N@TM Blog Post

• Overview
• Presenting at N@TM
• Looking at Other Projects
• Reflection

Overview

Del Norte High School holds an event called Night at The Museum which allows students to show off their artistic work. For example, the art class may show off their art pieces and the ceramics students may show off their pottery. For AP Computer Science students, we are demonstrating our programs/projects that we’ve been working on. It allows them to display the hard work they have put in the previous few months.

• Unfourtanetly, I was unable to participate in N@TM on that day and thus my goal was to:
  1. create a similar Night at The Museum event at home and with my friends. This way I could still show off my work and demonstrate my knowledge. By creating a similar enviroment at home, I can still present my project.
  2. Show off my project to friends and family. Over the break, I tried to get as many viewers as possible to view my project. SOme of these people include my family members. I also shared my project with some of my friends, some of which have taken computer science principles or have cs knowledge. They gave me useful tips on how to improve my program/feature.
  3. I also wanted to explore other people’s projects outside of the realm of computer science. So I invited my friend Derrick who has taken 3D Animation and asked him to show off his project. This made it so my N@TM experience was not just me showing off my feature but also exploring other artistic projects.

Presenting at N@TM

Side Note

• I got to show off my program to so many people that I got carried away and forgot to take pictures and record them. However, it is the experience that counts, not the recording of it.

• The first person I showed my program off to was Andrew Reid who just so happened to be available and at school on the day of N@TM. So I ran my program and tried to explain my code. However, I realized that besides the functionality of my program, Andrew had trouble understanding the code behind the scenes. Words like “databases”, “CRUD”, “API”, etc. were all terms that weren’t easy to comprehend. However, he still enjoyed my presentation and I enjoyed my first trial of N@TM. Video of me presenting my project

• The next person I presented to was Derrick Huang. This time I tried to incorporate more friendly language and a simpler explanation of my feature. After showing off the program itself, I presented the code in categories: frontend, backend, and model. I explained how each one was connected to each other but I may have generalized things too much because although Derrick was getting it, there were several important code blocks that I glossed over. So I learned that in future presentations I needed to use simple language but also delve deep into my project’s many components.
• I then presented to several more people and each presentation seemed to be better than the last. Finally, I showed off my project to my mom going through my project and the behind the scenes code in depth but also clearly. However, my mom was not impressed and suggested that I incorporate more complexity to my code which I did by adding a purchase feature.
• Ultimately, prsenting my project with my makeshift N@TM was a lot of fun as I got to show off my last few week’s of hard work. And I also got some helpful advice to improve my program which I was very grateful for.

Looking at Other Projects

I wasn’t able to see many projects due to my predicament. Many of my friends did not participate in N@TM and of the ones that did, many of them weren’t able to access their projects. However, I was able to view my friend, Derrick Huang’s, 3D animation project. In his project, his purpose was to 3D animate a donut and add additional, creative features around it.

He explained that some people put donuts on a table and put a plant next to it or put it on a car. In any case, the emphasis was on the donut. I was particularly interested in this project because I have experience in art but have never dealt with 3D animation. It was something interesting and something that I wanted to learn.

Derrick showed me his project and it was a decorative donut on a plate with a cup of coffee in the background. There was also a purple brick wall in the back which contrasted the colors of the donut and coffee. Derrick revealed how he did this in order to place emphasis on the main subject, the donut. I found this very fascinating. He also explained how the hardest thing about his project was managing the sprinkles because they would often be displaced and would thus look wonky on the donut. He told me that to solve this, he used filling which filled in a lot of the spaces where sprinkles normally shouldn’t be. It made it easier to put the sprinkles on the donut.

Reflection

Although I wasn’t able to go to the actual Night at The Museum, I was still able to create a similar envirment and have a lot of fun. One unfortunate thing I experienced ws being unable to view other people’s project but I believe there are some greater benefits such as being able to present my project to the people close to me. Through the feedback and experience I gained, I was able to gain futher insights to improve my project. Still prefer Track & Field meets though!