The past couple of weeks in our class have been focused on a few ongoing projects:

Energy Project:
Over the course of the past semester students learned the ins and outs of energy audits – not just the science of electricity but a more broad view of alternative options and conservation approaches. Trips to places like Hawaiian Electric and Kahuku WInd Farms were brought in to have them consider the ways we are trying to address energy needs of the island. For their culminating activity, the students have come up with a project that would change someone’s behavior around energy use. Student ideas cover a wide range ideas. One group is creating ad designing eye catching stickers to go near places like light switches, where a change in behavior will save energy and educate.

Another group is developing an infographic on alternative wind energy to help people understand why these are such an important past of our mix of options. A few groups are making videos that help people everything from ghost/phantom loads to a kitchen survey to better understand how to save.

One group is developing a system to save on wasted food and energy in refrigerators.

These projects wil be featured in the next OwlLine and are slated to be finished the first week back from spring break.

Continued Math Work
Although we try and integrate our math as frequently as possible, we also do stand alone investigations of mathematics to practice and apply core ideas in algebra 2. Three examples from the past 3 weeks:
– we studied rational expressions, did some practice problems, then tried to apply it to solve the classic “When will we reach the middle of the journey” challenge that airlines typically give passengers on long flights. Students were given real head wind and distance measures and tried to determine the total travel time for a jet doing a round trip LAX to HNL.
– we determined the cost of running a water cooler on campus based on current electrical load and pricing from Hawaiian Electric. This required them looking at ratios and dimensional analysis to solve.
– We did practice problems this week to better understand radical expressions, but will use it to design a tank and pool system next week to apply the ideas to a real world problem

Personal Project Time
We restarted the personal project time in both Humanities and STEM class to give the students a class period a week to design and implement a project of their passion and choosing. The information for the project is given below. Students have already submitted proposals and we are seeing much clearer and achievable project ideas than last semester.

MPX 10: PIP/ PEP

You get one period each week in Hines and Davis to work on a project of your choice. The constraints are that a) your project must help someone b) you must include all four disciplines in some way in your project: English, US History, Physics, and Algebra II.

Your project must be an ORIGINAL IDEA.

You may work with up to one other person on this project provided that are with you in either Hines’ class or Ms. Davis’ class together.

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In-class time for project will be graded on a 3 point scale, judging on your focus, engagement, and productivity during this time.

March 11th: Draft of Proposal Due.

March 13th: Final Proposal Due

April 15th: Model or prototype is due.

April 30th: Second, improved model or prototype is due.

May 7th: Feedback session with community members who specialize in your area.

May 22nd: Final presentation off campus to parents and community members, all possible funders of your product or service.

Where to next?

For the STEM side, once we come back from break we have two more projects to undertake:

April: The Water Park Ride. We will be designing and building a portable, exciting, safe backyard water slide (we had wanted to try and do this in time for Ho’olaulea, but we needed to push this into April.

May: Waves, Light and Sound Exhibit. We will build exhibit boxes that highlight certain features or the wave and particle nature of light and examine wave phenomena in general.
The goal is for these to be displayed in the Watase Courtyard.