OstwaldTSA - News

2023 Final Presentations - Day 3

On Wednesday, April 19th, the finals went into the last round. Architectural Design was the first project of the day and was presented by Julia, Johanna and Felix. They presented the 3D model of their assisted living home and explained their extensively thought-out ideas. They also had clear ideas for the creation of the physical model and summarized them in an understandable way. The creative project Children's Stories was presented by Johanna and Marlene. This year's story will promote a career as a STEM teacher and will appeal especially to children between 1st and 3rd grade. In addition, an interactive aspect should be included this year. The group wrote a logically structured, understandable and beautiful story and created the matching pictures. These support the plot and ensure a child-friendly overall book through rich detail and bright colors. An interactive website will form creative extensions to the pages. The final presentation was the Dragster project. Felix explained the concept for this year, the approach, as well as his prototype. He also presented his further plan and ideas for improvement. Our finals finally came to a close. Many thanks to the alumni and sponsors for their support and numerous tips. Now the final spurt is on for all members, so that all projects come to a great, satisfying result and of course they can be proudly presented at the Nationals, this year in Louisville (Kentucky). For the Officers and Advisors, the difficult task now remains to select those who will be allowed to fly to the Nationals this year to represent our Chapter. But to all members, thank you for your hard work. Now we have to wait for the results at the end of June!

2023 Final Presentations - Day 2

Tuesday the 19th of April was the 2nd day of our finals. This time we started with the presentation of Biotechnlogy Design. This year's task was to research a new solution that helps to provide astronauts with food while traveling in space. Helena started with the explanation of the problem and presented the chosen solution "Fy", a nutritional fungi protein. Sophia then presented the trifold design, which reflected the general theme of "space" and integrated the explanations into the design. LED technology that will be added after printing should provide interactivity and an interesting overall look. Lilly followed with presenting the plans of the model group for example a 3D-printed spaceship, which serves as visual support. Erik finished by explaining the video concept that will promote the chosen solution. Digital Video Production was the next project on the schedule. Here, a three-minute short film was to be shot this year, presenting a good-cause from the region. The team decided on a program where young people can learn about professions for free, making it easier for them to decide on a career path. Marlene and Sophia explained the approach, the idea as well as the plot. The latter was clarified by the presentation of the storyboard by Johannes. Afterwards the video was shown, which was able to capture the problem of missing future plans of many young people and presented the chosen project, which provides a solution for this, in a versatile way. The final project was Data Science, which was presented by Lauris. As part of their work, the group evaluated comprehensive data sets on public transportation in American cities. They illustrated the results in clearly laid out graphs, and Lauris presented them with confidence. Finally, Day 2 came to an end as well. The members of the presented projects openly accepted the numerous suggestions and can now finalize and optimize their work.

2023 Final Presentations - Day 1

On Monday, April 17th, we started our annual "final presentations" and thus the last working phase before the Nationals. The purpose of the finals is to present all projects and their status once again in detail in order to receive tips and suggestions for improvement from the other members of the chapter as well as alumni and sponsors and to keep them in mind when finishing the projects. Nils, Arthur and Erik opened with the presentation of Webmaster. One of our largest - and very successful - projects, where the task is to create a new website for our chapter each year. This time they incorporated all of the information in a clever and aesthetic forest design and presented the content, as well as special features of the website. Another aspect of Webmaster is creating a design brief. This year, the website had to be about a fictional company involved in space tourism. Lara W. then introduced the Audio Podcasting project. The task this year was to present and evaluate a product that high-school aged students could use. She explained the working process and introduced the portable blender that the podcast is about before playing it for everyone. Keanu and Lara S. then presented the Video Game Design project, which this year focused on Puzzle & Party Games. They showed their point-and-click adventure game, in which tasks must be solved to assemble a bubble machine over several levels. Next, Lara W. showcased the Photographic Technology project. She presented her 5 pictures, which all revolved around the 4 elements according to the assignment and explained how she implemented the specifications of a macro-, a black and white- and a still life picture. Finally Konstantin presented the project Music Production and therefore also played the self-composed song of the group. The song convinced with its great arc of tension as well as the creative use of vocals, instruments and effects. Thus the task of developing an energizing song was fulfilled. After this first successful and versatile day, we are looking forward to the next two days and wish all presenters good luck.

