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The NXT Controller is an application made in Xcode, a program made for developing IOS applications. It uses a button-based method that sends X and Y coordinates based on which button is pressed. When the Forward button is pressed, it sends coordinates such as (0,1) to a computer running Matlab. In Matlab, based on the coordinate, Matlab would send a specific function for that coordinate to the NXT robot and the robot will follow those functions. Throughout the whole process, one major concept that kept popping up was research, as these new programs made it so that I had to be familiar with them in order to understand the problems that kept popping up. Which almost at every corner there were many things that I didn’t understand, but later overcame as I further my knowledge of the programs. In the end learning new methods, and even thought the product was not completed to the point I wanted to, it was still a useful and beneficial learning experience that i am proud to present.   

Since I am planning on pursuing a career in architecture I decided to go down the path of building design for my Capstone. A teacher suggested designing the “New SLA” for my project. I found my mentor, who lives a few houses over, through my father. Together, my mentor and I worked on different assignments that when put together makes an official building proposal that could be given to a client. The entire project consists of site plans, zoning codes, building precedents, space diagrams, material research, floor plans and finally a digital 3 Dimensional concept of the completed school.

For this project I produced music, sung music and I shot a concert. The music content is in the final stages of producing and mastering but the concert is finished. In total I learned how to work with music in a variety of ways, I feel proud that I have gained a number of new skills.

 

            My capstone originally started out as a maneuver to receive grant money from organizations in order to help out Science Leadership Academy with sports equipment. As the year went on I quickly realized that equipment was not the real problem. The school district of Philadelphia has actually funded baseball teams this year so they could get three regulation bats and bases (along with a pitching mound). Our real problem was finding a home field. The purpose of my yearlong project was to find a field for the baseball team that was somewhat close, while making equipment more affordable for students on the team.

Here's a poster promoting savings on sports equipment.

An interactive made in keynote with the purpose of provided a user-friendly option to self-servicing minor laptop problem. s

With the use of input from upperclassmen of our school, this keynote was made addressing the problems they once had and the fixes they went through. This interactive is intended to ease these processes by taking the failures  experienced by us and alleviating them for future students. This project will have room for expansion as the years go on as technology changes and it would be optimal if a new student could carry this over in a future year.

Click Here to download the file:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxpIBHWh-l4SNHoxeC11TjlHLUE

My capstone is an enhanced podcast tour of the Upenn museum of archeology and anthropology. My mentor gave the idea of a podcast to me after hearing my interest in archeology. By doing some community service At the museum I was able to get the information I needed to start the process. With the help of one of the workers there, Amy Ellsworth, I was able to get access to the exhibit and images for the enhanced portion of the podcast, an idea given to me by Amy herself. A script was written first with the information given then turned into the podcast.

My capstone is on Autism Disorder. I choose to do this because I know people with this disorder and I want others to be aware of it. I feel as though that people are ignorant to this disorder and they make fun of what they are unsure about. I think by doing this project, questions that people always had but never ask will be answer. Autism Disorder is something that everyone should be aware of.

When we come into SLA as freshman we are given our laptops and some much appreciated freedom. Looking back now, I wish I could have been given something that would have given me ways to help my laptop last longer, and remain as fast as it was that first day of school. Because of how I felt I wanted to make my capstone something tangible that students can look back at and use to their advantage. To do this, I created a brochure, which was a good way to present my information in an easily accessible and comprehensible way. 

The most challenging part of this photo essay assignment was actually finding photos that clearly expressed the affects of globalization in Philadelphia for 10 different topics. I could find things here and there are language and trade, but I had to get a little bit creative to come up with 10 different things to show. Also, for some reason it was challenging for me to find statistical data on different facts on Philadelphia that I thought I would be able to get easily like the demographics of tourism or the largest oil companies in the city. I was able to make due, though. 

