Written by: Niki, Bridget, Reed
Posted by: Niki Our community forum experience went very well. The people in the community seemed to like our poster, and this lead to them coming over to our table and asking us about our solution. We split the amount of presentation up nicely between the three of us. It was a good idea for us to have 2 computers with our website pulled up on them, because sometimes two people wanted to hear about our project at once, so we could show them both at the same time. Many people tested out the website by looking through the pages such as the tips and donate pages, and many people went straight to “Find a Shelter Near You” and found an example of a shelter in their area. We are happy that our community enjoyed our solution to the lack of wildfire preparedness in our area. written by: Reed, Niki, Bridget
posted by: Reed This final week to finalize our solution has been very productive filled with challenges that we have overcome. There were some time related issues, especially around the finishing touches of our website including the google maps integration. How did we implement our solution? Well, this past weekend we have been going around and asking dozens of people what they thought of our solution. We let them interact with the website so they see it for themselves, which we think helped them really understand it. It felt really empowering to watch people use our solution and say things like “why hasn’t the city thought of something like this?”. In addition, we got some great feedback about our site which added to the usability to make it easier than ever. According to our 27 respondents, one per household, out data has found that 48.1% people were ‘very likely’ to use our website for the purpose of finding up to date information on wildfires. Another 19% was ‘pretty likely’ to. We also found that 56% of people were ‘very likely’ to take advantage of our tips page as well as receiving g evacuation information from us. I think that we tried our best to make the best solution possible, but if we had more time we could obviously add more, possibly including a news and evacuation routes page. The feedback we received throughout the various stages of CBL was critical to its success because it told us what we needed to focus and and what we needed to add to make our website the absolute best and most effective that it could be. written by: Bridget, Niki, and Reed posted by: Bridget This past week has been both difficult and fun. We had changed our final solution from an app to a website. The reason for this is the time limitations. Even though including all of our thoughts and ideas into this website will take lots of hard work and time, doing an app would take way more experience and time then we have. We have started to map out and find out what the website will look like and do. After a few meetings with an student tech support specialist , Josh, we found out that if we wanted to do some type of location services, we would have to do advanced coding and web design. Also we would need to connect a large database to hold servers in order to let people make accounts. Other than that we have been riding pretty smoothly through the solution by starting to design our website and finding out information to put in the different pages. We plan to have weekly meetings with Josh so we can make sure we are headed in the right direction.
Written by: Reed, Niki, Bridget
Posted by: Reed Our meetings with faculty was very beneficial to our project’s solution. We learned that it might be easier to create a website instead of an app so that the people who sign up do not have to keep an app that they will not have to use very much on their phones, taking up storage. We also came to the conclusion that it would be better for our solution to be a website because we have had more experience with creating websites than creating apps, and that if we made a website it would be better working than if we made an app. Now, our solution is revised and better than ever. We will create a website in which members can sign up, and experience a wildfire with more ease than ever. We hope to include every helpful source of information into one space, and give families information that they must know. We will provide information about shelters near you, how to get there, a communications plan for families to check if the other members are safe or not, and give helpful reminders for a smooth evacuation. We hope to provide families with a website that is efficient, easy to use and helpful! We will talk to faculty and staff members at our school, and find our first members. We will use information from the very recent Ventura Fires. Our solution will have a massive positive impact on our community because people will have accurate, detailed, and precise information that could literally save lives. Because there might not be a wildfire until the next few months, we plan to create a model of what the website would’ve looked like if it was during the Ventura fires last year. Our feedback will be people who say that they feel safer and more prepared in the event of a wildfire. If they say them and their families feel better equipped if a wildfire were to strike, we will consider it having a positive impact and therefore our project is a success. We are expecting an overall positive response from the community because our solution is designed to help as many people as possible. written by: Niki, Bridget, Reed posted by: Niki Over the past week, our group has worked very hard to come to a decision on what problem we would like to fix associated with wildfires. We landed on the problem of families not being prepared enough to evacuate in the event of a wildfire. We decided to try and help with this problem because many of the firefighters we talked to for research mentioned that sometimes families scramble to get everything they need to evacuate, and do not necessarily know what they will need and want before they have to leave their homes.
We first considered making disaster kits for wildfires for families, but we then came to the conclusion that this idea is not very original, and would be pretty unsuccessful. We also believe that this idea is probably being used a lot already, and we want to be very original with our ideas. Some of the firefighters we interviewed talked about making kits, so we figured that many people already make them. “You don’t want to be chasing after your prized possessions at the time of a brush fire...you want to be prepared,” said Firefighter Tom, of the Los Angeles Fire Department.” We came to a conclusion that making kits for our community would be unethical. We then began thinking about doing a solution electronically, and creating an app. We are currently trying to expand on this idea and create a solution that would help many, and be easily accessed on a cell phone. We looked on the App Store for apps similar to the one we have an idea for, and did not seem to find one that is easy to navigate and popular written by: Niki, Reed, and Bridget posted by: Niki We have narrowed our focus on the issues of families staying calm and being prepared in the event of a wildfire. We have experienced moments where there was a lot of stress and anxiety in our families at the time of the wildfires, which did not help us stay prepared and informed. From our research, we have learned that many people in our community are not as prepared as they should be for a wildfire, and we want to make sure that people like them stay calm and ready during a wildfire.
We have reached out to many individuals who are in our community. We interviewed experts to the faculty and staff at our school, and got a pretty good gist of how we can ease the worries around the subject of a disaster like a wildfire. We also learned that many people are not as informed as they should be, and do not have a sturdy plan in case a wildfire affects them. The huge wildfire in the Los Angeles area recently caused many of not only our peers but also our parents, teachers and family much anxiety and distress. We all began thinking about the people we love who might be affected by the fires, and if we were going to be safe and healthy after the fires were over. We want to take away that burden of worrying on families and provide them a way to remain absolutely calm during a wildfire. We want not only adults in families to be prepared, but also children, because from personal experience we know that kids can have anxiety about things they don't know how to be prepared for. We hope we can be the people to equip families with information and supplies to ensure they are happy and healthy, even if we have to go step by step. written by: Bridget, Niki, and Reed posted by: Bridget Imagine changing the world with a seventh grade science project. Sounds impossible, right? That’s our goal with the Windward School CBL project. CBL stands for Challenge based learning, our team of Reed, Niki, and Bridget are a compatible trio who share and differ in work ethics. We began doing research with only a mind map in mind. We researched disaster preparedness and different disasters. Everybody came back the next day with one section of notes. We came together to narrow down our topic and find something that was not only challenging, but something that could make a difference and help families and our community outside of Windward. We thought that doing a project on wildfires would be a good idea. In our area recently there was a major wildfire, and that caused us to want to take action and help the people who might be affected by a wildfire in the future. We also want to learn more about wildfires in general so that if another outbreak happens near us, we can be informed and also inform others.
Living in California has many risks, such as a danger to wildfires. I have had up close and personal experience with wildfires. Back in 2017, wildfires in California went crazy, not only did we have to stay home from school, but I had to evacuate my own home. I remember getting an alert on my phone, It informed us of the fires and smoke close to our house. My family packed up our stuff and headed to a hotel far away. I had so many questions, but In was too afraid to ask. “Is our house gonna be okay?” I remember asking my dad, he shushed me and we sat in the car in silence. I could mark this as one of the scariest days of my life. I hope to learn more about it to help other and possibly me in the future. |