Photography has much more to it than you’d expect. The cameras nowadays are just a click or a snap away, then you’ve got a picture. In the past, you had to do a lot of things to get a photo, much less a decent one. For example, the pinhole camera. The pinhole camera works by the light from outside coming into this small hole into a dark space, and the image appears in the back of the dark space. In class I had made a pinhole camera with a group, and the steps seemed simple, but weren’t. All we had to do was take a pringles can, make it completely dark inside, make a hole at the bottom (two holes actually, one large and one small) put some special photographic paper, and take the photo. Taking the photo was just exposing the photographic paper to the light. Lastly we had to dip the photo in some chemicals to make the picture stay on. I never realized how many different ways there was to taking photos.

What I am currently working on is screen printing. This is when you take a drawing and put it on tee shirts, posters, anything really. The first step was coming up with what you wanted to print. We chose to do a design of a walkie-talkie saying “I got you bro”. We chose this to show how we rely on technology. Once you’ve chosen a design, you have to print it onto transparent paper. Next you have to get a screen, cover one side in emulsion. After coating it, we had to put the screens in a dark place to dry. So far, these are the only steps we have gotten to, but I can share the next steps also. Next, you put the transparency on top of the screen. expose the screen for a while(about 3-4 minutes). Next you wash out the emulsion, and see if the picture turned out right. You can tell by being able to see the design imprint on the screen easily. Lastly, put the screen on your choice of object (we are doing tee shirts) and slide inc across the surface lightly once, then again applying pressure. Tada! You’ve got your very own tee shirt! I am really excited to see how my tee shirt comes out, and hopefully I can wear it over and over again.

 

~Elayna

Biomedical Pathway

by Melanie Arce

The biomedical pathway is important to the society because we are here to help people make lives easier. Going into the biomedical field is a lot of responsibility and a lot of hard work, for example being a surgeon is a challenging job because your top priority is to satisfy your client/patient but at the same time you can not mess up because there is no going back. The biomedical field might sound boring and uninteresting to work in but its actually interesting and you learn a lot of stuff. When my group worked on the prosthetics module, I learned that it actually takes a process of time to make and you cannot just build a prosthetic right away, you have to think out of the box and be creative in order for your prosthetic to work. There is a lot to learn from the biomedical pathway and its a great pathway.

When you think of the word, “biomedical jobs”, you might probably think of the jobs as a nurse, doctor, surgeon, and etc. Those are not the only jobs in the biomedical field, there’s biomedical electrical technician, biomed engineering, biomedical design engineer, and etc. There’s a lot of jobs in the biomedical field and with a little bit of research, you might just find your dream job.

I choose biomedical as my pathway because I plan to be a nurse that helps/works with children in need. I plan to save children’s lives and help them to the end. I want to help make people’s lives easier and better and I want to watch people succeed in fighting diseases, cancer, and etc.

For the different modules that we are assigned to do in pltw, we work in teams of three or four. We have one assignment that is independent, but the main assignment per module is done with our group. Working in a group is similar to working in an office in many ways. Working in a group is sometimes easier than working by yourself because hearing other people’s ideas can sometimes help you come up with ideas of your own. I’m not saying that everything that you do should be worked on in a group but it’s a good skill to be able to work with others. When you are older you are going to need to brainstorm ideas for the company that you work for and it would be really hard to get a final product if you aren’t used to communicating with others to get your idea across. Personally, I prefer to work in a group because I find it easier to get the work done, and the idea and concept turns out better.  Sometimes we don’t know the people that are in our groups as well but we learn to still get the work done. When you are older you will not know everyone that you work with. You may not know anyone when you join, but you are still required to do your job and complete the task you are given. Plus, you may not like everyone that you work with or everyone’s ideas all the time.  So learning how to cooperate with people you may prefer not to interact with is a good skill to have. To choose our groups, we first split up into groups based off of the module that we are interested in doing. Then once we decided what we want to do next we get into a group with the other people that have the same interest in a topic. Working in groups teaches you how to compromise. You learn how to turn downs ideas and how to convince others that your suggestions may be better. Group work sometimes requires that you divide the work and group work teaches you to be responsible for doing your part. You also learn to resolve disagreements. Once we get in our groups and we complete the individual challenge. The last module my group did was Media Tech. The group challenge was to create a video of an idea to improve technology. My group came up with an idea of fingerprint security where you can unlock your house door by just scanning your fingerprint. Our video was a Draw my Life theme in the sense that we used a whiteboard to draw out our ideas. All these are good skills we will take into our jobs in the future. Teamwork and leadership are good skills to have at school and in the world of work.

-Nicole R.

Project Lead The Way!                                                          Emelyn Macias

 

Pltw stands for Project Lead The Way, I can for sure tell you the pltw has changed my life in many different ways. Pltw made me try new things I’d never see myself doing, think beyond I’d ever think, and learn more about my interests! Now that it’s 8th grade year it’s time to think about our pathway for high school, I’m glad Pltw is a part of my school because it’s helped me learn about the pathway choices we have. Media Tech, Biomed, and Engineering are our high school pathway, We have the decision to choose one of the three pathways. In pltw we do “modules”, each module has to do one of our pathways which helps learn a little bit about our high school pathways.

