Capstone Blog Post 3

My capstone experience was really good. This was one of the biggest projects of the year! I’m very happy that I’m finally done because it took a lot of effort and hard work. Before I tell you about my experience, it would be best for me to explain what the main purpose of the capstone project is. Capstone is a project where you choose a main inquiry question and use five resources and interviews to gather information to answer the main inquiry question.

My main inquiry question throughout this project is “how and why is college basketball different from the NBA?” I came up with this question because I always wondered about the major difference between college basketball and the NBA. I was right when I found out that there were so many differences between these two leagues as I soon began to think of the game more differently.

The hardest part of this whole process was the research portion as I had to dig deep into the small details about my main question. It took a long time to find the correct answers to my resources’ questions. If I did not find enough research then my video would not be interesting and appealing to others. It was also hard to find resources that would match the correct information that I needed to make an essay persuasive and informative.

I had a lot of options for people that I interviewed. I chose a professional basketball player that went on to become a D2 college coach. D2 stands for division 2. On the other hand D1 is the most competitive league. It’s basically like A and B teams. I found the interview with Ken Barer very interesting as I was able to see through a first hand experience the hard work it takes for a good basketball player.

The final part of doing the project was the video process. Through this project, I had to find correct images for each slide. I also made sure that the opening of my video was interesting as I asked a relatable question to the audience. I made sure to ask questions about all of the different parts of my project inorder to make sure that everyone got all of the right information.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed doing this project. Through this project I learned alot about the differences between college and NBA basketball. My research was able to teach me so much and help me develop my words into a video and presentation!

Capstone Blog post 2

In this interview, which took me twenty minutes, I learned alot about college basketball and Ken’s experience with basketball. I felt excited to learn more about college basketball and the purpose of talking to him was successful as I was able to gain even more of an understanding of the talent gap between NBA and college basketball. It was nice to talk to someone that knows a lot about this topic, rather than just researching. The interview was definitely my favorite part, but one of the way challenges was finding research on which to base my questions.

I first needed advice from my dad and he gave me the recommendations of interviewing his friend who was a coach at Adelphi, or a local basketball trainer. However, both of these people did not work. From this, I then got the idea to interview a family friend named ken barer who played in high school, college, and professionally overseas, and was a division two basketball coach at UMass. Although it was hard to figure out who to choose, once I found Ken I felt relieved. The hardest part about this whole process was writing the questions. I kept getting stuck on certain words and wanted to make sure that what I was asking made sense. I also wanted to make sure that I was not repeating myself. I finally came up with questions that I felt good about and I think Ken liked them too!

My experience of conducting the interview went great. The whole conversation was so exciting and fun. We were also able to talk about some different things that we had in common. I definitely learned a lot more than I expected throughout the interview. Ken really did love all of my questions and seemed to be super excited to share his experience with me. I also learned some new things about him. I did not know that he played professionally overseas. Some of the new things I learned from him was the major talent gap between NBA and college players. I also learned that the best skill is hard work and that he loves to coach players who are hard-working. Also, another thing that was interesting to me was the college recruitment process and the way that he did it.

Overall, in this interview, I learned alot and I am glad I chose to interview ken. I also loved this interview because I was able to talk about my favorite sport, which is basketball.

Capstone Blog post 1

In our class, we started a product known as the capstone. Through this project, we are each picking a topic and have to research this topic through interviews and reading articles. I am so excited to do this and start my interview so I can learn even more about college basketball.

I wanted to discuss college basketball because I have always loved playing basketball and I really enjoyed watching march madness. I have always had an interest in this and when it came to my interview, I knew this was a topic that I know alot of people about. I choose to do college basketball rather than NBA because the college basketball is more specific and an easier topic to focus on.

My main inquiry question is How is coaching different in the NBA than in college basketball?. I came up with my main inquiry question because I wanted to compare NBA basketball to college basketball. I wanted to do this question because I wanted to see the similarities and differences between college basketball and NBA. Some challenges were narrowing down questions because it was a hard decision to word the question correctly to write the best paper.

