At the start of the year I decided to try and make a robot. However, while I was thinking about making a robot, most of the work that I did this year actually circled around a club I was making after school.

Since the capstone should be something that reflects 80 hours of work, I decided to present on my club. I also think that a liberal-arts driven capstone demonstrates my time here better than a STEM focused one. The Dungeons and Dragons club was a group of people that were largely gathered first quarter and then socialized in their groups. Three separate groups were made, and they changed evolved as the year progressed. I was interested in fostering a community and making an enjoyable environment that people could relax in. D&D gives a framework for interaction and gives people a bond that other relationships can more organically form around. I’m proud of the community I’ve fostered, and hope that it will continue next year.

Sorting

This document outlines the process by which the groups were made this year. This also outlines a way that interest can be organized next year.

Y-Band

This document shows some of the preliminary community building.

Plot

This shows some of the work that I put into making an enjoyable experience for the group I was in charge of (I was in charge of one of the three groups, contributed to another, and the the third flourished without me).

Rules (more rules)

These are the rules that my group followed, but more than three other systems were integrated as the year progressed.

(info available upon request)

Future consideration

These are resources which might help groups work more easily in the future.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 2d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1972. Print.  

D&D is a largely story driven game, and Joseph Campbell wrote guides to stories well. While D&D is a system that is largely driven by the players, the GM is the person who decides who they will run across and what they will encounter. Also, there are seminal events that happen in stories that can be adapted to the context of Dungeons and Dragons. It is interesting how characters sometimes stand out in games, by how the players value them and their importance to the story arc. Sometimes important characters are completely abandoned. The importance of using characters that instinctively stand out is just as much for the players to feel like they’re a part of the story as it is for the GM to help the characters build a story they’d enjoy.

Cook, Monte, and Sean K. Reynolds. Numenera. S. L.: Monte Cook Games, LLC, 2013. Print.  

The Numenera system has a couple of interesting benefits that differentiate it from many others. It is meant to be played like a pulp-science fiction novel (akin to Star Wars in many ways). While many of the themes are science based or science driven, the world itself has no science. There are no explanations for their miraculous devices, they simply function. Mechanically, this system gives a system driven on expenditure (not unlike the classic spell system of Dungeons and Dragons). Stylistically, this is meant to show how an adventure for a hero gets progressively harder through the story, regardless of the difficulties they face. Another interesting mechanic is that experience points (the way characters progress) are awarded when players discover things. This creates an environment where the players have to ask questions and explore the settings rather than solely focus on attacking.

Dungeons & Dragons,. '4'. Elemental Evil. N.p., 2015. Web. 22 May 2015.

This podcast shows a live stream of a D&D game that takes place during comic-con. It’s an intentionally entertaining game, something that is fun to watch and to (it looks like) be playing as well. The game is set up in a very theatrical way, with an open game board so that it’s easy to watch. The gameplay itself is comical, with large reactions and abstract encounters. Everything can be interacted with, and the GM does a good job of making sure that everything benefits you from having been interacted with. The players themselves are mostly writers and artists, so they have awesome backstories and the plot is well formulated.

"Horror Roleplaying Part 1. Setting the Mood." Dice of Doom. 21 July 2010. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.

This source explains how to foster a different setting for D&D. More often than not, players don’t worry about their characters. They’re divorced from the game play and the experience is more to be enjoyed than to be thrilling. The post is written about what to do to set the mood. They recommend a room that is inhospitable; poorly lit or heated. They also recommend setting a more somber mood during game sessions. While this premise is fun it’s not likely to work at D&D at school. Most of the time, games are treated as games; not as anything serious. This is a fun circumstantial game play method.

Iron Kingdoms Core Rulebook. Privateer, 2013. Print.  

Iron Kingdoms is a tabletop RPG system that works off of 2d6 (two six sided dice). The idea behind the system is that rolling two dice gives a better probability (7 is the most likely number) rather than a d20 which has equal probability from 1-20. Iron Kingdoms is derived from wargames, so rather than using the grid setup which D&D uses the players measure directly from their miniatures in order to decide how far characters move. Another interesting part of this system is that spell casters aren’t limited in the spells they can cast a day but by the points of spells they can cast each round. This system works because spells do about as much damage as other types of attacks.

