My final project was a task that took more thinking that I originally thought required. It took me the longest time to come up with a topic to base my entire presentation off of. During class I had heard the instructor tell a student that he should try to relate his experiences at Vieau with his major. I brushed the idea off at first but then one day during one of my sessions I found a poster that said “Bridges to Literature”. I immediately realized that I could use this poster as a way to link my major of Civil Engineering to my final project. While working on my project I started looking for more ways to strengthen the relationship. I then remembered that one of my favorite Civil Engineers was Spanish and also had done some work here in Milwaukee. Santiago Calatrava is a Civil engineer who became famous for his work with bridges that are very unique. I related him to what I was doing at Vieau because I was tutoring kids and teaching them how to read. So in a way I was helping these kids build their bridges to literature and they were unique bridges because the time we spent was very enjoyable and valuable. I started looking for pictures of Calatrava’s work and while I was at Vieau I started taking pictures of everything I thought I could relate to engineering.
Another part of my experience at Vieau was helping kids with their Rube Goldberg machines. After some research I had found that the projects they were building were closely related to engineering. Rube Goldberg machines are over engineered machines that perform simple tasks in many steps. My research brought me to videos of popular Engineering schools such as Purdue or Iowa competing with their own Rube Goldberg Machines. So I started taking some pictures of the kids working on their projects and even a couple of the projects themselves. Soon I found I had all the images I needed and started putting the presentation together.
This time I decided to use Windows Movie Maker instead of PowerPoint because I knew I might have video in the presentation and I found Movie Make easier to incorporate things like sounds and videos. While I wasn’t able to put any video on my presentation, I did find a song by an unlikely artist that would make my presentation flow smoothly. The song was “Modern Meat” by the Band Animals as Leaders and is Spanish sounding guitar track.
During the creation of this project I realized how important the education process is to building futures for children such as those at Vieau and that quality education is what leads to great Engineers such as Santiago Calatrava and their amazing buildings. After spending time at Vieau I hope that I have inspired a few students to pursue the profession of engineering because a strong interest at a young age helps when it comes to effort in schooling in the future.
