Summary and Conclusion

Elaine Lin / Rachel Garnadi

April 11, 2011

Ms. Adams

Capstone

Summary and Conclusion

It’s hard for both me and Rachel to believe that this semester is about to be over. With this year coming to an end, this also means our capstone project is coming to an end. In the beginning, we felt that one semester was way too long for a project and that it would be nearly impossible to accomplish anything. However, after encountering many obstacles, we know that we wished we had more time to accomplish more things. With this project, we’ve gained many new experiences, which we can take with us for the rest of our lives.

Looking at the guidelines for the Graduation Portfolio System, we can proudly say that we have investigated the world, recognize and weigh perspectives, communicate ideas, and take action. This capstone project has helped us identify our strengths and weaknesses as well as letting us realize what we can do to correct our weaknesses. We learned that there is a lot of “behind the scenes” action in order to get our desired results. However, we know that we have what it takes to become leaders.

The first category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to investigate the world. We definitely incorporated this element of the GPS into our Capstone project by identifying global warming and the greenhouse effect as our main topics. Although the topic of global warming is highly debated upon, we believe that global warming does exist. Our strengths in this area are being able to connect our capstone project with the world and using a variety of resources. We have used several sources to construct coherent responses to globally significant researchable questions. This is our strength because we were able to explain our topic to others with actual evidence. This is demonstrated in our Capstone in our Review of Literature as well as when explaining our Capstone project to others. Our weakness in this area is to develop an argument that considers multiple perspectives. We consider this to be our weakness because although we did mention that the topic of global warming is highly debated upon, we did not explain both sides of the argument, but rather, only one side of the argument. We planned to correct this weakness by researching the opposing argument on global warming to gain more insight, and then edit the review of literature, so that it has an actual argument that considers multiple perspectives.

The second category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to recognize and weigh perspectives. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into our Capstone project by expressing our own opinions about my thoughts on global warming and the greenhouse effect as well as how fortunate America is compared to many other countries. Because everything in America is already made for us, this Capstone project gives us a chance to step back and do things for ourselves by learning how to be our own leaders. Our strength in this area is knowing cultural interactions influence situations, events, issues or phenomena. This is our strength because we realize that many different societies have different points of views due to the culture surrounding them. This is demonstrated in our Capstone by us trying to change the perspective of students that we can and are able to grow our own food that looks and tastes good. Our weakness in this area is examining perspectives of other people and identifying the influences on those perspectives. This is our weakness because we are not able to pin point exactly what influences their perspective. We planned on correcting this weakness by becoming more informed of the world around us, which we did. We became more aware of the community around us. We talked to Mr. Yu for his approval on where we can place the greenhouse. We also talked to Mr. Renner about making a foundation for the greenhouse, what materials would be needed, and when he could help us build it.

The third category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to communicate ideas. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into my Capstone project by seeing different people’s response towards our goal to rebuild the greenhouse as well as the topic of global warming and the greenhouse effect in general. Our strengths in this area are listening and communicating effectively with diverse people, using appropriate verbal and non-verbal behavior, languages and strategies as well as using appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with diverse audiences. These are our strengths because we knew exactly how we wanted to communicate with these local companies. We wrote a proposal for each company as well as making a sample advertisement for their company to see what they would receive by making a contribution towards our goal. Our weakness in this area is reflecting on how effective communication impacts understanding and collaboration in an interdependent world. This is our weakness because at first we thought that we would just mail/e-mail companies our proposal. We corrected our weakness by realizing that it was much more effective to go there in person to explain our mission for our project to each company.

The last category for the Graduation Portfolio System is to take action. We have incorporated this element of the GPS into my Capstone project by initially communicating with Mr. Amerson, Mr. Yu, Ms.Kerner, Mr. Renner, and Ms. Williams about our plans to rebuild the greenhouse as well as communicating with people from our local community to make contributions to our greenhouse. We have taken into account our previous fundraising approaches and came up with a completely different one. Our strength in this area is communicating with people from our local community. This is a strength because we visited many companies asking for contributions, and were successful in several. However, many companies were not able to give us an answer immediately because they cannot make those kinds of decisions by themselves, but instead, the corporate office has to make those decisions. This is demonstrated in our Capstone by our fundraising aspect. Our weakness in this area is to reflect on their capacity to advocate for and contribute to improvement locally. This is our weakness because we expected more companies to buy an advertisement from us, not only because it was for a good cause, but because the price for the advertisement was really inexpensive as well. We planned on correcting these weaknesses by realizing that not every company is able to help us in our goal to rebuild the greenhouse. Even though with this setback, we still made enough money to purchase the greenhouse as well as had extra money to purchase materials for the greenhouse, such as sand, soil, seeds, etc.

Overall, we feel very accomplished that we were able to raise so much money to actually buy a greenhouse. We never though that we would be able to achieve so much, but we now know that when we set our mind on something, we can definitely accomplish it.

As our project comes to an end, this is our time to shine. We are proud to be able to showcase our achievements through this project. But we must thank all those who have helped us. Especially Ms. Williams, our capstone sponsor and gardening club sponsor, she has helped keep us motivated, going on the right track, as well as coming up with ideas. We would also like to thank Mr. Renner for helping us build our greenhouse. We know that we would have had a lot of difficulty setting up the greenhouse if it wasn’t for him. His insightful knowledge led us on the right track of knowing which materials we should purchase. We would also like to thank Ms. Kerner, our other capstone sponsor, because she also led us into the right direction. Last but not least, we would like to thank Ms. Adams and Mr. Yu for giving us this opportunity to take initiative and see what we can actually accomplish on our own.