One of my favorite module is mediatech. Mediatech is so cool! I love it because its perfect for me because I love solving things, I never saw myself interested in mediatech but its always good to try new things! That’s when I clicked to the mediatech module (photography) we were assigned to do a pinhole camera we basically created a camera using the following materials-

-wax paper

-scissors

-aluminum foil

-thumb tacks

-masking tape

-a can

-cylindrical vessel

-utility knife

For this module we cut a can out and painted it black from the inside so it would be darker and it would be better for us to capture the picture when we’re in the dark room to see the picture we took so it would appear in the wax paper.

 

I also did a biomed module where we researched hiv, aids, cancer, and diabetes which are incurable and we researched medicine that would help people from getting all of these. We researched how doctors would have a cure in about more than 20 years, such as shots, medicine, and pills for people.

Pltw is such a great opportunity here at Ann Richards, because it helps us know our interests and gets us ready for highschool. Pltw has helped me so many ways, and its so important to me because ARS gets the opportunity to have this program and especially because I’m a girl we think beyond average!

There are three different pathways. They are very different from each other. The pathways are media tech, engineering, and biomed. In this class, each of the pathways have different modules that get us prepared for deciding which pathway we are going to choose for next year. For example, media tech has photography and engineering has mechanical systems. I am interested in going into the pathway of media tech because I like to do things that involve a camera like photography or film. The other pathways are interesting too, but I like media tech better.
The engineering pathway gets people interested into becoming engineers. Engineering is the designing and building of things we use everyday. Engineers basically formed our society. There are many different types of engineering like mechanical engineering and civil engineering. Mechanical systems is one of the modules of this pathway. It gets us learning about automation and robotics. I haven’t done this module, but it seems really fun.
The media tech pathway is for people who consider themselves visual learnerz and for anybody who likes technology. This pathway helps us communicate our ideas of to the world. As media technology advances, some of our daily tasks will become easier to do. We will have information available that we can use to help us.
In the module of Intro to photography, we learned about cameras and how many years ago people had to do all of work to take a decent picture. They had to load a film and make sure the camera was focused. The camera was big and it was lots of work to use. If you did something wrong you had to start over.
I’m glad that our technology advanced because its really easy to take a photo now, we just snap a picture with our phone or camera. In Intro to Photography we got to make a pinhole camera. The pinhole camera is not that hard to make but to take a picture, thats a different story. We have to go to a dark room to load the film and then we expose the film to light to take a picture. We tried to do it but on the first try we let too much light in and on the second one we let a little bit of light in. We still haven’t made a picture, but Ms. Sauter said our camera was the best one.
The last pathway is bio med, which is short for biomedical science. This pathway gets people prepared to go into the field of medicine. Science is improving everyday and this is good because then we can someday find a cure for almost every sickness there is. Simulations and bioengineering is one of the modules for this pathway. In this module we are going to learn about how scientists are using simulation to enhance medicine through bioengineering. Simulations are helpful because they allow use of a quick model of a situation that could occur, and biomedical engineers can collect data on the outcome. Simulations are used for a lot of things and biomedical engineers are using simulations to help solve health problems and increase the quality of medical care. I’m not really interested in becoming a nurse or a doctor but the general topic of biomedical is interesting to learn about.
When I go to high school I want to be in media tech. The pathways are different from each other but they have some similarities. They all revolve around some kind of technology and they are all part of creating a new and advanced world. The part of the world I want to know more about is media tech. Look for me in the movies!

– Monserrat Guillen

Hey you guys! How’s it going?

I wanted to talk to you all about the last module I did. The last module that I did was the Biomedical Science module. Our challenge was to come up with an answer for the question, “What will the doctor’s office or hospital of tomorrow look like?” My group members and I (Catalina, Bonnie, Kayla, and Zoë) were trying to come up with ideas that we thought a hospital would provide, medical wise. Catalina came up with an idea that hospitals would provide a Bone Marrow/Organ printer. That way, instead of people waiting for a perfect match for organs or things like that, they could just have a person just print out any organ that they would need. Another idea we had was Bonnie`s idea. Her idea was to make a “finger scanner” which provides you with the right amount of medicine, any type of medicine, if you put your finger on the scanner. The scanner would be pocket sized and easy to use. One last idea we had was Zoë`s idea. It was to put a chip or scanner thing on a car that would scan the person to see if that person has drugs or alcohol of any kind in their inside of them. If they did then the car would not turn on. Next, we had to put all of those ideas onto a poster. We put all of those ideas down, we put what the object would do, and then we put a picture of the object on the bottom. All of us contributed to the poster and at the end, it looked awesome. Our teacher, Ms.Sauter, showed us an app on how to put little pictures on the drawings and you could only see them through something that you scan it with.  We put pictures of what we thought the real thing would look like in the future. Afterwards, we had to put up our work up on the wall so that people could see our ideas, and they could scan the pictures with their phones, iPad, etc. Then they could see how the future hospitals would provide those things. Another part of our assignment was to ask a person (they could NOT be part of our group) if we could take a video of them reading our poster out loud and then using the poster. Basically just scanning the pictures with her phone. We asked Prisila if she could do this and she said yes. We made the video, said thank you, took a picture of the poster, and all of us turned that in. I really liked that module because it was really fun. It was cool getting to make those pictures get scanned and then have those other pictures appear. I guess I liked it so much because I like to help people a lot and with these objects, there would be a great difference for a lot of people and more safety for them too. It would help a lot of people solve problems like drunk driving, or figuring out how much medicine to take, or waiting years for an organ that people really need. I am glad to know that a lot of people will be helped in the future if they really make these things soon. It will really make a difference.

