Category Archives: Capstone

Capstone Blog Post #3 – Creating Final Project

Posted on by
Reply

Capstone Blog Post #3

This year in class we have been working on a project called Capstone. This blog post is about making the project.

For the project, we had to choose the format from the following: Video, Screencast, TED Talk, and Ignite. In the end, I chose Spark Video because I felt that it would be the most convenient thing to do while at home. I also chose it because I really enjoyed using the platform the last time I used it, during our immigration unit. 

There was a lot of fun parts to creating my final project, one of these things was doing the voiceover for my project. I liked this because it was fun to share the information that I had spent so long researching. Another fun part was writing my script. I liked writing it because it was fun to craft my information into a digestible presentation.

During my process of creating the final project, a challenge was that it was hard to find images that could really help my project get to the next level, but after a lot of searching, I found the right photos.

For the final share, I am extremely excited. If I was doing a presentation, I may feel nervous, but since a did a video, I got to show it to my class first to get feedback and see what someone would think after seeing my video. I am excited because I love to show my work to others.

In conclusion, Capstone has been a great experience, and it was really fun for me to learn about a topic I am passionate about. Here is my final project:

Capstone Blog Post 2 – Interview

Posted on by
Reply

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, in class we are working on a project called Capstone, this post will be about my interview for the project.

 

To start the interview process I had a zoom meeting with my teacher about who I would like to interview. This process was easy for me because my mom works in the medical field so she has a lot of connections with people who are well informed on my topic: Vaccines. In the end, I decided to interview Holly Gilbert, an infectious disease specialist. I interviewed Holly because I figured that she would know a lot about the immune system, and vaccines, because of her profession.

 

After securing the interview, my interviewee requested that I send her the questions before we do the zoom call. This allowed us to have a smoother and more informative interview because she could think about how she would answer, before the interview.

 

For the actual interview, I had a document open with my questions and an area to write the questions. I also had two devices recording the audio for the interview, because, for another project that I did an interview, the recording crashed on a device. At the end of the interview, I looked at my notes and refined them, because I had to type fast, so it was sloppy. 

 

One of the most interesting things I learned as a result of my interview is that the administration of a vaccine matters a lot. Some vaccines go through the buttocks, most go through the muscles. A lot of vaccines work best on the area below your muscle.

 

One challenge that I faced during the interview process was coming up with questions. It seems simple right? Wrong. My goal for creating my questions was to find out information that I could not find on the web, which is hard to do but I managed.

 

Overall my interview process went very well, I gained a lot of information and I would classify it as a success!

Capstone Blog Post 1 – Task Definition

Posted on by
Reply

In class, we are working on a year-end project called Capstone. Capstone is a research project where we have to choose a topic and learn all about it, eventually, we will put it into a presentation and present it to an audience. This is blog post one, this blog post will be about the task definition of the research process. For my Capstone, after a lot of thinking and comparing I chose Vaccines as my topic. For this topic, we were assigned to make the main inquiry question which will guide us through research, and ultimately is our goal to answer. My main inquiry question is, what is involved in vaccines’ development and testing, how do they affect the human body’s immune system, and what are the primary challenges for administering vaccines?

 

During the experience of deciding my main inquiry question, one thing that was very helpful for me is that my teachers, my parents, and everyone around me were helping me. They were helping me the word and helping me come up with and develop my main inquiry question. Another thing that would help her for me while developing my question was that I had a private lesson with my teacher, where I could talk about my main inquiry question, and make changes to it. Another thing that was helpful was I had an organizer doc, which helped me organize my ideas and communicate with my teacher. To summarize, mostly what helped me was communication with people around me.

 

One thing that was challenging during my Capstone main inquiry question brainstorming process was zeroing in on one area of vaccines because vaccines are a very broad topic. I was helped with this by getting advice from my peers, my teachers, and my parents. Another challenge I had faced was wording my question to be equivalent to a level 4 question, this was because I have to include some level of opinion in the questions’ speculated answer to get it to that level, which was hard but in the end, I got it done.

 

During this process what I have learned of myself as a learner is that I learn better if I have some kind of background to that topic. I mean this in the terms that, to make a  main inquiry question I had to do some background research to create a better question. I have also discovered that I think better when my ideas are organized. I know this because the organizer doc that was provided really helped me organize my ideas, which helped me think. In future projects, I will definitely be utilizing the information I have found out about myself as a learner. 

 

Overall this project has been awesome thanks to the help of my teachers, my parents, and my peers. I look forward to the rest of this project and what I am going to learn in the days to come.