by Khammila Shimray

          At the beginning of this year we had to start our maker project. Which is, a project where we can invent/build basically whatever we think will help or serve a purpose in our community. We had about a month and a half to work till the Maker Fair on April 24th. Our project was a phone projector, so we needed a magnifying glass, speakers and a box. We had to order the magnifying glass and speakers and wait till they arrived, this took about two weeks. My group members were also frustrated because, it took three tries to send our order beforehand.

(what it was supposed to look like)

          Meanwhile, we worked on getting the box set up which had to be covered so that no light would shine through. When we finally put everything together, it didn’t work. For some reason the magnifying glass wasn’t projecting the image from the phone. We tried re-covering the sides with black tape so that there for sure wasn’t any light, but it still didn’t work. “What do we do next?” we asked.

          So again, we re-did the process of finding all the materials and re-building our projector. The results were disappointing. Our new projector did the same exact same thing as the one before. The Maker Faire had already passed and we basically had lost all motivation. So you’re probably expecting some great reflection on how if you never give up then you’ll eventually you’ll succeed. This is not one of them unfortunately.

           We had ran out of time and didn’t have access to the right materials needed. But, the learning experience was great and we really worked well together as a group. Although, we never actually finished our projecter we gained something greater, learning how to cooperate together, and the importance of time and materials in a project.