Process Paper

     When my group first got together, we discussed how we would design this campaign. My group decided that we wanted to target teenagers because we are talking about teen pregnancy and that is more a problem among the teen crowd. Also we discovered that if a teen hears something interesting, their more likely to to tell their parents. Then we decided that we were going to use the most popular social media sites to spread the world about our campaign. We created pages on Facebook and twitter. We wanted to use these sites to monitor how many people like the page. We wanted to see how many people actually cared enough to see our campaign and if we got the message across.


Finding the information for this campaign was fairly easy. Sterling and I were assigned this issue when we were partners so we used the information we collected for our presentation. We wanted to put on our web pages statistic that we didn't know until we researched it. But one thing my group wanted to be careful of is that we didn't want to present a bunch of boring statistics that no one cared to read or even look at. So we updated the twitter and Facebook everyday with one new statistic, just like positing a daily status. 


I was in charge of the Facebook site. I was proud because it got many likes and people actually liked the post. This was surprising because even though Facebook is used, it isn't used as much as it was used to so I didn't expect a lot of people to like the site. The twitter page was shocking to me. I was surprised because almost every teenager has a twitter, but the page only has 10 followers. I was shocked because I thought we get more attention on twitter then Facebook. But now I understand teens just don't follow random sites on twitter. Also the thing that hurt us is that we have a video but we never shared it. The video is good but the fact we didn't promote it, I think it hurt us the most. 


But overall this campaign was good but not a success. We got people to have an interest in our campaign and that is the most important of all. Even though things weren't smooth at times but we got everything done. 


"Lemony Babies" Process Paper

Our project was to slow down the rate of teen pregnancy in Philadelphia. We know we can not stop it completely, but we want to get the message through that although babies are blessings, most teens can not handle a child. We decided that teens would be our main focus, so we made a twitter account to tweet information about teen pregnancy, a QR code of a funny fact website, posters with our twitter name on it and the QR code. 
The QR code we found on the second day of working together, as soon as we found it we knew it had to be included somehow. We thought it would lighten up the situation and not just make it "abstinence is cool". The website is a parody or extreme of reasons why most people think that you should wait to have sex. It is not meant to be taken seriously, and that was our intension. 
We decided to hang the posters around our high school to see how they affected people. The posters consisted of pictures, slogans, and information. We had smaller posters and hung them in emptier locations for more impact. We put the QR code on all of the bigger posters and the twitter link on all of the posters. 
The twitter was created to put out messages that show that teen pregnancy isn't bad, but isn't a wise choice. We tried to make sure that in no way to promote abortions, just think before you have sex. The twitter basically lets young women and men know how to protect themselves and just lets young adults and teenagers know what they should expect if coming into parenthood or prevention to not get pregnant. 
Overall I think we worked well as a group and had our goals accomplished. ALthough in our original idea had a PSA in it, we decided to go a modern way and make a twitter. We knew we wanted the posters and I think they were a success. We all had separate parts but came together and collaborated on others. I worked mostly on the posters and the twitter, and I just made sure everything was flowing smoothly. 

Process Paper

My group made 3 components to our campaign which was a website, Facebook page, and Youtube video. In this project, I was in charge of the Youtube video. When I first visioned, the video, I wanted it to stick out and to reach out to people’s mind. Producing the video though wasn’t that difficult but wasn’t easy either. Since I knew what my other group members was doing and what they was putting in they’re components, it was easy for me to know how I was going to form my video. But when I was putting my video together, I was kind of working backwards. I put together the ending and the middle pieces before working on the beginning because I knew actually what I wanted to do with the end, so I thought that I would get that out of the way. The only thing that I’ll say that went wrong was my idea that I had for my video.

