This is it...

Wow my final blog post.... Never thought I would feel sad about this being it. Overall, I enjoyed the project. Although this has been one of the most stressful projects EVER, I also felt the most accomplished and most proud of myself when this was over. I think because it originated from us and it wasn't like we followed different guidelines from a teacher that I feel that we were really independent. We as a group needed to make decisions and solve our own problems. It just felt more like real life.Things that went well were that we finished the project with two bags and our second bag protected the laptop. I also think that our presentation went well. I personally like our final paper and I know Mr. Blake will too. (Well he better or else there will be some Punching Face going on :)) Things that did not go as planned were everything. Our construction process was heavily altered and adapted because of different sewing problems. Our theory was good but actually making the bag turned out to be harder. I learned a lot of life lessons. I learned that working in a group is harder because you need to rely on others. You need to be able to trust your group members. We also learned accountability. It is a different story when it is also someone else's grade on the line. All of our actions affected everyone in the group. I learned how to sew a laptop sleeve and how to hand sew a double thread cross stitch. I also learned how to use Google Docs. I would have liked it if we could have picked our groups. I mean I love my group but I would have thought it would be easier to work with other girls, just because of different work ethics. I would also have liked to see this as a class, instead of being incorporated to a Physics class. The idea of improving Kamehameha is great and if this could be translated into a class, it would be even better. Overall, I kind of think I was doing science. I think it was more like Mr. Blake tricked us into doing science. Most of the challenges I felt came from working with the group and not so much from the science aspect. But our whole bag needed to be science based, so I guess we did incorporate science. Thanks Mr. Blake for everything!!! We love yah!!!

This was a good but yet difficult project.Personally, I thought we learned more about life skills then we did about physics. And I have no problem with that. Some of the things I learned to do was work with a deadline, and cooperate with team mates. It is very difficult to work with a dead line when not all of your group members do their work. I experienced this a lot this project. But we just had to learn to get along and finish what we needed. I thought that the laptop bag would be easy to make, but it ended up being very difficult. We got stuck in a lot of situations where things just kept going wrong over and over. It comes to a point where you don't know what to do any more. But we pulled through and finished this project strong. I felt that towards the end of this project was when our group worked the hardest realizing the quarter was almost over. Some of the things I thought went very well was the presentation. I thought we did pretty good. I also thought our final bag didn't turn out that bad. Some of the things that didn't go as planned were just about everything. Our original plan for our laptop bag included a zipper and more padding, but that didn't work out that well. Mainly because we found it very difficult to sew on a zipper. And also because teneille was unable to help us for over a week because she was at Merrie Monarch. The other thing my group struggled with was blog posting. We started off week, but then towards the middle of our project we did well. But at the end, we started slacking again. I definitely learned that Group projects are not for me. But i also learned that in life, we need to know how to work in groups. I am very happy we got this project because it taught me how to talk with my group member and collaborate through all of our problems. Something I think would make this project better would be to get rid of the physics aspect of it. I know that its a physics class, but for this type of project, it was very difficult to find and appropriate problem to solve relating to physics. I think that if you just did improving the school in general, there would be a lot more creative projects that really help out the school. The one other thing i didnt like was the blog posts. I think that a blog post every night is a little unneeded. I think that maybe every other night, or just days we have class would be more reasonable. During this project, I do think i did science... just not quite physics. We used science in a matter of experimenting and problem solving. I think that these lessons would come more in handy later in life then learning actual physics.

FTW

My overall thoughts on this project was that it was great. I enjoyed researching and putting together an idea and making it into an action. This showed me that I could change Kamehameha for the better. This was also an educational project as well as a fun project. I got to experience presenting a presentation in the Kamehameha Schools Auditorium.

Things that went well were that we actually made a prototype laptop bag that could solve the problem of cracked screens. Also I feel like our presentation went very well. We all had speaking parts and explained our project in great detail. We pulled together as a team in the end and ultimately won over the crowd.
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The things that did not go as planned, was our first plan for our bag. Since we didn't have an industrial sized sewing machine, we couldn't build our first design. Also sometimes blog posts were not posted on time by the right people. Another thing was getting the material. This was a challenge because some of us didn't have the transportation.

I learned how to build a laptop. I also learned that we can do small things to make Kamehameha a better place. I learned how to be a part of a team and that it takes everyone's cooperation to make a successful group. Also I learned time management because if we didn't turn in one of the assignments, it affected our grade exponentially. Also we learned how to be punctual because if we went over time, our grade would be affected.