National Conference 2022

At 7:15 a.m. on June 23, 2022, the time had finally come. Our journey to the 44th National Conference in Dallas, Texas began. With anticipation, nervousness and motivation, we finally arrived about 24h later at the Super-8 Hotel, where we spent our first night. The next morning we moved to the Gaylord Texan Resort, our actual accommodation for the coming week and also the venue for the National Conference. After checking into our rooms, we headed to the local Walmart to stock up on food and pick up the last few essentials to fine-tune our projects. Saturday was all about exploring Dallas. On the list were the 6th Floor Museum, which educated about Kennedy's assassination, the Union Tower as the tallest building in Dallas, and a rodeo show in the evening. Sunday we used to relax and prepare. Documentations were printed and filed, the Architectural Design model was assembled, and the numerous conference rooms were checked out so we would know exactly where to go later. In the evening, we received our official name badges in a meeting and were explained the rules. Afterwards we already had to hand in the first projects. On Monday morning, the first General Session started, which we all eagerly awaited, since it was the first National Conference for every member. This was followed by the activity of pin trading, which also served as an exchange with other chapters. Throughout the day, projects were handed in and on-site projects, such as coding, were mastered. In the evening, the Cyber Security Challenge began and the topic for the on-demand video shoot was announced. This also meant that many members of the chapter were coding or drafting a script during the night. Tuesday also featured the morning General Session and the pin trading that followed. The rest of the day consisted of handing in many projects, such as Biotechnology Design, contesting other onsite projects, such as Problem Solving, and continuing to work on Cyber Security and On-Demand Video. In addition, the semi-final interview of the project webmaster was successfully completed. Wednesday, 9 a.m. marked the end of the Cyber Security Challenge and the submission of the completed on-demand video. After the General Session, there was diligent preparation for the Architectural Design and Biotechnology Design interviews, which were scheduled for early afternoon. Thursday meant the end of the conference and our trip, but first, the big awarding ceremony took place. We were eagerly waiting for the results, which did not disappoint us. The projects On-Demand-Video and Biotechnology Design made it to the semi-finals and thus to the top 12, while the on-site project Coding reached 4th place. We can be especially proud of our 3 trophies for 3rd place in Webmaster, Cyber Security and Architectural Design. After celebrating we spent the afternoon at the historic Grapevine before our trip home started around 6 pm. We finally arrived at the school around midnight on Friday, tired but happy and with numerous new memories.

2022 Final Presentations - Day 3

Julia and Felix kicked off the last day of the finals with their presentation of the Park Lodge they created for the Architectural Design project. According to the specifications, it should be environmentally friendly and designed for 12 rangers. The team created a vivid 3D model for the lodge in Mount Rainier National Park, and began working on a physical model. Their building has a shape that immediately catches the eye and a well-planned concept of how 12 rangers can live there together over a period of several months. Keanu and Lara S. showed their talent and diligence afterwards with their presentation of the Video Game Design project. The assignment, "An arcade game for a museum," called for creating a video game that could appear as an arcade game in a museum. The team decided on a 2D runner game with dinosaurs. The player can learn about dinosaurs and understand their way of life in a playful way and with a very appealing design. After that Nils, Arthur, Johannes and Geriet showed the project webmaster with a comprehensive presentation. They presented the newly designed website of our TSA chapter, which was designed this year with an underwater theme. Programming was done with Django (Python) as backend. Also, the website was made available in Spanish and French in addition to English and German. The last project presented at this year's finals by Sophia is Digital Video Production. A short film of around three minutes in length was to be made on the theme of "A day in the life". The team decided to use the theme of a cancer survivor to draw attention to the everyday nature of this disease and to spread hope. The film, which had already been shot and edited, showed in high quality the protagonist, who learns in the course of the story that she has been able to beat cancer, thus taking the audience on an emotional journey. At the end of this long third day, all team members left the room and headed home, somewhat excited, while the Officers and Advisors, with the assistance of some alumni, stayed behind to make a decision on who would get to represent the Chapter at the National Conference this year. The following day, the names of those who will be going on the trip to Dallas were announced, causing some happy and proud faces and only further motivating the others to continue to step on the gas in working on projects next year. We are already looking forward to Nationals this summer!

