Group 6 15/7

15/7/2016

After breakfast, we had our second visual design thinking lesson.  Since many of us need to prepare for our presentations after lunch, the teacher gave us some

 time to finish our presentations and rehearse for it. We first finished our drawing of our sketch by enlarging our drafts. Our classmates drew different things, such as crocodile, penguins, whales and even time machine! We had learnt a lot from this lesson to improve our drawing skills and make us to think creatively.

After lunch, we prepared our presentations for the final presentation later on. Our group made a video of our photos during the trip here and it contains a lot of our memories.  Also, we decided to present our presentation in the form of mock trial and share our feelings and our favourite parts of the trip to the audience.  We were nervous because we didn’t know whether this plan could work well or not. Although there was a lot of work to do, we managed to finish the project on time.

At about 3:00, the presentation session started.  Different groups presented their best memories in Stanford through many different forms, like drama, PowerPoint, and videos. We remembered that group 5 also did a mock trial too! Their mock trial was really amazing and funny. They linked the dorm rule of ‘lights out’ and the mock trial together which was really creative. When it was our turn to have the presentation, we had some technical problems. We could not find our video that we had prepared! Luckily, at last we were able to add the video to the usb drive again and did the final presentation without any regrets.

After the presentation, we went to have a water balloon fight. It was the first time for us to play this type of interesting game. It was really fun! We can’t really play these sort of games in Hong Kong and we were really thrilled to have the opportunity to try this in Stanford with our friends. We threw water balloons at the teachers as well and we had a lot of fun. After playing outside the common area, we moved the water balloon fight to the fountain. We thought it would be awkward to play the water balloon fight in such a public area but as it turned out, all of us had a lot of fun.

Tomorrow, we will be going to Capitola for our last field trip in our Stanford Tour. We will also have a chance to swim at the beach there. We all feel very excited and sad as we are going to leave soon. I wish we could stay here for a longer period of time. Stay tuned for our final blog tomorrow!

Group 10 15/7/2016

Our day began with a visual design thinking class. We learned some proper shading skills and layering. The professor gave us some time to prepare our visuals for the final presentation and helped us improve them , as well as taught us some useful steps in drawing a realistic map of the campus of Stanford University. He also taught us the crucial steps in drawing a quick sketch. Working individually with us, he commented on our sketches and gave us personal and constructive advice such that we can improve our drawing skills in the future. 

In the afternoon, we had our final presentations. The ideas of different groups are very unique and fun, ranging from a decision making demonstration to a mock trial drama to share what they think the best part of the tour is. Our group did a presentation with Prezi and what we think is the best part is exploring Stanford campus. Through Scavenger Hunt and signing out, we learnt more about the culture in the States and we were particularly impressed by the generosity and cheerfulness of people here at Stanford which made our stay here very comfortable and pleasant. The tranquil environment at Stanford and the warm weather here made our stay even more pleasant. After the presentations, we were presented certificates for the completion of the program. Vote of thanks are given to the organizers, councilors and chaperons for the care and support they have provided us throughout the trip. 

We had an intense water balloon fight after dinner. Even councilors and chaperons joined the fight! Smiles and enthusiasm were printed on each and every one of our faces. To conserve water and to satisfy our unsettling excitement,  we went fountain hopping at the Claw. Though it was freezing cold and everyone was wet thoroughly, we were still very smiling and laughing uncontrollably. We had a fruitful day. Goodbye!

Group 9 - 15/7/2016

This morning we had our second visual design class. We handed in our still life drawing assignment from the last class for his inspection. He helped us improve our composition by highlighting the main component of our piece, which is the bear. The way to draw attention to the bear is to add extra shade and use thicker lines so as to up the contrast between the bear and the background. After that, we had some time to prepare the props we need for our final presentation. We drew the tickets and the decision making chart for our presentation. At last, we had some time to draw our own composition. One of our group mates drew a pigeon, one of them drew a colourful parrot and a palm tree by the beach. One of us also drew a few feather illustrations. He helped each of us to improve on our different skills and techniques so as to finish our piece. He even introduced us to the artist Audubon who was famous for drawing birds, so as to inspire us to draw detailed and precise sketches. Overall, we had a great time in these 2 visual design classes, it really helped us with our expression of art. 

 The afternoon was packed with final presentations whereby each group introduced their most memorable part of the summer camp. The presentations are of various forms including video clips, dramas, powerpoint slides, mock trials, etc. Some groups reviewed their favourite lessons on neuroscience, design-thinking, mock trial, whereas some others recall field trips to San Francisco, Monterey Bay Aquarium, Silicon Valley- meanwhile evoking the audience's sense of nostalgia towards the past events. Our group focused on our favourite lesson i.e. decision-making class, whereby we outlined the major methods of decision-making. Next we came up with several examples and taught the audience how we came to a favourable decision. The group presentations are followed by a certificate presentation, then a short speech given by two student representatives. They summarized the highlights of the camp and expressed their sincere gratitude towards the directors, counsellors, chaperones, and all others who have contributed to our fruitful camp. We would surely reminisce our memorable experience here in Stanford.

