CH GCE Portfolio

For our second unit of Design and Engineering, we had to finish this term by designing a bike that would fit the persona given to us by our teacher. We had to design a bike using empathy. We learned about designing with empathy in our last unit. In this unit, we learned about speed conversions, gear ratios, Newton's laws, energy, derivatives, and we learned a lot about the volume and area of 2D and 3D shapes.  We met virtually with a representative from Divvy to learn about the program that they have in Chicago and how they believe it is helping our communities. We went to a bike shop called Earth Rider to learn more about e-bikes and how they work. I worked with another student to complete this project, here I have attached the link to their blog post .  Our persona lives in Banff, Canada, and has to travel 3 miles to school every day. They have to travel along winding roads and it is often cold. They have to carry their school books during this ride to and from school. They ...

In this unit Design and Engineering, we learned about levers, wedges, and tools. The project is asking us to create our own garden tool that is more accessible to senior citizens. The user is senior citizens and what makes them unique is that as people get older, gardening becomes a much more difficult task. Gardening becomes more difficult to them due to the decline in vision, failing manual dexterity, and difficulty stooping and lifting. Empathy relates to this project because if you want to design a tool that senior citizens can actually use, designing with empathy is the way to go. Empathy is when you put yourself in someone else's to try to understand how they are feeling. I learned that high quality and useful gardening tools are often expensive. The gardener I interviewed told me that she "sees gardening as a relaxing and meditation activity." The tools that my gardener found ineffective were the ones that, over time, had grips that could hurt the user's hand. ...