School Projects

[Helanna]

So I'm sure that many of the posters here are, or were recently, in high school or college. I'm also sure that most of these people have been asked to do projects in school. What I want to know is: Does anyone have any interesting types of projects, and what kind of projects do you usually end up doing?

For example, I get a lot of presentations that can be given any way the student wishes: PowerPoint, movies, simple posters, etc. Anything you want. And then everybody just does a PowerPoint. Does anyone here have any good ideas for really interesting projects? Like, say, puppets? Seriously, puppets aren't used enough. Just think of creativity bonus! Sadly, none of the projects I'm working on now would work well with puppets . . .

I myself usually do PowerPoint slideshows. It is more convenient, after all, and I usually can't think of anything better.

[Berserk Monk]

Um, I'm at art school. Nearly all my homework is projects. The exceptions would be for those damn liberal arts classes, and even some assignments in those classes involve project work.

[Sneak]

Wait, Berserk, you go to art school?

Huh. :smallconfused:

News to me. :P

[A Rainy Knight]

I wrote a short story for a project in chemistry this year. In it, Mendeleev came back to life, then the crazed undead Mendeleev burst into a random chemistry classroom. Hilarity and learning ensued.

That's probably the most fun I've ever had doing a project for school.

[Berserk Monk]

Wait, Berserk, you go to art school?

Huh. :smallconfused:

News to me. :P

Wow. Sarcasm. That's original.:smallannoyed:

[Sneak]

Wow. Sarcasm. That's original.:smallannoyed:

o i see wat u did there. (Irony points for you!)

In any case, I mostly do powerpoints for my projects. They're generally the easiest and the safest route to go.

[Berserk Monk]

o i see wat u did there. (Irony points for you!)

I actually got that quote from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

Anyway, to be more specific on my projects, for a self-portrait, I'm making a comic book starring the three celebrities I most closely resemble/think like:

Kevin Smith (Silent Bob)
Gerald Butler (King Leonidas)
Alan Moore

[Icewalker]

End of any AP science class here involves a large entirely self-driven project. Last year I did a pretty simple research project on stellar-scale megastructures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megastructure#Stellar_scale), namely the Niven Ring and Dyson Sphere. Alderson Discs may have come up.

Still not sure what I'm going to do this year.

[Rawhide]

You should totally do a presentation with shadow puppets (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-1j_PntB1g&feature=related).

[Katrascythe]

Almost all of my projects are papers of some flavor. Really dry and boring.

However, the best time I had doing a project was in my Economics class in high school. The teacher told me and a friend that we could "do a project on whatever we wanted." Literally. Whatever we wanted.

I spent 5 days doing a semester long project on the subgenres, stereotypes, and impact of heavy metal. XD

The project was then put on public display in front of a large group of conservative parents of honors students. At the end of the night my principal thought that I was a druggie with zero motivation.

.... I was valedictorian. When he saw me on stage the look was priceless. That alone made the project my most awesome accomplishment in my high school years.

[Jade_Tarem]

I'm in the College of Software Engineering at my University, and nearly all of my projects involve a bunch of coding, and more recently, algorithm development. Fascinating, I know.

Of course, it does have it's exciting moments. For instance, I have a professor, whose name will not appear here because he still has control of my grade, who was sort of... shanghai'd into running the Software Development class, and as a result ended up setting up a class schedule that works out great... for him. You see, each student is (was?) supposed to give one presentation this semester. These presentations are supposed to one run hour in length, out of a 75 minute class. There are roughly as many students as class days, meaning that 80-90% (some presentations run over) of the class is taught by the students.

Oh ho, Dr. B--k---r! I see what you did there!

On top of that, his TA grades all the assignments, and as far as I can tell he has a trained monkey running his website, so I don't really see how the professor is essential to the class. His schedule was pretty straightforward, and each student knew exactly when his presentation day was. So imagine my surprise when, one night, as I was sitting down needing to do several hours of algorithms homework (due the next day), I read the following email from Dr. B--k---r: (paraphrased)

Dear Students:

I have adjusted the schedule to compensate for the people who have dropped out, and for the cancelled class last week.

Thank you.

P.S. Tomorrow's presentation will be given by [Jade_Tarem]

This may just sound like a normal reminder, but before this email came out I still had a week before my project was due! He moved the deadline up on my project 7 days, 8 days before it was due! I had 19 hours to come up with an hour long presentation (it counted 25% of our grade) and do the algorithms homework. Needless to say, it was an all-nighter. I didn't do so well on the Algorithms homework, but I got a 90 on the presentation anyway.

So anyhow, that's the kind of presentations I do. :smallannoyed:

[Icewalker]

Actually, I had an idea for a project which I may well end up doing. If we do a free-topic project in AP Economics next year, I may well do it on the creation of virtual economies within MMOs and their interaction with the real economy.

[InaVegt]

Um, I'm at art school. Nearly all my homework is projects. The exceptions would be for those damn liberal arts classes, and even some assignments in those classes involve project work.

