For my capstone, I decided to make a mini documentary and a research paper about baile folklorico. it’s something that means a lot to me. I’ve danced for about 7 years but had to stop because of covid. It’s something that connected me to my culture and heritage, and it’s also where I met a lot of friends. Here are the links https://drive.google.com/file/d/15e_0khmYmVIBLkX-zkCeO7ZIpGqvQTrW/view?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GneaK94EezJS-3RzKlMs_0nOfyqmmLM1lY8WtjwyIwI/edit?usp=sharing

For my capstone, I created a podcast with a few SLA staff members to learn more about them as people and to emphasize the importance of a teacher and student relationship. My final product is two video podcast episodes. However, they were derailed a little due to me testing positive for COVID last week. I recorded two episodes, one with Mr. Lehmann and one with Ms. Gasser. My goal was to be able to learn more about their story and who they are beyond the classroom. The bonds that I have created with teachers are so special that I wanted to be able to show them through this podcast. I want to show how SLA is able to give students such a special space to be able to connect and feel comfortable with the teachers and staff. I want this to be able to be listened to by students, parents, alumni, and prospective students.

Below is my annotated bibliography, some pictures from recording the episodes, and the 2 official episodes of Teacher Talks!

I hope you enjoy!!

Thank you!!

— Max Blakelock

Kane Burgos Senior Gasser Advisory Mentor: Gade

Capstone Abstract Some say they hope their capstone will leave behind a legacy. However I know my project will outlive my high school career by about 10 to 20 years. My work consists of two parts: a fully bio active vivarium and a detailed leopard gecko care guide. To be more specific, I am preparing the habitat and instructions for Miss Gade’s class pet! We have been working closely to ensure that the health of the animal is a priority. I have given this animal the best of the best. A fully bioactive vivarium. No paper towel or carpet substrate and no plastic plants. As well as a full set of instructions for Miss Gade and her students; in order to guarantee that, with care, the leopard gecko will be taken care of without having to navigate several care guides, cross reference, and verify in order to give them the best possible life. Below I have linked the other necessary documents.

CARE GUIDE https://docs.google.com/document/d/10rEpva_eFVAiw0AxdWeZW1LK2cS4YUEN1xflf5W_LsU/edit?usp=sharing

BIBLIOGRAPHY https://docs.google.com/document/d/11W00NHBTW4MSz698gFhjFWQAAxTfuKTizLwDIChQr-I/edit?usp=sharing

For my capstone project I started a prom committee so there would be decorations and a theme for the senior prom. This idea came to me during the summer last year and I thought it would be a really fun capstone project. Last year we didn’t get a junior prom due to covid and being online so I really wanted this to be the most memorable prom possible. I wanted to combine my love for planning and art through decorating to come up with a night to remember. I started off by making a presentation to pitch to Braskem in hopes of getting funds to decorate. It was a really amazing experience. In the following weeks to come I waited for news on whether or not I’d gotten the funds, and about 2 weeks later I was notified that I got the money I asked for and a mentor to help guide me. I’d meet with my mentor every once in a while depending on if I needed help. After this I started to plan meetings out for the committee. Unfortunately not too many people showed up the times I tried to have meetings so I ended up reaching out to my friends and other seniors that were interested in helping me with decorations. I already had a theme in mind from a “Prom decor” Pinterest board I made a while ago so it made it easier to decide. I also made a mood board of the things I ordered with the title “ An Enchanted Evening”. I also visited the venue to see where the decorations would go. There were some bumps in the road with the venue at times but everything worked out in the end. In addition to all this I also sent out a google form to gather songs from seniors so everyone could have at least one song they like played at prom. I’m still waiting for decorations to arrive but I have a plan for when they do and have support from friends, family, and other community members at SLA to help make this a memorable event for the seniors.

