We wonder why there are so many genres of movies in existence. We think of every possible variation and each time we come out with something different. There are movies for every persons tastes, every basic human emotion, every type of character, etc.

Because there are so many ways to tell a story.

With our videography module we tried to craft a film that would vary in a new way. Create a new taste, spark a new emotion, and/or give a peek into the lives of a unique character; the Ann Richards girls. It took more than enough cooperation and teamwork to put all our members ideas onto one storyboard. In the end, we all saw we each had a forte, something new we could bring to this 2 minute film. We dedicated time and effort into something so simple. But that’s how all ideas start. Simple, youthful, with a purpose solely on growing. Until one day, it itches at your mind, pleading to be spread on paper, video, or speech.

Our mission statement interpretation, should give the audience a new perspective. That not everything is universal in the realm of ethics, or preparation, or compassion. We showed our view of these characteristics, shining light on the oppurtunities, the possbilites, the power, a statement or motto gives us.

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.
In other words: we all have a motive that allows us to reveal our perspectives with the world, showing leadership traits to those without a statement to live by. Even with something as simple as a movie.

~McClain D.

Time for us to use our creativity and what we have learned from the past modules. Everyone in the class of 2019 will be creating and original idea that they will make, this will be presented in the Austin Maker Faire. In the past we have been given a module that the teacher has come up with for us to make. What Mrs,Sauter did was do the hardest part for us, she give use the idea. Then, all we had to do is follow the design process and follow the constraints.

This time the entire project is all us. We have to come up with the idea, design it, and then create. The only constraint that we have is for our maker-project to be done before the Maker Faire and be within our budget.

For my maker-project i will be creating an accent piece that will be used for organization. I am a very organized person and everything has its place but finding a place for everything can be difficult. This acts kind of like a shelf where you can place things on top of each other. My design was inspired by a free hanging vanity that I saw online. This 12”x16” piece will have a drawer and a small door to hide things in plain sight. This is so that you can still have everything at an arm’s reach but have them put away.

Notice that I keep saying “them” well I designed this piece to go on the countertop in the bathroom so that you and put hair ties in the drawer, bottles of hairspray and perfume, and anything else you make have. Though, this organizer can also be placed on a desk to place all your office supplies in. There will be an attached cut like space for toothbrushes and that sort of thing, but if you use this for office purposes this would make a great place for pens and pencils. I can’t wait to start the project! 🙂

           If you want to check out the official site of the Maker Fair click http://makerfaire.com/. This is where the official countdown is.

By, Savannah Currey

 

by:Bunmi Oni

Before now, it was like some distant thing,

that may or may not happen.

Like a double rainbow.

But the time has come that we have to actually

talk about it.

And make applications.

Before we only thought of it,

when the teacher brought it up.

But now every time

I walk in the classroom,

everything is a reminder.

A reminder that the time for,

“thinking about it”

has passed.

It is now time for action.

It’s time to work.

To make.

Thus the Maker Project,

came to be quite apparent.

In PLTW class, there are many different ideas we need to learn, that can be very difficult. Many people think that those concepts can be more difficult than some of the hands-on work we do. Personally, I am not really a hands on kind of person. So when me and my group began the Construction and Fabrication Basics module, I knew that this would be a challenge.

For our independant challenge we are currently creating a “Wood Sandwich”. This is two pieces of wood we cut ourselves using the Miser saw. That was the easy part. Next we had to learn how to drill and hammer to connect the wood pieces together. Hammering is not quite as simple as it looks, trust me. I had a very hard time with this seemingly simple task. Next I had to drill a hole, when drill a screw into the wood. Once again, I went in thinking it would be a piece of cake, and then was met with a challenge.

One of my group members is exceptional at hammering, so I had to ask for help on multiple occasions. The key to it as far as I know is to go from the top, angling yourself above the nail to get it in straight. One problem I had was my nail was going in sideways! Nailing it in took much longer than expected, almost 20 minutes for a single one. Even with help, I was still struggling. For the next part of the assignment, all I could do was ask for help to try and pull me through it. We had to first drill a hole, then drill the actual screw in. The hole part was easier, because as long as you put enough force on it you were good to go. But the next part, I had many difficulties. For this section you also had to put a load of force onto the drill, to make sure it goes down. About halfway through, I had to change the batteries in my drill because it was making a ton of weird noises!

