By Aileen Carrizalez
People tell me I am very different from girls they know and I know it is true because I know I am different. My dad works in construction. He installs tile floors, the decorating of the wall in the kitchen, backsplash and the back of niches, powder walls, vanity splash, and shower walls. Sometimes I work with my dad, and I use many tools that many girls find scary or stuff like that. I don’t find them scary, I find using tools very fun, even though it’s sometimes hard getting them to work or working with them.
A few weeks ago I did the materials module that is under the engineering module and also falls under the construction and fabrications module. For this module we were supposed to create a word using the system of upcycling, and we eventually created the word “ARS”, the initials of my school. I enjoyed this module because I am really interested in engineering and like doing hands on stuff work like I said before. In the module that I did, involved cutting wood out and decorating. Decorating and cutting are things that I really enjoy doing. I really liked the outcome of our project, I created the letters “A” and “S” and my partner did the letter “R”. What I used for my letters was stuff that I had at home. For the letter “A” I used beads, aluminum foil, a CD that I found, and paint. For my other letter, “S,” I used some cardboard and decorated it with glitter. My partner used string for her letter. (Images below)
Next year, for my freshman year I plan to take the engineering pathway. I’m really excited and I know I’m going to have many challenges but, I also now I’m going to have a lot of fun!

Hello, Karla Rodriguez here. For my blog post today I’m going to describe my experience working on the Materials module, or to be more exact, Challenge 2 of that module. Challenge 2 is called Constructed Signage and for this challenge me and my group (Lendy C. and Vanessa M.) had to make a word out of up-cycled materials. (For those who don’t know Up-Cycling means to reuse discarded objects or material in such a way as to create a product of a higher quality or value than the original.) Specifically a character trait of our school Ann Richards. We thought for a long time and came up with the word graceful but since it was too long a word we shortened it to grace.

We decided to use wood from a crate, Styrofoam from a package, and cardboard from a recycled box(thank you Ms. Mathai). Since we used wood we had to also cut the wood to make them look like actual letters, so we used a lot of saws (jig saw, scroll saw, etc.). I really liked cutting out the letters although the cardboard was though to cut and the Styrofoam took forever to actually look like letter. What I really liked about the challenge though was decorating the letters because this part allowed me to get very creative. I especially liked the “R” I decorated because although you can’t really see it, it is decorated by a lot of circles that were cut from book pages and it just looks really cool. We eventually finished and I think we did a pretty good job. I enjoyed the module and I hope that you guys try it out too.

By Astrid Jackson – 7th period

This semester, I have completed the at least the first module of every category: Engineering, Biomed, and Media Tech.

In the engineering modules, we made a bridge made out of toothpicks, a wood sandwich, and a birdhouse. Our bridge was not as successful as we had hoped but we learned a lot from it. I understood more about the mechanics of bridges and how I could improve my bridge. I am always thinking about possible ways to improve my work, even after I turn it in. I know once I submit this blog post I’ll think, “I could’ve used a better word here…” and things like that. Next, we built a wood sandwich to help us get used to the tools and materials in the Makerspace. Finally, we made the right-angle birdhouse. I really enjoyed the birdhouse project. To read more about my experience with the birdhouse, click here: https://arsdesignlab.com/2014/11/04/for-the-birds/

In the media tech modules, we learned how to write an effective blog post and a movie. The purpose of the movie was to show our innovative idea of a spoon that cools your soup (or other hot food) down quickly to the perfect temperature so you can eat it right away. The way we chose to do that was by making a commercial for it. You can see it here: https://drive.google.com/a/annrichardsstars.com/file/d/0ByVKXyOqJ5PgUHpCTUR3b25kWm8/view?usp=sharing  We used a camcorder to film it and iMovie to edit it. I worked with Marlene, Sandy, and McClain (We work really well together, even if it doesn’t exactly seem like it from the blooper reel). I really enjoyed the movie module.

In the biomed module, we made a poster of what we think the future of prevention will look like many years from now. We thought of two ideas: an app and a watch. The app takes pictures and scans you to check for any viruses, infections, that might be where the camera is pointing. For instance, if you feel something wrong with your arm, you could scan it with the app and it will tell you if anything is wrong with it and will suggest the best possible approach to the situation. This can help people not make unnecessary doctors visits and keep you aware of what’s going on in your body. The watch would tell you what diseases are in the area to help prevent the spread of contagious diseases. The “HealthWatch” can help you make healthy decisions about where you go and keeps you aware of your surroundings. These ideas may seem nearly impossible today, but with the right technology, we might be able to make these work.

Overall, the engineering pathway seems the best fit for me. However, I learned something from all of the modules that I can apply to my high school and college years, and even my career when I’m an adult.

