Blogs and Vlogs

Blog #1:

Think about your personal values. Make a list of guiding principles- those that you stick to/never or rarely go against.

• Honesty
• Humility
• Respect
• Authenticity
• Dedication
• Faith
• Determination

How do your guiding principles affect your relationship with your education?

My guiding principles allow me to do my best in my educational endeavors and help my mind to steer clear of negativity and disinterest to continue my education.

How do these guide you in your life?

This set of values allows me to be a well-rounded individual and respect others with the same level of respect and understanding that I would like someone to treat me with.

Blog #2:

Mark Twain famously noted that all ideas are second-hand. Henry Miller (Modernist) believed that most of what we create is composed of hand-me-down ideas. And , interestingly, these observations came before the exponential growth of the internet.

Reflect on some ideas you are considering borrowing/stealing from that may become the foundation of your Capstone on which you then build.

Some ideas that I am considering borrowing are ones that some organizations may have already created to propagate their moral and goal. Since I am planning on also looking into equality of children's STEM education, there definitely are global organizations looking to help out in the same area of concern as I am looking into. With that in mind, some of our thoughts and resolutions may overlap and if I find something similar to my train of thought when I look into those such organizations, I will tend to borrow bits and pieces of their ideas.

Blog #3:

Post-Presentation

What's your positive takeaway?

My positive takeaway would be that this project forced me to go out of my comfort zone and research a topic that I wouldn't voluntarily choose on my own. It allowed me to expand my horizons and learn about a topic that both was not very appealing to me and was foreign to me.

What part do you feel was not so great?

I felt that having to research a project that I wasn't very interested about added to my lack of motivation to want to research and finish the slideshow.

What ARE YOU going to do to work on it?

Personally, I want to work on practicing my slides and making sure that I have a good thought flow when presenting them to the class.

Blog #4:

Annotations: A Check-up

So far, my annotations have been a little difficult to complete as I am not entirely sure what to look out for when researching my topic. My topic is based off of children's STEM education in India and although that seems as a broad and vast topic to delve into, it is somewhat hard to find a variety of information online. Many of the websites that I have looked into tend to present the same information and statistics.

Blog #5:

IRT Presentations Round 2

We are all doing our second presentations on topics that are randomly assigned to us. This time, the chosen topic was technology throughout the years which actually really interests me. Our decade is the 1990's and we have chosen to focus on the the invention of the iMAC which came out in mid-August of 1998. I'm looking forward to continue my research on this topic because it is something that I actually want to learn more about.

Blog #6:

CAPS Scarecrow

Today, we worked on a scarecrow for the Andover ACE Scarecrow Festival. Every year, the Andover Coalition for Education (ACE) holds a festival where different classes, schools, and organizations create scarecrows to place around downtown Andover. This year's theme was going global and international and so our scarecrow had a globe head and included small pieces about each one of our projects.

Blog #7:

Annotations

The time for the annotations to be due is almost here! I have found more websites with information pertaining to my topic, but I still have to quickly read through them and create a summary for each website. I have gone to using the Google Scholar website and it has really helped me to find a variety of information and more scientific information into why opportunities are/are not equal between boys and girls.

Blog #8:

IRT Presentation: The iMAC

Today, we presented our slideshow about the invention of the iMAC and its impact on today's world. Compared to last time, we had put in much more time and effort into making sure our slides were visually appealing, sensible, and well-rehearsed. This extra effort really helped us to deliver a very informative and persuading presentation to the class. The one thing some people commented about was that we tended to look back at the slides more than needed. Overall, we have improved significantly since our first presentation and I hope that we continue to get better, so that in May we all can give stellar TED Talks.

Blog #9:

Work Day

Today was a work day and we were allowed to work either on the annotations or our college applications. Early applications are due next week on Thursday (11/1) and the annotations are due on Monday (11/5). So far, I have found a lot of information about the STEM education system in India, but I'm still having some trouble finding sources that talk about the opportunities available for boys versus girls. I still have about 10-15 sources left to research so I believe that I should be able to find some, even if minimal, points about the educational opportunities.

In regards to my applications, I have almost finished all 3 of my applications and I hope to submit them 2-3 days before the official deadline.

Blog #10:

Upcoming Deadlines

Today, we were given a list of deadlines for various parts of our project due throughout the year.

These include:

Nov 7, 2018 : 32-35 Annotations (Hard Deadline)

Nov 26, 2018 : ALL 50 Annotations (Hard Deadline)

Dec 5, 2018 : Review of Lit. written (Hard Deadline)

The Week of Dec 10, 2018 : Presentation of Lit. Reviews (Hard Deadline)

May 20, 2019 : Senior Showcase

May 15, 2019 - May 20, 2019 : Ted-Talks (specific times)

This list of deadlines is very helpful to me as it allows me to visually see the breakdown of my project throughout the entire year. Having these deadlines well in advance also allows me to be prepared ahead of the due date and make sure that I don't miss the deadline and pass my work in late.

Blog #11:

A Check-in with my Progress: How's it going?

In a few class days, our first round of annotations are due. So far, I have a good amount of annotations completed, but

Blog #12:

Research Tells a Story: What is the story is my secondary research is telling me?

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Blog #15:

What is the story, personal narrative, that illustrates the connection between you and your topic? Tell it in this blog.

Every summer, I visit India to visit my relatives. In the summer of 2017, I volunteered through Sewa International in conjunction with a English medium school in Southern India, where I was staying. For a couple of days, I was able to visit the school and sit in on a few of their english and math classes. I was really struck by the gap in education of these students. Many of the concepts we learned in early elementary school, the kids in this school were learning in early middle school. This is due to the fact that their families do not believe education to be as important or needed as the knowledge and teachings of their culture. I really wanted to help bridge this gap as India is a quickly developing country. STEM has always been a field which I am passionate about and thus, I decided to combine both of these together for my Capstone project.

Blog #16:

What need/possibility/issue/problem do you want to address/explore/find a solution for through your tangible? Discuss it.

Through my tangible, I want to address the differences in STEM opportunities between boys and girls. Through my research so far I have seen that in many rural communities of India, girls are told to stay at home and away from technical fields as their families are financially struggling and need the help of the girls to take care of younger child and do household chores. I also want to briefly look into why India has a lack of strength and structure to its STEM education curriculum and what different programs are doing to close this gap. I believe more than having a physical piece to my project, my tangible will be more a compilation of my research and perhaps, a digital site where I can include information about India’s children STEM education and different programs catering towards girls, boys, and co-educational programs.

Blog #17:

Review of Literature Reflection

As I am writing my Review of Lit, I am able to better see the trends and topics that I have attempted to highlight through my annotations. I think the main part of this review that is confusing me is the formatting and set-up. I know that I have to write it in APA format because my topic is a science-based concept. However, I have almost no experience writing in APA; usually my papers are written in MLA format. So, I have been doing some research online and looking at various examples of literature reviews written in APA. Another gap I have encountered while writing is the lack of information I have found about gender equity in India's STEM education. I hope that as I continue writing, I can do some extra research on the side to fill these gaps.

Blog #18:

CAPStone Workshop Field Trip

Today, we went took a field trip to AYS to have an entire to day peer edit and review our research paper's part 1. I found this working day to be really helpful. Not only was I able to edit my writing many times, I also received constructive feedback from my peers. We all took turns editing and reading through each other's papers and helped to make comments to better our writing and overall flow. We also got the chance to ask teachers any extra guidance that we needed. The large chunk of time we received around and after lunch also really helped to further my research paper and start working on my Review of Lit.