For my capstone I answered the guiding question, “How can video games teach us?”. I decided to answer this question with the creation of a website compiling multiple studies and examples of video games that teach. I also made a video about how some specific games use tutorials to teach us. The project was a very comfortable and fun project to create, and It helped me further my research and video creation skills.

Website: https://sites.google.com/slabeeber.org/learning-through-games

Video:

For my capstone project I worked closely with Jasmine to create A Boss Brunch. This project was very tedious and took lots of time and patience to execute. We worked on this project throughout the school year and when the time finally came it was such a huge relief. We reached out to some well known brands in Philly and they came to support us and give inspirational speeches. Throughout this project I learned how to network, build, and be open to different ideas and opinions. I learned more about peoples work ethics and how not everyone is going to work at the same pace as you or even put in the same amount of effort as you. This project built me as a person and it built my brand. One of the young entrepreneurs that attended the pop-up shop has also seen a recent spike in his sales, one has decided to go to the art museum and promote his brand, and all of the others have continuously reached out after the pop up shop with business opportunites for all of the other brands.

I created a pastry business two years ago and named it Sweet Essence, this was the start of a great new life for me. Ever since that day I have been working to make my business flourish, create a larger clientele, and work at my skill. ver the past few years I was able to unfold my talent and create s many new things without guidance. With this being said I chose to do an internship with a professional baker in hopes of expanding my education from a different perspective, and better my skill. The woman I chose has been in this business for 10 years, she has a business called Jazzy B’s Cookies Cakes & Candies. While working with her I did lots of hands-on learning by helping her with her big orders and watching her complete them. We also talked about the different strategies best to use when running this type of business which helped me a lot. Towards the end f the internship, she asked me to design a cake, and then she’d guide me through making it. At the end of this internship, I was able to gain a new friendship, an entirely new skill set, and even more knowledge.

For my capstone project, I worked with Umme to research the issues that children face, especially the ones who need to carry oxygen cylinders on daily basis. We planned to make a flexible oxygen cylinder holder that can sense children’s movement so that they don’t always need to be assisted by an adult. However, the process wasn’t very easy as we started working on it, due to not having enough resources. Considering the research and also the accessibility to resources, we had to change our initial plan. We ended up making a car seat belt for the oxygen cylinder that can be used while traveling; it will secure the cylinder well, preventing it from possible accidental drips. After making our product, we presented our project as a proposal to the organization that funded us. Our main goal was to spread awareness on this issue which barely gets spoken about in our community so that people who are in power can take a step toward changing the issue. It was a different and unique experience for both of us. We have learned to think critically about the people and give back to the community that we are in. We noticed how difficult a task could be even though it may seem an easy task to do at first. Lastly, we have to acknowledge not to be afraid to change our plan if things don’t work out the way we wanted to be.

For my capstone, I recorded a music album about my senior year. I have been making music since I was a sophomore and decided this album would accurately represent my ideas for this project. I decided to name the album “The Senior Tape” and that it would consist of 10 songs with one of those songs being a feature from another senior in high school. Throughout the project, I had to change up my ideas in order to fit a budget as my original idea to create a concert would’ve costed more than I would wanted it to. Overall, this album was very fun to make and can benefit the community by showing people that you can do anything you put your mind to. This album will be available on Soundcloud and Youtube May 27th.

The guiding question that my capstone followed was how are we able to give advice to younger students trying to navigate high school? We wanted to share our experiences with how the reality of high school is actually very different from what we see on television and in movies. The way we went about this process is firstly we wanted to make it longer and include more, but we felt like we should just make it about our experiences and made it the highlight. We created two parts talking about our experiences and we talked about multiple topics in them. I felt like in the end, we learned that high school isn’t going to be perfect like there will be ups and downs, but it was experience that made us who we are today.

Being a student is hard. I see teachers and other people in leading positions, fleetingly mention the importance and presence of a personal life as a student. I rarely see people actually pay attention to it and break down the struggle of balancing your life at home and at school. This struggle is especially difficult as an older sibling because there are more responsibilities that include taking care of yourself and other people (your siblings). I took one of the main challenges I face to focus on and decided to give advice to other students that are in my position. I created a platform where all the information about the struggle and resources on how to better maintain would be incorporated into a website. This idea is the third I had for a capstone but happened to be my last. I am satisfied with my final project and how well it ties into my personal life and literally most of what I have had to deal with throughout my years of schooling. Check it out here at: https://iyesha215.wixsite.com/siblingsitting101

My capstone was based on mental health. Together Milah and I wanted to make a difference for kids we saw mentally struggling in school. We noticed over time that due to quarantine, the attitudes of our peers around us have entirely shifted, which even took a toll on our lives. So from there, our essential question became “How can we make school more comforting when it comes to mental health?” At first, the initial response was to make a mini-course so that people could talk. After much research, I realized that everyone isn’t comfortable speaking in a group so we created an anonymous google form that people can talk to and get responses from one of us. We want to continue it once we graduate because mental health is too important to take lightly. We also did interviews throughout the year talking to kids in the school about how they felt. Overall I feel like we learned a lot about how education can affect our mental health and methods to soothe the stress