 After the lesson and the final presentation, we had a water balloon fight as the final activity today. We first had water balloon fight in the garden in part of our dorm. However, we were too hyper that we threw all the balloons before the counsellors were able to fill up a new pile of balloons. Some of us were impatient, so we got big boxes, big water bottles, big cups and fill them with water, then splash everyone with them. Only some part of our body were wet. Therefore, we decided to have more fun and went to The Claw. When we arrived, we scared away all the other visitors. We splashed water everywhere. Finally, we ended up getting all wet from the head to the feet. A lot of tourists came around and took pictures of us. After 20 minutes, we went back to the dorm and fight for bathrooms.   

Group 2

7/14/2016

Group 2

Ingrid Luk

Natalie Yeung

Sharon Lau

Doris Wong

Alicia Au

Our first lesson of the day was Visual Design Thinking. At the beginning of the class, our instructor, Mr. Bill Scott, asked us to write all twenty-six alphabets horizontally on a piece of paper. It was a bit hard to do so since we had to adjust the spacing between the letters to allow them to neatly fit on a line. The technique of doing this perfectly was to first write ‘A’ and ‘Z’ in the two ends, then add the ‘M’ at the middle. Afterwards, write ‘G’ between ‘A’ and ‘M’, and so on. In this way, all letters would be able to fit into the narrow line tidily.  Moreover, Mr. Scott also taught us how to improve our calligraphy skills. Firstly, we drew many strokes and dashes. Then we practiced drawing ellipsis and chose the best ones and combined them so that the letters would look nicer and tidier. We really had a lot of fun writing calligraphy! Later on, we did some sketching on our own. Sharon and Ingrid drew beautiful red roses while Natalie drew an elegant lady. Alicia drew a cool racecar and Doris sketched a bicycle. We had a great time using our creativity and successfully finished our artwork within an hour. Sadly, this was our last art lesson and all of us wished to have more time with Mr. Scott. Today, we definitely learnt a lot of useful drawing techniques, enabling us to unleash our creativity. We are sure that all skills learnt will be extremely useful to us when we do various presentations in the future.

The afternoon lesson was was second session of Blogging Your Journey. We discussed biased journalism, evaluating the media and how to avoid being fooled. It was definitely very useful for us to understand how to look beneath the surface and not be just blinded by biased information, be it websites, newspapers, magazines, professional journals, books or documentaries. When gathering information, we should choose media source wisely and select those that were more trustworthy. We should also be conscious about not commenting about race and religion on mass media platforms. Furthermore, we should always check for fallacies and judge whether the content on the media was true or not.

After the lecture, the teacher taught us how to edit photos using Google. We had a lot of fun editing our beautiful pictures and posting them on our blogs.

After the lesson, we went to Stanford Office of Admissions to attend a talk about admissions to Stanford. The speaker gave us some tips on how to prepare for applying to Stanford for admission. The requirements of having chance to study at Stanford are high, requiring excellence in required both academics and non-academic interests.  We know that the competition between applicants is intense since Stanford is a top-notch university in the world. Therefore, we should get prepared right now if we want to get into such a great school in the future.

Group 7  7/14/2016

It was a beautiful morning and we had the first time going to the dining hall by ourselves. We had a lovely breakfast and we were fully energized to begin the day.

We started off the day with a creative writing lesson. After the lecturer introduced himself, he gave us some fiction writing prompts and told us to write a short story in fifteen minutes. It was quite unexpected but we tried our best to write down a few paragraphs. The lecturer then distributed a passage called ‘Reunion’ and taught us about ‘the Iceberg Theory of Literature’. It is a theory that stories should convey more through subtext than through the actual words written on the page. It was a great method as it helped us to write a more interesting story. We also created poems about chocolate in groups and it was a fun experience. We enjoyed this lesson very much.

            

            After lunch, we went back to our residence hall to have Effective Non-Verbal Communication class. It was quite interesting. The lecturer taught us about the importance of gestures and context with people. Besides, he gave us some pictures to analyze the facial expressions of different people. Furthermore, he gave us chances to practice how to tell a sentence with different tones and pitches.  Hand gestures were also being taught in the class. The lecturer told us how to shake hands in a more polite way. At the end of the lesson, he invited two of our group mates to give a one-minute speech.  He recorded their speeches, replayed it and gave them some useful feedback. We think that this lesson could be useful for our group presentation tomorrow.

