I love the laser cutter you can make 3D objects with it by cutting out the layers of the object and then putting them together to make that shape. For example you could cut out the pieces to one of those wooden dinosaur skeletons or you could use a file of something you would 3D print. You can also engrave your own design or artwork into wood, plastic, cardboard, or paper. Once you have your file  just enter it into the laser cutter and then you let the laser do the rest of it nothing could go wrong, right?

Of course nothing would go wrong all you have to do is find a picture or design of something you want to cut out. Then you have to trace out all of the lines in that picture and if you want it to cut out the lines have to be 255 blue and at a 0.1 line weight. If you have the color scheme on CMYK not RYB it won’t cut it will engrave. If you want to engrave you can trace your design in any color you want. After you’ve done all that and your design perfectly traced out you want to save your file as a PDF not as an Ai or it won’t print. Once it is saved to your flash drive you open your file on the laser computer. Next you choose your material, like wood or cardboard and you put it in the printer. Focus it and then you click print and mess with the raster, vector, speed, and power settings. When that is done you could you press job to make sure it’s the right file then you press Go and it prints out your design, so simple! I would say I messed up about five times. The first time the design I was printing was a circle and I made it too long and it turned into an oval. The second time I forgot to spray my wood with water so it caught on fire and got a little chard. The third time I didn’t have enough time to finish it, so I had to stop the printer then when I started it again, it started in the wrong place. The fourth time I used CMYK instead of RYB, therefore my file wouldn’t work correctly. The fifth time my file got messed up and it only printed half of the design, then it said it was done printing and I had to print it again.

Every single time I failed I thought to myself I should just give up this is too much work, but every single time I thought of how good it would look when it was completed and how proud I would be. In the end I would go and fix it and then print it out and the next time it would come out perfectly. I would think to myself this is why I continued to work even after I failed five times to get this beautiful piece of artwork. If you give up you don’t know what you are missing.

By Zoё Magee

This year has been the most amazing year. With a new maker space we are able to take our ideas and turn them into reality, it might sound like a ‘piece a cake’, but sometimes the process isn’t as beautiful as the end result as you’d think.

Building a doghouse for example you might be think that it’s basically making a box with a roof but in reality you need sketches, blueprints,frame and all the measurements have to be precise so that the house is perfect and stable for it to actually be a dog house.

My group and I, we were so excited to take on a big task like this and we thought like you might have thought that it was going to be easy but once we investigated on how and where we needed to start,we started losing hope and confidence. We didn’t think it was going to be that complicated and we talked and talked, coming up with ideas to make it easier for us but make the viewer feel that this project was more complex than it really was.

After that moment, we felt that we had a good starting point and that we could eventually pull this out, but that moment didn’t last long. We had limited number of supplies so their was no time for messing up, but it was time we screwed up. The whole frame of the house was wrong some sides were smaller than 3 ft and others were longer than 3 ft. So we had to go and re look at our plans and measurements to adapt them to our frame and trust me it wasn’t hard.

Once we had our new plan we continued with all the sides we cut all the sides to the measurements we had and realized that they all didn’t fit like they were supposed to fit so we had to go back and cut them which took up a lot of time. I felt like we weren’t going to finish the project and that we had to really step up and finish it.

We finished the house and all we needed were the stairs and we were done but none of us knew how to build stairs so we had to research how to build stairs which again took most of our time up. We then build the frame of our stairs and realized that the steps widen up when going to the top but we had literally no time to fix it with our presentation the next day we knew we had to just work around it.

Eventually we finished the dog house on time but it took a lot of sacrifice with staying after school, having to pitch in money to buy supplies, having to stay confident, and no loose patience. It was one of those projects we experienced failure but overcame it by staying positive and having resilience.

Our prototype home screen, Our logo, And the website to make our prototype.

