Reflection of week: Internship at Syrian Community Network

Something new that I learned throughout this PIE is the fact that the U.S. is a hard country to acclimate to, especially throughout the education system. I've also learned that while working in case management that these families would find it really hard to get through taxes, medical care, and job searching. I am grateful to have the opportunity in being in this environment like the one at Syrian Community Network because I am learning more and more about the criteria that goes into running an organization like this one. An organization that is constantly changing due to the different laws that are put into action in this country. I made sure throughout this week to start my communication building skills by asking more questions, meeting new faces, and working with them. I have made sure to put my input into the meetings that I attend because of the fact that I have volunteered so I know the students one to one. I am excited for the week that comes ahead.

Syrian Community Network is an organization that focuses on supporting the needs of refugees living across the Chicagoland. For the past two weeks, I have been working with directors from the Education Department that have allowed me to observe the adult and youth programs that SCN has to offer. I have also been able to get a deeper look into case management which helps clients anywhere from direct service to immigration services. Being able to be a part of staff meeting and even tuning into meetings that have been held with future donors has given me the opportunity to realize and take in why I want to go into the field of diplomacy and possibly manage my own organization one day. Being able to partake in these meetings and observing visits with clients has given me a different look into organization and community building.

No way! Did someone say heated bike wheels?

For the last unit of Design and Engineering, we decided to focus on the power of wheels and pulleys. We took a deeper look into how wheels can change the way transportation works around the world, and how wheels can lead to future designs and models. We looked into bikes and the parts that make up a bike. To get a closer look we visited Working Bikes on the southwest side of Chicago. We were able to disassemble some bikes that would later be sent to Jordan! This goes to show how important bikes are not only in cities in the states, but around the world. We also visited Earth Riders which was a small bike shop on the north side of Chicago where we got to try out some e-bikes and see how those worked. For our AP, we were asked to look into a persona of someone who had to ride their bikes to school and get a better idea of their commute. My partner and I got Karen who lives in Banff, Canada. From there we were able to assemble a bike for them and include parts of the bike that could be used to their benefit. Read more of my blogpost to learn about the ending result of our bike design and model!

Persona:

Karen
Age: 14
Distance from school: 3 miles
Situation: Banff is a beautiful place but Karen has to bike along large winding roads to get to school, meaning they have to watch out for cars and trucks speeding by. Additionally, it gets very cold and snowy or icy during the winter months, leading to a dangerous ride, especially when carrying their school books. Luckily they can keep their bike inside, but space is very limited in their garage.

Need

As you can see from our persona description, Karen's route isn't the fastest or the most efficient. We as designer's want to make sure that our designs are not only efficient, but work to make Karen's ride safer. For that reason, when we started the sketching process, we made sure to embolden those struggles they face on a daily basis. Banff's climate is pretty snowy and icy, so we can only imagine Karen going through those windy roads. Also, storing the bike is a huge thing for a biker, especially a child. We wanted our design to include a compact way for Karen to store their bike almost anywhere, and not just in their garage!

Benefit

We thought about ways that can prevent Karen's bike from slipping on the icy roads, and so we thought, how about heated wheels? Essentially, these wheels would be heated as Karen bikes around transferring kinetic energy to chemical energy to heat up the path ahead of them. As Karen cycles through, the ice or snow would melt, preventing Karen's bike from slipping and possibly harming them. My partner and I grew up in Chicago, a city where it could get pretty cold, icy, and snowy. We also know that not only are the streets bad, but they are also crowded with buses, trucks, cars, etc. We don't want a fourteen year old child to ever get harmed on their way to school, especially when they are riding a bike. We decided to protect Karen, if they ever do experience a bike crash, by including a "trailer" design for their upper body. The trailer would be covering them from the snow and protect them with airbags included on the sides are rear of the bike incase of an accident. Now many people do say that airbags are dangerous and could possibly harm the person rather than protecting them, but we'd rather have airbags and possibly end up saving someone's life than harming it. Lastly, we have made the bike collapsable by including clips on the bike where Karen can easily snap them and put the parts of the bike inside of the trailer frame not only for compactness, but for convenience as well!