At first I was having difficulties trying to find an idea on what to do with the video. My original layout for the video was to have pictures that I took with the “Do Not Cross” tape in front of schools. Then I was going to have the students give their views and have slides that says what was happening with the school closings and how the students could save their schools from closing. However, things don’t always go according to plan. It was difficult trying to get students to say what they thought because those who me and my group knew didn’t want to participate and cooperate with us. They said that they didn’t care about the fact that their schools were closing. With this I had to come with another plan, I then decided to just have voice overs with the schools that was going to close. I just took people who were at SLA and asked them if they could just say “Save my school” and recorded that. Another challenge was trying to get my hands on some “do not cross tape”. I wasn’t sure where to get a roll from other than a police officer. Instead I took some pictures that was on google that showed schools with “do not cross” tape. In all I don’t think that the process of designing that bad as I had thought but it could have been way better if I was able to get all my ideas in the video. 

After I had made the video and put it on Youtube, I was wondering how was people would know that it exist. I decided that I would post the link of the Youtube video on our Facebook page so that those who liked the page could go and watch it. I also decided to email people saying to check the video out. The challenge though was actually getting people to actually look at the video. So I would sometimes tell those who had kids that looking at the video can benefit both them and their kids. And for teens I would tell them that they wouldn’t lose their schools and wouldn’t have to go find another one. 

Working on this video was both interesting and time consuming because one, I got to see how many people actually took their time to look and like my video even though it did take time to complete it. I think that taking the time to actually plan out the video and see what could work and what couldn’t was the most challenging through the whole process. And it would be nice to know if some people actually took the advice.

Process Paper: School District Funding

So with this project I feel as though my group got off to a slow start. We didn't really know what angle we wanted to tackle this from or who our target audience should be and how we would set everything up. We decided it was best to focus on the lack of resources in public schools and where those resources are getting sent to. We realized that a lot of money that would have gone to Public Schools is getting sent to Charter Schools, and we also realized that the state of PA doesn't get as much money as another state such as Wyoming. I know that I am capable of working very well with a lot of technical things so that is the aspect I took in my approach to helping my group get this done. I handled the twitter page and the website. I designed the website to have Philly's colors because I thought it was patriotic and it worked well. I think that Roberto started to take the lead in the beginning because I know I needed a few days to get on board because I didn't fully understand the assignment at first and because I am a bit of a procrastinator. Sarah Charlotte took a role of our artist and worked well with photoshop and was able to express our theme well. Roberto also came up with the majority of the script for the video. I assisted him with filming it. I had difficulty getting followers for the Twitter page because many people that I tried to follow wouldn't follow back and also because its hard to get a new name out there. Robert actually told me about a site that will help me get my name out there and get followers so that people will learn about the what we have to say. Khari continually said he was going to make fact cards, but after three classes he only had about 5 or 6. I was hoping that I would be able to put the fact cards onto the twitter page so that I could spread some knowledge but I don't really have enough to go down that lane. The website went pretty well I didn't have any problems with making it and the setup and design. I think I should have shown more initiative in this project because I could have helped Roberto with more things. Roberto and I were kind of the back bones for this project. Him more than me however.

Process Paper:College Dropouts

My group’s campaign topic is  College Dropout rates in Philadelphia and what we planed to do was first raise awareness that this is a growing problem in Philadelphia, while also pointing out different solutions to fix it. So Devante, Joshua, Aazimah and I decided that we were going to create a poster, flyers, a PSA and a twitter page to present this problem to our target audience. Our target audience was college students in Philadelphia so we would host most of are campaigning downtown near Penn and Drexel Campuses.

My roles in this project were to create the twitter page, find places for us to post and hand out our flyers and work on the group PSA component. Each of these component to me had their own advantages and disadvantages, such as how I may have found a place where college students do come past but when we went to that location during lunch hours their was no one to hang out the flyers too. But overall I think I made some good progress on my components of the project such as networking on twitter. My groups’ account is now sending our message out to 70+ followers which considering that it has only been active for a week that is a rapid approval rating. This also shows some success to the flyers and posters made by other group members because the username to the twitter page is posted on each component.

 

Reflection Questions

Reflection Questions:

 How does this project relate to the real world?

- This project relates to the real world in many ways. Architects as they design and creating the building around the world. We were using different buildings around the center city area and measuring them trying to find the height of the different buildings. We also then made a blueprint of the buildings on the block that we were assign like architects do to sketch the buildings they designing.

