Capstone - Martin - Wed — Science Leadership Academy @ Center City

Tamira Bell's Capstone: Photography Portfolio

Posted by Tamira Bell in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Friday, May 20, 2016 at 9:14 am

To often people live their lives without meaning, simply going through the motions. They live a boring, mediocre life because they have not found their passion. A quote that I have heard many times in my youth is "A life without passion is not worth living.” The word passion in this sense can be defined as a strong or extravagant fondness or desire for anything. When you live your life without a passion or something that you have a high interest in, your life can be very dull and lifeless. My passion is photography.

For my capstone, I created a photography portfolio that features portrait and nature photography. The purpose of choosing this as my capstone was that I wanted to have a portfolio of my work so that I present it the world and expand it in college. Creating this portfolio really helped me sharpen my photography and editing skills. I took a lot of photos in a studio with a 3 light set up, so I learned a lot about lighting up my subject and adjusting my camera to the right settings under that light. I also learned about photo composition and what makes a photo visually appealing. I applied several photographic principles, one being the rule of thirds. I edited all of my photos in Adobe Photoshop. For most pictures it took me on an average of 30 minutes to edit. However some of the more complex pictures took anywhere from an hour to 5 hours to edit. I hope that you enjoy my portfolio.

Portfolio

Brian Torres Capstone

Posted by Brian Torres in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 11:15 pm

For my capstone, I worked with my church(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints aka the Mormon Church) to better improve the family history/ancestry program that is run through the church with a program known as Indexing. Indexing is a program that is used my members of the LDS church to further increase the database of names in the church's genealogy records so that things can be done in a more sacred setting. So, to further simplify what it is that I did, for my capstone, I worked with the genealogy group at my church to archive as many names as I could through the Indexing program into the LDS church's database. I chose to have my dad as my mentor, for several reasons, for one I knew that he would keep me in check through the whole process of completing the project and was always asking me for updates on how far along I was.

What you see in the picture above is just one of the many files I went through and archived names and information that I could find based off of those documents. In the photo, we can tell that what I'm looking at is a draft registration card for someone who had just been drafted into the US Military to go on and enlist to fight in WWII. On the left side of the card, we see a good portion of personal info about the person(name, place of birth and current place of living, date of birth, etc.) and on the right side which is a little cut off is where we see more info describing his looks(race, height, weight, complexion, hair and eye color) and we also at the bottom of that part of the page which is cut off in the photo, we see the date that the person became a registered and enlisted member of the US Military.

The indexing program was and is a very tedious program to work with. Everytime you download a file to archive/index, you as the user are given a week to complete the indexing of that particular file before the file is removed from the user's account and returned to the database of files yet to be fully indexed so that someone else somewhere in the world can finish what you started.

What you see in the above picture is the screen the user is brought to when they log in. As you can see here, at the moment that the picture was taken, I was working on two different files(which are known as batches in the Indexing program), one thing that stands out is the due dates for each one, once the due date reaches three days or less before a batch is due, the file name will turn red signifying to you that time is running out and that you need to finish or get as much done before the batch expires and is returned to the system.

Miles Cruice-Barnett Capstone: Solar Panel

Posted by Miles Cruice-Barnett in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 10:58 pm

My Capstone project was a joint effort with Jonas Bromley to create a solar powered charging station. The plan was to create a solar panel that would provide power to a charging station for phones and laptops inside the school. There were three main steps in making this plan come to fruition: one, making a solar panel; two, making a circuit to ensure that the battery does not get overcharged; and three, creating a station with charging cables in an accessible location.

My job was creating the solar panel. After getting the solar cells, I realized that there was more work to be done than I originally thought. The cells that I ordered needed to have tabbing wire soldered to each cell to wire them together. The biggest issue was that solar cells are extremely fragile and any moderate force would shatter them. Thus, creating the solar panel required a lot of patience; a lot of cells were broken by the end of the project. I spent a lot of time with my mentor and engineering teacher John Kamal problem solving and learning about electronics. He was a huge help in completing this project and kept me on the right track.

My partner Jonas completed the table that will be used as the station as well as the circuit that regulates the flow of electricity to the battery. All that is left to do as of now is mount the solar panel and place the charging station in a hallway.

Brand new solar cells

Breaking the brand new solar cells

Breaking lots of cells

Shattering even more cells

Finished solar panel on charging station table

Circuit schematic

Finished circuit

Olivia Mack Capstone

Posted by Olivia Mack in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 2:58 pm

For my Capstone, I originally wanted to produce a documentary about my involvement in the Philadelphia Suns, which is a basketball team in the Philadelphia Chinatown community. In the documentary I talked about our monthly tournaments, summer league and practices. I did end up doing this documentary but as long as getting a ton of footage I also took many pictures. I wanted to be able to share them so I thought about making a website with a page for a photo gallery as well as my documentary.

The process was pretty easy in the beginning because I had everything planned out and I knew since Junior year I wanted to do a documentary so I already had recorded some footage throughout the summer. However, further into Senior I had a lot of technology problems with getting the program to edit and problems that occurred within my laptop. There were also a couple of instances where my camera was on the muted option and I would have to recorded interviews.

