OUR MISSION

In this project, we were assigned to "fix" a world problem by creating our own effective solution to it. We would then follow up with that by researching our problem and creating a presentation on our data and solution.

Evidence of work

the process

When we were first given this assignment, there were so many possible world problems that I could potentially look forward to. It was an incredibly hard decision to make and lead to a very long list of ideas. But after evaluating my top choices, gun violence stood out to me the most. Our next step in this process was to form a group consisting of three other classmates with similar topic interests. My teammates Micayla, Gabe, and I then got together to brainstorm potential solutions towards reducing potential numbers in overall gun shootings. Our list ranged from things such as getting rid of guns all together (not a very smart idea) to placing a tracker and camera inside of all guns (a little bit more on the realistic side). This lead to our final solution of adding a thumbprint censored password on the back near the grips on all guns.

We then entered the research portion of our project. We were to read and annotate three articles from reliable sources. To annotate them, we wrote a 3-5 word summery for each paragraph. But since two of my articles were over 10 pages, I was given the opportunity to annotate only the key paragraphs. After gathering our data, we put together a short presentation consisting our idea on how to prevent future shootings and displaying our data. In this, we included our interview with retired FBI special agent/senior executive, Frank Montoya, a few charts showing data on school shootings, and a 3D online model of our finger print censored gun.

reflection

Although we made a few mistakes along the way, this project ended up being a success at the end of the day. After being let down during the viewing of our first attempt at presenting, I learned that I-movie isn't very reliable. I also learned to review our presentation after downloading it from I-movie and uploading it to YouTube.

After being in a race for time towards the end of the project, I also learned that although I have friends in my group, I need to put that aside and stay focused on the project. It was especially hard since one of my teammates was easily distracted and easily distracts others as well. So, the flow of our conversations would often go left.

Other than the few mistakes that we made, I really appreciated and enjoyed working on this project. The awareness of gun violence has been such an important subject lately and needs to be more appreciated so this was easily one of the most interesting projects I've ever worked on. Although there is much needed room for area, I think that we had a solid group that could contribute to this project in our own individual ways.