Coming into 8th grade knowing that it was going to be harder than any of the other grades so far was expected. But there was times during 8th grade where I wanted to give up and I thought no I cannot do this,its impossible. If you give up, you’re never going to know what could have been if you finished what you started or if you continued your hard work. But I believe that the hardest part so far and the most challenging for me as an individual, was probably during the Maker Fair project. A time that I thought about giving up was probably during our Maker Faire. A Maker Faire is where students bring their imagination to life. When students have finished making their idea a reality, they get to share it to other people that may not know about the project. Students show them how it works and the reason behind it. Marlene and I  are working on an app for our school that would help our classmates and our teachers by putting all of the websites that we use on an everyday basis in one place. That way we don’t have to go through the hassle of going to each website separately. We actually started prototyping which is basically the design and layout of what you want to have on the app. And when you have the prototype you would continue to actually build up and make it a real app.

At first we thought building an app was pretty simple, but once we got into the prototype building it was actually really hard. And there was a lot of times where I told myself how can a 14 year old girl do a job that’s meant for a college graduate. I also thought of how I knew nothing about app building to making an app that all of our school would use. Then we looked at how to make the real working app and I thought I can’t do this. And the more we looked into it the more difficult it looked, and it felt impossible. I honestly never thought I would get to finish the prototype with my partner. But then I told myself yes we can do this and we will achieve great things with this app. And then I started thinking of all the possibilities that could happen if we continued building the app. And I think that’s what kept me going. We would continue to work on this even if it wasn’t for a grade because we knew that we could do so much with it.

My experience with building this app and making this prototype is a lot like skateboard mentality. Skateboard mentality is when you fall, and when you fall you get back up. If you fall a 2nd time then you do exactly the same thing, and you continue. I have definitely learned a lot from this project and I have learned things from myself that I would have never known. We worked so hard and we know that this app will be something real and it will become something that I will forever be proud of. At first I didn’t know what skateboard mentality was, but now that I do I can see a hundred different ways that I’ve experienced skateboard mentality in school, at home etc. I think everyone should experience keyboard mentality in their lives. Because it teaches us how we really do learn from our mistakes. And…what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Inevitably, we will all inherit some sort of failure through our journey called life. Through our struggles and guidelines we find success, which makes it appear that failure is a great step in becoming successful, although some may disagree, their point to argue is that their failure wasn’t great enough to notice, or acknowledge. But why, of all concepts we have to accept, does failure have to be the best to learn to live with?

After submitting an idea for our schools annual “Makerfaire”, my group and I progressed into building our project. Our idea was initially to create an Art Piece that was also an instrument. The first couple weeks within the time period we had to build our piece, was spent researching nodes, pitches and other different aspects within the world of sound. Another portion we had to finalize in our project was getting to know our way around the laser cutter and Adobe Illustrator. Once in our project, we had designed a prototype of the basic pieces that fit together to make a replica the trunk of a tree. We put the piece of cardboard into the laser cutter and began our work. About halfway through the process, something that had failure written all over it had occurred.

My group and I had forgotten to turn on the ventilation system below the laser cutter. The cardboard was almost finished being cut when I noticed a fair amount of smoke coming from the bottom of the piece. I turned to one of my group members, McClain, who had way more experience with the laser cutter than I did. “Don’t you think that’s a lot of smoke?” I suggested. “No it’ll be fine.” she protested. About three seconds later a chunk of cardboard collapsed into flames. McClain ordered 2 group members to go get water, since conveniently there was none in the water bottle we usually use, while McClain tagged along and left without any explanation. After almost half of the piece was being swallowed by a small fire, I turned to notice the assistant principal sitting right behind me, interviewing and filming  2 of my peers. I was alone with a fire that could potentially burn down the school.

My group members returned with the water, and we silently removed the flaming piece from the machine without notice. Before any of us could do anything about the fire, Olga, another group member threw the flaming cardboard into a plastic trashcan. I panicked and threw all the water into the bin before any other mistakes could take place. The fire was out and nothing was damaged.