     

What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

- The most exciting portion of this project was measuring the different parts of the house. Also another most exciting was actually using the mirror method to find the height of the house. Measuring the different parts of the house was exciting because it was different and something I never done. The least exciting was actual drawling the buildings on the blueprint because my groups block was so long and had so many houses on it.


 What did you learn from completing this project?

I learn how to difficult it is to figure out the exact measurements by using different methods. I learn how to use different methods to find the actual height of the building you were assign to. I learn how to solve a proportion with the different methods for the buildings.

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Screen Shot 2013-03-15 at 10.08.41 AM

Education VS Economics- A choice no parent should be forced to make.

We discussed some differences between public and private education, and the challenges of trying to cross this boundary when one is surrounded by peers from different backgrounds, and trying to find a home among them. A set of twins who had to cross the judgmental line of cultural wealth interfering in educations and relationships. They’ve had the same experiences until the transition to colleges where they finally branched away.

We will be discussing the transitions and coping methods it takes to be subjected into a culture of education that is focused upon religion and riches. Two topics that this family has always struggled with.  

My brothers Asa and Tucker are identical and fraternal twins. They are now 19 years old and they are freshmen in college, the first school they’ve ever been apart from. Tucker attends Georgetown University for a biochemistry major. Asa currently attends Virginia Commonwealth University for computer engineering. They went through elementary and middle school in every class together, then to a private high school in Philadelphia. They were given full scholarships to Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School. Here they were set into a very religious brotherhood community, boundaries more focused on the practice of religion rather than the focus on financial complications that needed to be crossed for success.

When I asked my siblings about their experience with the initial change into a private school, they explained their feelings about how it may have been more work than they had been used to, but this community was so closely knit that they hardly noticed it. The educational boundary that seems to frequently interfere with financial issues was also apart of my own childhood.

At the same year that my siblings had to move into a private school, I had done the same. I attended William Penn Charter School for my sixth grade year. This was an extremely difficult change to bear. I had only recently lost my mother to cancer and starting at a new school made life much more difficult. The work was incredibly more challenging than I had ever had to experience before. I cried every night, but still stayed awake doing homework until two a.m. I had transferred from a public school just two days into the school year. The principal of my middle school had to persuade another girl to take me around for a few days since we had all the same classes. This girl was my opposite.

I knew from a glance at the school that I wouldn’t fit in. My family has always had to be really careful with money. None of the other students I saw in the grade could possibly be on a scholarship like I was. This school didn’t first focus on intelligence. They focused on a bank account. Not one that I could try to compare with. 

Lucky for my siblings, they’ve always been smarter than the rest of us. Saint Joseph’s has a very specific dress code of a suit and tie. Every young boy there must have their hair cut above the shoulders, shaved facial hair. Making them each look the same. With no room for judgement on appearance. 

I asked the question of whether Asa or Tucker had ever hoped they were more rich just to fit in with students at the school, with a modest answer, they each said that it hadn’t crossed their minds. They have the intelligence of the richest man in the world, so this didn’t change their experience in high school.

After getting over the basics about their experiences with transitioning into private high school, I changed the questions for college. Tucker, going to school at Georgetown, a very prestigious Ivy league school, spoke about the financial and educational ties. Georgetown is an extremely expensive school to go to. He has been blessed with a great amount of scholarship, grant, and financial aid money. Asa has also. Tucker’s current cost for each semester is a mere $700. Georgetown is very much still focused on the financial issues of their students. Regardless of the amount of money they make as an institution, most of their profit is given to financial aid to help under privileged, extremely intelligent students, get the greater education they deserve.

The educational and economical boundary that has been crossed by these boys has changed the type of man they’ve begun growing up to be. They know what it is to lose their mother, and adapt to a new world where they believe they will be invisible and forgotten no matter the brains. These boys have been through more than many adults have, and they still have been able to make their family proud, and keep their faith. We have all known the burdens of keeping secrets to fit in, some are blurted out because the truth is too painfully obvious, some are dug deep, to hide from cruelty. This judgement could just be all in our heads though.