After I struggled through these two tasks, I felt very proud of myself. It is very difficult to do this, and I did it! I couldn’t help but be extremely proud of myself. I definitely need some more practice in this activity, but I’m sure that over time I will improve. I think this is a very practical skill to have, so I hope that soon enough I will be able to do it on my own.

Overall, I think this was a really good experience for me. It was good to step out of my comfort zone and what I’m used to, and try something very new. Using hammers and drills definitely isn’t easy, and I now have a huge respect for people who can use them faultlessly. It might sound strange, but when you are doing so badly at something that you’ve seen others do great at, you can’t help but have huge admiration!

-Georgia H.

The last module I did was the materials module. What me and my partner(Catalina) did was first pick out a font that we liked on one of the two links on the haiku page. After that, we had to look for a word that we could write with that font, but not just any word. We had to use empathy, justice, ARS, etc, and we used ARS. What we had to with this project was choose a font, choose a word, then find recycled materials(like old wood, aluminum, plastic, etc) and form the word out of those materials that we found. I forgot the name of the font that Catalina and I found, but we decided to use old styrofoam for all the letters. We wanted to paper mache them after we built them, but first we had to get the letters on bigger paper, so we had them on the whiteboard through the computer and we traced them onto butcher paper. We were going to put a star at the end of ARS but Catalina’s mom accidentally threw it away. Next, we had to build the actual letters, so during class, we cut the letters, and after that we asked Ms.Miesner if she had flour so we could make the paper mache and we got some flour and water to make the paste. We used old newspaper and cut it into strips then dipped them into the paper mache and basically glued them onto the letters. They took a while to dry up but after two days they were finally ready so we could paint them. We painted the letter A white, the letter R dark blue, and the letter S(it was not a Z to those people who thought it was) a light blue. Those didn’t take as long to dry, they were ready overnight, so the next day we took a picture, turned it in, and the last step was to hang it up somewhere in the school. We wanted to hang it up in by the Christmas tree, but it blocked the leaves, so after we spent about an hour hanging it up, we had to take it down. We eventually found a place to hang it, on the other side of the hallway, close to the tree. I had fun doing this module, which seemed easy, but it was harder than I thought. It was pretty fun, but it really got us thinking on how to solve problems(like when the letter A almost fell apart) but other than that, it was fun.

Media Tech

By:Michiah Thomas-Thompson

 

I have been working on Media Tech this whole semester and it has been amazing all the modules I have completed. Media tech has always been something I’ve been interested in. When I was younger, and sometimes still I did/do photography. I also liked filming either myself or vlogging my day as a kid. Clearly they weren’t the best quality because I was so young, but when I was in the moment it was just something I always enjoyed. I also was into technology so I was always wondering how could a camera film? How did a camera take pictures. It was astonishing to me how everything did work and how a camera takes a photo. Still some technology under the category of media tech remains a mystery to me. I plan on choosing the media tech pathway since it has been a part of my life for so long.

 

My favorite module under media tech would have to be videography, because it was fun to do. Taking videos of the school and trying to make it seem so interesting was amazing. Being able to add our own creative touch to the video was different from other schools. Because not many schools allow their students to be as creative as they wished, because those students wouldn’t be as creative as people would hope so.

 

Media Tech was also a module I was able to try new things that I never would have thought to try. For example screen printing was such an experience. Even though it didn’t work out it was so prodigious and different. I feel like being able to take me out of my comfort zone and make me do something i’ve never done or thought of doing is a one in a lifetime opportunity. And being able to experience this at school is also completely different, and I am thankful that we do have a class and a school to support us.

 

Not every child can do what we do, and not every school can have what we have. Even though I might complain about it being stressful trying to do something i’ve never done before in a certain amount of time. But overall being able to do it with my friends and be able to do it in the first place is what I love.

 

Something I would like to do in Media Tech is actually taking photos would be something very fun. Maybe being able to choose what we want to take photographs of would be really cool. But I feel that whatever we do it always is an amazing experience, and the time working on it is worth it once you see the outcome.

 

At the end of the day the media tech module has been amazing, and I am glad I was able to be a part of this whole experience. And be able to attend a school that let’s me be creative and use my creative idea.

