Waking up, it felt like any other day: Hel was grumpy and there were some leftover crickets hopping around. I couldn’t see our neighbor, Nova, just yet. She usually likes to stay in her hide most of the day. I wanna ask her how she lost her tail, but there’s two layers of glass between us. The day went by fast. Kids started coming in like they always do. The two guys that like to watch us came in. They took Nova out and brought her somewhere I couldn’t see. Then I saw a hand reaching out to me. Suddenly I was on a private jet! I was quickly dropped off in a giant new house! I saw Nova there too! Hel joined us eventually. She was weirded out by our new home, but I loved it! It was so big! There was so much to climb and explore. The next day I woke up so happy remembering I was in my new home. I couldn’t see Hel from where I was, which she probably did on purpose. She wasn’t that friendly. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Nova yet. I hope she likes me! Later that day the watching boys came back. They let this weird green guy into our house. Then another and another until there were six of them! They’re much smaller than me, but they like to jump around too. I hope they want to be friends. They don’t seem too bad: just different. The next day I kept to myself mostly. The frogs seemed like they needed to adjust a bit. The watching boys came back again! They opened the door to our house and then they let in these huge bugs! They were really loud. When the watching boys moved them they hissed! They looked mean. I didn’t mind having more housemates; more friends is always good! Plus the house was big enough for everyone to have their own space. I personally like hanging out on this big vine that goes across the enclosure. The frogs like it too, and we share. The frogs can get hangry at times, but thats okay! Everyone has their flaws, and I’m willing to share! Tags:#Creatively&Innovation
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As mentioned in earlier blogs, Charlie and I have been concerned that we lost one of our six initial frogs. This was due to our inability to count more than five when observing their behavior. Earlier this week, we were happily surprised. On Monday, Charlie and I went in to check up on the animals before our first period class, and managed to count all six frogs. One of them must just love to hide! It was so relieving to see. I wish the rest of our week has been as relaxing. That same day, during capstone, Charlie opened the enclosure door without seeing that one of our crested geckos was on it, and she paniced and jumped onto his face. Thankfully, neither gecko nor Charlie was injured. Speaking of panic, yesterday, when I was feeding the frogs, I noticed a frog half sticking out of the door. It looked like I crushed him in the door by accident, and it gave me a heart attack. I threw the door open and ushered the seemingly unbothered frog back home. After further investigation, Charlie noticed there was a large gap between the door and that wall that probably allowed a curious frog to squeeze through. Luckily I saw before he got out. Charlie and I put up a temporary door block made of tape to keep the animals in. Over the weekend we are gonna pick up some paint sticks from Home Depot or Lowes to attack to the door to fill in the gaps. We’re going to have to put more than one layer in on the bottom because of how big the gap is. Once we fill in the gaps, we’ll paint it over the sticks so it won’t look weird. Today we need to check to make sure no animals got out when we weren’t paying attention. The frogs and the roaches would definitely be able to squeeze through, but at least the cresteds wouldn’t be able to get through. Observing the animals has been pretty okay, and there hasn’t been much stress behaviors. Tags: #problem solving #creativity and innovation During this week Connor and I had made a lot of progress towards our project. After having set up the enclosure with the heat lamps and adding decorations to the environment we were finally ready to start transferring the animals from their isolated cages into the large enclosure. On Monday we had started with the crested geckos,as mentioned in the methods , and moving them into the enclosure first. As expected, there was some stress behaviors exhibited by the crested geckos when being transferred. On Tuesday, we had moved the green tree frogs into the vivarium. The frogs were slightly more difficult to transfer over due to their tendency to jump.as soon as they have an opening. Overall there was little to know problems when getting all 6 frogs into the vivarium. The following day we had moved the roaches into the enclosure. We had discussed with Ms. Kushiner the previous day had talking about how the hissing cockroaches can potential become a problem due to their high birth rate. To avoid this becoming a problem in the future we had only put in male hissing cockroaches. This will allow us to control the number of hissing cockroaches. The reason why we did males instead of females is because there would be a chance that we move a pregnant female into the vivarium. Today we had notice something alarming with the frogs. When originally putting them in we had we are sure that we had moved six green jumpers into the vivarium. After going down to lunch that day and came back to the class fourth period we were only able to count five out of the six frogs. This had pattern of only finding five frogs had continued till today. We had asked Ms.K about the problem of the missing frog and she had reassured us that it was most likely a really good hider like most frogs. We think that the frog hadn’t died but either escaped or truely is a really good hider. The reason we believe that the frog hadn’t pass is due to there not being a strong scent of death within the enclosure. For now we are going stay on the lookout for the missing frog. Tags: #Collaboration#Communication # Creativity & Innovation This week was painful. We had Monday off for Italian Heritage day, so it wasn’t as bad as it could be. With the day off Charlie and I did some capstone work. We started building the platform, but because the spray paint took so long to dry, we had to take a break for the day, and we picked it back up on Tuesday. We finished making the platform then and proceeded to die. By that I mean we took the SAT Wednesday. As most people know, taking the SAT is so, so draining. Even on an easier SAT, it eats up all your energy. Even with that, we did get other Capstone work done Wednesday. Video Calling our raspberry pi mentor was very helpful. He put us in the right direction and we were able to order the materials, and we’re going to be writing the code for it next week. We got temperature probes, the pi circuit board and adapters that I personally don’t really understand, but that’s the beauty of having a partner: I don’t have to understand everything. Speaking of mentors, we were able to pick up the rest of our frogs this week as well. “But Connor,” I can hear you say, “I thought you already got all the frogs you needed.” We did. However, we relied on Animal Science students to feed the frogs and they let some of the frogs out. Somehow. This prompted us to get more frogs that we hope will make it to the new enclosure. This week, as mentioned earlier, we built the platform. We even installed the entire new platform and set up everything for the enclosure including the coconut fiber substrate and water and food dishes. We want to get more fake vines and bark for the enclosure, but other than that it’s all set up. We set up temporary heat lamps until the lamps we ordered get in. Hopefully on Monday we will be able to put the crested geckos into their new home. Tags: #Collaboration #creativity & innovation During this week we had gotten more in touch with our mentor and planning out what we will need for our vision to become reality. I personally am very excited and was originally the one to propose the idea that we could use the raspberry pi or some other type of electronics to semi-regulate the enclosures basking/heating lamps and the day/night cycle for the enclosure. We are currently behind schedule due to the three of our frogs becoming sick and dying. We are planning on getting replacement frogs next Wednesday. We are going to be reviewing with our mentor,Paul from slither and swim, of the current enclosure we are using to house the frogs as a temporary habit for them till we get the actually enclosure up and running.This had set us back between 1 to 2 weeks due. This upcoming weekend we are planning to get the supplies for the platform. The supplies will probably consist of screws, spray paint or wood stain, paint sealer , and sandpaper belts. We are going to get a light brown and darker green spray paint. Or we were going to get an Early American wood stain.We were between the wood stain and spray paint. The reason we think we are going to choose the spray paint because it will be faster to apply than the wood stain. We were going to get the probably going to get a lower grit to help shape the wood and a higher grit to help smooth the wood. We are going to be using the an oil based paint sealer to have it be waterproof and mold resistant. Tags: #Creativity & Innovation#Collaboration #Problem Solving We’re running behind schedule. Not horribly so, but we need to get going. This week Charlie and I went to home depot and got cedar wood donated to our project. It was overwhelming to pick out the wood because I am not well versed wood shopping, which is why I was glad Charlie was with me. He was in charge of this ordeal and I was there for moral support. We weren’t able to get the paint during the trip to Home Depot because we wanted to double check that spray painting and sealing it would be safe for the animals that would be in contact with them. We especially worried about the frogs absorbing dangerous chemicals because they breathe through their skin. We were able to take baseline data for comparison for when they’re all in the same enclosure, as well. The information gathered this week showed the animals have a very small amount of stress separately. Once the animals are put together the stress will hopefully not change or lessen. We will keep gathering baseline data throughout the week until we can start putting the animals into their permanent home. I was concerned with the fact that the crested geckos weren’t moving much at all, but we’ll need to observe them more to be able to know for sure if it was hypomobility or relaxation. Hopefully more observation will show that the crested geckos are not stressed because that would be bad for their health, however a small part of me hopes they are stressed because it then will give us a higher chance of improvement being shown in the new enclosure. Tags: #problem solving #communication Goal setting is important because it allows us to keep track of how much progress we are making in our personal, educational, and career goals. Connor’s goals are to be more comfortable presenting in front of a crowd, get at least a B+ in all of his classes, and to volunteer at an animal shelter when he turns 18. My goals are to volunteer at a hospital, have at B+’s in all my classes, and to stop biting and picking my nails. Currently we have all of our mentors. Ours mentors our Slither and Swim and Mr.DeGennaro. Slither and Swim is a reptile pet store in West Haven, CT. They had helped us with getting the green tree frogs and setting up their habitat. Mr. DeGennaro is an electrical engineer with over 25 years working F22, JSF military fighter engine control systems. In his spare time he uses raspberry pis and other circuit boards. This month Connor and I are planning on working on productivity. Even though in the past we have worked on and improved on our productivity we still feel that we both need to improve on this skill. To help us