Project blog 5/21/17

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Summary: During the past few weeks we were asked to create an urban village and to choose policies for this urban village. Before that we were asked to redesign a part of the school as well. My team redesigned the grass area by adding patches of grass. As for the part to create an urban village my team and I designed an urban village with 25% education, 25% outdoors, and 50% entertainment. Some things that I learned throughout this project is that it can take over under 15 million, 15 million, or over 15 million to create an urban village. I also learned what an urban village is since I didn't know what one was until we started this project. An urban village is a place that has places to eat, places to live, places to buy necessities, and places for entertainment.

Backward - Looking: 
I didn't know much on the subject before we started but only that we needed to create something for the project or that we needed to sketch things. The subject was on creating an urban village and to redesign a part of the school. I didn't even know what an urban village is until our Math teacher explained it to us. I never even really paid attention to the school areas and how we could fix it before we started the project.

Inward - Looking: 
Some things that I found frustrating about this project was that sometimes for specific classes I couldn't find information for what we were doing for the project in that class. Some other things is that we didn't work on one thing entirely in every class and in some classes we needed to do a budget for the things that we used for the project. For Math it was for furnishings and for the buildings in the urban village that we sketched and blue printed.

Outward - Looking: 
If I were a teacher some comments I would make would be for creativity, teamwork, the ability to turn in everything on time, and the finishing piece. First for creativity on the model for our redesign "Your model looks good but for the base of the model you could have used some sort of plastic instead of cardboard". Then for creativity on the urban village "I like the design you chose to put everything in and that you chose your furnishings with purposes in each building". Then for teamwork in every class "You worked well together and barely argued with each other". Then for turning in everything on time for each class "Mostly everything was turned in on time but one assignment was turned in late by one day". Lastly for the finishing piece of everything, "Everything was well done and finished".

Forward - Looking: 
A few things that I would like to improve upon is to remember to turn in everything beforehand so that I don't forget to after I finish the assignment. Another thing is to work hard on the assignments that I have and to finish them not till the last minute. I also want to make sure that I can work better with other people. By that I mean I want to be able to communicate better with my team mates so that we could plan ahead more. Lastly I want to be able to listen more closely to directions during a group project so that if my team mates didn't hear then I would know what to do.

Weekly blog 5/14/17

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Image link: http://www.estately.com/blog/2015/12/19-things-you-should-know-about-moving-to-cambridge-ma/

Summary: This week I learned about clean cities. I researched a clean city which was Cambridge, MA. First a clean city is whether a city has healthy food, daily exercise for citizens, if the city recycles a lot, etc. Cambridge has healthy food for its citizens and its council has meetings about fixing things around the city. Some things that the council fixed were to make the city better for the citizens or to make it cleaner. To make the city cleaner the council discussed things such as street cleaning.

SP8: Obtain, evaluate and communicate information
 A major practice of science is to communicate ideas and the results of inquiry—orally; in writing; with the use of tables, diagrams, graphs and equations; and by engaging in extended discussions with peers.

Did you research something, used the CITE-IT strategy and then “told” the class about it?
We researched about Cambridge, MA and put the info on a slide. We put the sources on notes but we may add them last since we're not done. We may present to the class our info and about what we learned.

Weekly blog 5/7/17

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Image source: http://ib.bioninja.com.au/standard-level/topic-2-molecular-biology/24-proteins/the-ph-scale.html



Summary: This week I learned about bases, acids, and neutral. Bases are things that feel slippery and most taste salty. Acids however are sour and some can burn your skin if your not careful. Lastly neutrals are things in between acids and bases. I also learned about the Ph scale which is a scale of color and numbers to tell if something is acidic, neutral, or if the element was a base. If something is acidic and you put indicator in it then it would turn pink. On the Ph scale 6 and below is acidic which is the color pink. Then 7 is neutral which is the color green. Lastly 8 and above is bases which is the color purple or blue. One more thing that I learned this week is that some people dilute acids to use it as a cleaning product. Acids can be used as a cleaning product since it can get rid of grime on dirty surfaces. Diluting however is when you mix acids and bases together because they cancel each other out which makes the acid not as effective to burn you.

SP4: Analyzing and interpreting data
Scientific investigations produce data that must be analyzed in order to derive meaning.

Did you create a graph, table, drawing, etc. of the data you obtained in an experiment?
Answer: Yes we did an experiment in class so that we could understand the Ph scale better. The experiment was a baking soda solution with an indicator of cabbage juice. We had to had to mix water with 1 scoop (popsicle stick) of baking soda and put it in the cabbage juice. We did this 6 times and for each of those 6 times we added one more scoop of baking soda to the water. The cabbage juice each time still stayed pink. We did the same thing for sodium chloride and cabbage juice but instead of pink it turned green.