2022 Final Presentations - Day 2

Freshly strengthened from the weekend, the finals went into the second round on Monday, 11.04.2022. We started with the presentation of the Children's Stories project, which was held by Johanna and Marlene. Children's Stories is about creating and illustrating a children's story. This year, the story should address the target group between preschool and first grade and introduce children to the field of engineering. The story "The Bat That Carried my Dreams" is about a protagonist who believes in her goals. After losing a competition in her childhood, she remembers the idea she had then in adulthood and refines it so that she and her research team can win an important competition. Through the story, reading children can be motivated to believe in themselves and learn about the field of engineering through the idea that the protagonist deals with in the course of the story. In doing so, the book's child-friendly illustrated pages help guide them into the story. After the presentation of Children's Stories came - who would have thought it - the presentation of Engineering Design. Felix and Andor showed three approaches to solving the infrastructural problem of medical care. They presented the concept of Plastic Roads for an environmentally friendly, faster and cheaper road construction, as well as "Telehealth" and "Telemedicine", which serve the communication between patient and doctor. Very "impressive" was how they showed their self-built and 3D-printed drone. After that, a more creative project was presented again. Sophia and Helena showed self-shot photographs on the topic of challenges. These represented different aspects - be it the challenge to "keep all balls in the air", i.e. to coordinate one's own life and to master challenges, the psychological challenge to accept oneself or the global challenge of consumption, which is getting out of hand in western societies. Dhruv and Helena concluded this day, which was longer than Thursday, with the presentation of the Biotechnology Design project. This year's theme calls for the development of a solution to cyanobacteria and two other solutions that were considered but ultimately rejected. Their solution called "Ultrasonic Algae Control Technique" minimizes the population of cyanobacteria in the affected water body by up to 90% in an environmentally friendly, effective and cost efficient manner. The associated trifold, which illustrates the solution, was also presented and could be further developed with the help of hints from the alumni. Due to the large number of projects, this second day was followed by a third day of presentations, at the end of which the officers and alumni would decide which team members would represent the TSA Germany Chapter at the 2022 Nationals in Dallas, Texas.

Atlanta, here we come! - National Conference 2018

Once again this year it happened: Two weeks before the end of the school year, twelve students and two teachers disappeared from school to drowsily arrive at Leipzig Airport at 4:15 a.m. for a romantic sunrise over the A14 motorway. After a long bus journey, which was interrupted by a very short flight, we then arrived in a gigantic labyrinth also known as Frankfurt airport. All the more we were happy about the quite recommendable film selection of Lufthansa, which entertained us ten hours and 40 minutes on the way to Atlanta. At 3 pm local time we reached our destination and took the subway to the city center. We moved into our rooms on floors 31, 36 and 62 of the Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, the highest building in the city. The view was breathtaking, especially at night and from the outside glass elevator. Exhausted we fell into our beds. The next day we went sightseeing. At first, we visited the Georgia State Capitol - a magnificent building from colonial times, which contained numerous watercolor paintings by politicians as well as natural and social studies exhibitions. Of course, we didn't miss the chance to take part in the CNN Studio Tours. On the 50-minute guided tour, we gained many exciting insights behind the scenes of the world news station. From there we went through the Olympic Park in the city's heart to the Georgia Aquarium and enjoyed a live dolphin show. The next day we went to the iconic World of Coca-Cola, which we could hardly leave after an immersive experience in the 4D cinema because the floor in the last room was so sticky from dozens of cola varieties from all over the world. Afterwards, we were actually quite satisfied with our European soft drinks (even though the American ones were quite drinkable, too). Following this stimulating dose of pop culture, it was time for some contrasting though very educational experiences at the Center for Human and Civil Rights. This touching exhibition on human rights violations all over the world has left no one unaffected. Particularly striking was an interactive simulation in which the visitor was being put in the skin of a protester who was insulted and beaten during a peaceful sit-down blockade. In addition to testing the local restaurants, we used our evenings first and foremost to rebuild our competitive event work after the flight and give it the finishing touches. On Friday evening, the long-awaited day had arrived: This and the following day we worked according to a well-organized schedule to register and submit all projects in time. The conference opened with the Opening General Session at the Georgia World Congress Center in front of thousands of members clothed in navy-blue. In addition to the projects worked out during the school year, we took part in various on-site competitions and regularly kept an eye out for our names on the semi-final lists. We reached this stage six times and proudly prepared for our interviews in which we had to present and defend the projects in front of a jury. A visit to a baseball game of the Atlanta Braves, which was delayed due to bad weather, loosened up the competition atmosphere a bit. We concluded that Baseball was a very fascinating sport. On Tuesday morning the final standings were announced: Our team was on stage five times, including the ninth place for Biotechnology Design and the fifth place for Scientific Visualization. Finally, one sentence took our breaths away: "And the first place trophy goes to a team that came to us all the way from Germany..." we heard three times that day: We won three trophies for Webmaster, Digital Video Production, and - to everyone's surprise - Architectural Design. Very happy and at the same time sad about having to leave again, we made our way home. We would like to thank all team members, the parents who supported us on our way and, of course, our teachers, sponsors as well as TSA. They are the ones who make it possible for us to embark on this exciting journey every year.