keep track of our productivity we will check our calendar to see that week’s deadlines and the upcoming deadlines. We will also stay on top of each other to make sure they complete their work. Two to three major task we need to complete to be successful in Capstone II. We need to finish getting the supplies for the enclosure, such as, martial for the platform, heating lamps, heating bulbs, and a raspberry pi module. Another major task we need to complete is starting to writing the script for the raspberry pi. The last major task we need to complete is setting up the platform and the branch in the enclosure. Tags: #responsibility #productivity The Leader In Me. (n.d.) 21st-Century Skills [infographic]. Retrieved from: https://www.theleaderinme.org/information/what-is-the-leader-in-me/21st-Century-Skills/ It’s the last blog of junior year. You know what that means: time for that grind. This week has been a mess. We have our final proposal due on Monday, and our final presentation, poster outline, and website due on Thursday. Then of course Charlie and I have all of our other classes to work on. Thankfully calculus is done; our final was on Monday. However, Charlie and I do have ECE History, and Mandarin 3 respectively, that we both need to study for a lot. This week we’ve been busy with our last sources for the Lit review and proposal, but thankfully we haven't had to worry too much about the presentation since we accidentally did it for the last one. Another big thing we did this week was to email slither and swim to ask them to mentor us. We hadn't done this yet out of fear of being rejected. Luckily, they responded super soon, and they were thrilled by our plan. We’re hoping they can help us out with finding the animals and the husbandry materials we need. I personally can’t wait to work with them because it’s an awesome store. This next week we need to make a sheet defining all of the terms in our data analysis so that we can rely on someone else to view the animals if we are both unavailable for whatever reason. Our proposal needs the data analysis, a conclusion, and three more sources to add at the moment. We still need to fill in everything to the poster, and practice the presentation. Both times we presented, we went over the time limit, so this time around we hope to fit into it finally. Tags:#communication #collaboration (n.a) (n.d) Petcoi. [Photo] Retrieved from https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore/product/crested-gecko-5004154--1 This week Connor and I had created and presented our methods section for our project. Unlucky we also have an ECE Calculus II test the same day. Due to this fact we had just enough time to make the presentation but not review or make flash cards like the time before.To add onto to this we had misunderstood the assignment. We had thought this would just be adding slides to our original presentation and representing our first set of slides plus the methods. To our benefit though, we were able to modify the slides we had added to the first presentation and make it into its own methods presentation. This is also good because now we have less work to do for our final presentation since we all the parts in the presentation and now just have to edit the existing slides. This will allow us to review and create flashcards for our finale presentation. Sadly we won’t be focusing on this till after this coming up Monday. This is because Connor and I both have the ECE Calculus II final that day and going to be putting our blood, sweat and tears in doing the study guide our teacher had given yesterday. Today we will be continuing the rest of the presentations are going today and tomorrow. The raspberry pi are most likely not going to be in the final part of our project proposal due to the fact Connor and I have had little to no time over this semester to learn much or have a mentor strong in programming. We think that the major part of our project will be observing their behaviors and see if they are stressed. Tags:#Communication #Collaboration (n.a) (n.d) Raspberry Pi. [Photo] Retrieved from https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/first-model-a-samples-off-the-line/ This week was all over the place. Monday we had off because it was memorial day. Charlie and I were able to get together to make cookies to sell for relay for life though, which is Friday. Tuesday neither of us were able to get to school, unrelated to the cookie making. Wednesday the full methods section was due, so we had to scramble to finish that all up. We were able to decide what specific plants we want to get for the enclosure. We decided African violets and Hibiscus were the best possible picks for the enclosure. Devil’s Ivy was recommended in a lot of places, but after more research I found it was toxic to some animals and we decided we didn’t want to risk illness in our experiment. The reason we wanted to get plants in our enclosure to begin with, was because we thought it would make all of our animals feel more relaxed because of the natural environment created by the plant life. Additionally, adding the plants to the enclosure will help keep the air circulating and the way they take in waste lets us clean the enclosure less often. This week, Charlie and I also are going to finish our Gantt chart, which is the final part of our methods to do. The Gantt chart is pretty much another set up of a timeline except it has the planned time and the actual time things are done written into it for each thing we plan to do. The only other thing we’ll be doing this week is relay for life. So far our team, Bee the cure, raised around 75 dollars just from cookie sales, and over a 100 dollars from a tag sale. It’s this Friday and hopefully Charlie and I can finish our gantt chart before then. Tags: #responsible citizenship #collaboration #problem solving |
AuthorSConnor O'Clair Archives
January 2019
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