I'd like to see a change in the amount of time given to brainstorm an idea, and implement. I felt that we were rushed into picking the laptop bag and if allocated more time, maybe a better idea would have came out of our group. Also if we could have had more time to implicate the idea. One because it would help us to make a more solid design and two because it would help us to gather more data to see if our idea was a success.

I felt that I was sorta doing science. But not really, but now that I think about it, I feel like this was very physics related because we had to calculate the amount of padding to cushion the fall so that the screen would break. Also we tried to find the force on the screen that was needed for it to crack.

FINAL BLOG

After a long, grueling 4th Quarter, we're finally done. I never thought we would have spent a whole quarter finding, creating, cooperating, and presenting our own Physics project. When we were first given the task, I thought that it was going to be boring, and easy. I would input my ideas, and let the rest of the group expand, and finish the project. But when we were put in a situation where if one member didn't pull their weight, everyone in the group fell behind. I liked the idea of finding, creating, and solving our own problems and solving them through physics; but we all know now that not all the problems in the world can be solved through physics. What I believe went well throughout the project was our group's ability to work around, and problem solve all the road blocks that showed up as we went along. Our group was able to change our whole project, and solve that new problem overnight. The hardest part, or the parts that didn't go so well, was the actual creation part of the project. Our group had many communication problems, and we all had this  "I'll do it when I can" attitude, which caused us to fall behind on many blogposts, and we just went with the flow. If we didn't have something done we just did it as soon as we could. Which is still good, but we could have cooperated more as a team. What I learned was that when we finish High School there will be millions of problems, and we'll have to choose which ones we will overcome. And when we choose those problems we have to be all in on solving them, if not it won't work out. Also, it's easier working in a group because you have other people to rely on. If someone wasn't able to, or forgot to do something, we worked as a group to make sure it got done as soon as possible.
If there was one thing I could've changed about this project, it would be the longevity of it. If this project was on-going, throughout the year. Our group's would have more time to find problems to solve, create better ideas, and create those solutions. Also, group's could collect more data, and actually see what is going right, and what is going wrong with their solutions. Which we could then fix, and see over a longer period of time if our solutions are actually working, and whether or not our solutions are making Kamehameha a better place.
Most people don't see this project as being the "Science" that we learn in classrooms, but to be honest, everything we did was science. Science is based on the Scientific Method, and each group had to go through each step to accomplish their solutions. Almost every aspect of what we did could be, or is in some way Physics/Science related. With a few modifications this project would be way more awesome. Hopefully more students will get a chance to experience what we did.

Change

This blog post was supposed to be for friday

Friday's presentations made me realize one thing. Everyone had the same problems as we did. Everyone had difficulties with their groups or had setbacks in their design. Everyone had to adapt their plans and original designs to fit the problem. It made me feel better that we were not the only ones with this problem. I really hope that we did make a change and that all this work wasn't for nothing. We as a group put too much effort into this to not make a change. I can see that everyone put a lot of effort into their projects too. So I ask myself did we make a change? Only time will tell... This image was found at http://sk8rrboi.wordpress.com/2010/09/02/change/

Presentation :)

I am throughly surprised with our final presentation. It went well :) Im really proud of my group for pulling it together. I think that once we got there, we realized that this is something serious. We went up and were prepared. Although we went a little over time, I am happy and content because I rather be over time then under time. We all participated during the presentation and presented our slides with accurate info. Something that wasn't said at the presentation was that although our bags didn't make that big of an immediate impact, it will hopefully have the school consider making new laptop bags for the students. The idea of the a new laptop bag was presented and hopefully, our school will take our request into consideration. Its more about intiating a change and stirring up our school perspective. That is the impact we made through this project.

One more day

The days have passed quickly and the presentation day is upon us. We will use class time tomorrow to practice our presentation and make it perfect for the people that are going to observe our idea. I think that this will be an educational presentation to let the public know about the ongoing problems of cracked screens. I believe that if we can solve this problem. We can save the school and students, thousands of dollars in repairs. We pretty much just made a new and improved laptop bag that takes away the risks of people forgetting to zip up the bag. But tomorrow will be fun.

http://www.e-socrates.org/file.php/43/images/presentation.jpg