All Good Things Must Come To An End :(

On the way to Mrs. Martin's to thank her :)

Hopefully she likes the gift :)

From the very beginning, Rachelle, Kenneth and I worked very well together. And throughout the course of a single quarter (mere weeks, really), we became close and accumulated enough data on the Konia bus stop to make it a better place. We did not always succeed (gosh, we've been through a bajillion plans that didn't work) but we never gave up and kept moving forward with a new goal in mind. So what did go well? Team bonding, for sure. And we kept a consistent stream of communication going with adults in positions of authority; so we managed to be somewhat responsible and levelheaded in our emails. Even our final plan went quite well— we managed to work with a viable solution and came in after school to the office to announce when buses were approaching Konia.  And our surveys indicated that students thought our solution was helpful to those catching bus home; so I would commend my group for being fairly successful. What didn't go well, however, were the circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes we would send an email or make a phone call, only to not receive one in return. So we would continue to press our parties for information and correspondence in a friendly manner, but sometimes it took a little pushing to get any response. Overall, I learned that patience is a virtue I need to keep (we often had communication lapses when certain parties failed to get back to us) and that perseverance is key to success. If we had merely given up after being shot down in one of our plans, we would have never gotten ANYWHERE, and I have a feeling we would have been hit in the multiplier.
To make this a better project, I would suggest starting it the last week of fourth quarter, because we felt a little rushed at the end. Working hard from the beginning, instead of cruising for three weeks (Spring Break and all that) is probably the better way to go so that future students don't panic TOO much during the last week or so. (Not like we were panicking much.) But it would help us manage our time better.
Although this was supposed to be a PHYSICS project, it didn't really feel like one. I mean, we found a problem that was solved with the help of physics (sound waves and frequencies on the radio), but it didn't really feel like we were doing science. It felt more like a feel-good "help Pauahi" project, not a science project. But I liked it better that way; had Mr. Blake forced us to incorporate lots and lots of science rather than coming into our own as a student scientist, I think we wouldn't have been as enthused.
Overall, this project was a great way to end my year of physics and I would definitely recommend this to other classes. Plus, the added bonus of NOT having a final physics test was nice. :)

And our journey comes to a end.. :')

As we bring an end to the fourth quarter, we also bring an end to our Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha physics project. Although I'm happy that this project is done and I feel like we did well, it's a bittersweet feeling to be leaving my group. We've worked so well together throughout this entire quarter and I'm so fortunate to call them my group members.

From day one I had a feeling that our group would do well. I'm not trying to sound conceited or anything, but just by looking at my partners, I knew that they were people who wanted to do well too. The major thing that went well in this project was spreading out the work evenly. Our group kept on task and made sure to turn everything in on time; this allowed us to not stress one bit. We also used our time wisely both in and out of class, so we didn't have to commit too much time outside of the classroom towards this project. Well, of course, besides going to the office everyday after school :P

Out of everything we did and went through during the course of this project, I think the only thing that didn't go as planned was the communication. This was a factor beyond our control and was due to the fact that we were working with people who had way more power than us. This may have delayed our project just a tad bit, but in the end it didn't hurt us because we ended up getting on project done.

From this project I learned a lot about teamwork. Working in groups isn't always going to be as easy as the group I was put in this time. I also learned the value of patience...especially when you're relying on other people. Since we wouldn't be able to execute this project in its entirety alone, we had to make sure that we had support from the people who would allow us to make it happen. These people (like Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas) already have busy schedules and other duties they're committed too, so we have to understand that our project is not the first thing on their "to-do" list. Patience is a good trait to have even later on in life......especially when we all start to have kids.

I don't feel there's really anything that needs to be changed about this project to make it a better activity because there's not really any rules that you need to follow. I mean, the only rule is to relate it to physic's somehow. Besides that, you have all the freedom in the world to solve whatever problem you see fit.

I can honestly say, I didn't think we were doing science at any time during this project. Okay, well besides the fact that we walked into a science classroom every time we had class, we weren't literally learning about just science. I think the only time I felt we were doing science was when we were writing how our project connects to physics in our report.

All in all, this was a fun project and very enjoyable :)

auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu PAU!!

ahhh the journey is finally nearing its close. it has been quite interesting to learn so much about the processes of life that are not so streamlined as we would hope them to be.  we learned all about the going ons of adults at our school which is not something that we would have been able to experience in any other way than by doing this project. i honestly think that there is great value for us in having done this project because this school is supposed to be preparing us for success in our future lives so that we can progress to the best of our abilities. having had this experience puts us ahead of the game when we graduate because we now have a much better grasp of how the process of working with others and with problem solving will benefit us in the future. somethings that went very well for us in this project is that right off the bat i believe we were given the best group members possible. we worked together flawlessly in dividing up the work between each other evenly and then all following through with completing our parts efficiently and timely. also we were able to come up with a problem to solve rather quickly which gave us the most possible time to brainstorm different ideas for solving it and to work on implementing our project and working out the kinks in it. some things that did not go quite as planned were the speed of responses from people who were helping us. we naiively expected instant responses but that is just ridiculous of us to have done because we were working with people who had lives outside of our projects and definitely more important things to be worrying about. if we were able to change this activity to make it better i would say that maybe forcing students to move along a little bit more might help because i dont think that any of us had much of an idea of what we were getting into when we began this project. i realize that the whole point of the project was for us to figure this all out on our own as much as possible but yeah thats really all i can think of because this was a very good project in my opinion. unfortunately i dont not honestly think that i was thinking much about physics for the most part during this project, it was more of a life lesson than anything else. it could be changed in the future to require a direct relation to physics but i dont think that it would be necessary. 

