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Hi everyone and welcome back to the fifth and final edition of my blogging series. For those of you who don’t remember, my name is Theo Braatz and I am a gen 7 evos student. The independence given in this project was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, I was able to put my effort where I thought it was needed and I was even allowed to stay home one day so I could cook barbecue, both of which greatly benefitted our project. On the other hand, I felt like I had no one holding me accountable, and as a result I let deadlines slip by me and I did the work when I wanted too, not when I needed too. My most significant success in the entire project was my final product and how I made it more visually interesting and informational in the last couple of days. My most significant failure, was my third cook. This was meant to be pulled pork, however I didn't let my fire develop fully and as a result it kept going out. This meant the meat was not very tender, and I could barely even pull it. It gave me a lot of perspective and information going forward, but my product suffered in the moment. I think the moment in the design process with the single most impact on my product was reading the smitten kitchen cookbook. Before this I had no idea what I wanted my final product to look like, and no real vision of an end game. The cookbook showed me how professionals incorporate information, recipes, and tips into their books and it helped me greatly in terms of my final design. Although I know barbecue is delicious, I don’t want that to overshadow the information I gathered. I wanted to have people think about something they take for granted, and maybe inspire people to cook for themselves more and too learn about their food. I think if everyone was more conscious in their lives and could do things by themselves more, the world would be a better place, and a good place to start is my book. Thank you again for reading this entire series, capstone has been an incredible experience and I have learned so much about barbecue, cooking, America, and myself. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity to embark on this journey, and a special thank you to all evolutions teachers for making this project so special. Again, Thank you and goodbye.

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to another edition of my blog series where I reflect on my experiences in the capstone project. For those that don’t remember, my name is Theo Braatz and I am a gen 7 evos student. Transitioning from model/prototype made me fully realize just how much progress has been made and how little time was left. It gave me a sense of both urgency and pride, as I could look back and see where I came from, but I could also look forward and see where I have to go. I also think that test evaluate made my work feel more meaningful, and I felt that my actions had real consequences. The value of presenting to peers is something I have always advocated for and I have spoken on the benefits multiple times. Having another set of eyes to point out issues you don’t see and add a completely different perspective. A piece of feedback that I received (again) is that I need to make my project more visually interesting to keep the reader engaged and make them want to read my book. It really hit me how important it was when I both recieved the same feedback twice and had to present my book and had nothing to talk about. It made me really realize both how little time I had left and how much more I had to do, so for the last couple of days my prepwork and classwork has been trying to make my book more interesting. Overall feedback has made my book much better and has given me solutions to problems I didn’t even see. The test and evaluate phase made me work with much more urgency. The change to milestone 4 made me realize how little time we had left and how much work I had to do. I worked feverishly during class time and every night I would look for things to change in my book. I think in the end this benefited me greatly even if it made for a rough week of work. In the test and evaluate phase the biggest piece of new knowledge I gained was how important visual aids are. It doesn’t matter how informative or important what you are trying to present is, if its just black text on white pages for 15 pages people are not gonna be interested. I know how much I need to add flourish, and I feel like thats whats been missing the entire time. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next week in the final addition of my blog series.

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Hello and welcome back to all of my readers. For those who don't remember, my name is Theo Braatz and I am a gen 7 Evolutions student. Transitioning from having the idea laid out on a piece of paper to working with real, physical is incredibly satisfying. In this case, my work is almost exactly how I imagined it and it is very rewarding to see my ideas come to fruition. It is also a little surprising to see just how fast the project is coming along, because it feels like just yesterday we were deciding what our topic would be and now I am working on a real and complete book. It is challenging, as things are moving fast and there is a lot of work to be done, but I believe that I can do what I need to. Having a model/prototype phase is incredibly helpful. It gives an idea of the challenges that you will face when dealing with the final project and it allows you to receive feedback without doing the entire project. It serves as almost a safety net, letting you know the holes in your plans and how to improve your general idea. Although I have no new reflections on the value of feedback, I still think it is the most useful thing in the model/prototype phase because having another set of eyes to look at your work and point out things you never would have realized. The most significant piece of feedback I received was that I need more visual aids and to just make my book more visually exciting. Since I started the process, I felt something was wrong, and that my book was missing something, and that feedback was almost a lightbulb over my head, and I knew thats what I was missing. I will need to work on it and learn how to use book creator better before I can add those visual aids but I know what needs to be done and that is what's important. Thank you for reading and i hope to see you next week, Theo

