Disruption!

Today we got up early and went to the San Diego Safari Park. 

Today at the massive safari park, we learned about all kinds of animals. But one animal in particular we learned about was a three band armadillo. It was about the size of a softball when he rolled up. His outer shell is made out of keratin, which is the same material as our fingernails. When he rolls up, it’s almost impossible to open him up which is a good defence against other predators but not humans. For example, rolling into a ball on the spot doesn’t help if a car is coming straight for the armadillo, which is why they are close to being endangered. 

Me and Robbie trying on the wrestling masks! 

Old Town San Diego is the heart of San Diego. This is where the first people settled, and it grew into the bustling city it is now. It’s important to keep because it shows the history of the city San Diego. 

My name is Samuel Scheewe, and I live in North Vancouver. I’m currently going to Seycove Secondary and I’m in the PLP program. This means all our work is in projects, and we do all of our work on our own personal iPads. I really enjoy this type of learning, especially since it takes me to places like California!

This book was to help share the experiences we had on our trip, and I hope you learned a little about what we learned a lot about! 

Disruption is something that comes into a normal cycle and interrupts that cycle. This can be a positive change or a negative change.

I think this applies to this trip because we are going to places that were disruptions. All the startup businesses we will visit had big ideas that changed the way people lived life at that time. They interfered in the normal cycle in good ways, and sometimes bad ways.

I’m looking forward to seeing this bridge because I have always thought the bridge was amazing, and a massive landmark to San Francisco 

Stanford University looks amazing. From the beautiful campus, to the extremely smart students, and to the whole mindset. Students and teachers at Stanford have worked to improve the health and wellbeing of people around the world through the discovery and application of knowledge, since it admitted its first students in 1891. They want to prepare people for making the world a better place. They can work on whatever they want, and take any course. This relates to disruption because the students here all want to disrupt the world in a good way. Whether it’s something small like an app, or something bigger in their community or country. This is different from traditional universities that just prepare their students for their jobs and real life. Stanford is both training their students for the real world, and giving them the resources they need to change it. This relates back to what we saw at HTH. The students there are being taught to think about what they are doing and how it applies to the real world. This even relates back to our program, PLP, because in PLP all our projects are about the real world, and how new ideas are changing our everyday lives. And those ideas can come from a place like Stanford. 

Google is best known for being one of the first search engines. This was disruptive because it gave people access to the internet extremely quickly, which people hadn’t seen before.

The Android “Mascot”  was standing outside Googleplex. 

I learned from Parker and Dawn that people are willing to take risks and even travel a long ways for a good eduction. Dawn travels close to 2 hours a day to get to school, and two hours more to get home. Both Parker and Dawn joined HTH to try something new, and left traditional school behind to take a chance with HTH. Both of them are loving the new ways HTH functions, and they feel it is a really strong school.

We are heading home! Now there’s time for what always comes afterwards... reflection...

I think that my definition of disruption has stayed the same. But I’ll say it again in a different way after my experiences on the trip: Disruption is a change that forces itself into a normal cycle, and can change the way that cycle functions for good or for bad. I drew this diagram because this is how I think all the big companies we saw began. For example, take Apple. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak saw the progress in computers, and Steve Jobs knew that personal computers were what people will want. This was the idea stage . Then, the two Steves started making personal computers in their garage. This was the creation stage. Then, they brought them to a computers fair, and people were very interested. This was the recognition stage. People were interested in having their own computers and that they didn’t have to be a computer geek in order to use. Steve Jobs knew what to do. As he began selling his computers more and more, he made his own company and began mass production. And that brings us back to the beginning of the cycle. Now it was time for the next computer. He began with an idea, creating a prototype, getting recognition that it was a great product, and then mass produced that product. It is a never ending cycle for these big businesses. This is one of the biggest takeaways I will get from this trip.

When we embarked on this walking tour, I thought that we’d be doing a lot of walking and not a whole lot of sightseeing. But, as we went on I realized that our guide had everything planned out really well. We visited lots of cool streets, learned a lot of history and ate some really good sandwiches.