      Although we could have been responsible for a what could have been a disaster, we later learned the proper way to put out a lasered fire. In the end, it was a great mistake to make and we learned a lot from it. Without that hiccup in our project, we could have burned our final piece or any other product that wasn’t that easy to extinguish. I’m very glad to say we fell in our experience, but getting back up was the best part.

Going into 8th grade year proved to be more difficult than I thought. After all, eighth-grade was my last year of middle school. I have managed to persevere through most of my classes with little failure except for a few exceptions. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have failed a couple times in PLTW. After every single failure though I was able to stand back up and keep going because if I didn’t, how would I ever learn from my mistakes? Since PLTW consists of modules that require us to make/build things, I did make some mistakes along the way. I was especially discouraged knowing that I had deadlines. For example the Computer Science Module. I thought it was going to be really fun because I love computer sciences but it ended up being really difficult. My group and I had ideas but they kept getting shut down. Eventually we came up with one solid idea did work and we ended up getting a good grade. After that I didn’t seem to have many problems except for when we had to start making our Maker Project for the Maker Faire. For those of you who don’t know, a Maker Faire is a place for innovators and inventors to show of things they have made. Knowing that our school dedicated a day to our projects made me a bit nervous. For my project my partner and I decided to make an app that helps girls at ARS deal with all the hardships of technology that associates itself with our school. As a student at ARS I know that it is difficult having to access many different websites for all our school needs, especially on our phones. We decided that the best way to make this all accessible was to make an app.

We started with the help of a guy named Nick, he told us about the basics like prototyping, websites we could use, etc. Unfortunately we lost contact but were able to continue prototyping on a website name Proto.io which helped us mimick what our real app would look like. Of course we didn’t know about Proto.io right away so we were using other websites such as Flinto.com but we eventually found Proto.io. Because of our deadline, working became kind of stressful but when you love what you’re doing it becomes worth it. So we pushed forward. One big problem though was that we had a free trial and when we were halfway finished our trial expired! Fortunately there are ways to extend our trial and we finished by the Maker Faire. I’ve never been so proud!

Now I do feel like I’m falling though. Making an app is a big deal that obviously requires lots of work and experience. I am willing to put forward all my effort on this app it’s just hard to keep hope when we have absolutely no idea how to start. We know more like what we can do after we’ve started but not how to start. I won’t let this fall get to me though because I know that no matter what I’m doing something big, learning so many things, experiencing a lot of things and in the long run it’ll be worth it. 🙂

These are a couple parts of the app that were designed on Adobe Illustrator, and the website we used, Proto.io.

It’s true that failure is inevitable in the process of designing and making, but whether or not you have a plan B is a different story entirely. My module group and I had no experience with pinhole camera-making. Our knowledge of cameras extended only as far as the everyday mobile (phone) camera or an instant Kodak. As far as research goes, we relied on DIY experts to share their intelligence on homemade cameras, studying YouTube videos like we were taking the SAT’s.

We had all the resources we needed

So why wasn’t it working?

At this point we were wasting enough tape to cover a small country. Our cardboard box was dilapidated under all the stress it was being put through, all the reshaping and redesigning. We had one more day to finish this thing. And we hadn’t even started.

My group members were just as flustered as I was, and the fact that we were one of the first to do this project in the class wasn’t helping either. Our plan, which was presumed well-crafted and detailed, was truly useless. I have never once considered quitting an assignment for this class. Except today. Whether or not the camera was pretty didn’t matter anymore. I needed a remotely decent grade to survive.

After an hour of improvisation and panic, we had a strange, distorted looking camera, ready for snapping some pictures. But because it was last second, taking an actual picture wasn’t on our to-do list. We got it done, but I was internally crushed because I’m not one to go with the bare-minimum. To me, this project was a fail. I thought over and over again that if I was told to redo the assignment, I’d make it one of the best home-made cameras in existence. I got a taste of true engineering and designing, testing what worked and what didn’t and making the best out of what we had. But as much as I didn’t like it, I knew it would only get harder from here. And if you know that quitting or getting worse isn’t an option, then you can only get better.