Philadelphia Housing Infrastructure

Running a champaign is an emotional roller coster rode by multiple people. My group was given Philadelphia Housing Infrastructure. The first step we took was acknowledging the problem. The group who first presented this obstacle proposed that there were two many abandon houses in Philadelphia, around 40,500 estimated. We decided we could take this a step further then that. Philadelphia has about 4,000 homeless people. These numbers, to us, made no sense. We noticed we had an abundance of vacant houses and thousands of people who were in need of homes, so we put the two together. We figured Philadelphia could simply solve our abandoned house problem by filling them with people who need homes, sounded so easy.   


Well, the first thing we discussed was how we were just going to go about giving random people homes. We know that many people struggle with difficulties and are actually trying to advance in life. However, we are also aware of people who would take advantage of this initiative, so we decided to create a binding contract. People would be assigned homes which are vacant and would be expected to care for them to the best of their ability. That means picking up trash around it and also cleaning it out on their own. This would not only give homeless people motivation to have something they owned but also slowly decrease the amount of liter in Philadelphia. Once they showed care for a home over a certain time period we planned on the government helping to fund construction of the homes. That was until we sent a letter to the mayors office and got no response.         


This is when we knew what we wanted from the general public. The point of our champaign was to try to get people to donate funds and materials to our initiative. We created posters which we posted around the center city area which lead people back to our website. The point of the posters were to grab people’s attention and promote our champaign at the same time. We also set up a QR code so viewers with smart phones could be lead directly to our website and social networking sites. So our champaign consist of 6 components: 


-Letter to the Mayor’s office 

-PSA 

-Posters 

-Website 

-QR code 

-Twitter  


For a group of 17 year olds I think we did pretty well trying to publicly push an initiative we built from the ground up. However, our champaign was not a cake walk. We had many grand ideas which we completely dropped when it was time to implicate them. For instance, we wanted to promote our champaign through a physical sculpture. This sculpture consisted of four nice bird houses and one broken down bird house. We were planing on writing “even birds wouldn't live here” on the sculpture and placing a simple QR code to our website. This,we thought, would grab people’s attention because it was odd and mysterious. However, our designated birdhouse hunter Tsion, found it very hard to find bird houses for sale in the city. She went to multiple art stores and was left empty handed. We could have ordered them off line, but it was unknown when we would receive them, so we trashed the idea. Ideas which we could not implicate in real life left us with more lessons learned rather then disappointment. When everything was said and done, we realized ideas blossomed when they were thought of outside of the box but we had to watch our physical limitations. Running a champaign is an emotional roller coster rode by multiple people, one of which my group and I rode happily, successfully, and learned many lessons from.

Benchmark Reflection



This project relates to the real world because when building a building you need to know all of the measurements. You have to make sure that all the math is right so that the building doesn't turn out with problems with the structure. Another way that I think this project relates back to the real world is if you want to do a job with building this is a good way to get a understanding of the math behind it. You have to know how to do proportions and measure properly. 

I think the most exciting part of this project was going outside and measuring the buildings. I thought that it was very hands on. I was able to get more of an understanding of what exactly we were supposed to be done. Standing next to the building you are measuring is way different than looking at it on google earth. I say that my least favorite part was some of the math a the drawing. I say this because at times the math could be a little tricky cause you wanted to make sure you got around the same numbers for each method. Also the drawing I say this because I want things to be perfect when it comes to drawing and we only had a short time do so. 

I learned how to measure buildings, I learned how to use different methods such as the mirror method and stick method. I also learned that through using google earth you can find the height of a building. To do that you move your mouse all the way to the top of the building and then you mine 16 from the height that is given. I learned that at times you may not get the same measurements as you did for one of the methods, but you just have to go back over your work and check for any mistakes that you may have made. 




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Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 4.40.55 PM

Benchmark Reflection

This project relates to the real world because people need to make a blueprint before they make a building. To do this you need to have some background knowledge in proportions. Proportions allow you to make scale drawings of bigger things that can help in many ways. With a scale drawing you could make numerous edits to something without having to worry about messing up on the real thing. This could save time and money depending on what the project is. Also since scale drawings are smaller you can share it with other people without having to make people go to a set location.


