Capstone - Manuel - Wed
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for tag 2016
Tobi Hahn Capstone
Sandra Avery Monroe Capstone
Abstract:
Over the past 4 years, I feel like I haven’t really taken the time to get know each and every person at the school, and I still don’t know every person. This year, I wanted to make an effort to get to know new people and talk to them. I also wanted to show people who all of the different students at SLA are and how they make the community the way it is now. SLA is such a diverse school in so many different ways. We have people from all different neighborhoods, cultures, races and ethnicities. There are also so many different people with different personalities that it made it very interesting to hear about them and then to put a face to those pictures.
With the help of Myrna Yousuf and Ms. Giknis, we created a blog where we interviewed students, teachers, and even a few visitors in the school. We wanted to get a chance to talk to them. The outcomes were different depending on who we talked to. We got some funny stories, some sad stories, some random stores. All of it put together created an awesome, diverse page. By myself, I created a magazine where I had a couple of people write poems and articles about being human and being a human of SLA. Myrna and I had the chance to collaborate with so many really interesting people to create a diverse experience and blog throughout our senior year of high school.Annotated Bibliography:
Benaroya, Ana. Illustration Next: Contemporary Creative Collaboration. Thames & Hudson. Print. This source provided me with a couple of questions that could be used in interviews with different students. I selected this source because as I looked through it, I really liked the questions that they asked. There were about 6 questions that were asked to every artist in the book. I thought it was very interesting to see the responses that the interviewer would get. I wanted to know how the students at SLA would respond to those questions and how similar they were to the answers I was seeing in the book. I found this source useful because at times I was stuck with what to ask people and I stumbled upon this book and I really liked what I was seeing. One limitation to this book was that some of the questions couldn’t really be applied to the real world and many of them were too broad.
Carrier, Nicole. "Four Ways To Get People's Attention Online." Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. This information was helpful for what I am going to do with both the HumansofSLA pages and also the magazine that will be created. This was helpful because often times it is very difficult to get people to pay attention to what you want them to pay attention to. This gave me good pointers for that problem. I selected this because as soon as I saw the first suggestion, I knew that is what I wanted to do with this entire project and that it would have more great information. I think the only flaw with this site was that there wasn’t more information about how to catch attention.
Isreal, Shel. "9 Tips on Conducting Great Interviews." Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 10 Jan. 2016.As soon as I saw this source, I knew that it would be very helpful and very reliable. The source provided me with a lot of great tips and pointers on how to conduct an interview. There was information on what types of questions to ask, and information on how to make sure it was a comfortable and personable situation. I thought it was helpful to have all of this information on how to be successful when interviewing somebody, especially if it is somebody that I don’t know. I selected this source because it was one of the first and best sources I found when looking for information on conducting a successful interview.
Kotter, John. "The Power Of Stories." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 12 Apr. 2006. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. This source was a very interesting read for me. This made me want to get more stories from people that were at my school and hear about what they have to say. I think that through doing this, I have learned so much about people. I have learned and changed from doing this project and that is what the article talks about. I used this source because it showed me how important this could be to me and the other people that are reading the stories. I like that this source showed what happened when people didn’t tell stories and how it wasn’t as effective. I also like how they showed what it was like when there were stories told in places instead of just people talking at you with a presentation.
Kuhel, Beth. "The Secret to a Successful Interview: Great Storytelling." US News RSS. 17 Apr. 2014. Web. 04 Nov. 2015. I used this website because it gave me information on interviews but then it also gave me a lot of information on how to put that into storytelling. This website helped me think of what would be helpful to get a good interview started. This helped me generate questions, even if I didn’t know the person. I selected this source because I felt that when I was brainstorming how to create a good interview this helped me a lot. It made it easier for me to make it a very personal experience for me and for the person that is being interviewed. This source helped me create a good flow for my interviews.
Parr, Ben. "7 Ways to Capture Someone's Attention." Harvard Business Review. 03 Mar. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. For one of the parts of my capstone, I am going to be creating an online magazine for people to look at and they will be able to submit different pieces for my magazine. This website was helpful because it helped me see what I can do to make the website more appealing to people who will be viewing it. I found this source useful because it was a good starting point on what I could do to make my website more attractive. I think that this source could have been a little more helpful if it had been more focused towards grabbing attention on a magazine.