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iIrejrrhgggQ5e0f971yYgKd_hpzWu19axTV8dJWTGY/edit?usp=sharing

Powelton Village is a beautiful historic neighborhood located in the northern part of University City. It is also the neighborhood in which I grew up. Growing up, I have always been very close to my neighbors. The community that we have formed together over the years has been a very influential part of my life. While brainstorming how I wanted to capture the past four years, I immediately gravitated towards Powelton. There are many topics of interest that I could have focused my project on: from the history, to the architecture, to the people. When thinking about all of the unique stories that I could tell, I quickly realized that many of the names that came to mind were names of artists. And then the question hit me: Why are there so many artists in Powelton Village? This became my guiding question as I set out to make a documentary exploring and celebrating the diversity of talent condensed in this small region. I made three short individual profiles where each artist got a chance to share their backstory, their process, and to show off their work. Each one describes their own unique connection to Powelton and how the community and the region has influenced their art and their lives.

Here is a link to a website that I created to compile everything into one place: Artists of Powelton

Bibliography

For my capstone project, I did a neighborhood cleanup with the help of my friend and parent. I live in southwest Philadelphia and it’s not the prettiest neighborhood around. I wanted to take s step toward creating our environment, into a welcoming place. An environment where people like myself can walk to the bus stop without worrying about trash being all over the place. The leading cause of this “trashy-ness” is the lack of trashcans. Having a few trashcans around each neighborhood can help lower the statistics of Philly being so dirty. Taking some time out of my day and starting a neighborhood cleanup will not only benefit me but my community as a whole. I wanted to help my community in some way before I leave for college and this is one of the many ways to do so. My contribution and project were the start of possibly, something bigger. I spent time after school with friends and cleaned up as much as I could. The challenges I anticipated were volunteers and weather; I did have a lack of volunteers. The weather wasn’t an issue and at first, the lack of volunteers bothered me, but once I started the project, it was pretty easy and fun to do. I took photos of our progress and how we managed with everything we had.

Annotated Bibliography https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v1Ag_bEoKELp3SvkvyR1ACDFSBAoOmH5jUTChZyfFy4/edit?usp=sharing

Pictures:

For my Capstone, I decided to combine my love for computer science and my passion for sneakers to create a website that I felt could benefit my fellow sneakerheads. The website is called Sole Searching and it is a website that will allow you to compare prices of sneakers, read weekly articles about different sneaker brands, find release dates, and even some trivia! To create this website I had to first research how to scrape data to compare the prices, how to implement that data onto my site, and how to make it look nice, all for FREE! The sneaker resell game is crazy and it can be difficult to find authentic sneakers for a reasonable price, so I wanted to try and give the community a place for that. When creating this project I began to think about all of the times I wish I had something like it to help me out when I was first getting into sneakers. So I hope that this project will be the place people go when they want to know more about sneaker culture and allow for anyone who visits, sneakerheads, people just getting into sneakers, or just the average consumer, to have an easier sneaker shopping experience and eventually Find Their Sole!

Website Link: https://solesearchingcom.wordpress.com/

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UugkwRzmVqXvhWb96NKajc2HWSsSsM-er-3btCeLiCg/edit?usp=sharing

My Capstone project is based on a favorite quote of mine and how it applies to my community. This quote originated from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

My Capstone goal is to show how I can use Google’s free services to teach my immigrant Hispanic community to better access technology to balance their lives. I achieved this through weekly seminars with family members. My final product is a video that demonstrates the process of gathering data on the needs of my community, creating a weekly seminar, presenting it, and evaluating how it helped both them and me.

By showing others how to optimize Google’s services, I hope to reach a larger audience that wants to learn more about the power of the internet. Oftentimes we get frustrated when our family doesn’t pick up a concept that is simple to us, but we fail to understand that it wasn’t an option for them to learn. By the end of my capstone, I want the listeners to understand the value of teaching, patience, and reflection.