I'm going to the Information and Communication Academy in Arnhem, all our work is project based too.

'f course, half of what people do here is just commercialised art, and the other half is black voodoo computer magic.

[Don Julio Anejo]

I did a talk show with myself playing 4 people.

[thubby]

I'm drudging through my prerequisit courses, so the most "interesting" thing i have to do is a 10 page paper on the state of freshwater in the world today.

[Decoy Lockbox]

I'm a computer science major (senior year), so I have to do lots of wierd 'n' whacky projects.

Last semester I wrote a program that takes a sentence, and figures out what version of each word in the sentence is being used. For example, what is the meaning of the word "flies" in the sentence "time flies like an arrow?"

This semester I had to mess around with the linux kernel (i.e. the fundamental basis of the operating system)...it didn't go so well.

In terms of non compsci stuff, I've had some really fun ones too: I wrote a short story combining Sindbad and the Ramayana, and another combining The Portrait of Dorian Grey and Gulliver's Travels. I wrote scads of poetry for various English classes, including one that even got published!

[xanaphia]

The most fun assignment I've had in a while was a Philosophy speech, which I performed last Friday. The title was I Hate Everything and Nothing Makes Sense. By the end, I had mathematically proven that eating animals is immoral, I had shown that Muse is better than Radiohead, and had discussed the morality of using disabled people for organ transplants and food.

EPIC!!!

The other one was for English. Everyone else got into groups and did haiku, or old english literature, or Chinese poetry, or something. Because of some... bad ... experiences with groups, I asked to work on my own. My teacher told me to do whatever I wanted. I did the Volsungasaga, and retold the whole thing, using every single person in the class as actors. The presentation was supposed to go for 5-10 minutes. I went for 35.

I really wish that someone had taped that.

Another time for Music, I had to do a project on Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. Sadly, however, I had forgotten my notes and Powerpoint presentation. Luckily, I knew the whole thing, so did it from memory. I got an A.

Another time again in music, I played an improvised jazz song on the piano, and called it Yon Ban Niwatori. (Japanese for Four Chickens)

In SOSE (basically the Australian version of history, geography, etc all in one), way back in Grade 5, I argued for the legalisation of mining in Antarctica, finishing with an animation of Mafia men killing penguins.

In SOSE last year, we had to do a mock debate. This was the same day as the Joseph project in music, and I had forgotten these notes also. I improvised the whole thing, and got a C-. I had a really hard marking SOSE teacher.

Fun!!! I love talking.

[Serpentine]

In one of my (ancient history/religion) classes a few years ago, in one oral presentation I called Margaret Thatcher a jackal-headed man... twice, and another I started with:
Immortal Kombat!

Ready? Fight!!

with screenshots from Mortal Kombat an' all. I'm told the latter was memorable.

[Satyr]

I am a teacher in training, so I normally see stuff like this from two points of view.
From a student point of view, the "best" presentation I ever made was about "Christian reactions to the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the Anachronism of Knighthood in the 15th century". Yes, it was as interesting as it sounds. Now, the professor of this specifc seminar was... well he was something that would certainly not pass the forum's profanity filter and he tended to interrupt his students in the middle of their presentations and pretty much took the heft of the presentation from the student's sweaty hands.
Now, after the first few impression of the presentation, my partner in this presentation couldn't cope with the constant interruptions, and after the third unnecessary question, she had fit, stood up and left the room, leaving me there, and more important, leaving the professor speechless (at least for five minutes or so).

I made the presentation alone, including her part (the anachronism stuff), and had a field day. Talking for two hours, I could even fend of the professor's interruptions with spontanious eruptions of elaborated code overkill and name-dropping. Including telling the stories of everybody's favorite vampire, Vlad Tepes.

And because this wasn't enough, the vey same professor lost my term paper afterwards.

The best stuff I did as a teacher was a large roleplaying game with a history class (9th grade) which I guided during the dreaded "project week" in German schools. The class was divided in several groups, each group representing one of the powers after World War I and negotiating about the Peace of Versailles and the new sructure of the world. For the course of four days, it was a hornet's nest of intrigue, covered negotiations, secret alliances and in the very end, a very interesting result.

[Nevrmore]

The last question on my American History final exam junior year was an essay question asking to explain the significance that one of the movies we had watched during the year had on modern-day America. It had to be at least one paragraph long.

I handed in an eight page review of everything I hated about The Day After Tomorrow.

[Quincunx]

Icewalker: Second Life and EVE are the MMOs with fixed game dollar to real currency conversions, aren't they? At the least, there are plenty of pre-existing data and news articles based on Second Life. I may be able to get you some dated* data on the fluctuating exchange rates the gold sellers have been offering in the more populated MMORPGs, and if enough of such data is available, a study on how the exchange rate has differed over time might even have a RL audience.

*both "no longer new" and "with a date attached"

[Berserk Monk]

This doesn't count as a project, but, like a week ago, I gave a presentation that ended with me flashing the entire class while I whore a chainmail bikini.