Resorts, Wynn. "The Power of Storytelling." The Power of Storytelling. Web. 01 Feb. 2016. This is an entire website that focuses on telling stories and how powerful they can be to people. This motivated me to find better questions, and I also liked to see how helpful stories could be to people. One part that I found particularly helpful was when they talked about how people use stories to make sense of different things that they have seen because of the lens that they look through. I liked this because I see this a lot when I am doing interviews, and it was interesting to see this in a business.
Stanton, Brandon. Humans of New York: Stories. St. Martins, 2015. Print.My entire capstone was based off of this website and book. We saw this website and were very inspired to create our own version of it. It was helpful to have something so similar to base our work off of. We selected this source because it was very interesting and we liked the idea of implementing this into our own school. This source really laid out everything that we wanted to do. Even if ours wasn’t going to look the exact same way. Through this source, we could look at how the pictures were taken, and try and backtrack to see what types of questions were being asked to the people he was talking to.
Wolfe, K., J. Carroll, and T. Bush. "Tips for a Successful Interview - 9.151 - Colorado State University Extension." Colorado State University Extension. Web. 15 Jan. 2016. This website was helpful for both conducting an interview and also being interviewed. I used it to give me information on this because at first, even though I knew how to do both of those, I needed the extra information just so that I could make sure I was being professional. The only flaw with this website was that since I didn’t know all of these people, I couldn’t always be prepared for the person. I wish they had pointers on what to do if you are interviewing somebody you don’t know.
"Fun Photos: A Look at What Participants Bring to the Booth." StoryCorps. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. This website was very helpful because with this, I could see the types of pictures that I could take to really represent people. I had other websites like this, but I liked this one a lot because it was a similar type of thing to what I was doing. I think that a flaw with this was that with these they didn’t really have stories with the pictures so even though you saw an interesting picture of someone, you couldn’t really get a story about them. I did like this website as a whole though because they had a lot of different stories on them and that was the whole thing that they did on the website.
"The Octoroon - The Broadview Anthology of British Literature." The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
For one of the people that wrote an essay for me, they talked about this play, so I wanted to get some photos so that there was a visual of the play that was being talked about.
"The Octoroon: A Play, in Four Acts." Louisiana Anthology. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
This was another picture that I used that had to do with the play.
Jacobs-Jenkins, Branden. "The Wilma Theater: An Octoroon [03/16/16]." The Wilma Theater: An Octoroon [03/16/16]. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
Aaron Block Capstone
For my Capstone project I designed a piece of software called Ribbon. Ribbon is a word processor designed specifically for screenplays since screenplays have a very specific format in which they are supposed to be written. The format includes unusual capitalization and indentation to convey character dialog, actions, new scenes, and other components of film.
The process of designing and making Ribbon consisted of a lot more planning than I had anticipated. During Capstone Week, I spent a lot of time doing research on different ways of organizing the code I was writing. This was very helpful because it made the code I was writing much easier to understand and follow but it also made it more difficult to write code because I was forced to follow a rigid structure.
I learned a lot about programming and my personal capabilities. First, I learned that there are so many resources available for free and on the Internet to allow you to do things with computers that I did not think I was able to do so easily. Second, I learned that a huge amount of software development is spent on thinking about the way the code should be structured rather than writing the actual code. This makes it much easier for other developers to come along later and contribute to your work.
The source code for the application as well as the application itself can be downloaded here.
Works Cited
Buschmann, Frank, Kevlin Henney, and Douglas C. Schmidt. On Patterns and Pattern Languages. Chichester: Wiley, 2007. Wikibooks. Web. 2 Feb. 2016. Rather than focusing on the components of a piece of software, On patterns and pattern languages emphasizes the relationship between different components. These are called patterns and thinking of my software in terms of the patterns I'm using rather than the components I'm creating has become very helpful in the writing of my code. The more thought I put in to the patterns I use, the easier it becomes for others to understand what the code does and to contribute to the project. Writing using patterns introduces other problems. It’s easy for me to write code that is messy but does the job effectively. To write code following strict patterns is difficult. This source has also made me realize that I need to plan out what code I’m going to write a lot more before I get to writing it.