The most exciting part about this project was going outside and measuring the buildings. This was the most exciting part because we got to go outside and actually try to measure a building using different methods, which I thought was kinda cool because most people don’t get to say I measured a building today. However, the I didn’t like doing the proportions to try and get the height of the building because there were were many issues that occurred that made us have to go out and do our measurements again, which was a pain.


I learned that there are a few different ways to measure a building and that you need proportions to do so. For example there are 3 methods you could use to help find the height of a building: the mirror method, shadow method and the stick method. They all have their ups and downs but can be very helpful for making scale drawings. I also learned that google earth has tools that allow you to measure a building’s width and height. Before I just thought it was an application that people used to look at cool places they wanted to visit if they ever got out of the country, but now I see that it’s not just for that.


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20130318_143521

Lemony Babies: Teen Pregnancy

      My group’s project was on Teen Pregnancy for this project we needed to start a campaign. However we had to do so on a budget of $0 and also set it into action. The people in my group were Jeff, Michael, Helen, and Keyaira. Together we came up with plans and ideas on how to get the word out about teen pregnancy.

 

        I was the person who decided that we should do posters. While it was my idea we all chipped in and put up plans. For one of the posters it was my idea to use a baby doll rather then a real baby. I helped write out the words on one of our posters. It doesn’t seem as though I did a lot, but as a group we did so much more. There were some things that I came up with that we didn’t need. Like where to place the posters to get the best reaction. I suggested that we put some in the bathrooms for some kind of reaction. I’m not sure if that plan fell through if it was just decided to not be done. While working on this project Helen and Keyaira did an amazing job on posting the posters up everywhere.

 

       The only difficulty would have been communication. It was hard to stay in touch outside of class. I was very out of the loop at times and felt that even though it seemed ok I should have tried harder. I am proud of the results our project got even if they weren’t too serious. One of the reasons that it wasn’t taken too seriously could be the website we were using. We found it amusing, but it could have caused a loss of urgency that we wanted. The posters themselves could have done it. Over all, however, the project came out great.     

Benchmark Reflection

1. This project relates to the real world because some jobs have to measure buildings. In order to get the height of an unknown object you have to use different methods. They might not be the same methods used in this project but there are methods. Especially architects, they have to figure out the measurements of the building they want to re-do, knock down, and/or build on to. Also when building a new building measurements/ the ability to be able to measure things correctly is needed. 

 2. Going outside and measuring the buildings and calculating the math was the most exciting part of the project. It was the most exciting because we got to actually use the methods to our advantage in the real world. This unit connected with the real world. Most of the things done in geometry I can’t connect to the real world. The least exciting portion of the project was drawling. It was least exciting because I am not good at drawling and I didn’t want to mess up the blueprint. It was also the least exciting because there was a lot of detail to draw and some of the information wasn’t required until we had to draw the blueprint. 

3. I learned how to use the mirror method better and google earth. Also I learned how to do portions better and get the correct answer. This project helped me to realize how much geometry is used in the world. Geometry is needed for architecture, especially when blueprints are needed. Also contractors need to know how to do proportions off the top of their head instead of needing a piece of paper to write it down. Lastly, I learned how to use similar units to figure out how tall a building is. 

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Screen Shot 2013-03-15 at 1.41.50 PM
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Benchmark reflection

1) How does this project relate to the real world?
The only use I can think of for this is for building buildings. When making something so big, it is impossible to measure everything by hand. So because of the using math will be much simpler.

2)What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?
The fun part was when everyone went outside to measure the building. The math and drawing part wasn't much fun for me.

3) What did you learn from completing this project?
I learned ways to calculate height using 3 different methods and that I will never be a architect.

building
building

Process Paper.

My group and I worked really well together. At first we were all nervous that we were going to bump heads and disagree on a lot of things, but to all of our surprise we never fought and we all had some really great ideas.  Since there was four of us we all had different strengths and different weaknesses. But it seemed where one was weak someone else was strong and vice versa. The project seemed to fall into place and come together really nicely.