“The Ann Richards School for young women leaders dedicates itself to prepare young women to attend and graduate from college, committed to a healthy and well balanced lifestyle lead with courage and compassion and solve problems creatively and ethically to support our global community.”

For this module we had to film several videos that had to follow the idea of our mission statement we filmed many videos and sometimes we had to redo them because our videos would get lost or because the video would be too shaky.

During this module we had to film about 14 videos but only used about eight. We had many different ideas like we filmed the front of the school and show the name of our school for the first part of the mission statement. The second part was a video of ms.Mathai teaching her class and also a 7th grade teacher and her class. The third video was of the college center. The fourth was of the cafeteria followed by the gym and us playing basketball showing the our well balanced lifestyle. We also filmed us helping the community by helping students in our school and donating food for the food drive.

During this module we had some problems like having to redo our videos and being off task we also had to get an extension date for the video. But, besides all of that we worked hard and did a good job in our video.

In PLTW we are in the introduction for the module computer science. In computer science it’s all about your creations. For this project we needed to use the “little bits” computer programs. At first we had to write a venn diagram on our big white board. The way we labeled the venn diagram was simple and complex computers. Things we labeled were camera, television, 3D printer, calculators, keyboards, landlines, etc. Then we handed the assignment in on the Haiku Learning page.
After we did that we looked at our next assignment which was to use the little bits to make an invention that you and your group decided. So me and my group pulled out the box of little bits and looked at the little booklet that told us how to create different things with the little bits. So from there on we started to brainstorm different ideas.
The idea we came up with at first was a night light out of construction paper,but it didn’t work out very well. Then we tried to make it bigger but that didn’t work either. So then we thought of a christmas tree since the holiday’s are coming up. After we finished making our christmas tree we posted it on the ARS instagram account.

http://youtu.be/yaHa3Z_McdU

At our school we have this program called Hour of Code and what we do is we created animation christmas cards and animations with our names spelt out. Now we are deciding what we want to do for our maker projects. So I’m thinking of making an invention that uses our laser cutter in our class it just seems like a fun idea. The thing that I didn’t like was when I was little I could come up with the best ideas for inventions and wonder why no one had thought of them yet but I guess the thing is the older you get the more complicated it gets because you have to worry more about the effects that your invention might cause the good or bad , the the budgets, etc. When I was a kid I thought you could do whatever ,stick with it and ask a ,magic fairy to help me make it. Something I am looking forward to is the maker project and we are making these little wood ornament things on illustrator but I am really excited!

The  most recent module that my group and I did was videography. While working on this we had a good learning experince with making videos. I thought this module was going to be much harder than it was. But it was way easier than I expected. My experience with this module was not to bad or should say terrible, but not the best either. The group had some difficulties, mainly due to the absence of members, but other than that we had so much fun working with one another. I think if we could redo this whole thing, this video would be much better than it is now.

Araveea W

   Engineering- Upcycling

Hello. This is Lily B. here to tell you about my experience with upcycling.

Our group started off with making our upcycled word saying “c’est la vie”- French for thats just life, but later realized that our upcycling word is supposed to describe an Ann Richards Girl. Thankfully our group wasn’t too far into our module, only completing the “a” of “c’est la vie”, we were able to immediately change it to ARS. Although we endured a set-back we were able to complete an awesome, upcycled project.

Materials Used:

• plywood

• cut-up CD pieces

• paint

• nails

• paint

• covered cork material

• wood glue

• band saw

BIGGEST CHALLENGE:

i believe our biggest challenge was maneuvering the band saw to create the shape an “s”. To make this process easier we chose to cut lines into the sharpie outline of the  “s”. then twist the wood to create cures and later sanded the serrated edges. the second challenge was arranging the nails perfectly from each other. Since we were all too lazy to get a ruler to do this we used a piece of string, which worked, but could’ve been easier had we used a ruler. The last challenge was tying the string around the nails.  since we were using different colors we had to tie the next color to the old, and many times the string would untie, so in conclusion i’d say this module takes patients.

Maker Faire Connection:

this module really inspires ideas for our upcoming makersfair. It encourages things like thinking outside of the box and creating things with electric saws, along with more complicated/intricate designs.