this was an awesome group and i am very grateful for their work in this project as well as all the help of the people who helped us out along the way. mahalo everyone!!!

The Penultimate Post :(

The word 'penultimate', in case you didn't know, means 'next-to-last', and this is the second to last post for this physics blog. I don't know if I feel happy, sad or relieved... I guess I'm a mix of both, considering how much stock Kenny, Rachelle and I have put into our Ho'oulu iä Kamehameha Project. As Rachelle remarked in a previous post, we did quite well during our presentation. We showed up to Konia 108-109, smartly dressed, and shared our Prezi with a room of our peers. I think we managed to make our presentation both interesting and fun with some well placed humorous remarks and an enlightening presentation. We've come so far— this confident trio of presenters was not present on the first day of fourth quarter. Now we've only got two days of class left; and we've got to make the best of them. We've learned so much about group communication and how many times plans don't always work out; even though our project wasn't perfect, we did make the best of it, and I think we did quite well considering the circumstances. :)

We. Are. Done!!!!....(son)...lol

Ohmygosh! The day has finally come where we finished our physic's presentation! Good job to all of the groups who presented tonight, everyone did a fantastic job! We can finally say that we are done with physics. You may say we still have our final report due; yes that's true, BUT our group finished it already! Weeeeee :) Here's a picture of us presenting tonight:

Surprisingly, our group wasn't that nervous about going up there to present. Surprisingly, I wasn't nervous...and it's funny because I usually get nervous having to talk in front of just a speech class, let alone a room full of students, adults and teachers. I really want to thank my entire group for always willing to go the "extra mile" because throughout this project I've learned a lot about hard work and what it takes to actually get things done. We are very glad this project is done, and honestly I feel our group did a pretty respectable job up there. We were all dressed in our "formal" attire and opted to show enthusiasm for our project. Hopefully people liked our presentation! Adding in the little act to demonstrate how we used the PA system was a last minute decision (like literally last minute) because our youtube link wasn't working, but we really enjoyed it! We thought that it was a good break from just talking at our audience. Plus, people were laughing so I think that means they liked it :P

We would also like to go ahead and thank Mr. Hooper (picture of our group with him above) for showing his support and coming to watch our presentation. Sadly, he walked in literally seconds after we finished, BUT it's the thought that counts :)

To sum things all up, today was a great day! It might've been a wee bit stressful, but definitely well worth it :) good job everyone!!

ahhh it seems like just yesterday we had 54 days do complete our project..

unfortunately all that time has left us forever and we will never get it back. luckily for us, we spent that time quite efficiently in my opinion! this past quarter has been pretty intense and we had a lot of work on our plate but we managed to complete something pretty great! we just got back the results of our post survey, and as it turns out about 80% of students would like to see the announcements of buses continued next year! that is amazing for us because we know we have all worked very hard on this and are pleased with ourselves for what we have accomplished but it is a whole nother thing to have the actual student body appreciate what we have worked on. it feels quite good to be almost done....even though tomorrow is the "big day" (even though every night seemed like it was the hardest) i think that we are fairly well prepared and will do fine. i am confident in our group and that we will be able to perform well for our guests and classmates (and our class grade!). just a few more grades going into that book and we cant afford to mess up now! good luck to us and all of the other groups tomorrow!

We managed!....even with 33% of our group not here!

To start this blogpost off...
Dear Nikki,
I hope you get well soon! Finals are coming up, just hang in there for one more week! :)
Love, Rachelle & Kenneth
But yes, as you can see, Nikki is sick and was absent during our class yesterday. On the other hand...this did not stop us from being productive! As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we used class time wisely and put up our signs. THIS, blogpost is going to be about our 2nd test run for the bus announcements that Rachelle and Kenny did Tuesday afternoon. Even though we only had two people, we were able to manage decently.