-Lucero P.

These past six weeks my partners and I have been choosing the engineering pathway. In engineering you build your ideas. We started with the Design Process. The Design Process is a procedure that you go through where you have a problem and you have to come up with a solution. For my first independent Design Process Project I had to create a picture that had the different steps in the Design process. Then, we did our challenge two project. We got together with our groups and had to create a fake design that we drew it our journals to help a stuck cat get out of a hole.

This is a picture of a Design brief and the Drawings of the first two projects. Basically a table of who’s idea was better and which module the group likes more.

Then, we moved into the third project. This was so fun to create! We made speakers out of cups and different materials!

These were the materials we used for this project:

-A napkin roll

-Duck Tape

-Plastic cups

-Paper

-Hot glue gun

We also just finished a project called Construction & Fabrication basis. We made a wood sandwich and I know that sounds weird but, it really wasn’t. To be honest it was my first time that I had actually had really dealt with tools. It was quite fun! We got to see the different tools that we would be using for the year! (at least most of them)

I have recently finished the Construction and Fabrication Basics Module, in which we designed and built a birdhouse. It’s actually not as hard as you would think, but designing it is the most important part of this project! That’s why i’m here to talk to you about it.

 

The first thing You need to think about is how you want your birdhouse to look like, and what your purpose is for it. If it’s for decoration, it be can pretty small, but if you want an actual bird in there, you need  to make it much larger. If you want a birdhouse for a bird think about it like this:

If you were as small as a bird, what kind of house would you want? Probably not one with no shelves, because you need a place to store your eggs. Probably not a place with tight spaces, because they will need space to fly. And definitely a place with holes, since holes are pretty much doors for birds (no hands obviously).

 

If it’s for decoration, then making the appearance is all up to you. But if you are making a house for a bird, think of how birds naturally live, and what they would look for in a home. If you’re one of of those people who observes birds, and wants a specific bird living there, you would have to do the research yourself for what attracts that specific bird.

 

Finally, once you have your design, make a rough sketch of what you want it to look like. Be specific and use measurements. They help immensely. To be sure, try adding up your side on both sides, and seeing if they match up. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready to build!

 

~Bunmi Oni

Hello people of the internet! Our school is a middle school and highschool combined. In highschool you are supposed to be in a pathway. There are 3 pathways: engineering, biomedical, and media tech.
Before experimenting with different modules, and finding personal connections to different pathways that I would like to persue in the future, I was very hesitant about the 3 pathways. I didn’t know which one was for me, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I was very confused.
Working on these modules I learned some things about myself. The first module I worked on was the biomedical module, and I had a lot of fun working on it! It was very interesting learning all of this new information and learning how technology has gotten us so far in the medical field! I love helping people and I have my mind set on becoming a psychiatrist. While working on this module I realized this was a pathway I should keep in mind. My second module was blogging and the one I’m working on now is the engineering module. The blogging module was nice but I felt as if it wasn’t for me. I have just begun the engineering module, so far everything has been great, but there’s not much to talk about at the moment since I just barely started it, but I really enjoyed being able to express my ideas and creativity!

Anyways, I hoped you enjoyed reading this!

Everyone loves a comeback.

I’m back, hi! Right now I’m doing the (pretty awesome) Computer Automated Drafting Module. Sounds fancy, and kind of is. We’re doing technical drawings and working with everyone’s favourite program, Autodesk Inventor. When we were all in 7th grade, we used Inventor a lot. Now we’re getting back on, and I have forgotten a lot about how it works. It’s very nostalgic.

Also, Inventor is only on the laptops, which are few and far between. It’s rather annoying, as everyone loves the laptops and will make a mad dash to get one. It doesn’t matter if you need it. You want the laptop, you get the laptop. First come first serve.

The CAD module should be a quick one. Some of the girls in my group are already finished with it. I’m not because I needed to get caught up, and that’s because I’m failing the class, alas. But I’ll come up. I can do it. The power is within me!

But anyways, things are looking up. There are no toothpicks to worry about, and that’s great, because those little rascals are never around when you need them. That sounded really weird. Sorry.

I’m not quite sure which module I want to do next… I’m leaning towards Photography, because I really want to screenprint. I want to make a T-Shirt! 😀

Bye for now, Avery :3