Halloween Happening 2016

So Halloween this year ended up on a Monday, which sinks. This meant that Happenings was on the Friday of the previous week. If you're new here and don't know what Happenings is, it's my school's little Halloween festival. Each club/honor society gets a booth and of course there's a haunted house. 

With the usual crowd of honor society and club members. Going down the line we had a theremin (it looks like a wooden box with a loop and an antenna), the sound effect gourds, our set of Little Bits, and the remote controlled claw. Of course we had fan favorite high sensor! I mainly worked with the high sensor and claw game. Little kids really like to climb on things. My sources say that the haunted house wasn't all that and needed improvement. The big hit at our booth was probably the height sensor. Some adults wanted to try it and know how it works. it simple really, it measures the high to the ground then when someone steps under it it measures the height to the top of a person's head. it then subtracts the second measurement from the first and boom height. We quickly ran out of prizes from kids playing with the machines. 

~Trinity Sanchez

A full length shot at the table

The gourds with sound effects

Claw game

Full length shot from other end

Some fun with the theremin

The height sensor

Gourds again!

Gourds and our little jack-o-lantern

And don't forget to clean up! (that thing is heavier than it looks!)

Technical Honor Society Induction Ceremony of 2016

On Tuesday, March 15, 19 new members were inducted into the National Technical Honor Society. The National Technical Honor Society provides scholarships to encourage the pursuit of higher education, and honors the achievements of students who are interested in technology. We are an organization that promotes creativity within the Commack community and encourages others to express their original ideas in creative ways.

The induction ceremony was started by a speech delivered by our advisor, Mr. Castrogivanni. After he introduced the inductees and explained briefly about the honor society, the four executive board members of the Technical Honor Society made short yet inspiring speeches.

After our president finished speaking, we were able to listen to the guest speaker, Harry Beyel, who graduated Commack High School in 2007. He made a very inspirational talk about technology and explained technology beyond just computers and cellphones. He made us realize that the world of technology has changed since the time he graduated and the present society. He has made the students and the parents more aware of the world of technology and has inspired us.

Below are some pictures from the induction ceremony.

 

~YongSo (Jungsoo)

Museum of Art and Design

The students in IB Design went to the Museum of Art and Design in New York City on December 15, 2015 with our very own favorite teacher, Mr. Castrogivanni. One of the exhibition in the Museum of Art and Design that the students saw was Wendell Castle Remastered. This exhibition displays the digitally crafted works of Wendell Castle, who is a designer, sculptor, and also an educator. Castle revisits his own achievements of the 1960s through a contemporary lens. This shows the vital time when Castle's works came to define the turning point of Castle's career.

 

 

Not only did the students visit the Museum of Art and Design, they also stopped by the pizza place and ate pizza!

The trip to New York City with the IB Design students was successful and fun this year, just like every year. For freshmen and sophomores who wish to attend this annual trip, come join the IB Design class, where the real magic happens.

-Jungsoo

 

 

 

 



2015 Halloween Happening

Halloween Happening was a huge success for the Future Engineers Club and the Technology Honor Society! During the Halloween Happening, families from Commack gather in the Commack High School to have fun with their families. The families were also welcomed into the cafeteria where different clubs and organizations had many different things to give to the children. This year, our Technology Honor Society and Future Engineers Club made many different toys and gadgets for the children to play with.

Our best attraction, not a surprise, was Little Bits. Similarly to last year's Halloween Happening, Little Bits was a huge attraction and certainly attracts the children's attention. Little Bits are little modules that snap together with magnets for prototyping and learning. Little Bits, if they are placed together correctly, can light up, spin, vibrate, or make noises. Children loved playing with them and finding out what different arrangement can make them do!

-Jungsoo

Senior Awards and a Goodbye Note

On Friday, June 5, Commack High School held its annual Senior Awards ceremony to honor seniors who have earned department awards, school awards, and scholarships. Prior to the awards, the seniors in the second year of the IB Design Technology class, the Future Engineers Club, and the Technology Honor Society gathered to take some group photos.

Below are some photos before the Senior Awards ceremony: 

At the awards ceremony, I was please to have won the Excellence in Technology award, which was the award given out for the Technology Department. When given the award, the speaker mentioned my future studies in technology, past officer positions, and most importantly, this blog. This blog was a unique way to share the many accomplishments of Commack's technology department over the past years. I am going to miss sharing my experiences through this medium in the future, however, I know our new owner, Jungsoo, will continue the success of the blog.