(I was the new Kenneth and listened in on the transportation radio):

We had a rough start though; we didn't know how to actually get the PA system to work in the beginning because we forgot to press "#". This delayed our announcements a little and we missed announcements for the first 3 buses. Secondly, Ms. Martin came back into her office halfway at about 3:45 and let us know that we need to be a bit more "lively". She was in a meeting with Mr. Blake for a possible new teacher and I think the bus announcements were a little disruptive to their meeting. There were also a few more combinations yesterday, which should've actually helped people who were catching those buses.
Although we had to face some difficulties, they were minor and we were able to push through! Can't wait to see what will happen this afternoon!

our project is off the wall!!! ...well actually our signs are ON the wall!

today in class we went on an excursion to the smith office (i swear we've been in there more than in the classroom this quarter). we went in firstly to have Ms. Martin approve our signs to be put up, and secondly to have Ms. Akiona work with us to rearrange the bulletin board so that we could fit our (crooked) bus line up along side all of the other information on the board. it took some work and intense creative thought but eventually we found a pattern that we could fit all of the necessary signage. 

this sign wasn't a part of our original project plan but we decided that it would be a nice addition for people to know the order in which their buses are to arrive. thats why our sign isnt really very fancy but it still gets the job done. we hope that lots of people will be able to view our sign and be helped by knowing when their bus will come in relation to the other buses.

First Test Trial (a great start)

Learning to work the PA system

Our sweet setup

Today was a good day; we managed to start our project trial right on time at 3:30. We had a quick crash course from Mrs. Martin ("Okay guys, press PAGE, then 1, then 19, then #") on how to work the PA system, then we switched on the walkie-talkie radio, listening to Mr. Cardenas remind the drivers to call out their route when they left for Konia. Although it took a couple of runs to get our announcements running smoothly (note to self: wait until the beeping over the PA system stops before you announce anything), we managed to get a system in working order by the time Mililani B/C was announced over the walkie-talkie. Rachelle documented our trial, noting what was helpful and what was not, and went outside to get feedback. Kenny helped me inside, listening carefully to the frequency and letting me know what buses were on their way. And I announced the buses over the PA system. We were quite successful, I think, because people asked later if the announcements were part of a physics project and a couple of people noted that the announcements came in loud and clear through the classrooms. The one hitch we had was that people at the bus stop itself were unable to hear the announcements as clearly because of the existing noise and the openness of the bus stop itself. Although that is an unfortunate and  discouraging turn, we still are helping people and still helping to fix a problem that needed to be solved, so we'll see at our next trial run (tomorrow). Here's to Day 2!

Counting down the days...

I'm starting to feel the stress... just a little.

With less than two weeks left, we are really in the "crunch zone." As Rachelle and Kenny have stated in previous posts, we have had many trials and tribulations in preparing and designing a solution to our problem. We've gone through Plan A-Z and we're still coming back for more. Although we may not be successful in the end, we are still going ahead with this project and we'll keep moving forward. Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with Mrs. Martin and learn how to work the PA system and test out the walkie-talkie relay system that we proposed to Mr. Cardenas last Thursday. I really hope this system works— we've already gone through so many ideas and proposals— but we'll see; I'm sure everything will work out. We're at the last leg of our mini-marathon and we're just clearing the home stretch. A lot of our problems were from logistics and even physics— in figuring out how to work the PA system, the walkie talkie system, and the reality of the difficulties of communication, we've learned so much that we would have never expected to learn before. I'm so happy that we're almost done and we've been working hard. Good job guys! :)

It's getting close to the end!

Sorry this is a late blogpost for Friday because I (Rachelle) was supposed to post this Friday. Mehd I'm so angry I even had everything set up and everything I just didn't post it to the blog :( oh wells, darn it, I'm so sorry! But on Friday Nikki and I weren't able to be in class because I had the AP U.S. History exam and Nikki had states for track. (Dear Nikki, I hope everything went well!! Let us know how it went:) So, as you can tell from the picture Kenny was left alone in class. We are very sorry Kenneth! But it wasn't a wasted class period even though 2/3 of our group was not present. The previous day we were able to make bus arrival signs to put on the Smith bulletin board, warning people the order of their buses. These were to be taken to the office today by Kenneth to get approval from Ms. Martin. I'm sure all went well and I can't wait to see how everything is going to work out this week!

We almost have deployment!!

(sorry this is late!!!!)

so yesterday we had yet another meeting with ms. martin, she made a call for us to mr. cardenas. we had a talk with him confirming what the people from island signal told him. he told us that we need to either put a box with a battery and speaker in the hallway somewhere or we would have to just run a speaker from the office to somewhere else in order to announce the buses. ms martin said that this was a cost that was unecessary because she didnt want to spend money on something that could possibly be in effect for only a couple of weeks. instead we have a new plan, on monday mr cardenas will have the bus drivers announce their passing of akahi over the radio. we were given a radio in order to listen in on this and then we will be able to relay this to the students via the PA system. if we are able to, we will continue this for the next week or so. this will be our official deployment of our project.

Never give up, never surrender!

Today during homeroom our group had another meeting with Mrs. Martin just to clear things up about what was going to be implemented, if something were to be implemented at all. As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we were hoping to go with the first option Mr. Cardenas offered, but after taking a second look at Mr. Cardernas' email, we all (Mrs. Martin and our group) came to the conclusion that implementing the radio by the due date, or even by the end of the year, would be nearly impossible. First off, the labor costs to have someone install this would go beyond our $100 budget. Secondly, to install things, work permits have to be sent in 2 weeks before the expected installation date. In two weeks let's see....it'll be summer! Haha, but in all serious-ness, today brought us to the end of the radio road. But! You know what? We're not gonna give up there! Just because what we planned for in our proposal and detailed design didn't work, doesn't mean we're not gonna either!

