For our AP Language and Composition Class and APUSH Classes, we were expected to design an Inquiry Based Learning project about an issue facing Native Americans. For this project, our group created an open ended question; How does government oversight affect native tribes? And how does this contribute to problems or positive ways of life in society? With this guiding question, our group was expected to collect information from researching, interviewing sources, and designing an end product to send to an authentic audience of our choice. We learned about Navajo history, culture, and government systems. We discovered that Native Americans, especially Navajo have very little representation in government and because of this the government takes advantage of Navajo land and laws.
-Expresses a clear and specific personal perspective on a situation, event, global issue, or phenomenon and explains how that perspective is informed by one’s culture and language.
-Accurately represents the perspectives of other people, groups, or scholars in the target language culture, and explains, using specific and relevant examples, how culture and language influence that perspective.
-Explains, using specific examples, how the practices, perspectives, and/or products of one’s own culture and language have been influenced by those of the target culture and language, and vice versa.
This is a photograph of a bust I made in AP 3D Art. For my portfolio I decided to make a series of bust of people from around the world with various cultures, backgrounds, and races. With each head I try to convey a certain feeling. This is a bust of a woman in a black burka. I was inspired to make this piece because I wanted to see if I could successfully make clay look like fabric. This can be seen as a political message or just a piece of art. I wanted to leave my views out of this piece so the viewer can formulate their own stance. Currently this sculpture has advanced to the State VASE Competition on April 29th.
Algebra Idea Book (Math)
This is an Idea Book I wrote during my sophomore year when is was in Pre-AP Algebra II. I struggled a lot in this class so of course I liked writing about this prompt. We were asked to convince an audience that something we learned that year may not ever be useful. I wrote about logarithms and to help convince the audience of their uselessness I recognized and incorporated the perspectives of my dad, a mechanical engineer, and Conrad Wolfram, creator of Wolfram Alpha.
-Expresses a clear and specific personal perspective on a situation, event, global issue, or phenomenon and explains how that perspective is informed by one’s culture and language.
-Accurately represents the perspectives of other people, groups, or scholars in the target language culture, and explains, using specific and relevant examples, how culture and language influence that perspective.
Preston Grossling Smith 3rd Algebra 5/1/15
Prompt 2: Write an essay convincing the audience why something you learned this year is unnecessary or may never be useful to you.
Loathsome Logs In algebra two, students take an adventure on what may be the hardest class of their high school career. One unit that we are taught is all about Logs or logarithms. Logarithms are a tedious branch of mathematics that require a technical understanding, in order to get a seemingly unrelated to life answer. This type of math is extremely field specified and logs are only used in a small amount of careers. Some of the careers that use logs include computer software engineers, statisticians, and aerospace engineers. Aerospace engineers use logarithms to “Perform a variety of engineering work in designing, constructing, and testing aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft.” (xp math). Statisticians uses logs to help determine the growth of a population or certain statistic. Although these jobs may occasionally use logs they are very specific careers that many people will never pursue. For this reason logs should not be taught it Algebra 2 rather, student should be taught in college when they know what their career plan will be. My dad is a mechanical engineer who uses math every hour of the day. Algebra plays an important role in his career because he needs it along with other skills to help him make graphs, calculate manufacturing capacity, and taxes. Despite my dad using mathematics daily, he still has yet to encounter a situation where he has had to use logs in his whole career. Logarithmic functions are encountered in a small amount of jobs and will rarely be used in many engineering careers. Mathematical genius Conrad Wolfram (the creator of Wolfram Alpha) has a perspective that most math teachers in the high school education system seem to ignore. In the TED talk “Teaching kids real math with computers” Conrad poses his idea on a new style of teaching math. He believes that “correctly using computers is the silver bullet for making math education work.”(TED) Conrad argues that math is “dumbed down problems, mostly calculating by hand” (TED) that are not interesting or relevant to teenagers. The problem lies within the process of teaching. We do “busy work”, and step by step equations that seem like they have no correlation to the real world. This hand calculating and following a detailed process makes us forget the importance of math. Conrad thinks that we should use the resources at hand (i.e computers and calculators) so that we spend less time on calculation and more time on correlating math to the real world. Logarithms are tedious problems with minute details that will give you an answer completely unrelated to the real world. Logarithms are a mathematical roadblock that is keeping math from moving forward into a more relatable subject. A very small amount of jobs use logarithms and most engineers will only use logs in high school. This skill is a waste of time that could be better spent on learning about how we can apply math to our lives.
Works Cited:
Wolfram, Conrad. "Teaching Kids Real Math with Computers." Conrad Wolfram:. 1 July 2010. Web. 5 May 2015.
"XP Math - Jobs That Use." XP Math - Jobs That Use. Web. 5 May 2015.