Every module after that, I told myself that I wasn’t going to put myself under any more stress than I needed to. I planned ahead, communicated with my group members and made sure that the first time for everything was the best time. But it is true that I had to fail in order to see this. I like to think that everything balances out, when something really bad happens then there’s likely to be something really good afterwards, same vise-versa. With epic fails, come epic comebacks.

McClain D.

Catherine G.

Failures happen every day, and when we don’t even notice them. Many of the ”failures” that we overcome everyday, we are actually not at all aware of it. But some failures are more obvious, and you know you have made a huge and epic mistake. Many of these experiences have happened during this in year in the class.

One of these examples was in what I thought would be a very fun module. My partners and I had been researching modern medicine, and historical methods, and we all had a great deal of interest in things like this, and so we began to make the prosthetic module. Originally we were really excited to start, and we had a bit far fetched ideas about what our lower leg would be. I thought that we should have 2 springs one in the ankle area and one in the middle of the shin to minimize the force of impact on the leg of the person. Someone else’s idea was just to maximize comfort and not really efficiency. With all these ideas in mind, and not really any plan we began to hot glue anything and everything we could find together. After realizing how hard it really was to accomplish something out of essentially recycled materials compared to something a real doctor might have access to.

The deadline crept closer and closer and the closer we come to it the closer we came to quitting. Our leg module was Lily, and the leg kept puncturing her knee, and when I felt it I also had the feeling that it was pinching me. We knew that this was unusable, and that there was no way that anyone could walk on it without losing their balance for more than 20 seconds, regardless of the pain it caused, and how unappealing it was in terms of style.

At the end of the day we had come to the conclusion that it was not really our faults, and although it is always disappointing for something that you had high expectations for turn out as a failure. I mean essentially the leg didn’t work, but it did show the effort that we put into it, and all the designs and sketches we made really showed our dedication to trying to make it the best we could. And at the end of the day, even though it was stressful, and a bit disappointing, I really am proud, because making the best out of any situation you are given, and it’s betters to fail together or with your friends, and have fun while doing it.

Failure to Success

Alexis Miller

“Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.”-Morihei Ueshiba. Failure is one of the best teachers. In order to succeed you need to fail. At first I thought failing was bad but I realized later that simply trying something new will entail failure. Had I never failed at riding my bike I would have never succeeded. This idea of failing to succeed opened a lot of doors for me. I became more willing to explore things without fearing failure. Failure is not the end of the journey, its just a bump in the road. I’m not promising  success but I am promising a lesson learned.

In PLTW we practiced our skills of failure when we made our Pinhole camera. We followed the instructions and had extremely high hopes. We sealed our pinhole with as much tape as we could find, held our camera out for the picture for the time instructed, and soaked the film in developing liquid for as long as required. We turned the lights on and with the highest of hopes turned the film over to find…a black sheet of paper with white splotches. I was quite frustrated with my makeshift camera that I had worked so hard one. Back to the sketchpad, innovating our design for perfection. We later learned that this work called “perfection” did not exist in reality. An unexpected word called failure became closer and closer than I had ever been comfortable with. The due date came closer and closer and constantly we were sent back to step 1. I thought we had accomplished nothing but failure and a pile of trash, the truth was we had  accomplished something so much better than a picture made from a pringles can.

Accepting failure. Something I had never known well enough, never known exactly what it was and why it was a part of everything. When looking at a pile of cardboard and electrical tape I finally realized that I simply did not have  the best circumstances to make the best picture and to receive an “A” on the assignment. We did however have the best circumstances for learning.

After completing this assignment and so many aspects of this class I have been able to relate this trial and error to the skateboard mentality. We have recently learned about the skateboard mentality and how beneficial it is to have. The skateboarder mentality is being willing to fall while trying to land a harder trick. I like to keep this in mind when I feel I am not succeeding the way I would like to. This mentality keeps me going and helps me to finish projects. I fail to make success more obtainable.

