This week we have been working on our methods and is due tomorrow. Not to our advantage my entire class had lost all of yesterday and today to a new standardized test called the pilot test. Usually testing isn’t a problem due to it wouldn’t be right around a due date for a major part of our capstone and this test doesn’t time limit due to it being such a new test they want to give us as much time as possible. Which is good since it is a new test and will allow us to explore the test and figure it out. On the other hand, we are losing two class days to work on our methods and the due date for our methods is still tomorrow. To add on to it I had already signed up for to donate blood during my class period. Lucky in the end Connor and I were able to pull it off. During the period before we both had finished our assignments in that class and was able to finish the review packet that is due tomorrow. This will allow us tomorrow to review it and then hand it in. even though we are able to pull this off doesn't mean we are in the clear just yet. Next Wednesday we have the experimentally design due. This will include our methods, procedure, martials, background knowledge, etc. This will be the other major writing section that will be completed for capstone one and if all goes according to plan Connor and I will be ready to get the reptiles and building materials to renovate and make the enclosure operationally once more. Something I’m worries are about the raspberry pi. My main concern is the lack of knowledge and research we have been able to do on the topic and devices. Due to writing the literature review, methods and doing assignments from other classes Connor and I have had little time to do any major research with them. We might have to learn as we go in capstone II or do some learning over the summer.
Tags: #Collaboration#Communication#Information Literacy
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This week was hell week. Specifically,e Tuesday was reminiscent of the darkest dreams of Satan. Why, you may ask, did a single day hold so much torture? A.P. calculus ab exam. Charlie and I both are taking ECE Calc 1 and 2 and because UConn credits don’t transfer everywhere, we took the A.P. calc exam to hopefully make it more likely to get college credits at the college of our choosing. However, this exam lasts over three hours, and requires a lot of studying. It’s a seriously draining test, not to mention our second draft of our lit review was also due on Monday, but Ms. V graciously moved it back to Wednesday for us because of the test. The calculus test was super difficult and draining, but I think Charlie and I did okay on it. The second draft of our lit review on the other hand… Well I can never be pleased with my work to be fair, but I think it could have been much better. Charlie and I were able to split up the work better than we did for the first draft. I say this because he didn’t complain that I did way more than him this time. I don’t think we had that big of a gap between how much we did during that first draft but Charlie did. Either way we started methods this week as well. We’re figuring out what exactly we need for the project, what we will do with the materials, and how we will gather data, along with other things. We hadn't gotten much done this week for it, but we’ll get it done next week. The methods are the only thing we have planned for next week.. Tags: #collaboration #communication #creativity and innovation (n.a) (n.d) Southland College Prep High School. [Picture] Retrieved from
https://www.sd162.org/Page/227 This week we are working on our first presentations that are graded in capstone. We had done one presentation before at the beginning of the year for Ms.V to access our presentation skills. I personally have trouble with looking at the crowd and with timing my transitions between slides. My partner, Connor O’Clair, has anxiety and gets small amount of stage fright. He also has a problem with raising his voice for people to hear in the back of the room,but compared to the first time I saw him present in this class I would say he has greatly improved while presenting to a large audience. After the presentations Connor and I have our next draft of the literature review due next Wednesday. Originally it was due to next Tuesday but Connor and I both have the AP Calculus AB Exam that takes over three hours to complete so Ms.V was nice enough to give us one extra day on the due date. This was great news due to the fact Connor and I had been staying after school and spending long nights preparing for this exam. Things that are in the near future is the methods and the budget plan. The