The start of a new beginning

I can honestly say this was not only the longest project I've been involved in but also the most significant.  I feel like project gave me and my group members a chance analyze the problems we have at this school and take matters into our own hands by finding a way to fix it.  The entire process hasn't been a smooth path at all.  We had many problems we had to overcome but in the end everything eventually worked to our advantage.
The things that went well with our project was that we were all willing to put in extra hours to work on our project.  Max and I went in a lot during our free periods to deploy our final project on time.  While Jo and Kipa worked on the draft.  In the end everything came together.  Another thing that worked well was that we were mostly on the same page.  We knew what we had to do for the day and we knew what we needed to accomplish and I think that was the main thing that kept our group on task.  The best part about this project was definitely looking at our final project and thinking, "holy moly we made that!!"
The hardest or most challenging part of this project that didnt go as we wanted would probably have to be getting approval.  We had to wait on Mrs. Martin and Mr. Massad for approval.  If we got their approval on time I think we would have deployed our prototype on time.  But you know everything must happen for a reason.  You never know what could have happened if the bench was deployed earlier.... I am very proud of my group for not giving up when all we could do during class time was wait.
I learned from this project the value of patience.  Throughout this entire project we had to be patient whether it was from waiting to get approval or waiting for the blue paint on our bench to try.  Im glad that everything turned out great though.  I also learned that this could actually be a foundation for bigger and better projects.  This could actually be a start to a new beginning for Konia Field.  If I could change anything with our project I would actually ask for a larger time frame.  I feel like a quarter wasnt enough time at all.  The deadlines for a lot of the assignments were really close and I felt like we hardly had time relax and sit in the glory that another task was finished.
If I were to be honest I really didnt think that we were doing science because we had a really hard time explaining the physics portion of our assignment.  Which ironically should have been the easiest part because we are in a physics class.  But all in all I had a great time doing this project.  Through the ups and down of this project the entire time I knew that the group would always be there by my side every step of the way.

Crossing the finish line

I have to admit that I did a lot to my team by asking them to present first, but even with that pressure we did well. Sure, our time limit was well broken, but I can continue to be positive by saying that at least we got every detail in ^ ^. Personally, I'm glad I had a lot of speaking time during the symposium because early in the project I let my group know that public speaking was my strength. My dad even commented to me that he found our presentation entertaining, mostly because he could tell how nervous I was (Thanks Daddy -_-‘) Afterwards, however, when I showed him the actual bench for him to see in person, his opinion about the entire project as a whole changed. He seemed thoroughly impressed by the craftsmanship of it, and was a little saddened by the fact that someone had already done the devils deed of vandalizing the bench.
Unfortunately, I too am at fault for my missing role in the completion of the final paper, because even if Nicole, Taylor, and Max tried to contact me, I could’ve done more to contact them and meet them halfway. I trust that their work is much more then enough to earn full credit on the assignment.
Over the course of the project, stress was high, and as I in stated in the title ‘cross the finish line’, I feel as if all the weight of that stress is melting away. It’s also a very satisfying feeling to know that your project is truly making a difference in the school. Thanks to Max and Nicole, construction was very successful despite it not being done on time, but not everything can be perfect, right?
Speaking of that, there are many things that went wrong. Take for example the mistaken impression of our bench being a table, and the later vandalism that was present. If there is anything about the project I’d improve, it’d be to allow more time for students to work, and finding a way to ease the process of gaining administration approval. The time at which the symposium is could also be changed…for some, it’s difficult to make it to a night performance.
A lot of the things I gained from this project doesn’t involve science. More so, they’re skills for life. You might consider that successful even though since as said by Mr. Blake, that was what he was aiming for. The biggest skill I have practiced and gotten better at with the Ho’o’ulu is Kamehameha project is working with a team. Truthfully, I’d much rather work alone, and sometimes have a hard time being flexible with opposing opinions to my own. Because of the environment this project has placed me in where I was forced to work with a team, I was forced to discipline myself to accept other’s ideas better and be flexible. On a lighter note, I couldn’t have asked for a better team to work with during this project, and am smiling at the thought that we really did it….that we helped move just that bit closer to changing our school.