Reason to believe

Throughout this unit we truly were able to get a better understanding of not only the anatomy of bikes, but why benefits are so beneficial. We are aware that around the world, not everyone has access to a car. We are also aware that the burning of these fossil fuels are having a bad effect on our environment, and the risk that we are putting our climate through when riding in a car, bus, or truck. We need to make bikes more convenient and in order for that to happen, we need to change the way these bikes are built. We as designers and engineers need make sure that the bikes that people are using are accommodating people's needs. By taking a look at Karen's struggles, we were able to identify the main problems and curate something that can change their future of biking. We need to make that change for each person in this world in order to lead our planet to a better, safer future!

Conclusion

In conclusion, this action project reflected what the possibilities of bikes can lead to. Biking can make a global impact that can put people in need in the position of a better future. By not only designing this bike, but actually constructing it, it got me thinking more about what engineers should do to make bikes more efficient. In order to change the way that people think about public transportation, engineers need to make their bike designs more convenient for everyone. There is a way to change people's mindsets about changing from cars to bikes, but it's all about accommodation!

iChile Desperto!, but have respected news channels done the same?

For our second unit of Rhetoric, we focused on the question,"How can we use rhetoric to change the status quo?" For some of us, this idea of "what is the status quo?" was confusing, but for the rest it's an idea that is constantly on our minds. To think more about the question, and how it fits its true form, we decided to speak with Ugo Okere, a twenty-two year old candidate running for Chicago Alderman of the 40th Ward. We learned more about him and how he used rhetoric throughout his campaign. We also brought in Troy Laraviere who plays an important figure not only in rhetoric, but in Chicago's education system. He also ran for mayor of Chicago last year. Laraviere is the current president of Chicago Principals and Administrators Association. He is known across the Chicagoland for curating an Op ed speaking on behalf of the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association, and why it's just as important to get the principals who are running the schools opinion as the Chicago Teachers Association. Reading Laraviere's Op ed led us to focus our action project on creating our very own an a timely topic. I chose to write about the current situation in Chile and how respected news channels that the majority of society follow can be false, while social media can sometimes be telling us the true story. Read my op ed down below!

Conclusion

Overall, I thought this Op ed was good way to wrap up unit two of Rhetoric. Being able to use rhetorical devices on a timely topic allowed me to see just how rhetoric is used on a day to day basis. I was also able to find myself and think about my overall view on this situation in Chile, but also see the way that social media can make an impact when it comes to political situations going on around the globe. This op ed really allowed me to reflect on the fact that news channels will play it safe when it comes to writing about political issues, and how it's a choice to maintain the status quo rather than changing it.

Transform Your Ordinary Transfer Shovel to a "Transformer" Shovel Today!

In my first STEAM course of the junior year, Design & Engineering, we discussed what tools are. We learned about the meaning of tools, different simple machines, and how they may be beneficial in our everyday lives. We started the term by going out to our school garden and picking up trash using only our hands, and also planted some plants. We calculated the amounts of plants that we planted in however many minutes we were out there just to get a rough estimate. The following week we did the exact same tasks, but this time we used gardening tools like hand cultivators, shovels, etc. We also calculated the amount of time we were out there planting and how many plants we planted. This activity showed us just how easy it is to use tools and how quick they can get the job done. We discussed different simple machines that we see in our everyday lives including levers, wedges, screws, and inclined planes. We also learned about the Pythagorean Theorem, Soh-Cah-Toa (trigonometry), ratios, and vectors. We also thought about how empathy can be a part of the design process when trying to sell your item. We thought about how not all tools and objects that we buy can be made for everyone. There are people in this world who are disabled and aren't able to use these items like everyone else would. This information would help us with our action projects that were coming up. We had the chance to visit Home Depot near our school and participated in a workshop led by an employee who taught us about different tools used for gardening, and we were given partners to work with for our AP's. While at Home Depot, my partner and I had to choose a gardening tool that we would be able to redesign for an elderly person. Prior to the choice of our tool, we were also asked to interview with a gardener. I interviewed my grandmother and throughout the process I noticed that she was finding it quite difficult to use the gardening tools due to her knee problems. My partner and I decided to take this problem into our own hands and redesign a transfer shovel that we had seen during our FE to Home Depot. Learn more about our redesign down below!
Defense: We have created an ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel that makes transferring soil and gravel easier without having to use so much force on your back or knees. The shovel takes out soil and gravel and makes transferring easier and speeds up the gardening process. Our shovel is contoured to your body and has an extension that can extend up to 70 inches. You can pull the handle bar in order to extend. Get a better grip by putting your handle on the “d-handle” that has been contoured to fit your hand comfortably and hold onto the lower grip just under the extension to take out that soil. We know that two of the most common problems that elderly people face day to day is dealing with back pain and knee pain. We want to make gardening still an enjoyable activity rather than a task. We have made sure to think about key elements that go into gardening without taking the fun away, but including safer elements to our design. We would say that our tool works like a lever. We usually see in shovels that in the input force is at the top which is where your hands are pushing the shovel into the soil. In our case, the fulcrum is in the middle (extra grip stabilizer) allowing there to be a balance once you take the soil out which is exerting force out of the ground. There’s an up and down motion and the fulcrum in the middle which makes it a 1st class lever.