From this we've developed a new plan...a new PLAN A :) So, with this idea, we plan to manually make the bus announcements ourselves using our own man-power. It'll work because someone will be down at Paki letting the two other group members at the top which buses are coming up, and these two group members will make the announcements over the PA system themselves. Even though our first plan wasn't able to be followed through...we will NEVER give up and NEVER surrender!

elima hou la!

not much time left!

yesterday mr. cardenas met with a representative from island signal to discuss how to go about linking the PA and radio systems together. aparently the people at island signal thought that we had a different type of system implemented at our school (a stand alone system) when we infact have a system that is linked through the phone systems. this complicates things a little bit but is fixable by two possible methods that mr. cardenas explain to us via email. the first is to connect the radio from the transportation department to a completely separate speaker which would be placed somewhere in konia circle. the second solution is a little bit fuzzy to me but i think it means this, we would mount a box in the hallway of konia somewhere with a power source and the radio in it. there would also be a speaker connected to the radio most likely wired to outside of the box. we would simply open the box after school and turn on the radio so that it would transmit to the speaker and then turn it off later on. both of the solutions are simple sounding but will require a lot of work if we are to complete them on time. we have a meeting tomorrow with ms. martin to hopefully clear up some of the confusion that we have and to decide and move forward with which ever solution we choose to go with.

Island Signal

Courtesy of http://www.fcs.com/index.php?h=Voip

Today I received an email from Mr. Cardenas informing our group that he was meeting someone from Island Signal at Smith Office to discuss the workings of the PA system in regards to our transportation project. We did not attend, but  I also created (based on Rachelle's charts) a bus timetable prototype that we sent to Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas to get their feedback. Mr. Cardenas felt that we should remove the times and keep it basic, leaving just the order of the buses so that kids know the order, but I think perpetual bus riders will know what order their bus generally comes in because they've ridden it for so long, so the times are more important to list. But we will fix that and generally make it better and hopefully tomorrow will yield important and eventful results. We are hoping that we will be instructed on how to work the PA system tomorrow and we will do a test run.

Ahead But Behind O.o

On the plus side, we're moving forward and we're getting our oral presentation as well as our final report in order for May 18th. We also had a successful meeting (as outlined by Rachelle in the previous post) on Friday, where we met and talked with Mrs. Martin and Robert Cardenas for the first time. He sent me a follow up email today in response to the one I sent him on Friday regarding our meeting and our plans for this week, noting that he had contacted Island Signal and someone would come out (possibly) tomorrow, but they would confirm...tomorrow. BUT-- we are planning to do some test runs this week, and we'll (hopefully) be talking to Mrs. Martin regarding this tomorrow. Although we didn't get our prototype deployed by Friday as we had hoped, we're still going strong and we're definitely going to finish off this quarter as CHAMPS :))

We're on track..just not 100% on time

Picture of Nikki and I's readmit after having our meeting at the office

Today was a very VeRy VERY productive day because we were finally to have the meeting with both Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas in person. Previous to this we've only been conducting emails, which were useful, but harder to get communication flowing because responses on-time weren't always guaranteed. At the beginning of meeting we went over what our plan was to refresh everyone's memory and we told Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas what we hoped to have implemented by our due date. Sadly, we found that it's not physically possible to install the radio to the PA system by today (the due date), but they said we could have a dry-run Monday afternoon. Although today is supposed to be the date that our prototype is up and running, we're just glad we've cleared up the communication problem and have a plan worked out. We're very excited to see how everything will come together Monday and we'll see if our solution is doable!

WAN MOA DEI!!!!!

this is our prezi that we are working on for our final presentation. today we spent some time working on it as well as deciding what attire we are going to wear. i think we are just gonna go for broke on it and wear super fancy because it is basically free pointage.

so today is the day before our prototype must be up and running (just like the freshmen and sophomores tomorrow!) and we still haven't corresponded with mr. Cardenas (FINALLY figured out how to pronounce that btw) about setting up a meeting with him and Ms. Martin. this being kind of an issue, our group took a field trip down to smith office and ms. Martin set up a meeting for us with herself and Mr. Cardenas tomorrow at 10:16 during our physics period. unfortunately this means that our entire group will be unable to take the test tomorrow but we will be sure to make it up promptly! well if we are unable to acquire a radio by tomorrow for use in our prototype, we will have to do this in a slightly more difficult way...with rachelle down at paki telling me via cellphone when each bus is leaving, and i will have to say it over the PA system up at konia. tomorrow has a lot in store for us and we are very excited! Also, good luck to Nikki and the other members of our track team tomorrow at their meet! DO WORK!!! (that is how it is physics related).

Dos días más!