PLTW fun 2014 process    –   Emelyn Macias

8th period PLTW

PLTW is one of those classes that brighten up my days. PLTW has been pretty challenging because I’m still not sure what I like, but PLTW has taught me what i’m interested and how to solve problems, For pltw we do modules and they are in categories by the pathway such as Media Tech, Engineering,and Biomed. Since we’re in 8th grade we choose until 9th grader year for high school. I’ve only done Biomed, and Media Tech, I’ve loved both them so far but I haven’t done engineering  for a reason, I’m not looking forward to it for some reason because I don’t like building and engineering  so that’s why I didn’t do engineering. Bio med and media tech has been a really fun experience for me because I’m trying new stuff and I work well with my partners, which really helped me out what I want to do for my pathway

One of the recent modules i’ve done is Mediatech and for media tech we had to film our school, so we took a camera and filmed the school and added some cool effects and edited our video. It was pretty cool seeing how technology has got bigger and how it helps so much. I loved media tech, I first thought it was going to be pretty hard, but I wanted to try something new and I continued more of the modules and it was pretty cool. I love how PLTW has taught me what I really like, and what path way to do. Maybe I do get time I’ll try engeneering if I time for another module

(link for the tour of ARS- Mediatech) In this video we did this for a module that we had to film our school and use the rule of thirds in order to record different angles of the school. The rule of thirds and filing has been super fun, filming has been really interesting.

The materials we used were;

• camera
• apple computer
• -imovie ( for editing )

We only used this and it was such a fun experience. Having PLTW in the Ann Richards Department is such a really big privilege because I can honestly say that PLTW is the best class ever because i’m always learning new things and ways to get better with my mistakes.

By: Darby Buscemi

I would like to start this post off by letting you know that I love art. I’m not the best artist when it comes to drawing and painting but there are other types of art. I love photography and taking pictures. For me, it’s a way of expressing myself and I’ve been using a camera since I was three years old. So I was a bit reluctant to start the intro to photography module because the point of GTT is to introduce us to the other pathways. But I couldn’t help it. I had to because it’s one of the only things that I’m really passionate about. But since I have a lot of background knowledge on the subject, I was expecting the module to be super easy and to breeze right through it. I was wrong.

So first we, my partner and I, had to actually make the camera, which took at least half the week and caused a few burns from the hot glue gun. We had to make a box out of cardboard because we couldn’t find a box that was appropriately sized and we didn’t want to make a cylindrical camera. So after the grueling and tedious task of making the camera, we painted the inside so it did not have any light coming through so it wouldn’t ruin the film. Light + photography paper = ruined photography paper. Then we had to cut a square hole in the camera for a lens. This hole was about 1/4 inch wide. Then we had to put a sheet of aluminum foil over the hole and make a small hole with a needle. This is the lens of the camera. We used a small piece of tape as the shutter so we could open it to take the picture but keep it closed while we were moving the camera.

Next we had to learn how to load the film into the camera with help from our teacher, Ms. Sauter. We would take some photography paper and attach it to the opposite side of the lens, glossy side up, with double sided tape and closed the box and made sure the box was light tight. I would like to let you know that we were doing all this in the dark with only one red light bulb so it was extremely difficult to do this. So finally with the paper loaded we went outside to take the picture.

While outside, we put the camera on the ground so it would be steady because we’d have to have to shutter open a long time. Next we chose something to take a picture of. For our first test we just chose to take the picture of the wall. We opened the shutter and left it open for about two minutes. After the time was up we closed the shutter and brought the camera inside to develop the photo.

To develop the photo we took the camera back into the dark room and turned all the lights off so we could open up the camera. Using only the red light we took the photography paper out of the camera and placed it into the developer for about a minute until the picture has fully developed. Next we put the photo into the water to wash off the developer so we could turn on the lights. The picture turned out a little dark so we tried again but we left the shutter open longer. This time about four minutes. The picture turned out okay but some of the developer had washed up in the water so when we turned the light on the photo got ruined. So we tried one last time, again, leaving the shutter open for about four minutes but this time, after we put the photo in the water, we put it in something called fixer. The photo had to stay in the fixer for twenty minutes but it had turned out good.

Overall this was a really fun module that let me explore different aspects of photography and now I know how to develop a photo. I had a lot of fun and so far this module is my favorite.

I’m in this amazing program called GTT; stands for Gateway to Technology, in this program students make projects or in this case modules to see what pathways would we be interested on going for high school. I have been through a lot of modules in exciting group members and to be honest, my last module was the best of them all.

