Capstone Blog #3

Capstone is the biggest project of the year, it was a fun and challenging project. I had to choose a topic to research. My topic was how cars have changed to become safer and faster. I also had to research and interview an expert on your to get as much information as possible. Finally, I had to present what I learned about cars.

 

Researching was the most important and hardest part of the project because you need the information to make a good project/presentation. I had to have five resources I used to get information about my topic. I had to get a lot of information which was stored in a slideshow. Researching was challenging because I would get the same information a lot. I would have to look for new information in new resources. I learned that researching is challenging, but the information you get will help you a lot.

 

After I finished researching, I had to make a presentation about all my information. There were three ways I could present my information. A TED Talk, an Ignite, or a Movie. In a TED Talk, you show your information orally, you can have a slideshow, but you don’t need to. In an Ignite, you express your findings in a slideshow and talk in front of everybody, the slides advance every fifteen seconds I didn’t do an Ignite because I didn’t want to time my slides to exactly fifteen seconds for each slide. In a movie, you show your findings in a WeVideo or an Adobe, you don’t need to talk in front of people. Pictures are required and you need to record a voice-over on the pictures. I chose to present my information in a movie because I like making movies and I am good with technology. I didn’t want to do a TED Talk or an Ignite because you need to memorize your script and you can mess up in front of everyone, in a movie, you can do things over and over again until it is perfect. 

Some challenges I had with my presentation were that sometimes I couldn’t find the right picture to go with my information, I had to search for more pictures or change the information I was presenting.

 

I learned a lot about cars and research over the course of this project. I learned that researching can be challenging but you should keep trying. Also, sometimes things won’t work the way you want them to so you have to improvise. I also learned a lot about how cars have changed over time to become safer and faster. Cars have become faster because they have stronger engines. Cars have become safer because of new technology. Capstone was super fun and amazing project, I learned a lot, and I look forward to presenting and finishing my project.

Capstone Blog #2

The purpose of the interview is so you can gather more information about your topic, the person you are interviewing should have new information. I think that the interview is very helpful because I got a lot of new information from it.

The process of figuring out who to interview was easy, my parents helped me find an interview. I thought I could interview someone who was a mechanical engineer or knew a lot about cars so that I could get as much information as possible. I found out that there was a place called, Mercedes of White Plains that fixed cars. I interviewed a person that was a service advisor named Frank DeMaio. When I wrote my interview questions, I included my sub-questions so I could get more information. Also, I came up with the rest of my questions by asking about safety, the speed of the car, and how the engine affects the speed of the car. Some of my questions are, what safety equipment has been added to modern cars for passengers and for the environment? I came up with this question because I knew I needed modern safety equipment so I could compare it to ancient safety equipment. Another question is, explain how hybrid cars (cars that run on gasoline and electricity) help the environment. I asked this question because one of my sub-questions is, how are modern cars safer for passengers and for the environment? I needed to know about safety for the environment.

My experience conducting the interview was good. The interview didn’t go as expected. The interview didn’t go as expected because it only took five minutes because the person that I interviewed already answered the questions and had them written down so I didn’t have to ask him. Something that I learned was that before modern cars, everything was metal and big and bulky in the old days because they thought that it would be strong. Today, we have impact zones that spread the impact throughout the car instead of the car getting hit in one place. The impact zones help because they lessen the impact on the car because they spread the impact throughout the car.

The interview was very helpful, I got a lot of information that I didn’t know before the interview. I look forward to making and presenting my Capstone project. I hope my project is great.

Capstone Blog #1

Capstone is a project where students come up with a topic to research, you have to have a main question that you answer and 5 sub-questions to help you answer it. You need 5 resources to help you research your topic. You also need to interview an expert about your topic to get more information. After you have interviewed an expert, have 5 resources, 5 sub-questions, and 1 main inquiry question, you turn it all into a presentation, you have 3 ways to present, a TED talk, an ignite, or a movie. I think Capstone is a great project and it pushes us to do better.

To come up with my topic, I had to list topics that I was interested in or knew about, so it would be easier to research. I chose the topic of cars because I am interested in how cars have changed over time. I needed to choose a certain topic within cars so I thought of choosing the topic of how cars work and function but then I decided to do my Capstone on how cars have evolved to become safer and faster because I was more interested in that.

To come up with a main inquiry question I had to make questions and see which ones I was interested in. I was interested in a few so it was challenging to pick one out of many. I decided to research the question how have cars evolved to become safer and faster?

Coming up with my sub-questions was both easy and challenging at the same time, the first three sub-questions were easy to come up with because I knew I needed the answers to those questions to answer my inquiry question. My first 3 sub-questions are, what were the first cars like? What were some changes after the first cars? And, what are modern cars like? The other sub-questions were hard to come up with, but because my main inquiry question was how have cars evolved to become safer and faster? I knew I would need information on safety in cars and the speed, my fourth and fifth sub-questions are on speed and safety. My fourth and fifth questions are, what safety equipment has been added to modern cars to

So far, Capstone has been fun and challenging and I look forward to finishing and presenting my Capstone project.’