For those of you who don't speak Spanish, the title of this blogpost means "2 more days!" (as in 2 more days till our prototype is created and deployed). Why did I write it in Spanish? Lol because I'm in Spanish class right now and since I'm being so studious I want to be inspired by the Spanish language. WELL, anyways we're now down to crunch time...and we still haven't got further contact from Mr. Cardenas! I mean we've been able to get in touch with him, but nothing has really changed. Not to say that we're stressing big time now, but we somehow need to figure out a way to get our prototype out there in less than 48 hours! I have confidence that by the time it's due we'll have something to present...we just need to keep working hard.

SURVEY SURVEY SURVEY!!!!

(some of the responses we have gotten in our survey)

I posted the link for our survey on the class of 2013 facebook page a couple of days ago and asked our classmates to take it. that yielded fair results with statistics that were helpful. yesterday however, Charlene Hara sent out a mass email to all of the Kamehameha High School asking them to take our survey. this was kind of excessive and not really what we wanted to happen anyway. we originally only wanted to survey the sophomores and juniors because next year they would be the only ones who would be using the konia bus stop and thus be affected by our project. this mass email resulted in a total of 393 people taking our survey. this would be great if all of these people were juniors and sophomores but they arent. this changed our data for our first two questions quite a bit, however the interesting thing is that most people still think that it would be a good idea for us to announce the bus' arrival over the PA system. we have had quite a few responses stating that the terminal bus in particular needs to be announced because that one is very inconsistent and students using it have expressed a desire to be able to study for as long as they can.

It's Crunch Time.

Here we are, about four days to our deadline to deploy our prototype by Friday, and we have no hard prototype. That's a bummer, and it's somewhat due to our (lack of) communication with certain parties. BUT-- we have an upcoming meeting and possible conference call tomorrow with Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas. We need to get them in direct communication with one another so everyone is on the same page and ensure that we CAN get a radio from the transportation department for the office's use. According to Mr. Cardenas in our phone call today, we can use a radio from transportation and hook it up to the PA system so that all the office has to do is switch it on at 3:30 and turn it off at 4:00pm. So that's the good news— we were relieved that all hope is not lost, haha. But we do need to work out some logistics, which we hope the meeting tomorrow will cover, because we are not entirely clear on a couple things that Mr. Cardenas went over with us.

On a side note, Kenny checked the survey results. So far 67 people have taken our survey, and what has come to our attention is that people generally support our idea, but would especially support it if TERMINAL BUS was included. ...Another interesting idea to examine? We hope so. We'll see. :)

Prezi prezi prezi

Courtesy of http://prezi.com/

It's been kind of slow on the work front-- getting clear communication from the people we need it most from has been quite difficult because they haven't responded to our emails-- but we've been trying to make up for it by getting a head start on our Final Report and our Oral Presentation. Rachelle has put together our data in a clean and neat fashion-- thank you, Rachelle! And Kenny created and distributed our SurveyMonkey survey both via approved email and Facebook. He did a great job :). Who knew how much technology would play a role in our project? Speaking of technology, we're planning to use Prezi (http://prezi.com/) to "spice up" our oral presentation. It's a neat, innovative way to make the average keynote presentation A LOT MORE INTERESTING. So we'll be working on that... it's just too bad that we're not getting responses from the folks at Transportation. I'm sure they're very busy, but we were in contact up until last week... I'll be sure to send yet another friendly reminder, but I've sent out at least two emails with no response. This is shaping up to be another potential roadblock, but we'll try again tomorrow. At least we've got a lot of "other stuff" done; it's just the actual transferral of information that needs to take place. We've set up the rest. :)

Check and check!

Today we sent out our finalized survey to Mr. Blake so he could send it to Ms. Martin. Now, we can finally collect more data other than the bus arrival times at the Konia and Paki bus stop. We also posted out survey link on the Grade 11 Facebook page because we know more people check Facebook than their emails...well, at least the normal high school student does. By the end of the class period we got 5 completed surveys! Whoo we're so popular, LOL jk. But no really we're glad people are (hopefully) taking our survey seriously because this data will be useful if administration or the transportation department would like to see its effectiveness. Our blogpost picture shows the charts we have made so it's easier for people to see when the buses have been arriving and departing Konia and Paki bus stop for the past couple of weeks. We hope to include these charts in our final presentation so people can see them!

7 days remaining....

so today we didnt actually have class and honestly our forward progression in getting our plan into action has been at kind of a stand still for the past few days because we have been awaiting approval from ms. martin to be able to send out surveys. tomorrow we will find out if we are able to send out surveys which i am pretty sure we will get approval for. if not then we will just have to move forward without that data from students. we are also still waiting for Mr. Cardenas' response to our emails in order to find out what he has learned from the bus drivers in the past few days about whether a second announcement by them would be possible. since we havent been able to actively move our project forward in the past few days, we have been using that time to start our oral presentation. this extra time is kind of good in that sense because we definitely need it to write up our presentation.

We So Studious!

