Saulving an obstacle

 

CoDesign- A summary of what you learned so far.

In my science 9 class with Mr.  Robinson, we learnt about wonder questions and more about the beekeeping lifestyle. Looking back into our past projects; it is shown that we connected with a guy named Saul Mwame who owns a beekeeping company called Haven Bees. We had about three times that we connected with Saul; the first was on a zoom call in class on Feb 2nd and the second was in person on Apr 18th in our class; both in 2023.

Many things interested me throughout this connection but there was one thing that stuck out to me the most; that was the marketing aspect of it. It interested me how such a big company such as Haven Bees would go about marketing and the strategies that help them throughout their journey. It also interested me how they protected and maintained their bee hives throughout different seasons. While connecting with him and asking various questions, I felt inspired on how he started this business’, I also felt inspired by how much of an effort he put into the company to protect bees and to produce honey. It is interesting to see and learn how protecting bees could be beneficial not only for the environment but also to humans. For this project, I am working with Abby from my science class to address the problem with marketing, like mentioned before, to help open up connections for the company. We were thinking about creating some products with the company name and/or logo to open up connections if we were to sell/give them away. We are hoping by the end of this project that we create a good product that opens up his company to other people around our city and/or globe.

 

CoOperate- How could you take action on your idea?

Abby and I have researched and watched  videos about making products and how to use the crochet and 3d printer to help with our products for marketing Haven Bees. Even though I have a small background working with the 3d printer and tinker cad, we had to search up how to get it started to make sure we were doing it right. We researched different designs of keychains and looked up his logo to make sure we were set on an idea for our project. I mention that we searched up keychains because that is the number one idea we thought of making for opening up the company’s connections for costumers. While doing this, we contacted Saul Mwame through Instagram DM’s and we are happy to say that we had a response. We sent him questions to answer that would help with our project and are hoping to hear from him again. We will also ask people that we know who are working for a company get more information on how to open up our connections. The final thing that we need to do, since we already did part of the connections, is to put all out ideas together and start on the product. We already finished the plan if the keychain and how it looks, as well as creating the logo to put with the keychain, we just have to print it out now and finish the post. Additionally, we have to wait for another response from Saul to complete out connections part of this assignment.

 

CoCreate- What creative idea do you have to help address the needs you learned about in Tanzania?

To create the ideas for this project, my partner and I, Abby, were thinking about making pins and a keychain to help grow Saul’s business a bit more or give ideas to help grow his beekeeping business’. We were thinking about using tinker cad to make a 3d printed object for a keychain in the shape of a bee to bring attention to his business’ that it is about bees and beekeeping. To split up the work, Abby is making the pin/pin keychain and I will be making the tinker cad bee. For the bee keychain, we thought of making the eyes glow up when you press the stinger just like a flashlight, to add some things that we learnt from the electric circuit unit that we had, so its a little more interactive to the costumer who would essentially be buying it. We need to focus on the idea that this may not be perfect or even good the first time around even considering the limited time. Considering the amount of time that we have to make this, we decided to work ahead of the schedule and make the designs earlier than needed so we could just go into the makerspace and print both the image for the pins and the 3d object. Additionally, to even start and complete these tasks, we would need to have the 3d printer, a pin maker and pin material and most importantly, support that we can go to for help. It is very important to have all these things to complete our task especially the teachers and peer helpers that help in that space since they can teach us how to use the materials provided to us. We have a feeling that the 3d printing part will not be finished on the set due date but we are trying our best to get it done. This is all considering the fact that it may not turn out perfect; we are just hoping for an idea that could help Saul.

Skills that would help with this project would be to know how to design stuff, how to use tinker cad and how to work some technical stuff before hand. We are glad to say that we know and like to design things like how we are doing for this project so we already have quite an advantage. Knowing how to communicate will also be an important skill for this project because we would need communication skills to complete tasks such as DM’ing Saul or other company’s and communicating with each other to have a positive workspace and time management.