methods are going to be one of the final pieces of capstone I and the budget is going to be key since we can ask the school if they are willing to provide martials and it will also give Connor and I us a goal to fundraise money for capstone II. Tags:#Communication,#Collaboration. Freepik (2015) Freepik. [Picture] Retrieved from https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/business-presentation_792712.htm#term=presentation&page=1&position=4 This week was an experience. We didn’t do nearly as much as last week, which makes sense because the lit review draft was turned in, and we haven't started editing it yet. So all we really were able to do this week was write our problem statement and work on our website, which is how you’re reading this blog right now! Isn’t it pretty? I can’t take much credit for it though, Charlie did almost everything for it. It evens out though because I did a bit more writing on the Lit Review. Anyway this week we didn’t do that much besides relax a bit, which was well needed. Of course I had to get sick so “relaxing’ wasn’t too fun. The problem statement wasn’t as hard as it was made to seem. The only place Charlie and I struggled was with the who part of it. We originally wrote the school as the people who had a problem, but we learned the who has to be an expert in their field, so we’re working on finding our who. Also, our TAs had a fun day with us this week which included terrible drawings, pretending to fight a teacher, and walking on tables. It was interesting to say the least. I learned how few of my classmates could understand simple directions, not to be salty or anything. Our teacher showed us a website called Mendeley which is an actual life saver. It helps us make an annotated bibliography, find related sources, and generally is perfect for capstone work. Finding supporting sources is going to be a breeze now. Next week we need to start working on our second draft of our Lit Review. Tags: #communication #collaboration Mendeley (n.d) Mendeley. [Photo] Retrieved from
https://library.unimelb.edu.au/reference-management/tools/mendeley THE DRO (n.d.) Madagascar Hissing Cockroach (Male & Female). [Photo]. Retrieved from: http://the-dro.com/product/madagascar-hissing-cockroach-pair/ This week we have mainly focusing on finishing our first draft of our literature review. We had came close to the deadline due to our struggle to find our fifth document. The weekend before we had all five our primary resources, but when reviewing the final one we had came to the conclusion that it would strong source to use as one of our primary sources but better as a secondary source. After losing a day to finding a new source we had fallen slightly behind schedule with three days left and a conclusion, introduction, the transitions, and writing for source five left to be done in our literature review. While I was writing for the fifth source, Connor had been working on the conclusion. After those were completed I had started working on the transitions and while Connor had started the introduction. We had finished with only seven hours left.
Besides that we really haven’t did much in the classroom but work on the lit review. In between writing the literature review, I had been working on the website and looking into how much our specimen and materials needed. Even before working on our methodology Connor and I had already narrowed down and picked out the most cost effective and highest chance to succeed with the different species not fighting or killing each other. This is due to us already having access hissing cockroaches and one green tree frog. They also have similar temperature and humid conditions, that wouldn’t make the enclosure inaccessible. Also they have all different foods needed, this might make it slightly more expensive to buy different types of food but this helps ensures that no species would fight over food. Besides that group I would like to look into a group that would include a blue-tongued skink. Tags:#Information Literacy#Collaboration#Communication Drafting season has begun. Our first draft of our lit review is due next Thursday so Charlie and I have been writing a lot. We hope we can get everything finished by Sunday since Tuesday is our SAT and Friday is Junior Ring dance. So next week we won’t have time to do much in terms of writing. At the beginning of the week Charlie and I picked out 4 of 10 groups to narrow it down to to choose to put in the enclosure. We later had a conversation with Ms. V about the groups and came to a conclusion. The first group was a giant millipede, giant land snail, and house geckos. I personally had high hopes that we would get this group