Week of Oct 13

This Week in CEA
CEA will continue with the Habitat for Humanity house design.  You should have turned in your floor plan, site plan, sectional view, rendering, and schedules (room, window, door) on Friday.  If not, get them to me ASAP.

There is an opportunity for some lucky juniors to participate in the High School Aerospace Scholars  program through NASA.  I have more detailed information on this on the Internships page linked above, but applications are now open.  High school juniors can apply to participate in a number of online sessions throughout the school year and then attend a summer internship/camp at NASA in Houston this summer (2015).  The culmination will be to participate on a research project with NASA engineers and to present your project results in front of NASA staff and media.

We will only have one class this week due to the holiday and PSAT testing day on Wednesday.  Wednesday should be an A day according to the rotation, but all students will be involved in PSAT testing or other related activities, so Thursday will be an A day, followed by the 2nd B day of the week on Friday.

Agendas This Week
I will link the agendas for each day here on the class page so that you can have more detailed information about what we are doing each day.
Thursday - Green Design

This Week at RRHS
If you look at the calendar, you would think there is a mistake with both Wednesday and Thursday being listed as an A day.  That is, in fact, actually the case - sort of.  All sophomores and juniors will take the PSAT test Wednesday morning, and the seniors and freshmen will be involved in related activities as well. Therefore, the only "normal" A day schedule will be Thursday.  Tuesday and Friday will be regular B days, and the schedule will return to normal next week.

Other than that twist, the schedule is normal.  No late start or pep rally schedules to contend with.  The six weeks, however, is not normal.  We will have only 5 weeks in this six week grading period, so staying on top of grades is even more critical than it normally would be.  The progress reporting period will end next Friday, and you will have less than 2 weeks from the time they come home before the complete end of this six weeks.  The school year is flying by quickly!

College Rep Visits This Week
None.  The next scheduled visit by a college rep will be Concordia next Tuesday.

Week of Sep 29

This Week in CEA
CEA classes will continue the home design project, covering residential code requirements and then beginning to build your home designs in Revit.  The school license allows you to download a copy of Revit for school use at home through the Autodesk Web Site.  You will have to provide a valid email address to which they will send the credentials that you will need in order to activate the software install.  Don't worry, Revit is not nearly as large a file as Inventor, so it doesn't take nearly as long to download.

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  Every year, we send teams to the Texas A&M University Engineering Expo, this year named the Sparc Conference. Students will form teams and compete against each other and teams from other high schools around the state in two of six competitions. The conference is held this year on Saturday, November 22. If you are interested, talk to your friends and start forming a team of at least 6 but not more than 8 students. If you can't build a team of 6 on your own, I can add you to one of our other teams or combine smaller teams. Fill out this interest form so that I can register the teams. There is no cost to you to enter the contest or even transportation. We will provide a bus to take the teams to the A&M campus.
  
  
  You can choose to compete in one of the following 6 competitoins:
  
  
  
  
  • ReservWars - Challenge competitors to understand the structure and function of petroleum reservoirs, as well as how to “clean up” when the war is over (after an oil spill).
  • The Boat Float - Have you ever wondered how huge ships made of steel float in the water? Explore the principles of buoyancy and density by designing a boat that will float! 
  • Galaxy Glider - Do you want to put your knowledge of airplanes and physics to the test? Then come and join the Galaxy Glider Contest. 
  • Bottle Rocket Cars - Propel your way to the top of the bottle rocket car racing circuit! Design a car that is propelled by a fizzy reaction and watch it beat the clock!
  • Code to Survive - Survival is an unforgiving game, and it's your job to keep your organism alive. You must program a brain to gain competitive edge! 
  • The Egg Express - Can you deliver the goods? Your engineering team must construct a casing for an egg that will withstand free fall to a hard surface from various heights, as well as have the capability to float.
  See me if you have any additional questions, but I need to register teams this week before registration fills up.
  
  
  This Week at RRHS
  No special schedules this week; just the normal routine except that this is the last week of the first six weeks.  Make sure that you are on top of all assignments and grades as I will need the weekend to get any work graded and entered before report cards come out next week. .
  
  
  College Recruiter Visits This Week:
  Monday - University of Alabama 
  Wednesday - Johns Hopkins
  Friday - Southwestern University
                 The University of Chicago
  
  
• Check with the counselors' office to sign up if you are interested in speaking with representatives of one of these universities.

Week of Sep 22

This Week in CEA
We will study heat transfer through walls and even learn how to choose the right sized air conditioner for your homes (well, the shed anyway).  This is to begin the project where you will build a house for another classmate as a client that conforms to city code regulations and the Habitat for Humanity guidelines.

Every year, we send teams to the Texas A&M University Engineering Expo, this year named the Sparc Conference. Students will form teams and compete against each other and teams from other high schools around the state in two of six competitions. The conference is held this year on Saturday, November 22. If you are interested, talk to your friends and start forming a team of at least 6 but not more than 8 students. If you can't build a team of 6 on your own, I can add you to one of our other teams or combine smaller teams. Fill out this interest form so that I can register the teams. There is no cost to you to enter the contest or even transportation. We will provide a bus to take the teams to the A&M campus.