Why do college teams play with 2 halves but the NBA plays with 4 quarters?, How far apart is the talent gap between college and the NBA? Some of the challenges with this was making sure that the questions related to my main question. I also needed to make sure that they were easy to understand and write about.

Overall, I am very excited to start my interview and move on to my video. This is my favorite sport and can’t wait to learn more.

Immigration Blog Post 2

We had to make a video explaining the immigrant’s life immigrating and add pictures of them when they were little in their old country. I got many pictures and surprisingly they were not very blurry because the cameras when my grandma was young were not very good.  Also, we did not have as much time as we wanted for each slide so we had to make it quick.

My process in the video started with adding the title and pictures. But when I had to add the voice over I found out the script was too long and had to take most of it out. I didn’t add any pictures online because my grandma gave me a lot. I put a lot of effort into the video and it took a long time but still was fun. One thing that was challenging was all the glitches with my video and getting the photos into the video.    

One thing I learned about my immigrant was that she had a stepmom and a stepbrother. I also learned to be more patient for example when I was asking for photos it took a bit of time to look for them. My interview was over facetime and it worked out very well. Even though my grandma could just come to my house whenever she wants because she’s retired it was much easier to do it on call.

Overall this project taught me a lot and was very fun. I hope we have projects like these moving forward and hope to learn more about this topic because it is very interesting. I love learning about my family and all the details anyone has faced when they were a kid.

Immigration Blog Post 1

We have an immigration unit at school and we learned about push/pull factors. To understand immigration better, we have to interview an immigrant. The immigrant I’m interviewing is my grandma, Her name is Marie Grace DeWitt. We wrote down 20 questions and picked 10-15 of them to ask the immigrant.

My process of preparing for the interview started when I had to find an immigrant I knew but that was probably the easiest part because I already knew an immigrant in my family which was my grandma. Then I had to brainstorm some questions I could ask her about her life/journey being an immigrant. Some resources that helped me find all of my questions were brain pop and other kids’ videos. Most of the questions I thought of because I ask my grandma these questions in general.

My experience conducting the interview was good, it took a short time and it was conducted over the phone. It went as expected and Mary told me things that I didn’t know. I learned that it might be hard for the other person because it is bringing back memories and it might be sad. The most interesting thing I learned about Mary is that I she had a stepmother and a stepbrother because her mother died when she was little.

Overall the interview went well and I learned a lot more about my grandma that I didn’t know before! And I’m really excited to make the video because I have a lot of photos from when she lived in Italy.

Rube Goldberg Blog Post 2

My experience designing a Rube Goldberg machine was fun, hard, interesting, and challenging. The start of my process was drawing my sketch. For me this was the easiest part of it all because I am good at drawing so, I thought this was fun. But then I started building and things got a little bit harder. I changed a lot of this during my processes like different ramps, tubes, and many simple machines. After my 14th clip worked I was so relieved.

During my process of my Rube Goldberg project, I did not just learn how to now make the machine I also learned a lot from working on the project for a long time. Some things I learned were that even if you want to give up keep trying and you will succeed. Another thing I learned was that it’s sometimes fun to fail and you learn a lot from it. One main thing I learned is how machines work and how to can use them.

In my opinion, the video was the hardest part. I am the not best at editing so it took me a long time. I also got some help from one of my friends. I started with just putting all my clips together to get ready for when I start arranging them. When I started each clip looked the same and that was a hard part I experienced. But then when I came close to finishing I kept losing this one clip but in the end, I made it work. Also after watching my video over and over again I realized I could add some tweets that would make it better.

One main part that helped me a lot with my project was the resources I used. Some online resources I used were Youtube, Generation genus, and google. The Rube Goldberg machines video that I watched on the channel was “Joseph’s Machines” That was a main one I used.  Another thing that helped was books. It all started one day I was reading one of my favorite graphic novels (Camp) and there was this part where they were building this “machine” I thought to myself “WHAT IF IT’S A RUBE GOLDBERG!” and on the next page the words read “She did this! she ruined our RubeGoldburg machine” And it showed so many ideas I was so happy!