Breathe in the sweet smell of success

Finally, the weight of Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha is off of my shoulders and I can finally look back at everything and pat myself as well as my group members on the shoulder. We did a great thing. We actually contributed something to Kamehameha Schools, even if it is just a bench as Mr. Blake so kindly pointed out, that is used on a daily basis and is rather successful. I'd love to see this turn into a class. I think that encouraging such "out of the box" thinking should be implemented into every class. Part of being successful and innovative in life comes from being creative, which is something Kamehameha does not strive to teach.

I am proud of our final project. The portion that went extremely well was most definitely the construction phase and the presentation. Although we went "grossly" over the allotted time period, I got a lot of encouraging praises that our overall oral presentation was very detailed. The success of our bench came from the precise construction that me and nicole executed quite well. We knew that in order for the bench to not only look good but stand on its own 4 feet, it needed to be exact. With this in mind, we cut no corners and made sure that everything was done correctly, by checking and then double checking. The result was a damn sturdy bench! The polishing was definitely a success as well. Jo did an excellent job painting and installing the plexi-glass. I couldn't have done a better job.

A lot of things didn't go according to plan. Ms. Martin contacted us weeks after we would have wanted. Administration took forever to approve our project. I had to leave our group at a very crucial time in our completion phase. Not only that, but a lot when wrong in the construction process. For example, I had bought square head screws instead of cross-haired screws. The impact could only drill in cross-haired screws. A couple times, nicole and I had misunderstandings and she ended up drilling the wrong holes into the wood. Another huge unexpected event was going over our presentation allotted time by 15 minutes. I learned that a lot of things can go wrong and the best way to brace yourself for mistakes and errors is to be flexible and find ways to use them to your advantage.

To improve the project for next time, I would recommend allowing perhaps a semester to execute the entire project. The time frame seemed rather rushed and was nearly impossible for groups to finish on the given deadlines. I would also recommend starting the oral presentation portion early in the day, or perhaps put it on a Saturday morning to avoid any late nights (if a group happens to go over their time by 20min!). Other than that I really enjoyed the project and cannot think of any other improvements.

I learned a lot from this project, not really pertaining to physics, but to life. I learned the necessary "friend making" skills that are crucial to working successfully in groups in businesses. I learned how to communicate to important people and how to communicate effectively to my peers. I even learned that sometimes being "the nice guy" puts too much weight on your shoulders. If you want work distributed evenly, then you have to lay down the law and make others pull their weight. I also learned how hard it is to construct such a simple piece of furniture, which before this project I took for granted. I'll always remember to treat such objects with more respect, because they are products of someone's hard work and dedication.

To be honest, Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha did not feel like science at all. In fact, it felt more like Speech/Woods/English. When relating our project to physics, I knew that we were partially lying our way to a physics related solution. I knew that friction had little to nothing important to do with the project. Anybody, who has no knowledge of physics would know that sanding something down smooths it out. It doesn't take an understanding of physics to get the job done. It takes an understanding of physics to realize why it gets the job done. I felt that we should have picked a problem that had more physics related solutions, like the ID group and even the 5 minute warning bell group. Even so, I'm extremely happy with what my group and I accomplished.

Sailing Into the Sunset

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This weekend was one full of accomplishment and happiness. On Friday, Kipa had to go to her boyfriend's graduation, which made our group be the first to present. Because of this, we were scrambling to practice and calm our nerves, which wasn't enough. Even though we rehearsed and timed ourselves, we still went over the time limit which overall resulted in a B+ for the final exam. This sense of disappointment is fueling our desire to make our final draft of the final paper a 100/100. I was in charge of getting the binder that will shelter the two copies Nicole and Max will edit and print. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a hold of Kipa, so she didn't contribute in the final touches of our paper. But once we are done with this paper, all we have to do are the final posts and the peer review and we are free sailing into the sunset!