You can choose to compete in one of the following 6 competitoins:

• ReservWars - Challenge competitors to understand the structure and function of petroleum reservoirs, as well as how to “clean up” when the war is over (after an oil spill).
• The Boat Float - Have you ever wondered how huge ships made of steel float in the water? Explore the principles of buoyancy and density by designing a boat that will float! 
• Galaxy Glider - Do you want to put your knowledge of airplanes and physics to the test? Then come and join the Galaxy Glider Contest. 
• Bottle Rocket Cars - Propel your way to the top of the bottle rocket car racing circuit! Design a car that is propelled by a fizzy reaction and watch it beat the clock!
• Code to Survive - Survival is an unforgiving game, and it's your job to keep your organism alive. You must program a brain to gain competitive edge! 
• The Egg Express - Can you deliver the goods? Your engineering team must construct a casing for an egg that will withstand free fall to a hard surface from various heights, as well as have the capability to float.

See me if you have any additional questions, but I need to register teams this week before registration fills up.

This Week at RRHS
No special schedules this week; just the normal routine. However, be aware that this is the fifth week of our six weeks, which ends next Friday (October 3). Make sure that you are on top of all assignments.

Monday - RRISD College & Career Fair at the RRHS cafeteria
Boise State University
Wednesday - University of Arkansas
Birmingham-Southern University
Thursday - Louisiana State Univeristy
University of New Hampshire
Friday - American University

Check with the counselors' office to sign up if you are interested in speaking with representatives of one of these universities.

Week of Sep 15

This Week in CEA
Now that we are finished with 3 weeks of school, it is time for progress reports that should be delivered to the students on Thursday.

CEA students should be finished with your shed by Monday and then begin calculating the cost of your shed and heat transfer through the walls.  This will set up our more involved architectural project, the Habitat for Humanity house.

If you would like to download a version of Revit to use at home, that is possible.  Our school license allows students to download and use the software for educational purposes on your home computers.  You can visit Autodesk's educational site and download the software from there.  Be sure to use Revit 2015 since that is what we have at school, and other versions will not be compatible with the files that you create at school.

Since CTE has duty every morning this week, I will not be available for tutorials except for after school hours.

Robotics Kick-off
If you are interested in Robotics, make plans to attend the kick-off meeting on Monday.   We need to organize who will be going to the kickoff event on Saturday (Sep 20) at Motorola in Oak Hill. I will provide bus transportation to the event, and we will load in front of the 100 bldg at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday and return about 4:00 p.m.  You MUST sign up to attend the event since Motorola is a secured facility.

This Week at RRHS
We will return to a normal schedule this week: no pep rallies or late starts.  However, be aware that there is a faculty meeting on Thursday, so I will not be available for tutorials.  Also, expect progress report cards to come home on Thursday.

College rep visits for this week:
Tuesday -  the Universtity of Texas
                  the University of Massachusets
                  Savanah College of Art and Design
Wednesday - California Baptist University
Friday - the University of Utah

After you finish and present your roof type model and information sheet, we will start the design of a simple, rectangular shed using Autodesk Revit(TM), which is the software that we will use in this class to make our architectural designs.

This week at RRHS
Remember that RRHS' Open House is Monday evening and starts at 6:00 p.m. with a ribbon cutting ceremony of the A Plus Credit Union branch housed in our new 1300 building followed by a brief PTSA meeting.  Parents are invited to attend the evening and then visit our classrooms.  I look forward to meeting you and to discussing your child and our the year that we will have.

College Visits This Week
Tuesday - University of Dayton
Tuesday - Texas State University
Friday - Texas Tech

Welcome Back!
Here we go for yet another school year, and for most of you, you are already familiar with our engineering program.  The Civil Engineering & Architecture course is one of the specialization courses that we offer, which is actually two courses in one: Civil Engineering and Architecture.  We will explore some of the careers available in these two very broad technical fields. Each of them by itself covers a wide variety of different jobs.

Be sure that you take advantage of all of the resources available to you in order to keep up with all that is going on in our school and this course.  For starters, give me contact info about yourself and your parents (or your student) using this form.  It allows me to collect and use this information much more efficiently than paper forms.   The form is also linked in the Helpful Links section to the right of this post.

You will also want to keep an eye on the tabs at the top.  Through these, I plan to keep you informed about college recruiter visits to RRHS as well as scholarship and internship opportunities to students interested in an engineering or technical field.  You can even browse through the history that is posted there as many of these 'ships are repeated annually.

The calendar on the right is a direct link to the Google Calendar that I use to plan out our lessons.  I have also placed a link to Canvas, the Learning Management System (LMS) that we will use this year.  PLTW provides this LMS access to all students and provides the latest curriculum via that site.

Be sure to review the First Day Packet (Syllabus) and return the $35 lab fee and required signatures to me by the end of next week.  If I can be of any help, please feel free to call or email me.  I look forward to seeing all of our parents at the RRHS Open House September 8!