Closing Remarks from Improving “The View”

It has been a great year for all of our Grandview Passion Project groups. New ideas and traditions have been brought to our Grandview community. Despite many obstacles, our group was able to fulfill our mission and Improve “The View.” Our original goal was to construct 2 beach volleyball courts on our Grandview campus. These courts could be used by students during leisure time and be used for competitive play. However, getting the proper funding for these courts was a major challenge. We were not able to overcome this obstacle and our beach volleyball dream was no longer possible. Despite this, our group continued to look for ways to Improve our school and its athletic department.

During the final quarter of our school year our group shifted our focus to bringing sports, specifically volleyball, to our Grandview students. Our group organized a field trip to Lake Wyman park for our innovation students. While on the trip students learned about how to play beach volleyball and how to stay active through playing sports. Our group was able to share our passion for sports and fitness with our classmates during this trip. Our group also decided that we would share this passion with Grandview’s 5th grade class. Using our current knowledge of volleyball we took over a 5th grade P.E. class to teach the fundamentals of volleyball. We worked on passing, setting, and being able to volley with a partner. Finally, our group has constructed an exit plan for the money that we did fundraise. These funds will be donated to our Grandview athletic department to be put towards new volleyball equipment for next year. We want to thank our Grandview community for all their support throughout this school year. With your help, our group was able to successfully Improve “The View.”

Closing the Year with Great Progress!

Though all of our local marine micro-algae samples died after Spring Break, we have since been very successful in culturing the marine green algae Nannochloropsis gaditana. We have 24 thick cultures. By mixing aquarium salt with distilled water, we can get our desired salinity content which is about 1.020sg. Then, we add micro-algae fertilizer at about 6ml/gallon. Finally, we inoculate the growth media with the cells.

Last week, we were also able to acquire a sonicator, which we will use to lyse cells (essentially shatter the cell wall). Once this happens, lipids are released from the cell membrane into the solution. From here, we can refine the oils into biodiesel!

 

The End of the Year is Just the Beginning!

As of today, Cloud 10 Productions has recorded Grandview’s alma mater on our new equipment! We will be giving a presentation at the end of the year Innovation Program convocation, where we will be sharing our results and comparing them to the quality of the same alma mater recording, except taken with an iPhone. Even we were blown away by how professional the singers of our high school music program sounded when recorded with our new equipment. It truly picks up every voice in the choir and it beats the recording capabilities of an iPhone by a long-shot! Cloud 10 is thrilled to be able to provide Grandview with these truly awesome possibilities! We know that so many students will create absolutely amazing things with this simple mic and computer set-up. With our mini recording materials also comes quite unique classes involving both specialized vocal lessons and production (learning the ropes of how to master music technology such as garage band). We would like to give a special thanks to our extra talented and extremely musically inclined friends who helped us set up, record, and get everyone on board along the way. Cloud 10 would not have been able to have had the outcome that we did without your constant help and support throughout the year! We would love to see you at our convocation on the 17th of May! 

Equal and Empowered featured throughout community

Since winning $9,500 at the Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank in March, things have only gotten more exciting for Equal and Empowered! We started off the week at a successful meeting with our mentor, Julie Cummings, where we discussed our upcoming plan, and what it will entail.

Since feminism is a movement, and not a tangible object, we brainstormed about ways to link both important aspects. It had to be something that would give voice to young people throughout the community, and advance our ideals of feminism and empowerment. In the end, we decided on a book featuring the poetry, artwork, and short stories from students in Palm Beach county and beyond. Every individual has a unique voice and story, and what better way to showcase that than via a tangible book? Members have already started writing and acquiring submissions, and we’re so excited bring our book to life!

It seems the local media is taking notice of the impact we have had thus far! The Sun Sentinel  featured news of our success at the Philanthropy Tank, and the Palm Beach Post followed suit, with a print edition coming out tomorrow!

As we continue to move forward on this incredible journey, we cannot wait to achieve even more to further the ideals of feminism, and make this world a better place for everyone!

Equal + Empowered wins big at Palm Beach Philanthropy Tank!

The evening of March 17 is one that will not be forgotten, especially not for the members of Equal and Empowered! Thanks to  months of preparation, and the invaluable insight dispelled by our mentor Margaret May Damen, Equal and Empowered walked away with a total of $9,500 and a mentor for a year! Julie Fisher Cummings contributed $7,500, and we are honored to have her expertise and enthusiasm guiding us for the next 365 days. Additionally, Danielle Moore generously contributed $1,000, and Equal and Empowered received $1,500 for being selected as second place audience favorites!

Such success is truly a dream come true for Equal and Empowered! Thanks to funding, we now have the ability to complete many tasks we had previously just been able to imagine. One such example is creating a book in the form of a collection of poems, each one detailing various aspects and struggles associated with feminism. With it, we hope to inspire young people to embrace who they are and understand they are not alone in their struggles.