I am very happy with how my final product came out. I enjoyed making the documentary and putting the website together. It had a lot of fun doing it and it was not one of those projects where you dread doing.

In the future, I hope to be more prepared with technical difficulties just because you can not always rely on technology. I learned a lot about my team that I actually did not already know. I hope that from watching this people take action to hopefully be more involved in the community and to join a similar organization. When I first joined the Suns, I was very skeptical but in the long run I am glad I tried something new.

The link to my website is here.

http://philadelphiasunscapstone.weebly.com/

Annotated Bibliography

Carr, Bella. "Ball Is Life." Personal interview. 26 Oct. 2015.

This interview source will help me a lot in getting a perspective from a young player. Bella plays with the New York Titans. She is the only girl player who plays for her team. I think that she will really be able to influence on how it feels to play on a team with all boys and being the only girl. Also, she is mixed. She could explain the rules of what the process of getting into this Asian league is like. She also talked a lot about her experience at her first nationals and not being able to play, because nationals did not allow coedd. I think that her interview could help me with getting a girl’s perspective in the league.

Chin, Rebecca. "Philadelphia Suns: Harry Leong's Suns Story." YouTube. YouTube, 10 Jan. 2012. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sh-hDZD5jY>.

This source is very useful because someone who was once on the Philadelphia Suns, who has moved to New York made this short film about the Suns. I know her personally and her experience will greatly help me with conducting my documentary. She also interviewed Harry Leong who is my coach and the president of the non-profit organization The Philadelphia Suns. I think that everything here for my documentary and the organization itself will be very credible. The information is coming straight from the person who created this organization and someone who has been in the league for a very long time.

Eng, Stanley. "Basketball Impact." Personal interview. 26 Oct. 2015.

The source is very useful for my project. I am using this personal interview in my project. Stanley Eng is now a coach and sometimes he helps around if needed in the Philadelphia Suns organization. In his interview he shared his experiences, as a player and how he transitioned to become a coach and started helping out in the Sun's community. I think this source will help me talk about the Philadelphia Suns organization as a whole and how it has evolved and changed over the year until today.

Lee, Ken. "Basketball." Personal interview. 26 Oct. 2015.

I think overall out of all the interviews that I have conducted this interview will really impact and help my documentary the most. Ken Lee is a coach of the New York Rockits, which is a basketball team that the Philadelphia Suns play the most. He has started the league with my Coach Harry Leong. In the interview he mentioned a lot about how he was as a player and how he loved basketball so much that he started to coach, and most importantly he coaches his two sons. He mentions a lot about the Asian basketball league and how it is very different. I think I will be able to incorporate a lot of what he says into my documentary, as well as putting the interview footage into my film.

Lowe, Lauren. "Home." Philadelphia Suns. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://phillysuns.org/>.

This is source is the Philadelphia Sun’s official website. It has everything you need to know about the organization. I think that it is pretty updated and it mentions a lot of events and past events that have occurred. It has many videos and pictures. I know that the majority of the contributors on this website are members of the Philadelphia Suns and they are very credible because they have been members of the Philadelphia Suns for a very long time. This source will help me a lot I think with the introduction most importantly of my documentary because they mention a lot about their mission and what they do and how the organization had gotten started.

"NACBA - Official Site of the North American Chinese Basketball Association." NACBA - Official Site of the North American Chinese Basketball Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nacbait.com/myNACBA/login2?accesscheck=%2FmyNACBA%2Findex.php.>

This source is very useful because it tells you literally almost everything you need to know about the NACBA which is the North American Chinese Basketball Association. This is the league that my basketball team plays for as well as the other teams that we play throughout the year. This website will provide me with information that I need to conduct and ask questions to certain players and coaches that I interview. There are also pictures and short video clips that will help me really understand how the NACBA league is different from other basketball leagues in North America.

Seiter, Courtney. "6 Powerful Communication Tricks Of Great Interviewers."Buffer Social. Buffersocial, 07 Jan. 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2016.

<https://blog.bufferapp.com/6-powerful-communication-tricks-from-some-of-the-worlds-best-interviewers>.

This website is very useful because it tells me tips and tricks to use while interviewing people. For my documentary I already do have some interview questions and some interviews that have already been conducted. However, I do want to make the person that I am interviewing comfortable and to not be awkward. I still need to conduct some interviews still and I want to be the interviewees comfortable to speak because I think that I could improve on that. This is be very beneficial towards my documentary because I do not want people that are watching to think that I did not prepare before interviewing.

"The Unexpected Beauty of Traveling Solo." The Unexpected Beauty of Traveling Solo. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/short-film-showcase/the-unexpected-beauty-of-traveling-solo>.

This source is very useful because it is a very good example of a short documentary or a trailer. I think this will really help me when I have to present my trailer and short piece of the film. I think this will really help me with how much content and how much of my film I should reveal in my trailer. I think that also this will help me with what is good in a video or film. I will be able to see how director or actor incorporate what was important for the film or what they should have taken out.