So, today in class our group continued progress for our project! We sent out another e-mail to Mr. Cardenas and Ms. Martin with more information and data we've collected from both the Konia and Paki bus stops this week. After collecting our data though, we realized we didn't collected bus stop times on the same day therefore our data is not 100% accurate. But! We are planning to collect bus stop times again today after school to get more accurate information. All should go well! In our blogpost picture you can see us and Mr. Blake working so studiously in the classroom. Lol. No, but really today we began the draft of our final report and all is going well :) we will continue to work on our report while we wait for further approval from Ms. Martin to send out our bus survey to the student body.

bus stops are hot..

so yesterday we uploaded the data that was collected from the konia bus stop and it was kind of surprising to see just how quickly the buses come and go from the stop. this data is useful but incomplete, we needed to also gather data from the paki bus stop. so i sat down at paki at around 2:25 and waited for the buses to begin loading. the first four buses were already in place when i arrived but didnt start loading until 3:30. this is good to know because it means that they arent leaving before the official end of study hall. they did not however waste time sitting around, after about a minute, each bus would leave and be replaced by another. this means that notifying konia even when buses are just leaving paki could be just enough time or possibly too late. even if we might still need to collect more information before submitting any of it, just being more aware of it is important for our project

It's my turn to be sick :( but we've got good news too

So I am super sick. 102° fever. I will not be able to come (probably) on Wednesday, so my apologies to my group as I heal up. But I would like to present some news— these are the results of Rachelle's bus timing from Friday. It shows that the buses don't take a long time to load at Konia— they load up in a minute or so (taken from when the bus passes the entrance of Konia circle). Kaneohe B was very late, as you can see, and is the main outlier in our data. If Nanakuli B is able to get to Konia and load up at 3:32, we would deduce that the bus driver is leaving Paki early, because it takes a lot longer to get up to Konia than two minutes. This may be a point to bring up to Mr. Cardenas, but for now we will just gather more data. However, Kenny also put together a survey in SurveyMonkey for students to take so we can gather more information and judge how effective our project has been. Mr. Blake is asking permission from Mrs. Martin to send a mass email to all students so we can increase participation, so we'll find out on Thursday if we can email it to everyone. :)

PROM this weekend! (yes, it's physics related)

On the way to prom...

So I didn't post yesterday because of PROM, but I've got the weekend shift and will post today. Ironically, prom has to do with our physics project— I saw Mrs. Martin there, and she stopped me, saying, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your group's physics proposal went really well. You guys got a lot of the work done. Good job!" I relayed to her a brief summary of our group's correspondence with Island Signal and Robert Cardenas from the Transportation Department, promising to keep her in the loop as we move this project forward. When prom ended and everyone scrambled outside to their respective vehicles, I was reminded of the very problem we were trying to create a solution for at school— most people didn't know what time and where they were being picked up, and waited as a mass in a concentrated area for their rides. Similar to the bus situation, people were waiting in a crowded place where it was easier to search for their rides, but there weren't any buses that came to pick them up, just cars, trucks, Hummers, and limos. We're going to be working on implementing our surveys and hopefully collecting data this week, so we'll see how that goes. :)

Instazzz

Big smiles for being productive!! 

We present you with good news once again! Our group used our class time super duper efficiently today and we were able to add the final touches to our detailed design. As of right now, we aren't able to fully complete our design because we need further approval from Mr. Cardenas and the transportation department. On the other hand, we did get in touch with the Island Signals Communication Company and they told us that connecting the walkie talkies with the PA system is possible, but we have to make sure transportation is able to create a relay system that pages the PA system. Our plan is still waiting on transportation, but once everything with them is finalized, our solution can begin to be put into effect. The one down side to this though is that since the PA system is supposed to be used for emergency purposes only, it will interfere with the bus announcements that go on. On the bright side, the PA system has rarely been used (if ever) by the office during the after school times so using it after school should not be much of a problem. Yay!

administration....we is boiz!

today we had our meeting with the administrators which went fairly well i think. they all seemed to agree that a system such as ours would be a nice addition to the betterment of our school. now that we have their attention we can move forward more with our plan of hopefully implementing the PA systems as a part of our solution. tomorrow another part of our project is due, and that is the detailed design. in this we need to further our estimates of cost. at this point we really just aren't completely sure about what our final costs will be because we are still waiting for more information with our correspondent in the transportation department mr. cardenas. once we have this we should have a very accurate assessment of final costs for our project. as of now the only things that we think could cost us anything would be another walkie talkie for use of someone in the office to connect them with the bus drivers.

Meeting with the people in power? ☑

(The above picture is a manilla folder that includes all the information on bus riders/schedules we've received from transportation thus far).

