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This semester was different than I expected it to be. I had talked to Andrew at the beginning of the year and I was so excited to start the semester. The way he talked about the project and the things we were going to do sparked something in my brain and the project seemed like a dream. The semester didn’t live up to my full expectations, but I still had a great time.
This semester was fun but it was tough on me. I’m glad it was tough. It helped me learn and grow as a person and student. We are asked to write three things about how we grew as a person and academically. For me that’s pretty much the same thing. I build my skills academically but those skills help me out so much as a person. For example, I was working as a member of the film crew this semester. My job was to film the open exploration groups then edit a film. The editing process is long a gruelling even when you have a couple months to edit. We had a couple weeks. During that first week we still had to film because the groups were still working. That gave us one week to edit our film. At times the program I was using would crash or I would be looking for a clip and it wouldn’t be there. This taught me how to be patient, calm, and how to overcome a problem. I could have easily called it quits because I didn’t have that one file. I didn’t. I knew I had to work on this film and get it done so I kept working. I had to find a clip to substitute the missing one or recreate it somehow. Those 3 skills I listed above were strengthened through school work but are also a part of my personal growth. It goes both ways. It helps in and out of school. I didn’t really have any academic goals this semester. I did start a project last year in Scott’s class. It is called a Ruben’s box. It is supposed to show sound frequency through fire. My goal was to finish it by the end of the semester. I think I could've gotten more done on it, but being apart of the film crew I had constantly be filming. I didn’t have much down time where I could go outside and drill holes or weld. I still want to finish the box. I just need to find some time where I can really get some work done on it. For next semester I need to do a couple of things. I need to manage my time and communicate better. Over this semester we were given a lot of free time, I often found myself wandering the halls and going to talk to Mike. There were also times where I got some work done late because I misunderstood the teachers and didn’t do the work until they had put a 0 into powerschool. For me to be as successful as possible neither of those things should be happening. I should be working, now I think I deserve a break every once and away but roaming the halls isn’t something I should be doing. Next semester I am going to focus more on work and if there are any misunderstandings about the work I need to do I will ask questions so I can get it done on time and get a grade that I want. I don’t have a specific way to do these other than the fact I WANT to do these things. I think that it’s important for me to do these things to become a better student and person. I feel like this semester I definitely worked to my best ability. I completed all the tasks we had. I also believe that on some things I went a little above and beyond. I consistently did a good job on my blog posts and that showed through the grade book but I didn’t just write them to get them over with. I would look at my notes to start, then I would just get on a roll. I was somewhat passionate about what I was writing. It felt awesome to be able to write something and not feel like I’m being forced to write it. I’m not sure why that was. I’m not specifically interested in Chemistry but when I started writing it felt good. Maybe I like Chemistry and I’m just not sure. For my own project I would do something similar to what we did this semester. I’d want to do more exploring though. I’d want to go on a few different backpacking trips in a few different places. I think that would be awesome.I love making films so, i’d still want to make a film. Another thing i’d want to do is create some book that has writing pieces in it. A series of poetry and essays. Those pieces would be prompted by a picture that I too while out on one of my trips. That picture would be the background of that page. Personally I love photography, film making, camping, and just exploring places I haven’t seen before and I would want to do a project that incorporated those things. I also enjoy writing shorter pieces like poetry or shorter journal like entries and I think that could easily be apart of a project. That writing could easily also incorporate science. I think this semester was kind of rough for everyone. We were going into a new system with 9th and 10th graders in the same class then two teachers who hadn’t taught together before were teaching together. I like both teachers and both classes but like I said above it was kind of rough. Our project took up so much time and effort we didn’t get to split up much into individual classes. Now I’m not saying I don’t like project work time but I think the project work time time took up too much of time where we could have been learning. I think Andrew did a good job of teaching us the content we needed to know. I also think Adam did a good job of teaching us but he didn’t have enough time with us. Humanities is tough because you need more time to work on things and we weren’t given that time. It was because of the project. I think we also should've started the explantion projects sooner so we could've had more time to create awesome things. I was apart of the film crew and I had fun but we had two and a half weeks to edit the film. I love film making but this was super stressful and I wanted to quit multiple times. It wasn't anywhere near enough time to edit these films. Maybe I could have used my time a little better but either way it was going to be a close call getting the film done on time. I think my group and I did a pretty good job on the film and I'm proud of what we could accomplish but the audio was such a big issue and we redid most voice over 3-5 times. That should have been enough but the audio still wasn't where we wanted it. It was a cool project but I wish we had more time. I’m also not a big fan of the new system. I don’t mind having the freshman in my class but I wish we had the same teachers for a full year. The reason I wish that was the case because I have a great relationship with Mike. I can go to talk to him all the time and we are good friends. Same thing with Scott if he was still here. But I didn’t get to that level of friendship until maybe midway through second semester. I think creating relationships is a big part of High Tech High. I’m glad that is the case. It’s awesome to be able to talk to Mike and have a conversation with him about whatever. I think with only having a teacher for one semester we are limited. We dont have the time to develop a relationship. I believe I’d be able to have a similar relationship with Adam and Andrew as I do with Mike if I had them for a full year. It’s a tough subject because yes it is cool to have different classes after winter break, but I think I benefit more from have the same teachers for the year. I’m almost positive a lot of other students feel the same way. I hope in the future we work something out so we can maybe go back to having the teachers for a year but still integrating the grades. Also instead of keeping the same teaching partner each year you can switch after the year is done because I think a reason this was done was more to benefit the teachers maybe. Yes it’s cool to have the options for new cool projects (from a student perspective) but I think it was popular throughout the teachers because they could choose who to work with. Just something to think about. I love High Tech High but I think it can definitely be improved.
