This semester many of the Advanced Technologies Academy seniors worked on a project of their choice in the Internet Technologies Project course. This course provides an opportunity to complete a significant digital media and mobile application development project from the design phase through implementation with minimal instructor support. The students chose a subject area in which they wanted to explore more in depth.

The students began the project by creating a plan for the semester. They decided on a project idea and broke it down into smaller stages. The students used a calendar to plan out the timing of the project. Each week the students would document their progress in a journal on their portfolio website. They wrote about what they accomplished and challenges they faced during the week and included an image of their work. To present their final projects, we invited several teachers, administrators, and students to a drop-in gallery walk in the classroom on Monday, May 8. The students enjoyed presenting their projects and talking with others about their work. This was a great way of showing what the students are learning in the Advanced Technologies Academy.

The Student Projects

Catlin impressed everyone with her wonderful stop-motion animation project. She carefully handmade the characters and stage. She wrote a creative and humorous script that her friends helped bring to life with the voiceovers. She worked for many hours and took thousands of photos to produce this fantastic animation. Catlin also mentioned she watched boxing on TV during her research because she wanted the characters’ movements to be as realistic as possible.
Melanie is a talented artist and she chose to produce an animated short story for her project. She used a Wacom Cintiq and an Apple iPad to draw and animate her story. A project of this nature takes many, many hours to complete. She wasn’t able to complete the whole story during the semester, but says she learned more about herself and was able to strengthen her abilities.
Rylan created a mobile app for his project. The app solves a problem many of us face each morning… what to wear today? In a format similar to a slot machine, users can press a button to create an outfit for the day. There is a category for shirts, pants, and shoes. Users can take pictures of their clothes and add metadata to the pictures to create filters for the selections. This is an impressive project that I hope to see in the App Store soon.
Cameron created a financial planning mobile app prototype for his project. He chose to focus more on the UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design than the coding of the mobile app. He used Figma to produce the interactive app prototype.

Mary began writing and illustrating a series of children’s books for her project this semester. Can you believe she drew these illustrations with just a mouse? She has plans on continuing the book series to produce both digital and hardcopy books.

Emma with her stick figure animation project.
Jonah with his animated short story project.
Cian chose to create a video game using the game engine Unity. This was his first experience with this software. He overcame many challenges while learning the software and is really proud of what he was able to accomplish this semester.
Grayson created a video game with the Unity game engine for his project this semester. It is a game about protecting a bunker full of survivors from ice creatures that have invaded the world.
Mya decided to create a website from scratch using HTML, CSS, and Visual Studio Code for her project this semester. The website documents her senior year at CASA. The website also has a page of some very good dad jokes. For example… Why did the man fall into the well… Because he couldn’t see “that well“.
Angela decided to learn more about HTML, CSS, Java Script, and Visual Studio Code for her project this semester. She did a great job learning how to create animations with code.
Gavin decided to create a website for his future farm as his project this semester. He plans to begin building the actual farm after graduation. He was able to learn more about web development by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Developing the working account creation and log in page was quite impressive.

Thank you!

I would like to give a special thank you to all those who came to visit us on presentation day. I appreciate you dropping-in and spending some time with our students as they shared their projects. Thank you to Leslie Farris for providing the photos of the students during the presentations.