In other news, our prom dress drive is still going on, and will be so until April 16. If you have or know someone who has a prom dress they would like to donate, please give it to one of the members of Equal and Empowered.

We are so humbled to have received such an incredible award from the Philanthropy Tank! Seeing such passionate young people come together to better our community was such an inspiring experience. The future holds many wonderful plans for Equal and Empowered, and we cannot wait to make an impact beyond the Grandview community.

It’s Finally Here!

After Cloud 10’s trip to the Guitar Center in Coconut Creek, we have finally been able to experiment with tangible equipment. Not only was the trip a success in both progress and overall music knowledge, but upon returning back to Grandview, tools of our very own had arrived! Our first package included a microphone, a mixer, a mic stand, a pop filter, and cables. We are so excited to assemble Grandview’s first desktop recording studio! It will be located in our campus’s music room, with our very own Mrs. Furman as it’s overseer. At first, this special addition to our music program will only be available to high school students. But eventually, we hope to be able to record students of all ages singing our school’s alma matter. This mini desktop recording area, will allow passionate students to pursue their own musical endeavors at a pace that best suits them. Our trip to Guitar Center has helped us gain invaluable information and advice from musicians and production specialists alike. Cloud 10 Productions was greatly benefitted by this trip, and would like to give a huge thanks to Guitar Center for welcoming our grandiose ideas with open arms, and helping us through the tough beginning stages of questions, doubts, and much enthusiasm. Stay tuned for many more exciting updates to come!   

Carpe Musicam!

Not only does Cloud 10 have an upcoming field trip to our local Guitar Center (featured above), but all of the necessary pieces for our very first production table have been picked out and ordered! A big thanks to both the hardworking members of Cloud 10 and Mr. Berey, our Innovation Program leader, for helping us kickstart our seemingly small project in order to pave the way for many huge and promising productions to come in the future! From scouting various local businesses in search of both donations and much appreciated advice (Louis-Charles), to researching and blue-printing what our future contribution to music will look like in person (Ricky and Jake) this past semester has proven to be most opportune due to hard work and dedication like theirs. With our new production table, we aim to record Grandview’s own choir students singing the beautiful school alma mater. The production table will be housed in Grandview’s music room, hopefully attracting many more voices than just that of previous music students. Both pictures of our Guitar Center field trip and some snaps of us assembling our very first brain child are on the way! Thank you for all of your continuous support, we look forward to the future! Stay tuned!

Philanthropy Tank

As we said in our last blog post, currently we are working on our presentation for Philanthropy Tank! Since we last posted, we have attended a meeting with our mentor, the estimable Margaret May Damen, and attended a public speaking workshop. These have allowed us bond as a group and streamline our plans and ideas.

Over the next couple of weeks, there are a lot of exciting things happening with E + E. On Tuesday, March 1^st, we begin Grandview’s first annual prom dress drive! We are working together with Becca’s Prom Dress Drive to donate prom dresses to underprivileged high school students who can’t afford them but still deserve to have a night with their friends. If you have any old formal dresses or prom dresses that you would be willing to donate, your contribution would be very much appreciated.

On March 17^th, we have our presentation for Philanthropy Tank! At 5:00 P.M. at the Harriet Himmel Theater in CityPlace, we will be presenting for the chance to win up to 15,000 dollars. It would be awesome if you could come down and show us your support.

New Discovery

SRT Fifth Blog Entry

This month, we studied the species in local freshwater algae using a high powered microscope. We happened to discover a tape worm like organism in the algae that was still alive, the the naked eye, this organism was invisible, but we were able to see and study it. We also say an organism split into two just like a cell. We have also begun to grow our algae using salt water.

Beach Volleyball in Boca

Our group has mentioned before that beach volleyball is the fastest growing sport in Collegiate Athletics history. Well this craze for beach volleyball has spread to Florida Atlantic University right here in Boca Raton. Our group sees this as an incredible opportunity to learn more about the sport on the college level. Also, the insight of how to build a beach volleyball complex will be very useful. The Owls season begins on Saturday, March 5 at their beach volleyball courts against University of North Florida. Florida Atlantic was successful in improving their athletic department with the addition of beach volleyball courts. We are looking to do the same at Grandview.

    Our field trip to the Florida Atlantic beach complex is currently scheduled for March 17. Our group is looking to cease this opportunity to better understand the construction of a beach complex. Also, we would like to share our passion for Grandview athletics with the rest of our innovation classmates. We hope that our peers enjoy this trip and see how exciting a beach complex at Grandview would be. Funding is still an obstacle for “Improving the View.” We ask all of our followers to please donate by going to gofundme.com/theview We would like to thank FAU and coach Steve Grotowski for making this trip to FAU possible. Good luck to the Owls this year! And please join the movement for beach volleyball at Grandview.