There have been many times in my life where I’ve thought to myself, I can’t do this. I need to quit. Due to, always complicating things for myself, I never wanted to take part in things that seemed to challenging and complex. I was always the kid who would take the easy way out. I never seemed to comprehend that, this mentality wasn’t going to take me anywhere, it wasn’t going to help me resolve my problems, it only left me stranded in a phase of confusion and frustration.

This year I participated in the 1st annual Maker-o-Rama, here at my school. I was working in a group of five people and we were basically presenting our Maker Project to students at the event. The students who had the opportunity to come to our table, learned all about how to make bath bombs. We had a video setup for them to show the process for bath bomb making and how fun, easy and affordable it can be. Then we had them create small sample balls that they could take home in a small box with the recipe included on it. This part was the most stressful for me, because there were many more kids than what we had expected. It would be very frustrating to see the crowd of girls forming around the table, all wanting a chance to get their hands dirty, and we could only have approximately six students at a time working on the mixture, which made it very irritating because we had so many students waiting for their turn. It came to the point where I couldn’t handle the situation anymore, everything around me was so loud and I really wanted to give up, but I knew that I couldn’t because not only would I’ve received a low grade, but I would’ve let my teammates down. I took a step back for a minute, took a deep breath and continued on with our presentations until we ran out of materials.

It’s been quite a few days since Maker-o-Rama, and looking back at our project makes me feel very proud of myself for withstanding such a challenging situation and really thinking clearly before taking action. Of Course none of this would’ve been easy without the help of my wonderful teammates who aswell did an amazing job of never being intimidated by challenges presented along the way. This project can seem very simple and easy to some, but once you start executing it you realize how much more complex it actually is. I’ve learned through this project, that nothing is impossible, you can’t ignore superficial problems and if you can’t concentrate, you can always take a quick back and come back with a fresh pair of eyes.

~Andrea Santos

Here is a link to the video we showed at Maker-o-Rama

By Bella Roberts

Being in PLTW, in the Makerspace, failure is always glooming beneath the plywood. It seems to be inevitable. Failure constantly lives in ourthoughts and defines our success. It determines the way we learn from our mistakes. Personally, I have failed a lot in my life, and recently that failure has occurred in PLTW class as I have embarked on various missions of success.

Not to long ago I completed a maker project in this class that could be defined by a lot of trial and error i.e. failure. There were times when my group and I felt a strong urge to give up and try something else, but every time we found it in us to realize that failure is not a bad thing. I think in a way it may be one of the best ways to learn; to learn from your mistakes and to learn what doesn’t work. The mission of my group and I’s maker project was to make a model of a maglev train; a train that levitates on a track due to the attachments of magnets and a magnetic field. This project resulted in constant failure, from making the wrong size of the track and train, the wrong  placements of the magnets, and the constant struggle of failing to get the train to actually float above the track.

Although these challenges were always present and our project seemed to beckon failure, we were able to get through them and learn that when you fall, getting up is always in reach. This message struck me at an even deeper level when I came across a quote on my tea bag the other day, it said, “Fall seven times, get up eight.” I think this quote speaks truthfully about the resilience and determination that comes along with learning to accept and come back from failure.

I also believe that overtime we start to see failure as a motivation for change. The way we recognize failure in our society, eager to advocate for change, helps us recognize our own personal failure and its many forms. Throughout my project I saw failure as a lot of disappointment and shame. I felt as though because of my failure I was not worthy enough to continue in our plans. I felt that because success is such an honorable title, wished to be worn by many, I might not get there. But, after some time I eventually learned that when you fail, being intimidated by your now distorted view of future success does not make any difference. Just because you fail, unknown to success at that moment, does not mean that it does not exist.

Now, to conclude my message about failure and its many forms of inspiration, I leave you with this quote by Thomas Edison-

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”