Paar, Morgan. "How to Make a Documentary: Part 1 Story Development."Videomaker.com. N.p., 1 May 2010. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <http://www.videomaker.com/article/f16/14803-how-to-make-a-documentary-part-1-story-development.>

This source is very useful because it shows you how to make a documentary. It gives you guidelines to which how to process your documentary from the beginning to the end. This source is very easy to understand because it shows pictures and diagrams which visually helps the person who is trying to understand this source. This source will help me because it will show me how to make my documentary organized and in order. It tells you what in a documentary really engages the audience whether it is interviews or music etc. Overall I think this source will be very useful in making my documentary.

White, Terry. "How To Get Started with Adobe Premiere Pro CC - 10 Things Beginners Want to Know How To Do." YouTube. YouTube, 11 May 2014. Web. 05 Feb. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK3JTh2jOf8>.

This source is useful because it will teach me everything I need to know to make my documentary on Adobe Premiere. I may need to know how use certain parts and tools that are apart of Adobe Premiere and this youtube video will definitely show me how to do those things. Tamira Bell knows the Premiere program really well. So if I also every needed her to go over some of these tool and what not I could as well as looking back into this source. This source will help me a lot because it will make my life better and project better as I learned how to use this program for editing.

Caitlin Keough Capstone

Posted by Caitlin Keough in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 at 9:27 am

My Capstone was inspired by the internship I have had at my old elementary and middle school, Green Woods Charter School, for the past three years. Over the course of the past five years GWCS has changed a lot and collectively been in four very different school buildings. The school currently resides in it's permanent location that they built from the ground up. Not only is the school in a brand new building, but the GWCS community has more than doubled and there are a lot of families that aren't as familiar with what GWCS is all about. The adjusting process was difficult so for the first part of my Capstone I made a informational brochure for prospective families to use to get a glimpse at the school.

The school's campus is unique and suits GWCS's mission to create a better and more eco-friendly world. They have a lot of new technology on the grounds of their school that a lot of people have never seen before. For the second part of my Capstone, I created signs that teach visitors about the technology and have code on them that links to a website with even more information on the environmental technology that GWCS uses.

My website can be found here.

My annotated bibliography can be found here.

Jesse Shuter Capstone

Posted by Jesse Shuter in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Monday, May 16, 2016 at 10:30 pm

The process of going about my capstone was a unique one. It started out as one thing, but turned into another. I wanted for my capstone to grow our journalism program from the small online based class that it was, to more than that. I wanted to do this my own way. For my capstone I traveled to different sporting events as a reporter, recording certain games, taking pictures and also writing articles for journalism. This year I also became the sports editor for what is now the journalism club/class and I was able to use some of the work from my capstone on the website. I was also able to help other sports writers improve their content and become better writers. I wanted to create a lasting role that someone else could build off of when I am gone. Throughout this I learned a lot about how much editing and preparing and learning goes into using this technology for reporting. Even the simple technology that I used required a lot of editing and learning about how they worked and additional items to make them work better. There were a lot of struggles that accompanied my capstone. I had to miss classes to go to the games, I lost a lot of data throughout the process including all the video from one of the games and one of the articles crashed and had to be re-written. I enjoyed this process a lot and recommend it to future students.

Here you will find one of my articles about the SLA Boys Baseball team.

Annotated bibliography can be found here.

Morgan Caswell Capstone

Posted by Morgan Caswell in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Monday, May 16, 2016 at 8:09 pm

Astronomy is always something that has been important and interesting to me, and finding a way to do something with astronomy with only a high school education proved difficult initially. The thing about astronomy and astrophysics, is that to understand the details, you often have to be an academic.

Science fiction has also been something that I have really enjoyed throughout high school. Naturally, combing science and science fiction seemed like a logical project. In my capstone, I created a text that explored astronomy and physics through popular works of TV sci-fi, namely Doctor Who and Star Trek: The Next Generation. The book is presented in an informal way that is meant to educate the reader both about science and the science fiction itself.

The book can be found here.

The process paper can be found here.

Joseff Filamor Capstone

Posted by Joseff Filamor in Capstone - Martin - Wed on Monday, May 16, 2016 at 1:42 pm

I have always loved making skate videos of me and my friends however I never had one that took more than a month to produce. Majority of my videos I made were short montages of random clips of me and my friends with little to no organization. Half way through Sophomore year I decided to make a "full length skate video." A full length video means that every skater that partakes in it will have their own individual part in the video to themselves. I have a lot of friends who skate but don't have a way to present their skating in the form of a video and I wanted to make something that we could all celebrate and be proud of. In addition, nearly everyone who had a part in the video was from a different part of Philly, so it was cool to have that connection through this video. Each person was able to choose their own song and have almost all creative control over their section of the video. A decent part should have a running time of 3-5 minutes and there were 7 parts in the video all together. After a little over 2 years of filming and editing almost everyday, the video was finished and had a running time of about 30 minutes.

Click HERE for my bibliography.

CAP-6

Term: 2015-16

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