What are the parts?

Extendable Length Optimizer: Works like a telescope just pull out each handlebar that extends 14 inches for each handlebar. In general, the ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel can extend up to 70 inches (5’10)

Bendable Handshape Grip: Fits your hand perfectly and comfortably.

Body: Contoured (wavy) body in order to make your job easier and work with your body shape rather than having a stiff & hard handle bar which puts more pressure on your back.

Extra Grip: Helps you stabilize yourself while transferring gravel or soil.

Latch/ Button: Allows you to detach the blade from the body making it easier to clean.

Blade: Aluminium based making the tool lighter overall, and we added some sharper edges at the end but not too sharp to be dangerous for anyone who uses this transfer shovel!

Here are FOUR reasons why our tool is better than the competition:
Ergonomic body: Fitting your body shape and making it easier to work with because the extra grip is at the right spot of the shovel providing maximum comfort on your back, less force is made on your back, and you won’t have to bend down as low which protects your knees from any pain.

Handle grips: Providing more comfort throughout the tool and using two hands in different areas gives not only better grip but more balance causing you not to fall.

Extendable Length Optimizer: Are you tired of having to put force on your back while gardening? Well, we have made our tool extendable up to 70 inches (5’10) which is the average height making it easier and not cause you to slouch down as much. Do not worry, the extension shafts in our shovel does not affect the overall weight of the shaft because although we use wood, the wood that is used for the shaft is thinner making the weight distribution feel lighter.

Blade: The blade can move in a 360 motion making it easier to scoop out and dump soil or gravel to your pile. Along with the 360 motion blade, it's detachable! This makes the cleaning process 10 times faster!

Purpose:

Throughout this unit, the idea of empathy kept coming up on our minds. What makes a design a design? I personally feel that a design should be well thought of before engineered. When designing a product, you should be thinking about different people in this world who all go through different situations rather than what you have experienced yourself. What makes a true design is when you think about the people that can use the design, and that's how your design can become successful. While I was watching my grandmother struggle with some of the tools that she used, I realized that many designers don't really think about their audience to whom they are designing the product for. Sure they get the idea, but do they actually test out the item before it reaches the market?

The process:
When I was talking to my partner about redesigning a tool, I made sure to discuss the issues that I had seen my grandmother go through to base our future redesign on those issues. Our issues were back and knee problems that correlate with one another when using a shovel. It's sort of like a cause and effect situation. If you bend down when taking soil out, you hurt your back. When you're bending down, you apply more force on your knees causing knee pain and damage. It's a problem that needs to get solved. While at Home Depot, we were looking at the shovels that we think can cause the worst back and knee pain. We chose not only the shortest transfer shovel, but the most uncomfortable to hold. The "Anvil D-Handle Transfer Shovel" was our competition. We worked with the shovel throughout the workshop led at Home Depot and realized that this may be one of the toughest shovels an elderly person can use. When we go back, we thought about different ways to improve the design without losing the idea of the D-handle. The D-handle was efficient when thinking about the grip in which you place your hand through. We created a rough sketch of our design the first day of designing and presented our ideas to the class. We received feedback from our classmates the second round of the design process for what we can change or what they liked about our redesign. We created a storyboard on how potential customers can use our design efficiently and effectively. Lastly, we recorded our volume and surface area of one part of our design, we included vectors of where our input and output forces can be found throughout the design, and found a relevant quote that inspired our design process. If you want to see this information, click on the slideshow down below!


Our Slideshow Presentation:

In conclusion, this AP was quite interesting to complete. This AP made me realize how important it is to think about everyone when designing a product. There are people in this world who are disabled and who aren't able to do day to day tasks. We should make products that are designed for everyone rather than products that only work for certain people. Also, you get more of an audience when you an include everyone making your design better than the competition. The next time I design a product, I will always think about empathy and pleasing my potential audience!

