Pirate based learning |
Artifact 1:
Our boat was a huge part of our project. Each part of the boat would take a good couple days to design, build, and test, sometimes even more when things got lost or even broke. The only thing we based our boats designs off of were research and presentations from boat design experts. After we created each design (3) we would calculate different coefficients to insure the boat would work they way we wanted it to. From there we created our boats from foam which we later had molded into our actual hulls. From there we designed, build and added all parts of our boats and soldered our electronics. Then we were able to decorated our boats according to what your group was classified as. We added spears to the front of our boat to help with attacking, along with covering our deck with blue tape to help with water proofing and to color our deck. We added our logo, a trident to the top of our boat, and our name, Percabeth, to the side which you can see above. My Job: In this project we weren't assigned specific jobs, but letters. Each group member was assigned a letter A-D. Every part of the project would be assigned a letter to complete it. A- Rudder, 1/4 of soldering B-Propeller, 1/4 of soldering C-Deck, 1/4 of soldering, decoration D-Deck, 1/4 of soldering, decoration My group consisted of A- David Olmos B- Mark Penaran C- Madi Ho D- Me As a D I was in charge of creating the deck, soldering, and decorating the boat. I also helped my A and B group members out with their jobs and figured out spacing for the electronics. Madi and I also figured out all the weight in our boat to make it so it wouldn't tip over. What I learned: I had never learned anything in that we had done in this project before. I had worked with electronics before but never soldiering or motors. I had never learned anything about pirates outside of Peter Pan before and had only heard of online piracy with movies. I had never really learned anything about boats and how they float and are made for specific situations but in this project I discovered how to create a specific types of boats, and make sure that it will do the job I want. I also learned how to take a regular picture and make it into illustrator so it will print of the laser cutter. Exhibition Night Exhibition night was really fun. I got to explain what I learned and actually show them by fixing my boat, racing my boat, and with the work displayed in our group binders. We did end up having quite a few problems with our boat during exhibition night, and although it was stressful, it was also fun to be able to work and problem solve in front of a group of people. You are able to really show what you learned and prove that you did in fact learn it, instead of just saying that you did and having your completed project prove that. Reflection This project was very hard, but in different ways from Apocalypto. We actually knew that everything we were doing was possible, since millions of people do it all the time. But it was still stressful trying to get all of this work done in such a small amount of time, problem shooting everything that went wrong while building your boat when you have no time to do it. Mainly time was the main stress factor to me. We did have a smaller amount of completion time than apocalypto, but I think that it was also the fact that you were counting down the days to the end of school. It wasn't just a project deadline, but a real deadline since you would've ran out of time. All in all my project was completed, on time, and if I do say so myself it looked pretty good and worked pretty well. I am really proud of this project since it showed me I can complete things in a small amount of time if I really try hard, and I was able to get a glimpse of my parents occupations. My father being an electrician, it was nice being able to show him that I knew all about circuits and soldering, he seemed very impressed with what I was learning, and my mother being an artist, she sees me doing things like her everyday here at High Tech High, but making stencils for decorating our boat, and creating a diorama out of an image was something I had never done before and she also seemed very impressed. |
Artifact 2:
One of the main parts of the humanities portion of this project was an idivsual short story, which had to include piracy is some sort of way. Mine was from a girl pirates point of view as something terrible was happening to her and her crew mates. It was a fun story to write and I used my poetry skills to really make my story descriptive. You can read my story below. Artifact 3:
Another part of the humanities portion was that as two separate classes, merchants and pirates, we were assigned and alphabet book to teach people about pirates from either and pirates or merchants point of view. I was assigned the letter Q. This was a difficult letter to work with, especially under such a short amount of time, but I was able to come up with a saying that I believe explains pirates pretty well. The language my seem childish or strange, but that is just the Q speaking. Feel free to read my letter Q research paper on pirates below. Artifact 4:
The final product of our humanities portion of the project was a group project to create a diorama. We took our knowledge from our first short stories picture and did the same with a picture that included a boat or could include a boat. We then traced it, put it into photoshop, and colored it, but this time we took each colored shape in photoshop and put it into illustrator so we could make it laser cutter ready. Once each piece was printed we colored them to the correct color and made a box and backboard for our diorama's. We then figured out which of our pieces would be on what layer and cut wooden sticks to the correct size and glued the pieces to the correct space in the box. In the end I think that it turned out really well and I am really proud of what it turned out to look like. |