just because I love millipedes and the land snails are adorable; they also had a arboreal terrestrial, and a burrower which wouldn’t compete for space. We were strongly leaning towards this group before talking to Ms. V. She pointed out to us that the enclosure we were going to use was large and had poor ventilation, and with the humidity needs for these creatures, there was too high a risk of mold growing in our terrarium. The second group we had was house geckos, hissing cockroaches, and giant millipedes. We didn’t think they would do very well as the temperatures were a bit different, and there was too high humidity again. The third group was blue tongued skinks and sugar gliders. This was the only group of two in our top four, and it was the only pairing that included a mammal. As much as this grouping sounded amazing, we were afraid of the reptile spreading salmonella to the sugar glider. The final group is the one we will most likely be using. It is one of hissing cockroaches, crested geckos, and green tree frogs. We were not able to find any negative notes for this grouping. I won’t bore you with the details of writing the lit review for the rest of the week. The only important thing to add is that we’re doing it and have a good top 5 sources. Tags: #collaboration #problem solving #creativity and innovation #information literacy Mold Vivarium (n.d.) Mold Vivarium. [Photo]. Retrieved from: https://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/mold.html During this April break Connor and I had beginning of annotating and choosing out the group of animals for our enclosure. The green anole, sudan plated lizard, blue tongue skink, day gecko, pac-man frog, green tree frog, crested gecko, rough green snakes, tiger salamander, house gecko, giant millipede, sugar glider, halloween crab, hissing cockroach, land snail, rough tailed monitor, desert iguana, horny toad lizard. We were aiming between two or three different species with at least one arboreal and a terrestrial. We made tables to compare the humidity, temperature, temperament, diet and size. After cutting animal out like the halloween crab and the rough green snake due to the fact that even if they are primarily terrestrial or arboreal, respectfully will travel to the ground or climb and may harm or get harmed by the other animals. I was hoping for a snake but we sadly weren’t able to find any species that are compatible with each other. We then narrowed it down into ten different potential groups that consist of the bounds previously mentioned. After that we listed out potential problems with each of the groups, we had discussed which groups will mostly work together with the less amount of complications. These groups consists of the giant millipede, land snail, house gecko, blue tongue skink, sugar glider, hissing cockroach, and crested gecko. I would enjoy having the sugar gliders and a blue tongue skink. This is because I would want to see how mammals and reptiles would interact with each other, while being within the same enclosure.
We had started to annotate the journals for the first draft lit review that is due in a little less than two weeks. I had started to annotate the Parasites in pet reptiles and Predators as mediators:Differential antipredator behavior in competitive lizards species in a multi-predator environment. We had used the the list from the Parasites in pet reptiles that listed multiply pet reptiles and did research on them to see any more potential candidates for our enclosure. Tags:#Problem Solving #Communication #Collaboration Photo Reference: cbreptile.com. (n.d.) blue tongued skinks. [Photo]. Retrieved from: https://www.cbreptile.com/product/blue-tongue-skink-for-sale/ So it’s been a while. Charlie and I have gotten a lot done in terms of getting our footing. The biggest thing we did was writing a practice Lit Review, which was NOT fun because of some miscommunication. It was very helpful to learn how to read and annotate peer reviewed journals and in how to get a lot of writing done in a short time. It was unhelpful in terms of mental health. I don’t know about Charlie but I know that working on it took all of my energy. We also started working on finding sources for our actual lit review. The latest thing we got done was reworking our timeline and going more in depth for said timeline. Working on all of this, we found we need to better hash out what species we want to put in the terrarium. Looking for sources, it was very overwhelming to find general information about multi species exhibits. Therefore we decided to switch around our plan a bit and find what to put in the exhibit now instead of deciding as we find sources.