Demaree, David. "The Art of the Commit." The Art of the Commit · An A List Apart Article. A List Apart & David Demaree, 02 Feb. 2016. Web. 02 Feb. 2016. This article is an excerpt from David Demaree's Git For Humans. My open-source project is being hosted online by a website called Github. Each time I save my project to Github, I must save it with a short message describing what I've changed. This article describes the best way to construct those message so others (and myself) can understand how my project has changed overtime. This is particularly important for making my project open-source. If I want other people to contribute to my project, they need to be able to understand what is going on. If people want to look at an older version of my project, it will be easy for them to find which version they are looking for because every time I save the project to Github, there will be a short message associated with it.
Fedosejev, Artemij. React. js Essentials. Packt Publishing Ltd, 2015. I am using a software framework called React.js. This book is a great book to reference if I do not know how to do something in React. Using React in my application will help me make Ribbon organized and will ensure that I use effective and easy-to-understand programming patterns. React introduces a lot of new conventions and concepts to my code-writing. Therefore, a reference book about React is necessary so I can refer to it at points in the code-writing process where I’m lost. React.js Essentials comes with great examples of how to use React effectively that are easy to understand. Given the important role that React plays in my project, having a React reference book is an absolute necessity.
Fogel, Karl. Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2005. Producing Open Source Software. Karl Fogel, 2005. Web. 2 Feb. 2016. Karl Fogel writes about how to create an open-source project that gains attention and support. He does not deal with the technical, programmatic side of development as much as he deals with how to publicize your project effectively and make sure that once people are aware of your project they continue to pay attention to your project. While I’m developing my app I must be mindful of how what I’m doing may affect how other people see my project. If I’m not careful about the changes I make to my project and how I share those changes publicly on the project page (http://github.com/blockaj/ribbon) it could alienate people who may otherwise contribute to my project.
"Gulp API Docs." GitHub. Gulp, 17 Dec. 2015. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. Gulp is a task manager. While I am developing my application, it’s important that I can easily compile the code I’m writing. It is Gulp’s job to manage all of that. The Gulp API Docs are documentation about how to use Gulp. Without this, the workflow of my project would be very slow and inefficient. Using Gulp will relieve me of a lot of tedious work. Knowing how to use it is obviously essential in being able to use it. This documentation is a very good instruction on how to use Gulp so that my workload is a little less.
Hahn, Jungpil, Jae Yun Moon, and Chen Zhang. "Emergence of new project teams from open source software developer networks: Impact of prior collaboration ties." Information Systems Research 19.3 (2008): 369-391. This source talks about why people join open-source projects. One of the most compelling reasons is that the contributors have strong ties to the initiator (in this case, me). This is important to keep in mind. The people who may contribute the most to my project may already be around me. In addition, this source is useful because I can use to market my open-source project to developers. At this point in my project, I’ve worked the least on trying to attract others to contribute to my project. If I want to start focusing on this more, I should learn more about why people contribute to open-source projects.
Kubrick, Stanley, and Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange: A Screenplay. Hollywood Scripts, 1970. While having a description of the format of a screenplay is helpful, it’s also very helpful to see a full and polished screenplay. As I progress through the process of developing my application, I will compare the screenplays I write in Ribbon to this screenplay. If, by comparison, everything looks good, I know I’m okay to move on. I can also use the screenplay to see how character and story development works in a real screenplay. Similar to the McKee source, A Clockwork Orange: A Screenplay could give me good insights on some features that would be helpful for experienced and skilled screenwriters to have in a word processor.
McKee, Robert. Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. This book describes the process of writing a screenplay. It goes over how to develop a story and characters. The reason I find it helpful is that it gives me an idea of what things are important to a screenwriter. This could clue me in onto some good ideas for features I may include in my software. It also has some good information about how screenplays should be styled which are also very helpful. If I want my software to format screenplays effectively, there should be a reputable source behind the way I chose to format the screenplay.
Mockus, Audris, Roy T. Fielding, and James D. Herbsleb. "Two case studies of open source software development: Apache and Mozilla." ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) 11.3 (2002): 309-346. This case study looks at two of the biggest existing open-source projects: Mozilla and Apache. One of the things this source addresses that other sources in this bibliography do not discuss is an open-source project’s ability to compete with commercial products. This source is useful to me because it describes what makes open-source software so successful. It explains what Mozilla and Apache do right as open-source projects and what they do wrong. There’s is a lot I can learn from this source about how to make my project a successful open-source project and not just a successful piece of software.