Module 6 was the last module I did and it was about Engineering. Specified engineering is that we were working on construction and fabrication, and we learned about tools and how to use them. We took a quiz about the new tools we learned and I aced it. Our group was finished with the quiz that was about our module and we all passed it with great grades; they all knew there tools. After we learned the tools to use, we got to use them for our project. Our project was to build a birdhouse and learn how we created the birdhouse. We started off by designing our product and listing what we needed to create it with, it was our design brief so our imagination was spread into paper. Once we did that, we learned how to use the most dangerous tools I’ve ever used in my life, it was a sewing machine. They were all sawing machines and they teached us all about how it was constructed to be safe. It was easy to saw and all that but when you start something new it just makes you think of all the negative things that could happen, and so I just went right to it and didn’t have any problems. Of course other members in my group had to at least try sawing and they all got an equal amount of doing something new. All that cutting was for our woods to be in perfect measurements for our birdhouse, like we arranged them in our design brief. Keep in mind that this work was going progress in different days, the progress wasn’t really all done in one day but we hurried to get things done and just be ready to turn everything in. When we finally got all of our woods for the birdhouse, we now had to put them all together for it to look like a birdhouse. It all seemed great and with tight edges and everything was put together greatly. It didn’t seem really pretty because it was just wood shaped as a birdhouse, and so it had to be painted for it to look creative. I was really not into painting the wood with splinters coming out, and so I was the member that wanted something smooth, so I used a sandpaper to smooth what I could. Finally, we could paint the birdhouse, but what I really liked is how we all got our favorite colors and put them in our product, that was the best part knowing that we all created something useful and pretty. After a few days, the paint was dry and it all looked perfect, now we just need to reflect what we did and think of the great memories building a product for someone who needs it to have a family in it; the birds! So they won’t have to do all that work to make a house for them, when we can make one that everyone would enjoy; the inventors and the birds. Now, someone in our group member had to keep it, and I was sure I wouldn’t use it a lot but the rest of my group thought it was magnificent to have it for them. And I never found out who kept something new that we created in our lives.

~Sophia Niave

The Hour of Code

A thing that we have been doing in GTT is coding. In our class we go went onto a coding website named scratch and animated our name and made a holiday card. We did this because of Monday the eighth of December was the day of a thing called the hour of code where people would go coding on their computers to at least learn the basics.  It was a little fun thing that you could do. Some of us are still using scratch because it’s a very fun website to go on and I encourage you who are reading this to go onto it and try it out. It’s free to signup and you don’t really have to know anything just follow the instructions and you’ll learn it in no time.

-Selena A.

There are a lot of different modules for every pathway. I have done modules in the pathway of media tech. Which include challege one and two of media tech, intro to photography, screen printing, blogging, and videography. Every module has a challenge one and two. Challenge one is an individual project, challenge two is a group project. Each module was different but also similar in a way. I had some favorites that I did this semester and I’m going to tell you them.

The first module was intro into photography. In this module, challenge one was to choose and print a photo that means something to us. I choose a picture about a camera and there were headphones around the camera. I choose this picture because I like music and I also like photography. The second module was to create a pinhole camera. My group and I build the camera out of a pringles can. We covered the inside with black paper and the lid so that no light can escape. Then we made a hole at the bottom so we can take the picture. It was a little hard building the camera, but not as hard as taking a photo. To take the photo, we went to a dark room to load the film. When we came out, we will go to the object that we wanted to take a picture of and place the camera in front of the object. We didn’t take a good picture because we left the hole open for a long time and when we did it again, we left the hole open for a short amount of time. This module was fun and I enjoyed getting to see how people used to take pictures.

The next module was screen printing. The first challenge was to draw a picture of something that is related to the class. I drew a camera because it represented photography. The second challenge was to make a design as a group and print it on to a shirt. The design my group and I made was a walkie talkie. We choose the walkie talkie because it represented communication. We use communication to communicate our ideas to other people or the world. This module was messy and some of the boards to print the pictures on were broken. We didn’t get to print our design because of this but I learned how to put the primer on to the board. Even though we didn’t get to finish, I enjoyed learning how to screen print.

The next module I’ve done is videography. Challenge one was to take a picture using the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds is when you mentally divide up your photo using 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines. Then you position the important object in your scene along those lines, or at the points where they meet. I took a picture of a fire alarm and post it on the discussion board. The second challenge was to create a video about our school using the rule of thirds and a tripod. My group and I went around the school and took videos. When we were done, we went back to the class to edit the videos using a computer. It took some time to get the videos right. But we figured it out and finished it. This module took longer to complete than the others but I had a good time working on it.

These modules had things that I like to do which was why they were my favorite ones. Even though the modules have different things to do, they are similar because they revolve around the pathway of media tech. The modules were a little hard but it was still fun to do them.
– Monserrat Guillen