Iran Nuclear Deal Plan with Elizabeth Warren

For this humanities course, Rhetoric, we focused on studying the art of rhetoric. Some of us had no idea what rhetoric was and how it was used, only to find out that we use rhetoric everyday. We started off by learning about Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos. Using credibility, emotion, and statistics to prove an argument. This term, we were able to visit Leo Burnette, which works with different brands in advertising and marketing.We learned about the art of rhetoric that is used within different brands to convince a customer to choose their brand. This was an interesting experience and also got me thinking about our AP. For this AP, we were given a democratic candidate who is currently running for presidency in 2020. We were asked to curate a question that could come up throughout the candidate's presidential campaign trail, and create a two minute speech in which the candidate will respond to. I got Senator Elizabeth Warren and her topic will be foreign affairs, specifically Iran Nuclear Deal. Read and watch my response to learn more!

Video:

Q. Senator Elizabeth Warren, as a Persian myself, I am tired of seeing my country and America not being able to make amends for the past four decades (especially now). In previous interviews you have stated that Iran is a “significant threat”. I am hoping that in the future, Iran and the U.S. could make amends. If elected president in 2020, what would you do in order to gain back a relationship with Iran?

2 Minute Summary:

I have stated in previous interviews that Iran is a “significant threat” to the United States. But what is more of a “significant threat” is the fact that our president has put us at risk of a nuclear war with Iran by withdrawing the U.S. from the JCPOA back in 2018. A president that is supposed to protect us has just put us at risk of nuclear destruction. As I've stated before on warren.senate.gov, “America should be a country that keeps it promises. The Obama Administration negotiated a landmark agreement to peacefully prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” This was a monumental moment in U.S. history. Finally being able to be a part of a peaceful agreement with Iran meant we might finally hold a stronger relationship with Iran, and a safer one. I’d rather deal with Iran’s bad behavior with a nuclear deal than without it. Our president has isolated us from many deals that could be pointing America to a better future, but instead has just isolated us. Now that we withdrew from the JCPOA, President Trump’s “administration has pummeled Iran with crippling economic sanctions.” according to Business Insider. Since September, Iran has already begun taking a “big step away from the deal when it announced it would begin developing more advanced centrifuges that allow for more rapid uranium enrichment.” from business insider. The JCPOA deal only limited Iran to “3.67% of Uranium enrichment to maintain the country’s energy needs.” according to NPR. That percent would not give Iran the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Now that we have Iran fighting back, we have increased our potential of nuclear war. As a senator serving for almost eight years, I have seen our presidents make decisions that can destroy America’s future. I will treat America like my baby if elected president. If I am elected president, I will make sure that every family in our country is in safe hands and never at risk of nuclear destruction. If elected president in 2020, I will make sure to get us back on that deal. Foreign affairs seems like an Eye of the Needle for some presidents, but it’s an issue we must address. We, as Americans, need to make sure that we make amends with countries like Iran before we go ahead and make other plans to better this country. We, as Americans, need to make amends with countries like Iran for the safety of this country. We, as Americans, need to make amends with countries like Iran in order to keep these influential generations alive and love this country. We have been divided for too long and it is time for us to make America what it should have been these past four years.

Overall, this AP got me thinking about America’s future. Next year, I will be able to vote for the very first time. I want to make sure that as a voter I make the right decision about the candidate I choose, and I want to make sure that our next president is able to make a difference for our country. Foreign affairs is a topic that I really look into when thinking about what makes a good candidate. I personally feel that in order to set orders on what can make our country better, we need to think about the countries we need to make amends with first. We need to make foreign affairs priority for the safety of our country.

Citations:

1. Gathright, Jenny, and James Doubek. “Iran Will Surpass Uranium Enrichment Limits, Officials Say.” NPR, NPR, 6 July 2019, www.npr.org/2019/07/06/739171142/iran-could-surpass-uranium-enrichment-limits-on-sunday-according-to-top-aide.

2. Haltiwanger, John. “Here's What's in the 2015 Nuclear Deal with Iran That Trump Withdrew from, Sparking a Crisis That's Led to the Brink of War.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 19 Sept. 2019, www.businessinsider.com/iran-nuclear-deal-explained.