Rising, Linda, and Norman S. Janoff. "The Scrum software development process for small teams." IEEE software 17.4 (2000): 26. This is a simple explanation of the Scrum software development process. It incorporates using patterns to develop software with a workflow. I can use this source to learn how to work more efficiently on my project while still writing good code. This source also relates to the Buschmann source which is all about using patterns in programming. Scrum software development may also be useful if others want to contribute to my open-source project. If they decide to, using a development process could help make sure that not only my code is good and organized but theirs is as well. Trust me, this is a good source.
Angelica Owens Capstone
For my capstone project, I self-published a poetry book. With this project, I got in contact with a publishing company and started the process. I started a document with the poetry I wanted to be in it. I put them in order and put the table in contents so the publisher knew what poem to put where even though I put the poems in order on the document too. I emailed it to him and he kept in touch with me. I asked Amanda to do my cover because I heard she was a good artist and I told her the vision I had for it. After I received the books, I had a book release party at school where my family, friends and my two nurses who took care of me at Temple came since I am donating the money to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Temple as well. During the process, I learned how important it was to keep tabs with people who are putting together my product. It was very stressful at times because the publisher would be out of town a lot and not email me back and it was getting closer to when I wanted to have my book release party. I also learned how many people are supportive and think I am going places with my writing as well and how to plan an event since I planned it mainly by myself.
Beck, Allison. "25 Best Party Foods Your Guests Will Love." The Daily Meal. N.p., 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 05 Feb. 2016.
This source talks about what makes food good for parties. It states that if people will be standing up, make sure it is not too greasy and also make it look appetizing as well. I selected this source because it will help me figure out what I should and shouldn’t be looking for or doing when it comes to appetizers for the event. This source is useful because now I know what to do and what’s best for the event when it comes to food so people don’t make too much of a mess. A limitation of this source is that they don’t have a everyday list of appetizers, they only have like fancy ones and some people are very picky and don’t like everything.
Ben-Ari, Elia T. "Special Book Article: Electronic Publishing: Past, Present, and Future." BioScience 49.3 (1999): 229. Web.
This source talks about electronic publishing in the past, present and future. It talks about how things posted online can be easily updated which is a good and bad thing. If it can be updated, you can choose different things but at the same time, you can keep it the same way if you choose to. I selected this source because it gave me a look into the cons of publishing something online which will be half of what I do since I am publishing an online version and hard copy of it. A limitation of the source is that it doesn’t talk about the pros of publishing online.
What Is a Chapbook. Dir. Christopher Brown. Perf. Christopher K.P Brown. 2011. Web.
This source was created by Christopher “K.P.” Brown. It describes what a chapbook is along with the what they expecting, and the basics of their process for the book. I selected this source because I didn’t know what kind of poetry book I wanted to publish. When I found the publisher, on the site, he was talking about a chapbook, which I had never heard of it. By looking at this source I found out it was a small collection of poetry which could be about a maximum of about 28 poems. This source helped me figure out the kind of book I wanted to do. While I have tons of poems, there are a lot that are touching on subjects I would not put in my book well not my first book. A limitation of the book was the price it would cost for a couple of 100 books and if you wanted extra, how much extra would it cost. That would have been helpful so I wouldn’t have even had to email him first about the price along with telling him I was interested in publishing through them.
Doskow, Minna. William Blake's Jerusalem: Structure and Meaning in Poetry and Picture. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1982. Print.
This source was created by Minna Doskow and talks about Jerusalem and their interpretation of poetry. In this book, they talk about poetry and their set up of it. This source says that with a poetry book you could have different themes for the poetry. This source is useful because I was thinking of doing themes for my poetry book until I decided that would be messy and mess up the flow I wanted to have with the book. One limitation this source has is not to describe other ways someone could set up a poetry book.
Giovanni, Nikki. "Mothers." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2016. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177837>
This source gives a poem by Nikki Giovanni, a well known poet. In the poem, she speaks about her mother, the last time she went home and her mother passed a poem to her. I selected this source because it reminds me of a poem I wrote for my grandmother in the way I worded it and not so much of the situations are connected. I find this source useful because it shows how I want to change the world with my words but also shows that my poems in the book are talking about real things in my life, good or bad and that they will be coming from the heart. One limitation of the source is that while it is a good poem, I won’t be able to model my work off her because I already sent my poems off.
Hunter, Maya Angelou - Poem. "Still I Rise Poem." Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/still-i-rise/>.