I am super excited for this project. I love film and I can't wait to get started. The button below is a link to some example shots that I've taken in the past to show that I know how to frame and use different visual tools to compose a good looking shot. There is also an example of a voiceover overlaid with music to show that I know how to do that. Voice overs are the main source of audio for the films we are making so we need to know how to do them well. My groups thesis is to, "Use film to raise awareness and make the world a happier place."
In our film you will see a guy fearing for his life. He tries to escape from danger, but he can't run away fast enough. The aliens that catch him fly away from earth and celebrate that they were able to successfully catch a human safely. We worked on this film as a group. One of us had the idea and then we agreed on that. After that We all contributed to making the story better and also drawing up the storyboard. I did all the filming and editing. Marco acted. Jack and Marco were there in the editing process giving me feedback to make the film better. We wanted to be created with this idea. As a group we agreed that using the rocket in our film would be "the norm" and we wanted to do more. We were brainstorming for awhile than came across the idea of being abducted by aliens. All of us thought that would be super awesome. I was super excited about making this film. From what my group and I discussed it seemed to me like our film was a blank canvas that I could do anything with. The story was good because I was able to experiment with different shots to make it good looking cinematically. I loved this project. Going into it I wasn't pumped. I was a little worried and confused. It seemed like we were making these big scary rockets that were super intricate and complicated. Now they are complex and hard to understand but as the project went on I got the hang of things and it became less of a challenge. In the end, our rocket worked well and we were able to recover it. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't recording while ours launched so we didn't get the footage but it was still a fun experience. I was also worried about the film we had to make. Once my group and I started working on it I realized there wasn't anything to worry about. We got that done within a few days and I was very happy with how it turned out. To conclude, I loved this project and even though I was skeptical of it in the beginning it grew on me. The button above is a link to our rocket plans along with our storyboard and pictures of our final rocket.
This second build was AWESOME! Going into building the rocket my partner and I knew more about the construction and what worked well and what didn't. We did experiment with the fins and they didn't help with straight flight but in the end it turned out great. On our first launch the motor died out and it sounded like a breaking down car. The second motor was crazy. It flew. It flew very fast. Now, it didn't go high and straight but it went FAR. I count this rocket as a success. The videos to my second balsa rocket build will be attached in the link.
Going into this year I wanted Spanish first semester because I had heard of a few projects that were happening in the second semester that I was thrilled about. To be able to even think about being in one of those classes I had to get Spanish first semester to get all my credits in order to graduate. I also wasn't really that interested in rockets. A few days before school started a few of my friends and I came into school to work on some things. We didn't know our teachers so we asked around. It turned out most of us had Andrew and Adam. Andrew started talking about what we were doing this semester and I was really excited except for the rocket part... It turns out rockets are AWESOME!! It's cool to construct these rockets than use these powerful motors to launch them. It was a fun experience making a rocket this way and I can't wait to do more. I feel like we were limited because we didn't have a ton of resources but in the future I think we'll have more and we'll be able to create bigger and better rockets. After my first launch I know what I can improve on the next rockets I build and with more launches they will get better and better. When we launched the rocket flew up to the right. It should of gone straight but there were a few factors that made it go to the right. One being the weight distribution and second being the friction from the launch pad. In the next build I want to add more weight to the top and for the attachments for the launch pads I want them bigger o they have more room to move. |
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