Our day started with flying from Vancouver at 4:30 am, stopping in Seattle, and then flying down to San Diego. Then we went to Torrey Pines Natural Reserve, a park dedicated to preserving the last Torrey Pine trees in North America. We then went to La Jolla cove, which I really enjoyed. 

The picture below is called “A breath Of California” It’s the view we got from Torrey Pines Reserve, with the beautiful ocean and horizon. 

Alcatraz would be difficult to escape because it’s 1.5 miles from the nearest coast!

Today we went on a famous decommissioned US aircraft carrier called the USS Midway.  This ship was the biggest aircraft carrier of its time and it was decommissioned because the technology it had was getting out of date. They wanted to make the new ships run by nuclear engines.  These ships were built to be a big intimidating force so that other countries wouldn’t mess with America.

This ship is a disruption because it is replacing the need for hand to hand combat. If a country is getting out of line, all America has to do is send one of their ships over there, without even fighting. It immediately makes the country calms down since no other countries have even close to the size of a military that USA does.

Today we had the opportunity to spend a few hours inside the computer history museum. This museum was actually pretty interesting, unlike some other ones I’ve been to. We walked through in two groups, each with a guide. We started with the oldest computers that were as big as a room, and worked our way through until we got to the present day. What stuck out to me was that after every new breakthrough, people didn’t stop creating and looking for better ideas. We would never be where we are today if people just settled on one model and said it’s good enough. Developers kept doing what they do best. People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates kept pushing, and finding ways to make their computers faster and smaller. This museum showed all these computers in a timeline format, and there isn’t going to be an end. They will have to keep adding to this museum as the years go by. This is inspiring because it shows us that what technology we use now will be considered ancient in 15 years. Knowing this is exciting and makes us wonder what the next great technological breakthrough will be.

We weren’t allowed to film some parts of the Apple loop. This is because Apple wants to keep their ideas and products to themselves while they’re in progress. If I filmed it and showed it to the world, people would try to copy Apple’s work!

Intel is best known for creating semiconductor chips. This was disruptive because it made it so people can build their own personal computers easier, and because it allowed the computer to do millions of functions at once using other chips and lots of transistors.

Mission park, San Diego: This park is a place where people can come and just sit around doing whatever they feel like. People walk around selling stuff, or handing out free stuff. There’s basketball courts, soccer field and a fountain. This park is a disruption because it’s going against the norms of other cities’ parks. This type of park is only in San Francisco.

The Castro, San Francisco This part of town is LGBTQ. Everyone is welcome to be who they are. But it wasn’t always that way. If you want to learn more, look up a man named Harvey Milk. This community is a disruption because it is showing people that they are proud of who they are, and every city and country should be accepting of everyone.

Mission High school, San Francisco This high school has a unique incentive. But, it is a normal school, and it’s been there for a long time. But, if the students grades are getting low, the high school says if they can get their grade up, and show the ice cream shop their report card, they will get a free ice cream! This is really unique to this school, ice cream shop, and city.

This device, the palm pilot, we saw in the computer history museum, and was the first of its kind. It is a small handheld device that has a calendar, contacts list, and notes. It is meant for business persons to carry with them instead of a big laptop. When it came out in 1997 it wowed the world with the “fast” processor, touch screen and 512 kB memory. These devices became popular because of the relatively low price, small size, and ability to connect to a home computer. It was a disruption because it was replacing the need for papers, and larger computers and laptops. It was a great innovation because it was the first of its kind, and a step closer to cell phones. 

HIGH TECH HIGH

This project was created by middle school students. They used hand cut pieces of wood to construct a figure, and chose the colours that they thought would best represent their personalities. 

This project was created by students in grade 12, and the aim was to leave their legacy in words. They each chose a word to represent the thoughts and feelings they want their class to leave behind. The colour and font were all taken into consideration as well. 

This project was created by multiple students, and it is a bridge that goes over one hallway. It is designed to have only one purpose: to provide an alternative perspective. They wanted to show a different angle on people’s everyday life they don’t normally see.

Having activities like this hot air baloon ride are important to zoos because they attract more people to come visit, which gives the zoos more money for their animals. 