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Hello and welcome back to all of my readers. For those who don't remember, my name is Theo Braatz and I am a gen 7 Evolutions student. The value of a clear and defined vision is that every time you move to the next step, you have a clear path and you don't have to figure out where to go as you go. Having a defined vision reduces confusion as the project goes on and creates more time to focus on the actual quality of the product. The vision board lays everything out and lets you look back when you feel stuck and it makes you fully define your product before you move on. In that same line, getting feedback is the most helpful thing possible in the early stages of a product. I know how my brain works, and I understand all of my thoughts, but it can be hard to clearly translate those thoughts onto paper and have a defined product to move forward with. Having peers and teachers see the early stages of your thinking and having another set of eyes can alert you to unclear thinking and iron out kinks from the brainstorming process. I received mostly positive feedback, however the feedback I received regarding my bloom statement and looking at cookbooks to get a clearer vision of the final product will impact how I move forward. I have already started looking for cookbooks that most closely model what I want to create, and I am brainstorming a better bloom statement which can get the same things across. I think having a clearer bloom statement will allow me to have a clearer and more defined vision, and I have already spoken on the benefits of that. I think a specific piece of feedback that I gave, which was to katie, was asking what her project intended to do. It could be interpreted that she was justifying serial killers actions, and I don't think that was her intention. Giving her a more defined intention will allow her to hone her project in the future and I think it was very helpful. I think that we all have a responsibility to be honest with each other, and to give constructive feedback in the areas we see need it. We have an obligation to help each other, and having a different perspective to look at a project almost always gives new insight and new ideas. Thank you for reading and I hope to see you again next week.

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Hello to everyone reading. My name is Theo Braatz, and I am a gen 7 Evolutions student. My capstone topic is the cultural and historical significance of American barbecue and its different styles. I will be studying this through studying historical articles and texts for background information, actually smoking barbecue in the different styles which I have studied, and compiling that information in a cookbook. I believe this is a meaningful pursuit because not only is cooking an essential life skill, understanding the context of American culture is important to better understanding the country as a whole. I think that a key to understanding what I am studying is using multiple disciplines to do so. It is one thing to hear about how pit masters slave over fires for 12 hours a day, and it is another thing to actually cook a rack of ribs for 12 hours. I understand what I am reading about on another level when I actually take action and do what I see. I have also gained a lot of experience in learning independently. Midstone was similar, but I feel that we were more closely instructed through the research phase and we had a lot more in school time and resources to complete the research portion. In this project, the majority of our research had to be outside of school, and we had to find those resources ourselves. I had a lot of trial and error, adding sources only to take them out later, but I found what worked, and I feel that made me a better student. I've learned that for experiential, reaching out early matters, and to cast your net wide. For research, I've learned to read the entirety of a source before assuming it will give you good information. For my experiential, portion, I interviewed Brent Brasier, a pit master who was born in Alabama, worked in Texas for a long time, and now owns a chain of award winning barbecue restaurants in the Chicago area. I would say that this interview was the single most informative thing from my research phase. Being able to talk to someone who made barbecue a career gave me information on why barbecue is important to people, how to make successful and delicious barbecue, how to market and present sed barbecue, and a little bit on the history of barbecue as a type of cuisine. It gave me real human stories to connect to the information I was learning from others, and gave my topic more purpose. My finished product will be a cookbook. I will have a general history of barbecue at the very beginning, and then I will have pages specific to different styles of barbecue. On these pages I will have a brief history of the style featured, a picture of my cooking and/or cooking process, as well as the recipe I used to cook the food in the picture. I will then have a thank you and bibliography section at the very end. I am most excited to actually cook barbecue and learn to use a smoker, as that is something I have wanted to learn for a while before this project. I think it will be great to learn another method of cooking, and being able to eat the results is a pretty good side effect. I am most concerned with the creation of the cookbook itself. I have created books online but they were nothing like what I am envisioning in my head, so I am worried my final product will not match up to my expectations. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you in my next reflection.