Mearls, Mike. D&D 5th Edition Players Handbook. N.p.: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

Fifth edition simplified many of the mechanics in D&D to try and make them more instinctive and less about hours of study. They got rid of many of the small modifiers (+2 attack from flanking, +2 to attack and -2 to armor on charge, separate armor class when surprised), and put everything into a new mechanic called advantage. Instead of adding small circumstantial bonuses to the attack rolls, the player rolls to dice and takes the higher one. Another simplification is the elimination of feats. In 3.5, a character gains a feat every two levels, which adds an amazing amount of diversity and complexity to the game. However, feats are troublesome to navigate and require specific paths to get to more beneficial abilities. 5th edition replaces that with greater diversity inside of each class.

"Pathfinder_OGC." Pathfinder_OGC. Web. 21 Feb. 2015. .

The Pathfinder system is built off of the open format game license. This allows for the Pathfinder core rules to closely mirror those of D&D while at the same time distancing themselves subtly. Some of these subtle differences are names of gods and some terms that each of the companies have copyrighted. PFSRD made more powerful characters than 3rd edition by letting species play a bigger role in development, and also by letting all of the classes have more abilities at first level. Also they have systems in place that allow for specialization into very specific areas. However, as the system expanded over the years, not all abilities were play tested and balanced in comparison to each other. This created a situation where extremely powerful characters could be built by stringing disparate material together.

Peterson, Jon. "History: Forty Years of Adventure." Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards of the Coast, 19 May 2014. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.  

Rather than explaining gameplay, this source focuses on the history of D&D. It outlines the war games that D&D came from, and how it was publicized through magazines prior to its release. However, this is a timeline for D&D, not tabletop role playing games overall. While it contains valuable information about how the setting developed and D&D propagated itself, it doesn’t show how other companies followed D&D to make similar games. Regardless, this source functions to show how long the game has been around and how many people and hours of work went into continually building the company, but it also shows through the number of items produced that there was a continuing market for theses games, and that each edition (while different) was purchasable in and of itself.

Quick, Jeff. "Front Page." Sakuru. Pbworks, 1 June 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.  

This is a website explaining a specific world of D&D. Most of the rules are the same as other D&D systems, but the spells are slightly weaker and there are more miscellaneous benefits attributed to classes. Sakuru is heavily inspired by the work of Miyazaki, so the world is heavily based off of legends and slowly growing magical powers. Items that have been in use for generation begin to gain powers from the fact that they were used in those ways. Similarly, nature spirits come purely from the age and power that the elements have accumulated. By prioritizing found items, it encourages the players to explore rather than develop themselves. The website provides information about the world and system rather than a scenario itself in the hope that players will largely guide the way they interact with people. However, such an open scenario often causes a lack of drive that makes the game lack the long story arc Joseph Campbell would say we all instinctively look for.

Rhem, Scott. "The Angry GM." The Angry GM. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.  

The Angry GM is a blog that focuses on teaching GMs how to play their role more effectively. The role of GM is to lead the story; the person playing it is responsible for the setting and for the actions of all non-player characters. Since the job is so central, it’s the one that requires the most preparation and understanding. Angry GM talks about some of the ways stories can be made more engaging and for how GMs can prepare for what the group’s encounters will be. He does this comedically and through many curse words. However, this source also represents how a GM helping text can be written. They’re important, but it’s often hard to keep the attention of teenagers. Texts like this may help.

When coming up with an idea for a capstone, I wanted to do something that would interest me and also give back to the SLA community somehow. That is how my partner, Kenny Nguyen, and I came up with the idea to build a game about SLA. We both enjoy playing video games, and also wanted an engaging way to teach future generations of SLA students about the Core values. Our video game does just that, but it in a slightly more engaging way than how they were originally introduced to us.