Final Words...

Have you ever had that endless feeling of accomplishment that just makes you want to jump up and down for 5 minutes strait, and, even though you had the same amount of energy in the ending as you did in the beginning, it still wasn’t enough? Well that is exactly how I feel with this project, and let me tell you why…

At first I thought this project was going to be a piece of cake. I thought all you have to do is find a small problem, and do some calculations, and solve it using physics. At the most, I thought I was going to put in about a few hours of work to create a solution. But I was wrong.

After really taking the time to think about what Ho’oulu ia Kamehameha was really meant to do, I realized that we aren’t writing a report or doing a project that we can just forget about after we are through, but, rather, we were making a physical or tangible change to our school that will be seen by administration and the student body. After deciding that we were going to make a bench, I realized that REAL people will sit on the bench – REAL PEOPLE who will judge, vandalize, and sit on the bench.

I thought it was phenomenal what Mr. Blake was doing. He managed to disguise using necessary skills for the future, such as teamwork, time management, communication, problem solving, creativity, and presentation, in a project that also helped to make Kamehameha a better place. He also disguised using physics in our project because most of us didn’t even know how to incorporate physics at the time of thinking of our project.

I really thought that beginning of construction went well because all of the team members were present, and we had a set process of doing work: Max, Nicole, and I went in during our free periods to work together and get the bench done ASAP. However, the road became bumpy after Max left. At that time, we finished constructing the bench and began the polishing process. Unfortunately, all the free periods I had didn’t overlap with Nicole and Kipa’s, so I felt the need to go in on my own and do majority of the work. I felt so pressed for time that I had to ask some of my friends for help. Even if this didn’t go as planned, this project was still a success because the good times weighed out the bad.

The good thing was that we pulled off a pretty good presentation, but even after having a few timed group practices; we still went over the time limit – “grossly” over the time limit. But in our presentation, we got to express how the final product was a success. The bench looked pretty darn nice, if I may say so myself. And after all that hard work, I hoped it would look exactly that. We put a lot of hard work into this project, whether it was depending on each other to do daily blog posts to writing a 10-page report. And even if there were a lot of rough times, for example, when someone didn’t turn in the presentation or did a blog post on time, the project was worth it because it gave us a taste of what the real world is going to be like.

This project is a revelation, and I hope that one day it will be turned into a separate class instead of a physics project. This class could pull in concepts learned from math, English, and science, and at the same time, teach you how to communicate with others. Other than life skills, it could possibly teach you other skills, as I learned how to use a drill, how to paint, how to use an impact, and how to use an electric sander. I think it will be better if the class raises money somehow to serve as an additional fund for the project. But other than that, this gave me a taste of real life, and gave me an upper hand for the future because I have all of this experience to help me.

Today is the BIG DAY

I can tell that everyone in my physics class is nervous for tonight. Tonight is the day of final presentation. The portion of the project that everyone has been dreading for the entire quarter. I thought that we would have more time to prepare for our speech, but honestly, we just finished implementing our project. Our group still has some final details to touch up on and a lot of stuff to plan out and clarify for tonight. We are planning on doing a few complete run-throughs after school today. I am hoping that our professional attire along with our charismatic voices and beautiful powerpoint, we will finish our project off to the best of our abilities. I am hoping that as the first group, we will set the bar high and be able to enjoy everyone else's presentations after ours is completed. I MUA!

Nerves?