Thank you to Mr. Castrogivanni for making everything possible over the past few years and thank you to all of our viewers! It has been my pleasure to run this blog! I'm am so excited to now have the chance to read this blog in the future to learn about the new accomplishments of Commack's technology department.

~Ashley Cooper

New York Institute of Technology Engineering Showcase Competition

This year, Commack's technology department participated in its forth NYIT Engineering Showcase Competition. All three groups earned the first, second, and third place prizes and won $1,000, $800, and $600, respectively. Below are some descriptions of the projects:

First place- ID Me

Kayla Houshmand and David Li

Emergency response teams worldwide face many issues that are never fully resolved.  Many of these response teams include volunteer ambulance corporations across the nation.  One major issue ambulance corporations come across is obtaining records of every patient assisted. In many cases the patients are found unconscious with little to no identification found on them. On some occasions, unconscious patients are allergic to many medications which can make it difficult for the Advanced Life Support provider or paramedic present to treat the patient in fear of causing more medical conditions. 

A database for receiving the basic medical history and other basic information has been created in order to treat patients with better care. In order to obtain the correct knowledge of whether a medication will be safe for a patient or not, the system constructed identifies the medical history of a patient via fingerprint. A fingerprint scanner has been optimized and hooked up wirelessly to a computer, which contains a custom database, which can detect the unresponsive, frequent patients whose basic medical information then becomes accessible in order for treatment to be applied. This product maximizes progress and saves time within in the ambulance for more hands-on medical attention rather than paper work for the patient in need of help.

Second Place- Voice Assist “Office Top”

Brianna Delgado, Anoop Singh, Melike Akoglu, Abinaya Anand, and Yonghyun Cho

The motive for engineering OfficeTop was to meet the workplace needs of Mr. Glenn Campbell, an attorney with Quadriplegia. OfficeTop is composed of two motorized stands that hold, on his desk, work-required items including a laptop computer, mobile phone and/or a book/tablet. Through voice control, Mr. Campbell can control access and the position of these items.  This gives him more freedom and easier control over his work space.

Third place- BVM group

Claire Drotman, Will Furst, and Chase Oliver

The BVM group focused on the design and construction of a device to aid emergency medical service personnel in utilizing a bag-valve-mask. A bag-valve-mask (BVM) is a self-inflating resuscitation device utilized by emergency medical service personnel and in hospital settings to provide artificial ventilation to patients who are unable to control their own airway and breath on their own. Since its’ development in 1953 by Henning Ruben, the bag-valve-mask has not been modified despite the many problems that can occur if used incorrectly, such as hyperventilation, gastric distension and volutrauma (damage to the lung caused by over-distension by a mechanical ventilator).

To assure EMS personnel that they are providing an adequate flow of air to patients, a prototype device was created using a pressure sensor and Arduino Uno to sense the pressure of air exerted into a patient’s lungs and notify EMS personnel if they are squeezing with too much or too little pressure, thus increasing the chances of patient survival. The prototype device operated using a 3-light system, using the colors red, yellow and green. With each squeeze a light would light up depending on the pressure at which the user squeezes the bag. Yellow indicates that not enough air is going into the lungs, red suggests that the user is exerting too much pressure, therefore misusing the BVM, and green advices the user that he or she is squeezing with the correct amount of pressure.

~Ashley Cooper

Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

On Tuesday, March 24th, both the year one and two of Commack's IB Design Technology classes took a field trip to the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. The museum was founded in 1896 and was originally named the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration and was owned by the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. It is one of the only museums in the United States that is devoted to historical and contemporary design. Its exhibitions explore nearly 240 years of design and aesthetic creativity.

The museum was an interactive experience for students with exhibits that focused on the IB Design Technology curriculum. It was an opportunity for students to apply their classroom knowledge to actual designs and creations found within the museum. After entering, each student was given a pen, which was a storage device for certain exhibits and descriptions throughout the museum. Whenever a student came across an exhibit he or she liked, she could place the top of the pen on a "+" sign that was found at each exhibit. This connection would then allow the student to access his or her saved exhibitions on the internet by using the link that was provided with each pen.

Below are some pictures of students and exhibits:

After spending several hours at the museum, we concluded our trip with a stroll through Central Park and a meal at Dallas Barbecue. 

~Ashley Cooper