Final Product: https://youtu.be/Dry93jovn5s

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cH5up_s3GFjE-5NPXe9n3IBLHIjdTld44K_Fs4Gjw2E/edit?usp=sharing

What i did for my capstone was build an “cartoonish adaptation of our school, I did this on units game building engine and I learned a lot of an entire coding language (c#) in order to complete this project i also learned about architecture and how building video game worlds is hard just like building real world buildings especially when you’re doing it alone (i gained a lot of respect for dev teams of 20-30 people) and I realized that building worlds is time consuming and not for everyone to do. What i started off with was the spawn room for the school I thought making a spawn room similar to a video game would be a cool way to start of the school i then followed it up by building the 2nd floor with walls and floors, did a bit of polishing in c# and thought it looked ok I then continued that process until I was done and I decided not to make a first floor because it was a bit much and I felt as though my computer couldn’t handle that but I had tried to do the best i can without crashing or killing my computer. Lastly, I put a giant cube around all the architecture to resemble the school walls and how when you’re in school it’s a bit harder to see what’s going on outside of the school.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_sWmIrm36bd6VwsHPkwmCzXYAgocPy-w/view?usp=sharing

https://www.gamedesigning.org/learn/make-a-vr-game/

Article title How to Make A VR Game (The Last Guide You’ll Ever Need)

Website title Video Game Design and Development

Date accessed March 16, 2022

Date published March 15, 2022

This source is 100% reliable as it goes over the does and doesn’t of making a VR game as well as the basics of making a game so you don’t have to be left in the dark if you are just starting and this explains the different types of VR apps and games there are for different things. This source also explains exactly what coding languages VR games are written in and the most efficient for the type of game you are trying to make it also pinpoints the ups and downs of coding a VR game and it talks about how to improve your game making ability/skills

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-04-01-the-best-practices-and-design-principles-of-vr-development

Article title The best practices and design principles of VR development

Website title GamesIndustry.biz

Date accessed March 16, 2022

Date published April 02, 2020

This source is a bit older but it is definitely reliable as it pinpoints “The best practices and design principles of VR development” and it also includes quotes from different game developers about what/what shouldn’t be put into VR this source also goes over the limitations of VR and where to put what you need in the game to make it more efficient overall and make it work better for you it talk about not letting you overwhelm yourself with the coding process and to take a break whenever you need because if you can’t think you can’t build and that is one of the biggest things when it comes to initiating the building blocks to any game

https://circuitstream.com/blog/unity-vs-unreal/

Article title Unity vs Unreal Engine - Which is Better for Virtual and Augmented Development?

URL https://circuitstream.com/blog/unity-vs-unreal/

Website title 3D Development Bootcamp & XR Courses | Circuit Stream

Date accessed March 16, 2022

Date published February 14, 2022

This source pretty much handles the difference between the 2 coding engines and which one is better for coding an ar/XR game and it also goes over the basics of what a VR game is and different impacts on the world it also goes over what ar/xXRis and it gives you a step by step guide starting on how to start brainstorming an idea for a game to getting your scans in the game to revamping the game and working out bug glitches this a guide and they give you everything you need to build whatever VR game you VRnt

https://youtu.be/1VC3ZOxn2Lo n/a citations?

This source is a relatively short YouTube video for a larger topic of study but it is an important video as it goes over the basics and for some people me included would benefit better from someone teaching them hands-on through a video rather than a guide although guides are very helpful in the video he goes over setting up your unity for you to start building a VR game and how to make grabbable objects also to make your person Movable he helps with all plugins addons and such things that are needed to make your game legit

https://virtualrealitypop.com/the-costs-of-making-a-vr-game-6814a012303e

Article title The Costs of Making a VR Game

Website title Medium

Date accessed March 16, 2022

Date published May 23, 2017

This source talks about bigger budget tech companies making VR games but it’s always good to model your platform off of bigger companies although you may not necessarily have the funds they have you can be as innovative as them with what you have and so this source goes through the beginning of a guy building a game through the beginning of college and how much he had to pay freelance coders and everyone else and he goes over the cost of workstations and VR kits for the devs to use as well as computer price in this it goes over a bit more corporate issues than personal issues but it’s always good to see what companies pay and how they work behind the scenes

https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unreal/unreal-quick-start-guide-quest/ oculus devs (citation)