Since Sean and Owen already had the interviews with the social workers, we didn't have to do that, but we had to make the blog. In the blog we all had different parts to make sure that all of the lots of information we had got across. We all came up with fun ways to present this information, one of the bigger ways was a QR code. So, what I did with that was made a QR code that would take whoever scanned it to our blog. I figured that people wouldn't just want to scan a sketchy QR code, so Dejah and I wrote "Free Money!" Just to grab peoples attention and then in very small print we wrote "Just kidding! But thanks for checking out our blog!"

Once we made the QR code and printed them out, Dejah, Owen and I posted them all over the school to make sure they would be seen. The copies we made were pretty big, but we figured that wouldn't be enough. We all made small copies and posted them all over as well. Then I went around and took pictures of a couple of posters that were posted and made a collage for the website. Since social networking is very popular and I'm constantly on Twitter so I also posted the link on Twitter. I noticed that a handful of my friends retweeted me, so I know they helped me get the world and they also clicked the link and read up on it as well.  When looking at the stats it said that eighteen people clicked on the link from Twitter!

I enjoyed this project because I was interested in the topic and getting word out. Also, because I had an amazing group to work with. Hopefully the QR codes did help get the word out and changed people's outlook on homeless people.

Q3 Benchmark Reflection

1) How does this project relate to the real world?

If I were to become a construction builder, I would I have to do this as a living, in order to do that I have to measure the length and width of the block to build a new building. 

2)What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

The least exciting part of this benchmark must be the amount of work we had to do. It seemed to drag on and on. The most exciting part of this benchmark is the going outside and measuring part.

3) What did you learn from completing this project?

That there is more to just measuring buildings with a measuring tape. It is a really long process that requires time and effort. I also learned the different methods to measuring the height of a building with different items and methods. 



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Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 8.36.31 AM

Q3 Benchmark Reflection

 

The main that this project relates to the real world is in the facet of construction and architecture. It is important to both know the correct measurement and the correct means of attaining them in the real world. This project makes students apply essential skills and contains very marketable information that can be used for various occupations in the world. Students are challenged to come up with ways to measure unknown heights of a building using their knowledge of proportions and angles. The reason that these skills are so useful is because it teaches students how to apply themselves and possibly develop new ways and shortcuts to figure undetermined lengths or heights.

I thought that the most exciting part of the process was figuring out the proportions and their missing variables to determine the missing height of the building. It could have gone either way and it was very rewarding to see that you had gotten a reasonable or correct answer from some of your methods. The least exciting part of this project was drawing the visual representation itself. The work for it was very tedious and didn’t really show much math other than the scale. I would have much rather done another building than draw out the entire block with artistic detail.

I learned many skills from completing this project. The two mains ones that I would like to discuss are the ability to use mirrors and poles to attempt to figure out unknown heights of objects. I believe that this is not only a fun activity, but also a useful one for future assignments. It’s helpful to have a way to determine the height of a building or wall of some sort by using easy means to do so. Secondly, setting up proportions for these methods and solving them is crucial. By doing this, one can find out if angles/sides/heights/lengths are proportional or not.

 

 

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Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 9.45.06 PM

"Protect yoself!" HIV/AIDS Process Paper.

The group I worked with for the the duration of this project focused on the epidemic of HIV/AIDS throughout Philadelphia. Raeven, Taylor, Jailsa, and I brainstormed many ideas to help broadcast this problem to those in our school, and those throughout the city. We immediately began breaking down the project in to portions where think we would be most productive. Raeven created a google doc form where people could anonymously answer questions on HIV/AIDs related inquiries, Taylor created the script for our video and acted in it, Jalisa edited said video, and I was charged with social networking and creating an ad. 

Since we save desserts for last, I’ll list a couple challenges that arrived during the creation of this project. One challenge was designing an ad that would quickly grasp the eye of a passerby, while still delivering a powerful message. Many different advertisements line the walls of SLA, telling all who read of upcoming events. I had to make sure that our ad could compete amongst the sea of ads. I decided to incorporate the most famous African-American AIDS awareness activist Magic Johnson on a poster, along with some clover statistics. Instead of posting them around the school, we will be handing them out. This insures that people must at least look at them firsthand, before doing whatever they please with them. 