With the final days of school approaching the pressure to complete all of the work and study for finals are upon us.  Our final speech is tomorrow and I personally have a bundle of nerves in my stomach.  Our game plan for tomorrow is to go over our speaking parts during our original physics period and sometime between the time school ends and before our performance we are going to do a final run through. We are going to look very professional by wearing an all black attire.  I feel like we all just want this project to end because we spent countless hours working on this project and we are sufficiently proud of the outcome.  I am glad that my group has came through during crucial times wether its pulling together a detailed design on time or spending extra time in the wood shop to finish our bench on time.  In the end I can honestly it was all worth it :)

Final Paper

Above is a part of the title page to our final paper, which is the process of being written. Our final paper will consist of the many different components that made this project possible. However, with this, comes a great responsibility on my part because I am the one responsible for writing the final paper. Our group was quite strategic: Max and Nicole were responsible for building the bench, I was responsible for writing the paper and doing the finishing touches, and Kipa was responsible for taking pictures and doing the presentation. Writing the paper was a lot harder than I thought it would be. The struggle consisted mostly of trying to capture all of the problems we encountered and their solutions. However, with time and a lot of effort, I will hopefully be able to execute a great paper so that it can travel along side our I Mua bench on the road to success.

Team Work

Its great when you can truly count on others to accomplish such great things. That is one of the many joys that accompanies teamwork. I experienced this feeling twice this weekend. I left school last week Tuesday for the mens volleyball state tournament with a complete bench finished. It was ugly and very raw, but definitely served its purpose. I left feeling accomplished with myself and my groups progress. Little did I know that when I returned home this weekend and to school today, I'd be welcomed very warmly by my group and a beautiful, complete bench.

I was so impressed by the work that my group did while I was gone. Jo and Nicole spent a lot of time painting the bench, sanding it down, stenciling out I MUA, painting I MUA, and installing a plexi-glass finish on the bench's seat. The final product is definitely something to be proud of. I am optimistic from this small project that Kamehameha Schools can definitely be changed for the better.

I MUA!!!

We have liftoff!

I cannot stress the joy and relief that comes with the successful actual implementation of our bench. Not only is it finished, but its gorgeous! It's painted a lovely IMUA blue color, along with the words Imua on top. If there's anything left to do with the actual bench, it's to employ some kind of flyer to educate the student bout it. Some sources have notified me that students are actually mistaking the bench for a table! The hope that with this flyer, confusions like these will eliminate. Being my job, I plan to put up the flyers on Monday when I return to school. Hopefully they'll be not only attention catching, but informative.

(Oh! And on a little side note...Congrats to Max, seen in the picture above, for being apart of the State Championship Volleyball Team!!!! :D)

Finally!

Yesterday, Thursday, May 12, 2011, 11:55 a.m., our bench was finally in place. This past tuesday I e-mailed Mr. Robert Ramsey of the Physical Plant Department, asking humbly for permission to place the bench right in front of Midkiff and under the tree. After receiving his approval yesterday (Thursday), I went to the tech building at the beginning of the first lunch period to the end of the 2nd. Wednesday after noon, my friend Pua and I painted "I mua" on the top of the bench using card stock stencil. The next morning (Thursday morning) I went to tech building to pick up the bench and take it to Konia, when to my surprise, the card stock had dried and was stuck to the paint on the bench. That morning, Andy, Mr. Massad, and I spent time scraping off the paper and re-painting the "I mua."

When the afternoon came rolling by, I went back down tech building during the lunch periods and Mr. Massad recommended putting plexy glass on the bench to make sure that the rain wouldn't ruin the top part of the bench. Mr. Massad and Mr. J did all the work with the plexy glass, except sanding down the edges: Pua and I were good for that.

After all the hard work, we are done... finally!

Sacrifices must be made

Today is the day we are supposed to be implementing our projects for the world to see.  Our progress on our bench is going really well.  Yesterday Jo painted the entire bench so that today we could put on a second coat on during 6th period.  I had somewhat of a mishap with the painting process.  I completely stained my beautiful Saint Louis University jacket. :( It was horrible but I realized that sacrifices must be made.  Today during 8th period Jo is going to paint I mua on the bench to show some school spirit.  I believe that our bench came out great and I can honestly say I didnt think it would be this sturdy.  I am proud of my entire group and I am so glad that the building process is almost completed.  The next step for us is to continue working on our final presentation and paper.