This source is from the VR headset devs and it’s about how to start coding on the unreal engine and how to transfer your game to oculus or whatever VR headset you would need to it also provides instruction on how to set up your project settings in the unreal engine app to be allowed to take it onto oculus and configure it for oculus plugins something bad about this source work probably be that it doesn’t give you info to start the project and get it going it just informs you on how to optimize the game for oculus

https://gemisis.medium.com/developing-for-vr-in-2020-a-beginners-guide-bde4bc2611fc

Article title Developing for VR in 2020 - A Beginner’s Guide

Website title Medium

Date accessed March 17, 2022

Date published July 17, 2020

This article says it’s a beginner guide but if you go through the article it talks about everything from buying a headset to coding the game and this article talks about the best coding software you should use to create a game the author of the article even chimes in and says what he thinks is the best starting coding software throughout this article he also talks about how easy it is to go right into VR development and that as we go on it takes less and less time to build a cool working VR compatible app it even seems like it’s easier to make a VR game then it is a regular PlayStation Xbox or pc compatible game

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/getting-started-in-vr-with-unreal-engine

Article title Unreal Online Learning

Website title Unreal Engine

Date accessed March 17, 2022

This is from the game coding engine themselves and it gives you a basic rundown of how everything works it even gives you a little course that gives you the basics of their platforms it teaches you how to implement a template prepare oculus and steam VR games to go into the store and how to implement motion controllers into your VR character to make them move around a lot better and control different things within your virtual environment one downside is that you have to have a compatible computer you can’t just use it on a bare minimum computer.

https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Make-a-Virtual-Reality-Game-for-Beginners/?amp_page=true

Article title How to Make Your First Virtual Reality Game for Beginners

Website title Instructables

Date accessed March 17, 2022

Date published September 21, 2017

This source is a bit more focused on building a battle royale game but it’s a good source because you get a feel for the building of any game. After all, every game has to have the same base for people to build off of it and in this source, you can learn about setting up scenes and how your character can navigate through the game or hallways and corridors of your game it also teaches how to add NPCs in your game to give it some feel and where to place your NPC files at.

Article title Scanning Reality into Virtual Reality

URL https://archvirtual.com/2015/06/15/scanning-reality-into-virtual-reality/

Website title Arch Virtual VR Training and Simulation for Education and Enterprise

Date accessed March 17, 2022

This source talks about scanning items into the game which is great because I have to scan different items from the school into the game to create a replica of the school in VR it talks about how easy it is to scan things into the game and why 3d scanning is important and it talks about 3d scanning architecture into the game the downfall to this source is it doesn’t tell you exactly how to scan the items into an unreal engine or even any good applications for scanning. Things into your unreal engine

For my capstone project, I created a few art pieces that are a result of my time spent learning the ins and outs of Python and Python Turtle. I used coding to make art because I wanted to show others one of the many ways to use coding.

Since I was completely new to this and self-taught, I started with learning the building blocks of any code, the syntax. Then I learned simple shapes like circles, squares, and triangles. After a while, I was ready for my first project, Generative Art. It is a form of digital art that generates randomly and goes on forever if you don’t tell the code to end. The random things I developed were random triangles, squares, and circles of random colors. They would be in different places every time I would run the code. Finally, I was ready to make a project to display to others. This project would be much more complex than my previous project because I would have to code each shape individually and match the colors as well. My final project is Low Poly Art of pictures I have taken on my high school journey so far. Low Poly Art is made up of small simple shapes that make an image. I was inspired by mosaic art. I enjoyed the thought of many little different shapes coming together to build a piece of art.

Capstone: Abstract, Annotated Bibliography, & Some Examples of Art vs Original: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jOg3ZQhYGVTIcc_V7mWP4Rl1Ai8LmshkMV7neoc02hc/edit?usp=sharing