The game starts with the freshmen Yael, whose curiosity leads them to venture onto the forbidden fourth floor. (It's a very known thing that the 4th floor is off limits so we wanted to use this to start the game's lore.) Next, Yael wakes up on an islands beach, and seeks help to get back to Mr.Reddy's class. After receiving help from the village leaders "Mr.Worst" and "Doctor Echo" they learn that they must collect the 5 core values, which are the heart of the island. Once they collect the values (and learn what each value is) they are teleported to fight and defeat the islands guardian, the “Benchmark”.

My partner and I collaborated throughout the capstone, and used our talents to make it better. I focused on creating the environments, animating the characters, and coded the mission and boss battles. Kenny focused on finding resources that we could use, recording the voices, and he coded the combat and dialogue in the game.

Bibliography:

"Getting Started with Unity | Unity Cookie." Unity Cookie Getting Started with Unity Comments. Unity Cookie. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

This is a website featuring useful tutorials, videos on how to use Unity, and a user forum that allows feedback on how to use Unity. This will be a useful source because, if need be, we can simply look at the tutorials they have. It also has a forum which we can also look at if we face a problem that others may have experience as well. This will be a valuable tool for references; if we don’t know a string of code to add, then we can simply look on this site, in the tutorials section. It also features free (and some for a  price) premade models and games we can use for tests.

"Tutorials." - Blender.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is one of the programs we’ll be using to create the characters; the site features downloads you can use in your blender projects, a FAQ area, and contact information in case we want to contact the team about copyright models. We plan to use pre-made models if designing our own is too difficult, so being able to review all of the legal stuff with using pre-made models is important. Also, this is the official website for Blender, so it has a wide variety of tutorials made from professionals. This site will be very useful also because it features a forums section, so we can look there of we have similar issues other users have had too.

"Blender Stack Exchange." Blender Stack Exchange. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This website’s best feature is the huge forum it has that allows blender users to post their experiences with blender. This is a good source for a project because of this; if we have a problem in blender we can’t figure out, we can simply look on the forum to see if someone has had a similar problem. We can also use some of the posts that outline how to make new, interesting things for our game. Since the site is free to use, it’s easy to navigate around the website and use the many tools that are available. It’s organized by the most popular posts, by if we have a problem, we can simply search for it on the websites database.

"Characters 3D Models - Free 3D Characters Download." Characters 3D Models - Free 3D Characters Download. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is the main site we’ll be using for NPCS and character objects. It features thousands of prefabs and premade character models that we’ll need for our game. Spending extra time to model every single NPC in the game will take up more time then we have, so having a site where free prefabs are available is a great for our project and the process. This site will save us a lot of time. It allows it’s users to upload their work for other users to download their work. having a plethora of free NPCS models will make the extra month working on NPCs turn into extra work time. The website is easy to navigate, and free to use.

"2. Interface and Navigation - Blender Cookie." Blender Cookie 2 Interface and Navigation Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This is essentially the same as  cg cookie “Unity Cookie”, but for the program Blender. This features lots of information about using blender and character creation, which is part of a crucial first step for creating the game. The first things we need to do involve advanced CGI, and a site that has step by step instructions on charactering modeling is a valuable source we need. It also features mostly free downloads that we can add to the game. The website is partnered to “Unity Cookie” so the videos have a lot of tutorials where the user uses both Blender and Unity. That’s great for us because we’re using the same programs. Exporting files from Blender (with animations meshes etc.) seemed difficult at first, but this site has shown us a simple way to do it.

"33 Brilliant Blender Tutorials." 33 Brilliant Blender Tutorials. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2015.

This sites may purpose for our project is that it includes a lot of great tutorials. Watching tutorials for references while building our game is going to be very important, because we’re learning new skills while we’re building. This site has lots of sources besides itself that we can use, and has professional tutorials done by professionals in this business. The entire website features tutorials on other programs, and also includes a forum section for questions and comments. The website is neat, organized, and user-friendly. Most of the things on it is free, so it’ll be a great reference source for the Capstone.