In order to go out and collect my images, I made a notepad on my iPhone with just some general ideas and then set out on foot. One afternoon, I essentially walked home. Using my ideas to guide what neighborhoods and streets to walk through, I just took pictures as I saw fit. If I saw something that I could possibly use, I took a picture of it. After I got home, I then walked more through just my neighborhood of Northern Liberties for pictures. I must have gathered at least 90 photos, which I left sifted through and divided into categories. I then used those pictures and showed them to classmates and my teacher to double check their globalization-ness. The top pictures won the chance to be in the actual project. There were two pictures that made the cut that I would call my favorites: the picture of St. Augustine's and the picture of a mural in my neighborhood. Both of these I felt fell more on the original side compared to my other pictures of foreign cars, banks, and restaurants. I attended St. Augustine's church since I was small and even was an alter server for 4 years, yet I never knew the affect the church had on the Filipino community or the affect that community had on the church. I have also been involved in the Mural Arts program since I was young because of my father's job as an artist. I have personally met many of the international artists in the program and watched several murals comes to life. I now see these murals every day in both Northern Liberties and other parts of the city. 

Luckily, I was able to come up with enough pictures for my project, but it was a challenge to find pictures that actually showed globalization in Philadelphia. There are countless things I could have taken a picture of and then explained how they related to globalization, but the trick of this project was clearly showing globalization in the pictures themselves. That was indeed hard for topics other than like trade and economy. Philadelphia, just like many big cities in America, have been affected largely by international imports and exports, but finding obvious sources of globalization other than that is hard. New York City may have been less than a challenge since it is has more obvious communities occupied by only certain groups of people than Philadelphia, but I can see a person doing this project in other large cities having similar problems as me. 

I definitely learned more about the functions of Philadelphia and what make this city was it is. I never knew all that stuff about the church I always considered to be "my church." I also just never paid attention to the smaller things like the Chinese stores down the street or the Spanish translations on advertisements and such. Globalization is everywhere and affects everyone. This is what this project has taught me.

Name: ​Daniel Quach
Mentor: Andrew Toy

At The Enterprise Center (TEC) in Philadelphia, I learned about the importance of assisting small businesses, the resources TEC provides for those businesses, and how their success positively impacts the community around them. The Enterprise Center, located on 46^th and Market, is a community development corporation, minority business development agency, and provider of access to capital and programs for prospective young entrepreneurs. Specifically at the department I interned at, the Retail Resource Network (RRN), we develop long-term sustainability for new, existing businesses to preserve job security, which results in externalized benefits.

One of the projects I helped organize and worked on was Philadelphia's carrotmob, which was held at West Phillie Produce in West Philadelphia. Below was the flyer for the event.

​This was a year long project called a capstone. In this project I researched and studied various workout that could be proved to increase muscle mass for teenage males in a given amount of time .

Mentor Name: Melanie Manuel

Summary of project: For my project, I ran a school supply drive at school; the proceeds went to a church community in Honduras. 

Abstract: My project consisted of running a school supply drive at SLA. One of my church members had already begun this fundraiser at my church, and I continued it at school to help the cause. This project is extremely important to me because the church that the supplies are going to be shipped to has been affiliated with my church for many years. My process consisted of mapping out my due dates and planning on time, getting some cardboard boxes from my father, placing them in the school hallways, advertising my project via flyers, SLA advisory news, and SLA talk, counting/keeping record of inventory, and finally handing the supplies to my in church mentor/contact. Through the research I conducted regarding Honduras’ education system and economy, I learned how fortunate I am to be a student in the U.S. I also learned how to run a successful fundraiser.

With my desire to learn about the dynamics of fluids, I decided to construct a project that would focus on the mechanics of flight. To execute this idea, I built a wind tunnel that simulates the movement of air over objects. This tunnel is used as a basic method to build automobiles both land and sea as well as aircraft. The project propels smoke through a tube that moves through the tunnel over a series of objects to display the various motions of air depending on its environment.

For my capstone, I volunteered to host a blood drive. As a blood drive coordinator, my job was to work with the American Red Cross to organize the blood drive. I had to make a recruitment plan and schedule all of the donors for the drive. Although this may seem like an easy task to do, it is not very easy to get teenagers to give blood. Some don’t know that importance of donating blood so besides just organizing; I also had to do a lot of educating.