The oldest thing we did was working on reworking our SWOT analysis. We just had to go in, make some changes to how detailed we were, and add some more tabs of information. It was on the easier side of everything we did since the last blog post. The practice Lit Review was about the human Gut Microbiome and I now know a lifetime’s amount of information around the bacteria in my gut. Never will I look at Alzheimer's the same again. The past few weeks were in no way easy, but they were doable, and it showed us how difficult capstone could really be. Our plan for this week is to get all of the species we want to house hashed out, work on reading sources, and find more journals. That is all. Tags: #communication #progress #timeline #lit review #information and literacy. PreziBase. (n.d.) TImeline Curves - Prezi Template. [infographic]. Retrieved from: http://prezibase.com/free/preview/timeline-curves-diagram-simple-colorful-prezi-presentaton-temp late.jpg Over the last two week Connor and I had settle down an idea that we are both passionate about and finished our timeline for what we doing this capstone and planning out what we will have to complete that week. Before that we did a S.W.O.T. analysis of our project to have a good understanding of our internal and external helpful and harmful traits. This helped a lot because it allowed Connor and I to allot time to areas that we may have less experience and be able to improve our negative traits. The SWOT shows ours strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses show internal traits that you are good at and need improvement respectfully. Opportunities and threats are things externally that can either help you complete the project more effectively or block any further progression on your project being completed. Personally I see the weakness playing a big part in our project. For example, Connor and I both have time management problems, over passionate, and both having little to none experience in programing. This has allowed us to make our timeline more focused on parts like the programing and dedicating more time to learning and researching how to program and use raspberry pi(s). After that we made our timeline outline. We are doing an umbrella type outline.We summarize what we want to accomplish each month.Then plan out each week into specific goals and what we plan on completing that week. During March we are starting on looking for primary journals, finding our mentors that can help Connor and I program, and finalizing the draft for the aquarium being installed into the enclosure. During April we our going to be doing the majority of our research and learning how to program.We are also going to have the majority if not all the animals selected for the enclosure. By then we will also figure out funding and if it is going to be self-funded or if we are going to be raising money. In the May we are planning on starting and finishing our essay. We are also going to make a draft of the final code that the raspberry pi will run so we can dedicate Capstone II to troubleshooting and getting the animals into the enclosure and have them adjusted to each other. During June we are going to finalize and finish anything we haven’t completed yet. Critical skills that i have developed over these two weeks are collaboration and creativity. Connor and I had to discuss about our plans and how we will move forward. We had to think what will need to be done sooner than later and how to set realistic goals for the two of us. Tags:#Collaboration#Creativity #Timeline Image Citation: SWOT ANALYSIS [A SWOT analysis, with its four elements in a 2×2 matrix.]. (2007, September 30). Retrieved March 5, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis During these past two weeks, Charlie and I have really got our plan set. We worked on brainstorming, made our SWOT analysis, created a slide summary, and made our time management timeline. We learned how to brainstorm by watching Ted Talks and reading an article from google. The ted talks were interesting and now I definitely feel less guilty procrastinating. Swot analysis's involve four boxes (as pictured to the right1) involving strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. My strengths are my GRIT score, a 3.5, adaptability, capabilities, and passion for the topic. Charlie and I both love learning about animals and husbandry. However, my passion is also a weakness. Because Charlie and I are both so passionate, when we disagree we tend to butt heads and get very heated, for a short while at least. Other weaknesses of mine is time management, insecurities, technology (although Charlie makes up for both of us here), insecurities, and time management skills. We both need to work on our time management skills, although if we listen to that one Ted Talk, we should procrastinate even more. The opportunities we have boil down to partnerships with companies, other capstones, and teachers. Our Threats include funding and raspberry pi access. Our slide summary was a basic overview of the project we’re doing, along with our intended audience, our plans, and the basic problem we are addressing. The timeline we created was a basic week by week outline of how we want all of Capstone 1 to go. We made a table for each month including the days, a description of what we needed to do, a space to mark it off and a reminder to make a blog post, like the one you’re reading right now. Each month also has a description of the things we need to get done that month as a whole. For example, May is dedicated entirely to working on our Literature review of the 15 primary journals we found earlier in the class. I have improved my 21st century skills doing these two weeks as well. The most improved traits have been Creativity and innovation and Collaboration. To improve my creativity and innovation I had to introspect into what of myself was a strength or weakness in the specific scheme of capstone. I think this helped my creativity because the way I looked was I pulled myself away and tried to look at myself from a different point of view. I think I improved my Collaboration skills because I had to work ona comprehensive timeline with Charlie, which required a great deal of communication. Additionally, I’m working on making my own “voice” in writing so I hope this is the direction the rubric wanted me to go. Tags #progress #timeline #strengths weaknesses https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/SWOT_en.svg/220px-SWOT_en.svg.png |
AuthorSConnor O'Clair Archives
January 2019
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