"C Games and Graphics Code Examples." C Games and Graphics Code Examples. Happy Codings. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.

This website will be an important reference website for our game. Instead of spending hours on hours trying to write our own, brand new code, we can use already written code from this website. It features a plethora of different languages and lines of code that are free to use. This will be great for our project because this will allow us to make a more organized, better game. Instead of spending hours on a simple part of the project, we can add even better things to the game that we otherwise couldn’t. The website is organized and easy to navigate through.

"Learn to Code." Codecademy. Code Academy. Web. 29 Jan. 2015.      

This is the website me and my partner used during the summer. This is one if the first thing we used to help us learn programming, and it’s a fantastic site for that. The curriculum is easy and teaches well, it’s free to use, and has great courses. It has a wide variety of languages to learn, and the website itself is appealing. When I first started learning coding, I was a bit intimidated because of how hard it appeared. This website really did make learning code very easy. It helped me learn a few languages fast, and will aid us with the Capstone. If we have a certain language we want to use for code, but don’t know it, we can simply use this website as a reference or use it’s free courses to learn the new language.

"Amplitude Studios Chose Unity." Unity. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://unity3d.com/>.

This is the site that contains that program Unity. Unity is the engine we will be using to build our game. The website will be our main platform for learning how to use Unity. It has useful tutorials, user experiences, and support for the company that produced Unity. It allows easy access to many of it’s files, and, includes a forum where users can post comments, concerns, or experiences. Unity itself will be a great option to use because it’s easy to use, free, and already includes many of the assets and prefabs we'll need to make the game.

• Rauschmayer, Axel. Speaking JavaScript. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media, 2014. Print.

This is an online book me and my partner found that will be a valuable source. We’ve decided that the main language we’ll be using is Java Script, and we both aren’t experts in that language. This will help us brush up on this language, which is another important part of the next step of making the capstone process go smoother and faster. Jumping into a project without know the basic code needed to make it will only make the process harder, so it’d be wise to learn the language first then use it. We plan to do that, and this book will be a great aid that will make making the game a lot easier.

ABSTRACT:                      

My name is Jasmine Nieves. To explain what had to be done for my project, was that at first I wanted to do a newsletter. Then another opportunity came so I can help participate in somebody else’s Capstone. That somebody is Kenayah Cerdan. I just went back and forth with the idea. Also, another great opportunity came so I can volunteer for a company known as, “Dress for Success”. That business, all it is, is that it is sort of like a donations. They give those donations, but of business and professional clothing who can’t afford it. Throughout being in this process, nothing really happened. I called the people, I got nervous and we never moved forward. Also out of nowhere, I thought to volunteer at the Main Library in Philadelphia. But then my mentor said, “Would it be realistic enough?” That question stuck with me ever since even though I really didn’t think about it. When I was trying to set up more of the newsletter than I already had, the program didn’t allow me to both do the accessing and the editing. While in this process, I put words together in my own words describing the styles people SLA likes and who inspired them.

So then I went along with the idea of creating a website. The one who gave me this idea was my mentor and one of my old teachers, Elizabeth Menasion. She told me in the beginning how she wasn’t good about knowing about fashion but she did help me. She was the one who gave me most of the ideas. This is why I chose her as a mentor. To speak now about my website, I just started off with a Google survey. I created 10 questions but in the very beginning, I had more until I needed to edit and condense it. I created one survey and then I created another survey in which some people did answer and did leave their email address so I will know who did what question. The total amount of people that did the survey was 10. After I saw the results, I then put what I put in my own words, onto my website. My capstone ended up to take up the whole year. Mostly all the senior who had a Capstone did.

Now speaking about the website. According to the questions that were created and the way people answered, I ended up having the titles that I had when putting together everybody’s words on to a document, making them as my links with some pictures, videos, and of course the description of what I put in my own words. What I am doing right now is just writing up my abstract. Soon I will upload everything to SLAte and then everybody will get to see my Capstone.