     For my senior capstone project I wanted to better myself for the future. I wanted to become a healthier person and learn about different nutrition diets. I had to come up with an exercise method and try to go on a diet. There was a website that I used which helped me keep track of what I ate. I also set up different dates and time that I went to work out. I tried to work out at least 3 times a week and I would switch up my routine in my work out every two-weeks. I switched up my routine because if I was to keep the same workout my body would get used to the work out and I wouldn’t be doing anything to it. I also had to cut back on the fast food, it wasn’t easy but I did very well cutting back on Chinese food, McDonalds, Burger King, and even pizza.

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The question I had inquired for my Capstone was “Are you able to experience culture, simply throughout food?’ In future plans, I want to become a baker therefore making me want to take this aspect of cooking and add it to my Capstone. I’ve researched the seven continents looking for recipes that would best fit and it turned out that I had successfully found cookies/biscuits for each continent that also held history to each continent as well. With each continent some how, and someway I was able to finance the supply to make each from scratch. I have learned that you actually can experience culture throughout food and I’ve been able to do this just by making cookies/biscuits originated from each of the seven continents. 

​Taking the ANZAC Biscuit dough out of the mixer and placing them on the baking sheet.

 

 

 

​Me placing the almonds on the Chinese Almond Cookies. 

​ Sledging Biscuits!

​Lehmann supporting my Capstone!

​Ms. Thompson trying out the Alfajores and other cookies from around the world.

​Me explaining my Capstone to Mr. Miles.

For my capstone I took a mini class with the Jefferson Awards people for them to teach me how to start a new program like this in my school. So a former student and I of SLA took what we learned from this class and fought a way for us to go about doing this in SLA. The Jefferson Award presents an award to a student every month or so who does something outstanding in community service. My first steps were to get a group of voices to start a committee. And get the word out to SLA about this new program.

My benchmark is here! :)

I had a great time with this project. It was very educational and I really enjoyed going in deep with the different things that are evidence of globalization. The most challenging thing about this project was actually thinking of the different evidence of globalization. It took a while to really think of the different signs of globalization, but after that, it got relatively easy and I just splattered my thoughts into the keynote. The first thing I did for the benchmark was find out the different evidence, write about why they are evidence of globalization in Philadelphia and more, and then finally I went to take the photos of what I had chosen. Most of the pictures were relatively easy to take because they were right in the center city area like the Red Cross and the flags on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The image that is definitely my favorite is the one with Trade and clothing because it is pretty unique how I took the photo. I literally went and grabbed Daniel Mambu's shirt and took a picture of the tag while he was still wearing it, which gave some great authenticity to it and really showed the true background to how clothing is definitely an example of globalization in not only Philadelphia but all around the world. The evidence of globalization in Philadelphia is very prevalent. Surprisingly enough, most of the evidence is very common and is a clear example of the effects globalization has had on the world. As for Philadelphia in specific, I would say it is more prevalent here compared to other places because of the trends we have and the fashion trends especially. Globalization really has had a surprisingly strong effect. As for the learning aspect of the benchmark, I learned so much. I would never have really realized the true effect of globalization on the world without this benchmark because in today's world that isn't really thought of that often. I also learned that globalization isn't always a good thing, because there are many negative effects globalization has had as well. Overall on the benchmark, I enjoyed it very much and it was a fantastic learning experience.

​For my senior capstone I took a journey into the life of a performer. Many people do not understand that performers are people too, on and off of the stage. Many people who consider themselves performers are usually passionate and dedicated to what they do. 

First I had to choose a topic that I felt best reflected me as an individual student at SLA and something that interested me. Next I had to figure out how I could portray all of it in not only a presentation, but in a way that shows it's importance to me. I had to also get a mentor and doing plenty of research.  One obstacle I ran into was that the show I helped make the choreography for kept changing. The date kept changing because the acts that were in the show weren't prepared. Eventually Ashley and I came up with a schedule that worked for everyone.  Another obstacle that I ran into was that I kept changing how I wanted to portray my project. At first I was going to show a simple slide show but I knew just having a slide show wouldn't be as appealing to the audience. I decided to create videos and gather extra footage that would help the audience members feel more intact with my presentation and more entertained.

 Website: www.youtube.com/TheOfficialSekai