About two hours ago Nikki, Kenny and I had a meeting with the high school administration (whoa, scary) to propose to them our physics problem and what we see as a possible solution. It was very nice of Mr. Blake to take the time out of his busy schedule to stay with us through the meeting because being around all those important and powerful people was pretty intimidating. The meeting was short, but we were able to get our point across and let the administrators know what we are trying to do. They were very supportive and feel like what we are trying to do can really make a change in the high school. As of right now, we are waiting for an email from Mr. Cardenas to see what the transportation department has in mind with the radio system that could potentially be hooked up to the PA system. Mr. Cardenas hoped that he could test the communication networks between the bus drivers and the radio this afternoon, and we are hoping all goes well so we can win approval over the PA system :)

Approved!!!!

so today's physics class was interesting indeed. our group started out small with only 3 people in it and today one of our members decided to get sick (i think she had ebola or something like that). in any case we were quite undermanned. we did not however let this slow down the forward motion (lol get it?) of our project. we got a nice package in the mail from mr. mike hooper with whom we spoke last week, it contained quite a bit of information regarding student bus riders. from this we learned that there are about 300 students who are signed up to catch the bus home from konia every day. we also discussed today the possibility that maybe all that is really needed is a more accurate time table of bus arrivals because the one we were given said that all of the buses were to be leaving konia at 3:30 which we all know is not what happens. we are still working out what we are going to do for sure but if we are involving the p.a. systems then we will be sure to use the inner workings of them in our report due on friday. oh yeah we also discussed our project plan with kumu blake and we were approved!!!!!

And now we're waiting...

 I know, this blogpost must seem REALLY boring, but there's really nothing else to post about. We're currently in the waiting phase of our project— we're waiting for important documents from Mr. Hooper (to be sent via campus mail), waiting for Rachelle to get better (get well Rachelle!), waiting for contact from Robert Cardenas, Mr. Hooper's boss, and waiting for the deadline to approach (just kidding.) We're just getting our proposal ready and hopefully airtight for Thursday's meeting. We hope to answer questions about the number of kids this would reach, the intricacies of the proposed PA system, and how this would work accurately and automatically. I think we'll try to answer those questions tomorrow. Kenny and I will try to hold down the fort if Rachelle is still sick (hopefully not) but I'm sure it will be fine. We just want to make sure that we're prepared for anything Mrs. Martin and the administration team have to throw our way :).

Friday's (LATE) Blogpost!

Waiting for Ms. Martin in the office :O

First off, I would really like to apologize for this late blogpost that I was supposed to have completed by Friday night. I promise there won't be another late blogpost!

But anyways, our interview with Ms. Martin on Thursday after our interview with Mr. Mike was very helpful because it gave us the reality expectations of what our plan would take. As Nikki explained in the prior blogpost, there were many other problems/roadblocks that came about in our meeting with Ms. Martin that we weren't expecting. The most shocking thing to our group would probably have to be the fact that the PA system is actually only for emergencies. I don't think anyone in our group realized this as we created the PA system solution, so we realized we needed to find another way to somehow make announcements through another system. This will prove harder than it sounds (even though it doesn't sound easy) but we're up for the task! We're excited to see how our solution will actually pull through because with all these changes, who knows, we might end up implementing something completely different :)

Mrs. Martin and the upcoming meeting

After interviewing with Mrs. Martin on Thursday, we realized that we had a few kinks to work out in our otherwise innovative plan. The problem with our current solution, as Mrs. Martin so adeptly put, was that there is an insufficient number of people working in the office at the considered time of day (afterschool/study help period) and the limited number of people there are so busy with a variety of other time-consuming tasks, so to press a button and initiate the bus sequence over the PA system would be just another task to add to the never ending list. Whoa. I did not foresee that roadblock. However, I don't think it will be a major problem if we can find a way to make the system self-sufficient; initiated at the proper time by a student, perhaps, or something. But we are making progress— we've knocked out two interviews and will hopefully get to one more as we prepare for an administrative meeting on Thursday. Mrs. Martin kindly invited us to share our ideas at this week's high school administrative team meeting for the first five minutes in order to get a feel of how her colleagues would respond to our idea, and we accepted, as you can see from the email sent above. We hope to have a few more questions answered by then, and Mr. Hooper, who has been a great help to us, is sending his information via campus mail. I am confident that his bus data will be able to provide answers to Mrs. Martin's questions, and we look forward to sharing with her and the rest of the high school administrative team.

Mahalo Uncle Mike!

so today we were extremely fortunate because mr. blake was able to set up a meeting for our group with Mr. Michael Hooper who is in charge of some part of transportation. we explained our project and our plan of action to fix it to him. he had very interesting ideas regarding possible solutions to the problem as well as much more information as to what happens on the transportation department's side of things. he said that at present, all of the buses are to start loading students at 3:30 in order from longest route to shortest. this seems to be a pretty effective way of doing things but he has another idea which is to start different buses from different locations in order to speed up the process of loading students and getting them out and on their way home. he presented more ideas similar to these which may not necessarily be they types of things that we could work with but he also told us about a program which he uses to organize all 28 buses which is called common tracker. using this system he is able to view the gps location of all of the buses at any time. we were hoping to possibly get a device like this in smith office and at a certain point when each bus is near konia have a pre recorded anouncement play informing students of the  near arrival of their bus. we thanked mr. hooper for his time and mana'o and proceeded to Ms. martin's office....

