By Vivian Fang

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Putting their years’ worth of Career and Technical Education (CTE) training to the test, MHS students competed and placed in three categories at this year’s Performance Based Assessments (PBA), held from April 27 to 29 at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel.

“(My favorite part of the competition was) the people we got to meet and the things we got to learn,” said Sophomore Reyn Aubrey, whose team placed first in the Marketing Program of Study, “There’s so much to be said for out of class learning and it was a great experience to learn from the mentors.”

Although split into its respective individual CTE competitions, the PBA revolves around a central theme: being able to create a solution to a problem. “Since McDonald’s was our primary sponsor (this year), they asked us to create a mascot that would best promote the job opportunities offered at McDonald’s,” explained Sophomore Joseph Fujinami, whose group placed first in the Design Technology category. Fujinami’s partner, Senior Clayton Dailey added, “We decided to design a mascot. This person wore mismatched clothes, so his whole body was mismatching (and) every part of our display was symbolic.”

The Marketing Program of Study competition consisted of coming up with and implementing a business plan. “We found the target market that we wanted to advertise to, we made some proposals about how to advertise to them (and) we implemented for a three week period,” explained Aubrey, “PBA was a showcase of everything we did.”

Students were also challenged to learn and establish a new program called Augmented Technology in their presentation. “We had to advertise McDonald’s in the light of them getting new employees. We were designing recruitment cards to be in the store and video to go with it,” said Junior Lydia Strickland, whose group placed third in Digital Media, “You can use an app on your iPhone or tablet and you can scan something in print and bring up overlay content. That overlay content was our video so we had to make an augmented reality marker, which is what you have to scan to get to the video and that went on the recruitment card.”

Faced with the challenge of learning augmented technology under a firm deadline, PBA also served to be a learning experience. “I knew nothing about it, and it showed me how to put graphic design and digital media and reality together,” said Strickland.

Operating under the time frame of one day, students were pushed to exercise their skills under pressure. “You only have a certain amount of time to do it and if you want to make it as good as you want to, it takes a lot of time, but you don’t have that time,” said Dailey. Fujinami added, “I (had) never (Computer Aided Designed) that long before, from 6:30 (a.m.) to 10:30 (p.m.). It was a real thrill for me.”

With another year of experience, contestants hope to compete again next year with a better plan to efficiently manage their limited time.