Reflections
My Reflection
My overall opinion of the project is that it has been a great help to prepare us for college. The project has given us more independence than projects in the past as we were expected to find our own problem, solution, and find help if we needed it. The independence from the guided steps of PLTW was a nice change as we could work more at our own pace. The independence also showed as everyone ended up with different problems, products, and presentations. I enjoyed that we could use the four years of engineering experience in our project as the design could be taken in any direction. One of my favorite parts of the project was when we finished constructing and painting our prototype because I felt accomplished seeing a design we made together come into reality. There were some bumps along the way that involved materials, tools, and snow. We at first had trouble with cutting the materials and trying to match the length of the cuts to our design, even though we did not cut it exactly right it was still able to work fine. Tools was another bump as we struggled to find the right type of saw to cut the wood we were using. Lastly, our biggest problem was the weeks off that we had from the snow as we took some time to get started again, and we were not able to get the time back. My recommendations for next year's capstones would be to advise the students to try and work ahead over Christmas break due to the possibility of snow days or delays that stop us from going to tech. Also i wanted to thank you, Ms.Z, for being such a great engineering teacher.
Brad's Reflection
Anthony's Reflection
This project gave a crucial learning experience. This project gave us skills we'll be able to use later in life like critical problem solving, talking in front of judges, and how to fix problems that I created. This project did grow stagnant at times but was really fun at times. I strongly recommend that this project is carried on for a while because it tests all the material that we learned throughout the years. A lot of this project was on our own and that made it a lot more fun. When we got done there was a sense of achievement that no other project has given us. We made a chair! Not just no ordinary chair, but a chair that solves a common problem in Ocean City. I still couldn't believe our product broke. When we had the dry run and Michael sat on the chair, I was terrified. He had never sat on the chair before and we only tested a higher weight once before. I've learned procrastination is not key when it comes to big projects. Nothing can beat going out to Ocean City when it's about 27 degrees to shoot a video the day before it's do. Overall this project was really fun, taught us all crucial life skills and was just great. In the future this project is good to have for senior students because it shows how far we've come and learned as students. Plus as said earlier it was fun and it gave me experiences I'll never forget. All of it wouldn't have been possible without a great teacher guiding us through it all. So thank you Mrs Z, for being a fantastic teacher (also probably my favorite teacher throughout high school) in the Engineering Program.