EVIDENCE/ ARTIFACT:

https://sites.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/slastudentfashionsof2015/

FINAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

• https://sites.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/slastudentfashionsof2015/home

• http://www.statista.com/topics/965/apparel-market-in-the-us/

• http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1413

• http://www.citylab.com/work/2012/09/worlds-leading-cities-fashion/3182/

• http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-fashion/25-shocking-fashion-industry-statistics.html

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZF9KV6qjG3tooJLNYDaJgyn7l-nIYSO8xtE5MeQm9bg/edit#gid=156800620

During my four years of high school I have observed that not many teens are familiar with the meaning of sexual health, so I choose this topic as my Capstone. Having a Mother that has worked with sex education almost all of her working career I received  information regarding sexual health earlier than some of my peers. I wanted to look more into school based programs that inform young minds about safe sex. OIC of America offers a TPP ( Teen Pregnancy Prevention) program which is funded by the Office of Adolescent Health and the DHHS.TPP goes into different school across the Philadelphia area and teaches young people on pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) prevention. September 21-23, 2014 I attended a National Performance Measurement Conference. While attending the conference I was able to sit in on a couple of sessions, in these sessions they focused on key target populations and locating hard to find community level data. While at the conference one of the activities I participated in with the Philadelphia group were to evaluate pregnancy rates and performance measures to develop an action plan for re-application. On April 17,2015 I attended the TPP Leadership Academy. I participated in a  Pros and Cons of Sexting and Texting activity as while as team building activities. While working on my Capstone I was able to gain understanding of the TPP program while also learning what is focused on to build a program such as TPP.

Bibliography

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-policies-on-sex-education-in-schools.aspx

"State Policies on Sex Education in Schools." State Policies on Sex Education in Schools. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2015.

In this article it speaks about the breakdown of what states allow sex education in schools. In this article they also talk about why these states allow schools to implement these programs . They go state by state and talk about the programs that they have and what they are allowed to educate the teenagers and children with. Something that I found really interesting was that pennsylvania was not on this list.  

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/educators/implementing-sex-education

"Implementing Sex Education." Implementing Sex Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.

This source talks about how to implement sex education in a school setting. How it should be taught so that the audience understands the message and what they are trying to get through and to also help them fully learn about sex education. They talk about how each topic should be talked about and how it needs to be approached depending on the age of students. They also talk about how education does not just stop at school it is also a conversation that should be done in the household.

http://www.popednews.org/

"The Popular Education News Continues With A New Editor!!" N.p., 09 Apr. 09. Web.

This source talks about what it takes to be a good educator, how you should approach children when talking about any topic. What students are receptive to, how they learn the best and how they retain what they learn. In the article they talk about how certain things need to be taught certain ways depending on the community that you are in.

OIC of America

http://www.oicofamerica.org/

This is the program that I am working with they are located on 1415 N. Broad st. There mission is the continue to provide a quality education, training and employment and housing services. They reach out to the community to provide them with the tools that they need in order to succeed. Their motto is “Helping People Help Themselves.” This organization focuses on the African American community, the sexual health programs that they provide focus on the poorer communities.

http://www.avert.org/sex-education-works.htm

Sex Education That Works." Sex Education That Works. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.

This article talks about what works best for sex education. What teaching methods work best for students. It also talks about how sex education is a very touchy subject so it needs to be approached in an appropriate manner. It talks about what attitudes and beliefs should young people should be exposed to. It talks about how students need to be able to form their own opinions about sex education and what it means to them.

http://www.studentcouncil.ie/Running

This source talks about the most effective way to run a student council and how the flow of the meeting should run. It talks about how to become organized and how to keep people engaged. It also gives you other various links to other websites where they talk about what is best to do for running a student council. It also gives you examples of student run councils that have worked over the year and gives you guidelines as to how you should run yours.  

https://www.nasc.us/

"National Association of Student Councils." (NASC). N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Jan. 2015.

This website is the main website for the National Association of Student Councils. It speaks about the many student run councils around America. It also talks about the history of this association and why it was put in place. They want to help students become advocates for themselves and making sure that they have a voice, they want to help establish strong student councils that will make a change in their communities.