Another challenge was gaining followers on Twitter. We felt twitter would be the best social network to set up on because of it’s popular promotion reputation. YOu can get a word out quickly, and follow other pages that support the same cause as you. What started off as a fun idea, turned sour quickly. We couldn’t manage to get followers outside of our group mates! We knew our page wouldn’t progress within our own circle, so we looked to other groups who created twitters for their problem. Once we “followed” them, promotions and constant tweeting got me to a staggering 12 followers. Yes, this is a challenge that we are still trying to solve. 

On the other hand, a success we managed to pull off was a smooth video. Our video consisted of an angel and a devil, whom represented good judgement and bad judgement. Taylor approached us with a thorough script which clearly depicted each person’s role, and of course what they were saying. We were even able to use the nurse’s office to help Jalisa complete her role as a nurse preparing an AIDS test. I believe this video will grab the viewer’s attention of the presence of HIV/AIDS, and also the importance of getting tested/treated for it as quickly as possible. 

All in all, this project was fairly simple, as long as you’re organized. We broke down roles from the beginning, which gave all of us the chance to think about how we could construct our individual parts. With more time came more ways to perfect our product, and also add more components to help broadcast what we needed to say to the public. Our objective was to inform others of the dire epidemic of HIV/AIDS, which we think we accomplished. 

My reflection

   This project relates to the real world in many ways. There are many calculations that we just take for granted when they were done by real people. There are people who work for google maps who have to make calculations like the ones we did every day. Another way that those techniques are used is to build buildings. Architects usually have a drawing of their building then scale it to have the measurements right. They kind of do the opposite of what we did. It’s a privilege that we know how to use techniques such as the stick method and mirror method now since we never know what we might end up doing in the future.​

The most exciting portion of this project was figuring out the height of my building. It’s because I think architecture is cool and since I could not measure it, I had to figure it out using the methods we learned. I think it was kind of exciting doing something like this, it will come in handy eventually. I think that the least exciting part of the project was the fact that I got many different results for my building height. It’s because I got two almost completely different results from my two calculations and I was confused. That confusion kind of took the excitement away.

I learned many things after completing this project. I learned about different ways that we can determine a building height. I learned about the mirror method and the stick method. I also learned about how we can verify that we got right answers from our calculations. I learned about the picture method and google earth. I learned that you can  look at a building on google earth and the mouth cursor will tell you the elevation and eye altitude. I also learned that the height of the building is the elevation minus the eye altitude. I learned to respect all the buildings I see and all the jobs related to math because of the hard work they do. I learned to not take anything for granted in the world like for example google maps.

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Screen Shot 2013-03-19 at 11.43.19 PM
2013-03-21 09.16.45
2013-03-21 09.16.45

Quarter 3 Benchmark Reflection

This project relates to the real world because buildings have to be measured, and there is more to getting the height of a building than it seems. In designing buildings, cities, and blocks it is important to be able to measure buildings and they aren't just something you can tape measure. Because they are so big, measuring them is much more involved. The project relates to the real world in that it is eye opening because getting the vital height of a building is harder than it looks. 

I can't say I found any portion of this project exciting. I didn't think it was an exciting project, but that doesn't mean it wasn't interesting. In general measuring buildings isn't very exciting and to me this project wasn't a rule breaker. The least exciting part of the project was the Google Map Log. I found this very uninteresting and underwhelming as it seemed pointless and boring and wouldn't let you input height measurements.

From completing this project I learned that measuring buildings is much harder than it looks without the use of trigonometry. I learned that it is also difficult to take a picture of large buildings from the front. I also learned that drawing 54 windows to scale is very time consuming and takes much more time than you would think. But most importantly I learned the significance of being able to measure buildings, especially with congruency and similarity applications. 

Picture Comparison
Picture Comparison

BM Reflection

- How does this project relate to the real world?

This project relates to the real world via engineering. When you design a building you need to figure out the proper proportion for the height. Using the mirror, stick and shadow methods can help you find the proportion. Thus this project taught us that when dealing with buildings you need to know math like proportions and other mathy stuff like measuring and multiplication. And it also relates to the real world by telling us NOT to use the mirror method in engineering or construction or any other chosen field. And so that's how the project relates to the real world using math.