"Attention, Attention! Your bus will be here in 5 minutes"

Courtesy of: http://www.artisticcontrols.com/images/public-address-system.jpg

Let's see, so far our group has proposed to you two solutions we find could solve the bus stop dilemma. One of which may be more reasonable than the other. But, guess what? Our ideas don't stop there. We've got one more idea, and this one consists of working with administration to get a hold of the PA system. Whether it be study hall, in a classroom, or hanging out with friends in the hall, I'm sure people would rather spend their time hanging out in these places than the bus stop any day. That's why, we are proposing, as our third solution, to somehow find a way to make bus announcements everyday after school for everyone to hear...no matter where they are. The PA system is great for sending out mass announcements to the student body at any time during the day because it is likely these students will be somewhere near an announcement box. We would somehow get the transportation department and the Konia office to work together allowing an announcement to go off 10 minutes before each country bus comes. We think this could be very beneficial for all bus riders, and if successful, could carry onto the Paki bus stop as well.

"is that an airport?" nope, just konia bus stop!

you know how at the airport when you are headed out on your long earned journey to disney land and your flight is inevitably delayed simply because the universe hate you? yes we have all been in this situation and the step right after crying profusely is to check one of those cool sideways tv things that they have on the walls that show all the times of flights arriving and departing. well imagine having one of those boards available for use by students at konia so that they could view the position of their bus along its route to the bus stop. this would give students the knowledge and power to more accurately manage their time after school while waiting for their ride home to arrive. they could possibly get over 15 minutes of extra study time in after classes are finished! thats a lot of time, if you add up even just one week thats over an hour! this is just one of the ways that our group is considering as a solution to the cramped bus stop situation which currently is a problem at our school.

Proposed Solution #1: Mobile Alerts

          The previous blogpost proposed a problem we see and feel as a group, can solve for this project. As a group, we have come up with three different solutions that may or may not be reasonable to put into effect. Our first idea has to do with mobile alerts through a cell phone. Just like TheBus Company has HEA, the Kamehameha bus drivers and transportation department would have some way to contact bus riders to let students know when their bus is going to arrive. We feel this is a potentially efficient solution because in this generation people live on their phones. I personally don't know anyone in high school who doesn't own a phone. These devises are always in people's pockets, if not in their hand. So, if your phone is always with you, it would only be beneficial to the rider to rely on a text to let them know when their bus is going to arrive. This way, the rider won't have to rush or guess what time their bus will come.

(what the alert would look like)

          On the other hand, we do realize there are flaws with this solution.
          Say, you forget your phone at home and you are no longer to receive the notification because you don't have your phone. Or maybe you're not able to send or receive text messages on your phone because it's not included in your data plan. We do realize that these may bring up issues, but we also offer simple solutions to these drawbacks.
          Ask a friend who catches the same bus (and has the mobile alerts) so you know when your bus is going to come, or something like that. IF all else should fail, we have a simple solution to that too.
          Wait at the bus stop :)

(where people normally wait)

          This is our proposed solution number one and although it may not be flawless, we are making progress!

The Situation

What do we see as a problem?

        Kids don’t know when their bus comes, resulting in an influx of people congregating around the Konia bus stop area, making it difficult for teachers to drive out, making it awkward for other students to pass by and limiting the amount of time students have to spend studying after school. 

(what we want the bus stop to look like)

Most students who ride the bus know the bus order, but when buses become unreliable (for example, break down, or there is a bus combination), students would like to be aware in some way of when their bus is going to come (5-10 minute alert in advance, etc).

It would also be nice to know when the bus is leaving middle school or high school (like Paki) and this depends whether it's a middle school/high school bus, or just a high school bus.

This is a problem we see is evident on our campus and we would like to solve it.

Interview with the Beck-ster!

 (Mr. Becker's suggestions from the interview)

          When our group decided that we would all do an interview with a teacher to see their insights and suggestions for our physic's final project, I decided that Mr. Becker would be the perfect candidate. He's very easy to talk to, making it more fun to conduct an interview. I started off by showing him our bug list and asked him to list his top three choices out of our 11. He liked our first idea, which was putting some sort of shade over Konia field. After he read that idea, he thought of another problem that could be solved. He suggested that we find a way to make the front of Konia have some type of shaded seating so kids could sit there instead of crowding the halls. Teachers would also appreciate this because there would be less noise during class. I thought this was a great suggestion because coming from a student's perspective, now we wouldn't have to push through hallways saying, "Excuse me"..."Umm, thank you" anymore! After suggesting this idea, he also said he didn't like how much homework teachers gives their students. He believes that there should be less homework outside of school because kids are just so overwhelmed with work that they have no enthusiasm for school whatsoever. This may not be a problem our group can solve directly, but it is an interesting idea....haha. I totally agree with it!

          Overall, I feel that our group is continuing to head in the right direction...which is forward! We all conducted our own individual interviews on our own time so we haven't wasted any class time having to do that. Collaborating on our problems have gotten our group to come up with some great new ideas. We look forward to deciding which problem we hope to solve to improve daily life on this hill!