Lord help us.

The completion of our bench is so close, I can taste it. From my last post were there was simply a base with support beams attached at the side, there is now all support beams, and the actual sitting piece on top aligned where we intend to put in screws. Even being so near the end, we continue to encounter problems. Just a few days ago, our biggest problem was with the screws for connecting the seating piece. Being made to fit a square head bit on a drill, it was impossible to drill in when we tried to use a Phillip drill piece. Fortunately as I've just been informed, new screws were used to finish the job. With all this progress, I continue to look forward because even with construction over there is still quite a lot to do. Some of the tasks still remaining on the to-do list include our Oral Presentation, and Final Report. They're both really big grades to this project.

Drill! Sand! Puddy!

We've gotten so much accomplished!

Today during 8th period Max finished drilling together the support system of the bench. During 6th period, our group walked up to Mr. Blake's class to get the second plank of wood for the seat because the first was cut too small. We also spent time taking pictures and talking to Mr. J about what we had to do next. By the end of 6th period, we realized that we were more than three quarters done with the race. However, the last quarter the race will be one of the most difficult because Max and Nicole are leaving for the volleyball state's game for the rest of the week, meaning that we will be two group member less.

Most likely, the last leg of this race against time will be done by me.

Contributing as much as I could to the project, I stayed in during 4th and 2nd period to get as much of it done. But there was one pr

oblem: I had never done wood shop...in my life.

Thankfully, I had Mr. Massad, Mr. J, and Mr. Kondo there to help me.

They gave me screws to replace the faulty ones we had and helped me put in the screws to attach the seat to the support.

I also used the rounder and the electric sander to round the edges so that people wouldn't get cut or get splinters. After, Mr. Massad gave me puddy to use so that I could fill in the holes and cracks on the seat of the bench. After doing all that work, I realized all we have to do next is sand down the puddy and paint the bench! The finish line is finally in sight, and by tomorrow, the bench should be completed!

Paint!

After laboring over constructing the bench for many days, we can finally see an end in sight. We finished most of the bench, but we still need to put on the seat and the seat's support. The seat will be made up of a plank of wood and the support will be made of a piece of wood that will span across the bottom of the seat. After we complete making the bench, we have to paint it. Mr. Massad recommended using exterior paint because it will withstand the weather. We wanted to paint the bench blue to represent our school colors.

It's like hitting the glowing acceleration arrow in Super Mario Cart

I was very impressed with the progress our two builders (Max and Nicole) today. Unfortunately because I've never worked in woodshop at Kamehameha schools before this, I'm not allowed to do any actually building in it. The same is for Taylor. Not wanting to do nothing for this project, I volunteered myself as the camera person and specifically followed the two builders down to Hale Koa to watch what they were doing and document it by means of pictures. Their flawless team work ended up progressing the bench from just pieces of woods with holes in them into a sturdy base with a pair of support beams on the sides as seen in the picture below.

Hence the title, it's as if we've hit a speed boost or power up. Our position in this race (assuming you've gotten my connection with the project being the race) is significantly better then what it was when we were standing still waiting for something as simple as Administration approval a few weeks ago. Even though we didn't meet the prototype date, I am confident we will still succeed.

Almost there!

Although we are behind schedule as far as our deadlines go, we have been making substantial progress in the shop. Yesterday, we finished the drilling and construction for the top frame for our bench. Today, me and Nicole worked separately in the shop and accomplished a lot. We are almost completely done with the bottom frame. Tomorrow, we all plan on going in and finishing up the construction. Once everything is in place, we have a few technicalities to take care of, such as adding an extra middle piece to make the seat portion more stable (this was advice from Mr. Massad). We also are planning on sanding the bench down and painting the bench white or blue (hopefully). The major portion of construction can be finished by tomorrow and the finishing touches can be added on monday. By then, we are planning on being completely done with our construction so that we can make the implementation deadline on time. I am confident that we are well on our ways to a very successful project!