Commemorate- How did the process go?

how did the Connections-based Learning process go?->

The connections-based learning went as expected in my opinion. At first, I thought that we would have a bit more completed when in reality, we were rushing to get it completed considering the amount of time we had. In the end, it did turn out well and I am proud of the products that we created and we hope that it will in fact help Saul and his never ending journey in marketing. We are glad to say that our ideas did end up sat

is factory and the experience that we went through was definitely interesting. Since I did the 3d printing part of the project, I learnt many cool things such as converting the file into a readable file for the 3d printer, so it could print. I learnt that the 3d printer would not read a .jpeg for example but instead, I believe, it will read a file called .gx. To add, for the bee keychain, originally we thought of making the eyes glow up when you press the stinger just like a flashlight, to add so

me things that we learnt from the electric circuit unit that we had( we ended up not having enough time to experiment with that near the end). Although, like mentioned, we did not have enough time to create the electric circuit, I still think that, that would be a cool idea to try in the future and I hope that soon i will be able to create a keychain that has a built in flashlight. To add on about the pins that Abby made, I think that she did a wonderful job with them and the logo looks very good. I like how she made her own logo with the old logo instead of just copying and pasting it. She made added shadows and put the Haven Bees name over it and I think that it was a good idea to also add the name of the company over the actual logo; it made it look more “put together” on the pin. I think that we also did a good job asking questions to the people who help out at the maker space, Abby

and I learnt new skills that will be long-term if we evolve off of it for example, coming into the makerspace more and making more stuff. I think that this was a cool experience considering that I, myself, have been wanting to work in the makerspace and create something using the 3d printer. The bees that I created for the keychain didn’t turn out as fantastic as I imagined them but, in the end, I think that the experience and the process was more important and helpful for my future if i one day decide to use the 3d printer again.

 

The DM’ing with Saul went pretty smoothly but I do feel like it was a bit slow in communication and connection speed. What I mean by this is Saul answered my DM’s but he didn’t answer the questions that me and Abby provided. He did say that he would answer the questions but we never did get the answers. I do understand though that he is very busy and I appreciate the time that he took out of his days to help with our class. The lessons were very informative and I am glad that i was there to see.

here are the questions we asked him and the way we messaged Saul:

Hello Saul Mwame; this is Megan (and Abby) from Mr. Robinsons grade 9 science class. We are high school freshman’s as well as interested people who wish to learn about, you’re Haven Bees company. We also enjoy making art as a hobby and are interested in marketing for this project and were wondering if we could ask you a few questions to help with our project about using the Maker Space; the place we saw with the 3d printers, pin makers and other crafty things such as that. I look forward to your response and thank you for your time! Feel free to email Mr. Robinson to double check if this is reliable if you do not trust this DM.

We have a class project which you may have heard of called “Saul Proposal Post” to help with your business and Mr. Robinson is asking to have us to interview people including you and aim high for a response! One of our first thoughts came to ask you since you are the biggest part of this project, and we would love to interview you! Here are the following questions for our project;

1. Why are you passionate about your job or role?
2. What do you hope for the future of your company?
3. What obstacles have you faced to get you where you are today?
4. What advice would you pass on to someone interested in what you are doing?
5. What problems do you face with bee keeping and marketing?
6. What are additional things that we could do to help that would be in our reach?

I hope to hear a response from you and have a wonderful day! The whole project is due by May 4.
-Megan and Abby –> from Mr. Robinsons class

Screen shots-

what is the quality of your post?->

Personally, I like the quality of the post because of the fact that we learnt new things throughout this experience and I was able to put it into words and add the media needed for the post. Considering that adding media was one of the things we needed to d0, I think that the media that was provided was good; what I mean by this is that the pictures are all good quality in my opinion. None of the pictures are blurry and a lot of the screenshots show how the process went and especially the DM’s with Saul, I added proof of the process. I like how my partner and I shared our pictures and worked together well instead of having difficulties with working together; our partnership let to me ending up with this good post. Also the  amount writing really shows how much effort I tried to put into this project; I hope it shows that I documented my process and journey and reflected well on the things that were asked. Additionally, I like how I was able to organize this post, the way that the pictures are organized and how the titles are placed and sized really make a  difference in my opinion. Having a lot of information is good but it can be difficult to find information or to not get bored of a post when it has nothing, adding media and placing/organizing the post can make a big difference. To sum up, I do like he outcome of this post, the look of it is satisfactory and I am happy with it.

what could you have improved upon?->

One of the things that I feel like I could have improved on was connected to the 3d printing process. During the process of 3d printing, I made a lot of last minute changes to it. I find that changing things last minute is a bad habit of mine and I think that I should try and get better at planning ahead. Speaking of which, I feel like I should have checked up on somebody who knew how to 3d print in the maker space and get their input before the day of printing so I would have more time to actually print my things. I also had to figure stuff out on the spot because the print did not work as we wanted. The next time that I use the 3d printer, I will make sure to put this knowledge that I learnt to use and think more ahead of time so I will hopefully not be in this situation again.