This source gives me a poem entitled “Still I rise” by Maya Angelou. I selected this poem because this is my favorite poem by her and by being a huge fan of her, she helped me start writing poetry. This poem is part of the reason why I am who I am when it comes to how I write. It is speaking real situations that has happened but saying that she could care less which is what I strive to do in my writing. This source is useful because it can show the audience why I choose to write and what I want to get across in my book that people are different and to respect their differences but also having a theme of family as well.
Hunter, Langston Hughes - Poem. "As I Grew Older Poem." Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016.
This source is a poem by Langston Hughes entitled “As I Grew Older.” This poem talks about his dream and how he could see it like the sun. I chose this source because it talks about his dreams and how determined he is to follow his dreams which very much reminds me of me and the whole purpose of my book release party which is to get my work published to start my career. This source is useful because it can show people the path of where I want to go and where I want my future to go.
Matthews, Curt. "Self-Publishing Success." American Libraries 43.5/6 (2012): 12. JSTOR. Web. 03 Feb. 2016.
This source talks about how self-published books be successful. It states that it’s all about how you market your book. If you market to more places and make it known that you published a book, it will be more successful. It also stated that if you publish it more than one place than people will be more likely to buy it because they have an option to purchase it online or in person. I selected this source because it can give me an insight into what to do in order to be successful. It reassured me that I am going down the right path. I am planning on publishing my book on Amazon for people who I don’t know that want to buy it randomly or if my family and friends can’t make it to my book release party. I find this source useful because it showed me I am going on the right path to make my book successful. A limitation this source has is that it doesn’t tell the average price that we should sell our books for to be successful.
"The Meaning of Poetry: Breaking Poetry." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 04 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QToz8zYuU>.
This source is talking about the meaning of poetry and what poetry means for the particular speaker and just in general the meaning of people for certain people. I selected this source as a way showing that the meaning of poetry is more than just writing stuff down but that writing poetry is an escape gateway for people and a way to express their feelings. I find this source useful because this describes my usage of poetry and the reason why I write. A limitation of this source is that it doesn’t speak more on why people who write don’t have a connection with their writing.
Free Verse. Digital image. Slide Share- All about Poetry. Natasha Walker Van Niekerk, 6 Mar. 2014. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.
This source was found on Google Images under it saying “Free Verse.” While going to the sight investigating it, I found out not only Free verse is majority of what my poetry book is but also that a couple of my poetry is called Narrative poems which is just me narrating through a poem. This source is useful so I can identify the types of poems that are in the book which I didn’t know all of the kinds at first. I selected this source because it helped me to figure out the names of type of poetry used in the book so I knew.
Myrna Yousuf Capstone
The purpose of this capstone was to represent the people of SLA. I wanted to show how our school has a diverse population and that everyone is different. I also wanted an image of what SLA looks like because we cannot be defined by one thing. Our school has so many people with different stories, ideas, and thoughts. I submitted my capstone proposal with my idea and got it approved and had my Mentor Ms.
I decided to tell the stories of people through photos and words attached to them on a Facebook and Instagram page. Throughout the school year I worked with my partner Avery to create these posts on our social media page. Then I decided to represent each grade at SLA through an interview podcast series as my own individual product. Each interview is with a student in each grade and they share their views and experience at SLA.
Nicholas LePera Capstone
Stress factors into everything that happens in your day. It can provide the motivation you need to complete an important task, or it can be debilitating and block your goals. Stress is a huge issue in society and the largest issue is the lack of knowledge people have on it, and how it is sociologically stamped out as an unimportant topic. My capstone goal was study stress through a survey response system, and from various medical journals, and other credible sources.
My initial goal was to drive an exchange of dialogue between myself and takers of my survey, however few were willing to respond. I received a total of 23 responses out of roughly 500. This was disheartening, but I quickly shifted my eyes toward existing studies and built the foundation knowledge to create an infographic. I began by detailing stress and methods to overcome it that people can use to their advantage.
Overall, I found that this setback worked for me in the end. I found that I learned far more with peer-reviewed medical journals and other materials that furthered my existing knowledge of the issue. The product I am left with are a survey, a paper, and an infographic. My capstone gave me an opportunity to dabble in fields of study I will likely encounter in college as a biochemistry major on a pre-professional track towards Physical Therapy.
CAP-4
- Term
- 2015-16