Here are some pictures of us working in the shop:

progress :)

Today was great work day despite the 30 minute setback we had at the beginning of the class period.  We used our physics class period and our free period to work on our bench.  Although today was the deadline for the prototype we knew we needed to work as a team to hopefully alleviate some work off of Max's back.  Jo was in charge of doing the measurements while Max worked on lining up the pieces and I drilled the holes.  When all the holes were drilled we tried to line up the pieces to see how the bench would look.  When we tried to put them together we found that it was a trial and error process.  We lined up the wrong post with the wrong platform but thats not even the worse part.  Everything seemed to be going wrong when we found out that on one of the post we drilled the holes in the wrong place.  So we had to redo the measurements and drill the holes and by then our time left was nearly over.  We had such a positive workday :) I think that we can finish this in one more class period.

setting up the base of our bench

Stressed Out!

Today, Nicole and Max worked on the bench for 3 hours. Unfortunately, they were unable to complete it. With our hopes crushed, we all decided that it will take an extreme effort from each of us to finish the bench by the end of the week. Because we didn't complete it today, we didn't make tomorrow's deadline to release the prototype which was tomorrow, May 4th. As Mr. Blake had told us in class, "What happens in school and in the real world are two totally different things. In school, you only get a bad grade. But in the real world, if you don't make a deadline, you better have a good reason why you didn't make it or else your boss will get angry, the company will loose money or loose your job." Therefore, I'm going to write a paragraph explaining why we didn't make our deadline. Speaking of deadlines, our group is focused on finishing the construction by Friday, but until then, we will be scrambling and stressing until we fulfill our goal.

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The game of 'catch-up' rolls on

The main goal of Today was CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION CONSTRUCTION. Because it was difficult to gain the approval of Administration, and took longer than we expected, the building of the our bench is severely behind schedule. Though we hope to finish in time for the may 4th implementation date, there is no telling at this point if that's possible. To add to our problems, only two out of four possible team members are allowed to enter the wood shop to actually work at building the bench. Along with that, our group must also continue remembering other parts of the project. For me at least, one new task involves educating our school community about the bench and why it's been built. To accomplish this, I've decided to hang up flyers around Konia building. It doesn't take too much thought to know that unless something catches your attention and is able to keep it, it's not worth the energy to be read or looked at. One obstacle I face is educating the school body without boring them about something as trivial seeming like a wooden bench.

(Max marking measurements on the wood)

(Our intended spot of placing the Bench. In front of Midkiff)

the deadline is approaching

With deadlines approaching faster than we have originally expected my group and I are ready to take on the challenge of building a bench in a short amount of time.  We must construct an orthographic design which is kind of time consuming before we can even start constructing.  The good part about our last class period is that we made all of our dimensions on the wood so we could just cut the wood the next class period.  The only hard task we face is getting the approval we need from Mr. Massad.  We as a group feel that we have given him a lot of information but it just isnt up to his standard.  I guess we just have to be fortunate he is letting us use the wood shop for an outside project.  The countdown has initiated and we are ready to work!

webdesign.org

Only 3 days left!

(http://www.tjknowles.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/WoodShop1.jpg)

Nicole and I have three days to cut our scraps of wood and construct our bench. This seems almost impossible to me. It seems that all of our setbacks have finally caught up with us and we will be feeling the damage very shortly. Optimistically, I feel that Nicole and I can finish just about the majority of the bench in two days, because we both have a 80minute period to cut the wood up on monday together as well as our physics period which is also 80minutes to work on the bench construction. I am hoping that on tuesday, our individual work will allow us to finish our bench on time (at least the prototype). The particulars, like glossing the wood/painting it and/or naming it can be left for the next stage in our project which is the implementation of our bench. The stress can be felt and I can only hope that my group and I pull through.