-       What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

The most exiting portion was Jian measuring the building and braking the tape measure, causing us to fix it and seeing him try to wind it up while walking down the street. The expression on his face when he realized he could have jammed it back in was priceless. Not kidding. The least exiting portion of this project was doing the calculations. I swear I thought I was making a mistake every step of the solving, I ended up checking Wolfram Alpha and seeing that I was right all along. Then I struggled getting the verifications to make sense. But I did it all and it was as right as I could possibly get it.

-       What did you learn from completing this project?

What I learned from completing this project was that the mirror method is horrible and the best way to measure a building would be to go to the top and drop a tape measure. Not kidding. At all. Technology is awesome. I think that the Mirror method is extremely unreliable. The measurements were way off the verification. I think that if we were to use some other method, like stick or something else it would be way more reliable. I also learned about how I learned about how you shouldn't pull a tape measure all the way out, see above to learn more.

I don't have access to the blueprint.


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Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 2.43.33 PM

Reflection

-    How does this project relate to the real world?

Geometry has a lot of say in the appearance of our city. This project has a lot to do with the architecture and design of both buildings and city blocks. It taught me how the height of buildings can be found only through triangles. Having the capability to measure distances with ease is a very useful skill. The architecture aspect is more about proportions and making sure that everything is to scale and precise. It is actually much harder than it sounds. I had to measure and re-measure my building to double check my results. I think that from now on I will always make sure to verify my results in every way possible.

-       What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

There were many elements of this project that I were nice to work on. I enjoyed making the draft of my building. I tended to prefer the manual measuring because is was easier to base the estimates off of an already known object. For me it was challenging finding known measurements because my building is currently under construction and many crucial aspects were inaccessible to me. It was a bit difficult finding ways to deal with compromising and finding new strategies but in the end I was able to estimate the height in many different and I discovered tools that I didn’t originally know were available to me. I also enjoyed drawing the building which allowed me to put my knowledge of the Franklin Institutes structure on paper

-     What did you learn from completing this project?

I learned a lot about the techniques of measuring a building that has cut outs and different heights.  I found the measuring by using triangles very useful, particularly the mirror method. This helped me understand how geometry and shapes are involved in designing of cities or structures and in our daily life. I learned a lot about compromising and finding new ways to reach a certain goal. Sometimes I reached complications, but as I went along I found them much easier to deal with. I learned ho important precision is in my life as well. I guess I never really paid attention to the thought put into each individual building.

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Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 6.24.24 PM

Petty Refection

How does this project relate to the real world?

This project does relate to the real world. I think at any where at anytime you can be put in a place where you need to find the height of something. You might not get the real height but you will be close. I find this project will come in handy when you have to move houses, or home remodel. You measure a lot of things when this is happening, and something a way to tall for you to get something a masure with.   

What was the most exciting portion of this project and why? What was the least exciting portion to this project and why?

I think that the most exciting part of this project was getting to go outside. I really need in a school day to go outside, and get some air. This was really nice for the class, another was that you gave us help outside of school. One thing was it I think we needed a little more time, just for the drawing. Also it was a little cold.  

 
What did you learn from completing this project?

I learned how to use the method we learned better, this was the biggest thing for me. Also I learned how to cross multiply much better. I am really bad at fractions and I have gotten better.   

Brycen's Q3 Benchmark Reflection

This project relates to the real world in architects as they design and create the buildings. We have used similar methods of finding measurements in buildings that architects uses. We have created a scale version of our buildings to get a better accuracy in determining the measurements of the buildings we were assigned to just like architects do when they need to make a blueprint of a building. 

The most exciting part of this project for me, was drawing the scale model of our block, because I have already had the measurements for the building, so It was much easier for me to create my scale building. The least exciting part of the project, was when we were measuring our buildings, because it was really cold outside and I didn't get enough time to get my measurements so I had to take time after school to finish it.

I learned how to measure buildings using the several methods such as the stick method. It was really interesting to learn how to accurately measure buildings without the need of having a bunch of tools. I have also learned that you have to be very precise when you are using any of the methods, as I got a measurement of 10 feet using the mirror method when the building was actually around 30 feet.
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Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 1.34.29 PM