CH GCE Portfolio

This is an action project for my core class Light, Sound, & Time. In this first unit, we learned about light and how it works. I learned a lot about wave-particle duality, the visible spectrum, the electromagnetic spectrum, human eyes, and similar triangles. A couple of students went on an FE to the GCE building to use the darkroom that our teacher set up. For this project, we were asked to build our own pinhole camera to show how we could use light to capture images.  CH. "Pinhole Camera." 2021 I made a pinhole camera. The dimensions of my camera are 4.5 inches tall, 6.3 inches wide, and 8.4 inches long. The volume of my camera is 238.14 cubic inches. In order to capture a picture, the inside of the camera has to be completely black. When you close the camera, it has to be a completely light proof so that unnecessary light doesn’t mess with the picture. Once you place the light reactive paper inside and close the camera, you can not let any light in unless you are taking...

During my three-week Civic Term course called "Music that Matters". We learned about music that has helped to teach, inspire, and ignite. During this course, we had three guests virtually talk to the class. Our guests Faiz Razi, Conan Neutron, and Fransisco Ramirez are active people in the music community and they talked to us about music and why it matters to them. For this action project, we were asked to create a proposal for My Block, My Hood, My City. Their newest project asks, "How can you make a positive impact on your neighborhood?"  I am proposing a giant interactive musical experience. I want to install a giant piano keyboard into the ground so that the community can interact with it. The piano will be playable and light up when the keys are pressed. I want to create it so that people could also pick from a list of songs and play them on the piano. When the songs are played the piano keys will light up in beat with the song. The music for this installation...

In my Humanities class, Rhetoric, we recently finished our third and final unit called Unity. In this unit, we furthered our knowledge of rhetoric and the impact it can have. We studied different situations where rhetoric has been used to inspire, unite, and bring change. We then focused on rhetorical devices. We studied different passages so that we could understand how these devices get used. For example, Common Sense by Thomas Paine was a pamphlet that continuously used rhetoric to persuade independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. For this AP, we had to create a piece of artwork that expresses an issue and brings together unity.  CH. "Collage." 2020. I am 17 years old and as a teenager, I can tell you that life is a mess right now. With all of life's ups and downs, it can often seem as if we are just moving through life with no real purpose or goal. In order to portray how I feel, I choose to create a collage. The words and pictures I used we...

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 ...

I have been interested in photography for a long time. I like the way that pictures seem to capture a moment that can never be recreated that same way again. I like the way that photographs are able to play with perspective and lighting. During this independent study, I learned how to shoot in manual mode. I learned a lot about aperture, ISO, and shutter speed and how these components play a big role in taking a picture. During this IS, I also practiced shooting with perspective. My goal was to learn different photography techniques, and use those techniques to create a portfolio of pictures that depict the current climate that our world lives in. I do not think that I have met this goal. I believe that I still have a lot to learn and work on. The pictures I collected for my portfolio are things that are important to me or that I enjoy. I will definitely be continuing my photography journey throughout high school. I want to practice my photography skills around my neighborhood and when...

In my Humanities class, Rhetoric, we recently finished our second unit. In this unit, we furthered our knowledge of rhetoric and the impact it can have. We studied different situations where rhetoric has been used. We focused on the literary devices used in rhetoric and how those devices have an impact on the words, their context, and the impact on the audience. We watched the vice presidential debate and studied rhetoric between now elect Vice President Kamal Harris and Vice President Mike Pence. We met with Ugo Okere, a man who was running on the ticket as a Socialist to be elected in Chicago ward 40. As a class, most of us met in-person to walk through and learn about the MLK Living Memorial in Marquette Park. To wrap up our second unit of Rhetoric, I was asked to write an Op-ed. I choose to write mine about Chicago, CPS, and the current struggles Covid-19 causes for students. In this op-ed, I included rhetoric to help appeal to the reader. I established logos by including three cit...

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. ...