Overall this project was really fun and I’m looking forward to different science projects coming up because I learned a lot from this one. My hope is that future projects are as hands-on as the Rube Goldberg project. Whereas the Rube Goldberg project presented me with many design/build challenges I know that there will be aspects of future projects that will even be far more challenging. Having successfully worked through the challenges of this most recent project am fully confident that I have established a strong foundation for tackling future science projects.

This is My Sketch. hope you like it! :

This is my video. Hope you enjoy it! :

Rube Goldberg Blog Post 1

Hi my name is Alexa and I’m starting to build my Rube Goldberg project, So far I only did a quarter of my machine and luckily it worked out pretty well!

My process so far is turning out good. I just finished my sketch, and so far when I was building it I only got rid of one thing Because I saw how it could not work. I think I might need to get rid of more things later on. Since I haven’t started my project yet I don’t have many challenges but one challenge was thinking about what I should put on my sketch and I had to think about what materials I had.  I used a lot of resources like TikTok, youtube, and google.

When I started to test out a small section of my machine I quickly learned that the dominos I’ve decided to use don’t have enough strength to push over a heavy ball so I tried lighter balls but some wouldn’t balance because of how light they are.

So far the things that have been so frustrating were dominos falling over (multiply times), Not finding the right ramps, things not balancing, and light and heavy things. Some things I had to correct making a small bit of my project was the different types of balls I used.

And I also changed some ramps. Also one of my “aha” moments was when I put dominos under a ball to balance it, and when I found out what position I should put a ramp in.

In conclusion, so far I am doing good on the Rube Goldberg project and I think I am going to be really happy when I finally succeed in this project.

 

Reflection For Constitution Project

I chose this topic because I thought it was interesting to learn about women and how they wanted to change the constitution to have the right to vote. I was also interested to learn about their lives during this time period. I also wanted to learn why women had not been given the right to vote when the constitution was written.

Something I found challenging was finding information for my question and finding resources that were exactly about the question I chose. Another thing I found hard to understand was the words they used in the articles I read. Words like “suffrage” and “ballot” I didn’t know because there not used today.

This was a long project with many steps. For me, the research was the most difficult part. in the end, I found that I learned so much about the 19th amendment and about the history of it back in that time period too. And I am happy this all happened because if the women did not step forward life would still not be equal.

Book Review

The book Roller Girl. If you are into drama, competition, fearless people, roller skating, or living your dream. Then you should read this book. This book is a graphic novel with colored pictures. This book for me is hard to put down because I want to know what’s next all the time. One main part is that Astrid ( roller girl ) has never roller skated before so will she succeed? Or will she fail? And the other main part is that her best friend did not want to do the skate camp with her and wanted to do dance camp with who? Read the book to find out. As I was saying now the person she’s doing dance camp with is telling her to not be friends with Astrid. What will happen next will Astrid meet a new friend? Will her ex-best friend regret doing dance camp? So I highly recommend the book roller girl and hope you will read it and like it too!

Welcome to 5th Grade!

Oh My God, I can not believe I am a fifth-grader. Looking back at when I first moved to Scarsdale from Brooklyn, in first grade, I can remember looking up to the fifth graders like it was yesterday. I don’t even feel much older. But that being said, it’s fun being the oldest in school, I love it!  It’s only been about three weeks but I already feel the difference. We have way more opportunities.

Although, the one thing that’s still upsetting is the fact that we have to wear masks. The past 18 months were hard,  we had virtual things 24/7 luckily my parents weren’t as scared as others so it didn’t affect me in a big way except for the masks. I got to see my friends and go to sports the only thing that changed a lot was not going to school of course.

The things I’m looking forward to are all the graduation activities, the 5th grade vs volleyball teacher game (if we have it), all the holidays, and the snow days which are fun!