Blog 16 Answer 2

1. My essential question is, “How best might a cake decorator fulfill customers expectations while maintaining a viable business?”
2. My first answer is, “A successful cake decorator must be able to establish and maintain a well rounded relationship with their customer.”
3. My second answer is, “A successful cake decorator should create a positive work environment for their employees.”
4. List three reasons your answer is true with a real-world application for each.
1. Organization establishes clear deadlines and goals.
1. A successful bakery is one that gives both great customer service and employee service.
2. Proper organization and delegation outlines what role each member plays in the staff.
1. In government, every level of senator and official and leader has a certain, specific job they must accomplish. One person can’t maintain government spending, deal with foreign affairs, handle internal scandals, and city infrastructure issues all at once, so the work is delegated.
3. Communication, especially when utilizing time and keeping up-to-date and constantly aware of dates, deadlines, and orders
1. When you have a group project, you always need people to communicate. Then, the group will know when meetings are, whether or not someone can make it to the meeting, what work needs to be done, and similar group project happenings.
5. "Business Resolutions to Create the Best Odds for Success in 2013: Part 1."
6. This with the help of my mentor helped me discover my second answer.
7. Discovering this second answer has brought me so much closer to finding my last and final answer which I'm kind of sad about.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

Content:

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.
I plan on creating a business plan for the bakery that I mentor at. I will also do research on pricing cakes and start pricing cakes at the bakery and figure out if it is a profitable price. I will do that by calculating the amount of materials and ingredients the cake contains in a spreadsheet.

2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
I will log my hours and take pictures. I will also have a typed business plan and a spreadsheet on the data I collected from the ingredients put into each cake.

3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.
This will help me by identifying if having a business plan is essential to be a profitable cake decorator. As well as if making a spreadsheet and calculating the probable profit on each cake is important in todays economy.

4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your other logs and call it the independent component 2 log.

Blog 14: Independent Component 1

Content: 

LITERAL

(a) Statement saying: “I, Vincent Zepeda affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”

(b) Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component

"Cake Boss" by Buddy Valastro really helped me with my independent component because it helped me evaluate what factor pertain to his success in making a mass amount of profit as a cake decorator in today's economy along with customer relationship. It also helped give me ideas of experiments that I could try out in my mentorship to identify what is most important in a small business. 

(c) Provide a digital spreadsheet (aka log of the 30 hours).   Post it next to your mentorship log.

( its under "Links")

(d) Explanation of what you completed.  
Throughout my independent I helped out with decorating a lot of cakes and designing quite a few on paper. I also helped with attending customers and sitting in on consultations my mentor had with her clients. I also started looking into what materials where put into making the cake and how much it cost, then i estimated how much it could be priced according to the articles I had read. I also helped arrange cakes into a great presentation layout for customers to admire.

INTERPRETIVE

Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work.

In the beginning of my Independent Component I just started doing basic stuff like Practicing piping and molding fondant. After I got my solid Essential Question I started focusing more on how the bakery that I attend, tends to their customers. I  also did some experiments by comparing our regular standard cupcake to our gourmet cupcakes, was that the cupcakes that had a theme or some type of design were priced more than the plain ones. In the end I noticed that the cupcakes that looked like there was more effort put into them (gourmet) sold more than those that had no design. I also noticed that when a small child would walk by and see them they would ask their parents and what I found was that these cupcakes were mainly aimed to a younger customer base.  I also helped design some cakes, that are displayed below and I helped decorate them a bit. At times I had to be by the register and speak with customers and focus on prices of products.

Blog 13: Lesson 2 Reflection

What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?

I am most proud of the fact that I got to hit my key points and I got to elaborate on them pretty well. I usually get really nervous and go over my points fast, but this time I didn't. Also that I made time. Phew.

2. a. What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation?
AE


b. I made time, I said a lot of information and I was loud and clear. Also i got a lot of positive feedback on how well I did on my presentation.

3. What worked for your Lessson 2?
The way I set up my presentation, I had the attention of the class the whole time and didn't drag on. Also my activity was very intriguing and hands on.

4. What didn't work?
Everything went smoothly there wasn't any error thank god!


5. What do you think your answer 2 will be? 
I think it will be more researched based. It will still be about building the bond with your customer because I firmly believe that without your customers you will get nowhere. 

Blog 11: Holiday Project Update

1.  It is important to consistently work on your senior project, whether it is break or we are in school.  What did you do over the break with your senior project?

Since school’s been out and I wasn't able to be at the shop all the time (due to vacations and other scheduling issues), I’ve mostly worked with the designers in cranking out cake creations from the content that has been submitted by our customers. I also was the lead store receptionist and also made all our icings for our products

2.  What was the most important thing you learned from what you did, and why?  What was the source of what you learned?

I’d say the most important thing I learned is that you should always, always plan ahead. Since we took too much extra time completing special orders it was hard to produce for walk-ins.

3.  If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers for your EQ, who would you talk to and why?

I would interview one of my mentors, either Darla or Sabrina. They would offer a perspective that I can relate to, and have the clarity of hindsight to add to their advice.

December Extra Blog

During this amazing holiday season I was the busiest I've ever been at the bakery. Due to high demand for cupcakes and cakes for everyones christmas parties we were extremely busy. I was extremely proud of my projects i was involved with I had a lot of insight from my previous research articles that helped me during this time. I was at the Bakery almost every other day taking orders and working in the back as well. My main duties were to prep all icings and cupcake sheets for the orders to come in the rolling days. I know you might think this was easy but boy was it hard and time consuming the good thing was that the frostings only needed to be to colors green and red so glad thats all they had to be because I would have been there forever. During break I've realized that it takes a lot of patience with customers and their needs but in the end it always pays off.

Blog 10: EQ

1.   I reviewed the rule of three for writing an EQ.

Essential Question 
Once a topic is chosen, the student will develop a working essential question.  The purpose of the working essential question is to help the student build a strong foundation of research which will allow him or her to create an essential question that encourages depth and rigor in the chosen topic.  An essential question must:

• Provide a framework for studies (It calls for breadth and depth of research, Is not a yes/no question)
• Take a stance (It allows you to argue some point, Cannot be a recitation of facts or a list)
•  Format (It is specific, The wording makes sense)

2.  Review the following EQs and

• Tell us if each meets the rule of three.
• Tell why they do or don't.

 a.  What is the most important factor in healthy weight loss?
      Yes because it's more of an opinion kind of question.
 b.  What is most important to securing a conviction in a criminal investigation?
      No because it's worded weird.
 c.  What is most important in creating a hairstyle that best satisfies a customer?
      No because you can't really research this.
 d.  How can an anesthesiologist best treat chronic pain?
      Yes because you can take a stance on this.

3.  Based on your review of the rule of 3 and your experience with assessing four EQs, please write another draft EQ for your senior project.  The senior team will be meeting with students shortly for EQ revision and approval; you are expected to bring your research notebook to that meeting with your EQ draft written inside in pencil.