           

            After a 30 minutes break, we took a long walk to the History Building in which we had a talk about admission procedures to Stanford.  The speaker gave us some really important tips and advice. We hope we’ll be able to use them in the future!

- Joyce Woo, Cherry Suen, Cydney Skinner, Jocelin Kee

Group 3, 14/7/2016

14/7/2016

Eunice Cho, Sabrina Lee, Eunice Lee, Stephanie Liang

Today was the 10^th day in Stanford, which means there were only 2 days left till the study tour ends. Today, we had the lesson of Visual Design Thinking and Blogging your journey part 2. We also had pizza for our cluster dinner tonight!

Last night was the Fire Pit night. We tried to make S’mores ourselves and it was really tasty. Here is the general procedure for making the S’mores.
First, we put our marshmallows over the campfire to turn the marshmallows to melty. We transferred the melty marshmellows to the chocolate and placed to place the remaining cracker on the marshmallow and chocolate. We also watched the sunset there. It was really beautiful.

l and we enjoyed out time by taking many beautiful pictures. Afterwards, we gathered together to share our feelings about this study tour. We were all very impressed by the huge grasslands inside the campus. We also thought that we became more mature and independent in this trip. This Fire Pit night gave us an incredible and unforgettable lifetime memory.
Today the first lesson was Visual Design Thinking. We learnt different strategies and skills on drawing and designing. We first took a fast review on what we have learnt in the last lesson; this recalled our memories on the sketching methods of cube and different object. We then started our lesson by drawing lines, we were quite curious about what would we had to do with these lines. Surprisingly, drawing lines was also an exercise for today’s lesson; it was really difficult to draw straight line without using ruler. Then, we were asked to write the 26 alphabet between the lines which was drew by us. These activities really inspired us about something look simple doesn’t mean it is really easy to do. Drawing lines and writing alphabet that we were taught by teachers when we were in kindergarten looked easy to do, unfortunately, it was really challenging and difficult to do well in this task. We kept on trying and we finally succeed on drawing better lines. This taught us that we would succeed one day if we did not give up and keep trying things out. It was a pity that this is the last lesson of visual design thinking, we tried hard in this lesson and hope to learn as much as we can.
For the second lesson, we had the second part of a blogging lesson. We learnt about commercial and non-commercial media, and ways to identify the real or exaggerated information which we received in daily life from different advertisements. Advertisement exaggerated the advantages of that product and makes it more valuable. On the other hand, journalist is responsible in telling the truth and should not be influence by any organization and government. After introducing different information of journal and blog, we were asked to write a blog about the general feelings and overall view of the past ten days. We know more about our friends and ourselves. This lesson was very important to us as we learnt to weigh the information in real life as we were often misled by the using of advertisement and commentary which could be unfair to others. We should also learn to accept opinions and try to identify our own mentally vested interests which were affected by our own bias. We have learnt the credibility and the trust of a person is absolutely important in every way including journalism and in other situation.

All in all, we enjoy today’s lessons very much and we are looking forward to the next day.

 

Group 8 Day 10

Day 10

We started our second last day in Stanford with full and tasty breakfast. Next, we attended creative writing lesson. The professor gave us 20 minutes to write a short story at the start of the class. We then shared it with our group mates. We also learned about the ice berg theory which uses subtle text to convey meanings instead of using direct languages. We read a few short stories and identified the skills they used. Apart from that, we were each given two chocolates. We had to write a poetic ode comparing the two of them thus emphasizing how one chocolate tasted much better than the other. We ended the lesson by reading out loud our poem in groups. It was an interesting lesson.

After lunch, we had a non-verbal communication lesson. Out of our expectation, the lesson was very interactive and interesting. The teacher taught us different techniques of expression like body gesture, voice, eye contact etc. It was really useful for our final presentation and future use. We like the way how he did his presentation using his body language which was eye-catching. Though the lounge was rather hot and stuffy, it did not affect our ambitious learning attitude. At the end, two of us volunteered to do a one minute speech in front of the whole class which we received feedbacks from the teacher after. We indeed had a wonderful time.

Then we went for an admission talk from which we learnt a lot about the ways of admitting and the requirements for admission.  We understood more about personal statement and the exams we have to take before the application. We found the talk very useful as we loved this place so much after visiting and Stanford is definitely one of our dream schools. After the talk we went back to the dorm for dinner! We had pizza for dinner, with flavors of cheese, Hawaii, meatballs and vegetarians, we had a delicious meal!

Jackie Fung, Maisie Luk, Michelle Ng, Kelly Ng