The Ann Richards School for young women leaders,

dedicates itself to prepare young women to attend

and graduate from college,

commit to a healthy and well balanced lifestyle,

lead with courage and compassion,

and solve problems creatively and ethically,

in support of our global community.

We recite this statement everyday, to remind ourselves what we are meant to do in our time at Ann Richards. In PLTW we had a module named- Videography. The purpose of this module was to capture the mission statement in a video. We didn’t necessarily have to capture the mission statement word by word, it was more about capturing the essence of the school. We captured a lot of good things about the school such as: the author visits, the college center, the cafeteria, the friendships made, the activeness, and the team leadership. The school is filled with so many opportunities, and we decided to catch most of them. This module required imagination, editing and filming skills, compassion, and patience.

For the first challenge, we individually had to look at the rule of thirds and capture an image using the rule of thirds. When we captured our image, we uploaded it to a group discussion, containing other peoples images. After we did this individual challenge, we got together with our group and started brainstorming. Next, we made a storyboard with pictures and descriptions of what scenes and moments we wanted to capture. We were told that we could add in other moments that weren’t necessarily on the storyboard. This part required the most creativity. After this step, we decided to start filming. Filming takes creativity, Filming requires you to play around with the angles of the shots and the lighting. It takes compassion and determination to film a very good film. When we captured all of our short films, it was time to put them together. We went on the Mac’s and uploaded all of our footage to imovie. The next step required a lot of patience, we had to organize the footage and erase the unneeded part. This was the step that required a lot of patience, which I do not have. Luckily, with the help of my team we finished editing and uploaded the video.

Not every film-making experience will go this way, but it will require determination, compassion, patience, leadership, imagination, and creativity.  

My last module what probably the hardest one I’ve done. For all the other modules before it I had chosen media tech, but recently I finished all the the media tech modules, so there was nothing left to do except engineering or biomed. If you know me, (which you probably don’t) you know that I can’t really handle biomedical things. Blood? sure. Guts? I don’t mind seeing a kidney here or there. The part that really gets me is doing ‘hands on’ kind of things, hearts are cool, until I have to hold one. I know that we’re not going to be doing anything that extreme in PLTW, but that isn’t the only reason I didn’t chose that pathway. I also find biomed very boring. So naturally I decided to go down the engineering path, thinking that it wouldn’t be that different from the media tech. I was wrong. Engineering is a lot more technical than media tech. To me, media tech was kind of like ‘alright let’s try this out and if it doesn’t work we can just take it apart and do it again, until we get it right.’ Engineering is more, ‘ take everything into accounting, the measurements have to be perfect because if we screw this up there’s no redos.’ Since this was my first time doing something like this I was kind of intimidated, and I didn’t do too well on my first module, but now I know what to expect for next time, I’ll be prepared this time.

Natalia Vazquez

My experience working with this module was good and you gain knowledge about the materials that you use and see daily in life.

The type of materials that I talk about is  Concrete, Concrete mixing, Lumber, Wood Grain, Plastic, Steel, Gold, Copper, Cork, Aluminum,and Plywood. In our group the challenge one of this module was to pick one material and we choose plastic we had to create a wiki about plastic, on how plastic is made and what can plastic do. Plastic can be melted down and be recycle to form other plastic things like a water bottle. Plastics are made from oil and oil is a carbon-rich raw material and plastics are large carbon-containing compounds. I feel proud by knowing a little more about plastic, and I also think that people should know about more information plastic a material that is use by everyone.

The challenge two was my favorite because you can actually work with materials and I enjoy working with machines. Our group we were to make a inspirational word I thought it was a nice thing to do. The letters had to be of three different materials we used wood for one of our materials in letters we choose “Hope”. I had fun decorating the letters after we were done making them and this was a great creative way of using materials.

In our second module we created an egg beating mechanism. We created this mechanism with by following this design Brief.

                                                                  Client: Top Chef                                                                                                 Problem Statement: create an egg-beating mechanism                                     Design Statement: create a mechanism using 90% vex component          Constraints: 90% vex components, creative, function, uses gears

Our final product was a hand-held portable egg beater. The mechanism was worked by twisting the handle at the speed and in the direction of your choice.

Raymya Hardeman 

“I know building can be hard for some, trust me it was hard for me.”

The module I did was mechanical systems. Mechanical Systems was a module where you had to be creative while learning about gears and what makes them work. For this module I had to choose between three things to make using gears an egg beater, something that can slice a piece food, or turn three separate skewers over a flame. I chose to create and egg beater and with this I learned so much.

Starting off this project was hard because at first I had no prior knowledge to how gears worked and the info about it. I didn’t have a robotics background so it was hard and I wasn’t getting how to make it. So I looked deeper and thought harder and as hard as I thought it was it really wasn’t.

To start this challenge I had to build a gear to see exactly how it works,but once you know how the gears work and how to build them everything else falls into place. So afterwards me and my partners Lily B., Lilly A., and Jazlyn came up with the ideas we decided to try out different ideas. At first not everything worked but after trial and error and gaining tips from others we decided on a complex and yet simple idea.

For the idea we created and egg beater using gears that also has good grips and you can also attach it onto a table or strong platform.

When I finished this project I had a better understanding of what a torque is (a push or pull in a circular direction).  I also understood how the placement or the gears affects the motion and position.