Students try to put together the puzzle cubes their classmates created (Photo: Ms. Varela)

By Leonard Fields,

Editor’s Note: Ms. Varela’s engineering class made puzzle cubes (three dimensional puzzles) for other students and staff members to solve. This is one student’s reflection on the project.

Unit 4 was mostly about a box that my classmates and I had to create. The hardest part about the box creation was the start. When I had to pick on piece and begin from there. My teacher was a big help for me, she helped me with my brainstorming and my creations of my box but she did not create the box for me. She made sure I knew what I was doing. My classmates where a big help, they helped me understand everything also, when I was confused and my teacher was already helping someone, someone that knew would explain it for me. I didn’t really realize how much my teacher helped me understand everything until we had visitors to come and test out our puzzle cubes, and everyone was struggling to put my puzzle together.

One thing that runs in my family is creativity. So when I had a chance to use my creativity I was determined to make it the best one in the class. My determination level rose when I realized how much fun this could be for me, and how much it could help me understand better.

The brainstorming was a good part for me, it took me a long time to brainstorm the rest of my cube. To tell the truth my time management was a little bit bad. If my time management was better I would have finished a lot earlier, when I was almost done I stayed after school to finish my work.

When I was presenting my puzzle and the work I completed on the computer I had to be professional I couldn’t be playing around because when I get older I’m going to have to be a professional and be mature. It’s not easy to talk professionally about something as complicated as this. I thought it was going to be easy but in all honesty it really wasn’t, I thought it was going be easy because I understood the work I just couldn’t explain it fully, but I did it eventually.

The thinking outside the box wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, like I said starting off my box was arguably the hardest part of my project. So when I had to think of a couple more pieces to create a 3×3 box wasn’t that hard. The easiest part of creating my pieces was the measuring and putting it all together for the final piece.

This project helped me understand the ipt files, the iam files, the idw files, and the ipn files. When we first started working with inventor pro 2015 it wasn’t easy for me. Now that I have experience doing all 4 of the files, is became easy.

When everyone was struggling to put my box together that was a sign of achievement for me. All my work payed off. My teacher, my classmates, myself I don’t just give the credit to myself I give it to everyone that helped me complete this.