier. Without my partner I would not be able to come up with as good of ideas and it is also more fun to work with a partner.

Rube Goldberg Blog #2

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For our first blueprint we made a draft.We did not like our draft because we did  not think it would work because it was not laid out well. so we made another draft. One of the biggest challenges was making a new blueprint after our previous one did not work.It was really hard to restart all over again because all of our previous work would go to waste. We  watched youtube videos to get ideas we also tried to use ideas that we learned at the camp.