These prisoners were in a tough prison. Physically and mentally. They could sometimes hear the sounds of laughter from across the bay on New Year’s Day, and yet they were stuck in a small cell. This had to be hard on them. They could see and hear their freedom, but they couldn’t escape. 

We interviewed Steve about how he thinks the Midway as a museum is just as powerful as when it was a warship.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was a maritime explorer in the early 1500s. He was one of the first people to explore what is now the coast of California, and discovered San Diego bay on Sept. 28, 1542. Before being a explorer, he became rich mining gold in Guatemala, making him one of the richest conquistadors in Mexico! And, now, in the state of California, September 28 is officially &quot;Cabrillo Day&quot; He is significant to California, because, well, he found it! 

I would be willing to work on a aircraft carrier, but I’d do it only once to have as an incredible experience. After seeing how cramped the living spaces are, the low food quality, and learning about how strict the rules are, I wouldn’t be too excited to stay for long. But I also think that working on the biggest weapon in the world would be an amazing experience. 

Today we listened to Scott and Brendan. Scott was on the original iPhone creation team, and worked for Steve Jobs! Brendan is a software designer who worked at IBM, and now just started working for Amazon. They talked about their careers, and gave us some life advice, I guess. What I took away from is that what you want to do for your career is not necessarily what you will end up with. Scott for instance, made a camera with a few friends in his garage, brought it to a conference, and Apple was there, and really liked what they saw. Later, Scott ended up working with Steve Jobs himself. He really liked working with Apple, and says that it was fun working on small problems as well, and that “Not everything you work on is going to be like an iPhone.” He also says he really enjoyed working with really smart people. He learned that you can do lots of other things than you trained for. Brendan found his career path because of something he calls a “radius of opportunity.” Nothing intrigued him where he graduated so he moved and found what he wanted to do. They’ve shown me that you can do lots of other occupations that you didn’t go to university for, and still do great. 

High Tech High welcomes a lot of visitors for a few reasons. Firstly, they really want to show people how their school works. And they also want to encourage local people to join their school.

HTH was not what I was picturing in my mind. I was expecting a very expensive looking school with lots of technology and really smart people. But what I saw was a little different. The people there were smart, that’s not what was different. I wouldn’t say that the classrooms were normal, but they weren’t full of crazy tech. The classrooms were very open, with lots of glass, and that’s so people can see other classes and what they are doing. This school is all PBL, which stands for project based learning, and it’s where everything they do is a real world project. This directly relates to my program PLP, which is also project based learning. Except for them, it’s ALL PBL. This can be considered a disruption to the HTH students, their community, and the whole entire education system. That’s because this type of learning is new, and people haven’t seen it before. For a long time, school has just been take notes, listen in class, write a test and move on. In PLP and HTH we are learning topics and in ways we won’t forget in a few weeks. For example, I’m going to remember this trip for the rest of my life. 

Train ride from San Jose to San Francisco timelapse

Fun fact: When it got really warm, students would swim in the 40 fountains on the campus, so Stanford chlorinated the fountains and encouraged students to take a relaxing dip whenever they needed!

Three floors of cells per hallway. On both sides. 

The cell where a breakout was staged! Notice the fake head!

Us after running a lap on the Stanford track!

I think that this field school has shown me a lot. For one, it’s shown me that there’s so many jobs out there that I’ve never even heard of, and weren’t around 10 years ago! And there will be even more jobs by the time I need one, based on the progression of technology. And we also learned that people nowadays have multiple jobs in their lifetime, compared to 20-30 years ago where you stick with one career your whole life. Steve and Scott told us that the job you picture yourself getting, is most likely not the one you will actually have. Your career path can change at any moment, depending on what opportunities you pursue. This trip taught me that with the new innovations in all areas of our daily lives, there are jobs out there for everyone. This trip hasn’t drastically changed my views on what I want to do for a living. That’s mostly because I don’t have any specific ideas on what I want to be. But this trip has opened my eyes on all the varieties of jobs I can take, in just the tech industry as well. I feel I am more confident that I will find a job that I love after going on this amazing trip.

One section of the library in Twitter’s HQ

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