Cole’s Connections based learning post

Define:

During the beginning of my groups research, we talked with Saul Mwame from Tanzania. He has a company called Haven bees, and our class wanted to find out a way to help him. When he told our class what we can help him with, what stuck out the most for my group was the fact that honey badgers would break into the hives. The bees also had other predators like ants, but the one that my group of me, Braedon, and Malcolm the most were the honey badgers. We felt that the conversation with Saul went well, because he exposes enough problems that we could help him with. I myself was interested in this project because I would have to do a lot of new stuff. I’d hadn’t done a lot with microbits in the past, and I especially haven’t done anything with honey badgers in the past.

Discover: 

My groups idea was to build a motion detector using a microbit, that would set off lights to try to scare away the badger, but it would also send an alert to the beekeeper, letting them know that there’s an external threat. Some skills that my group needs to make our vision a reality is to be able to code, be able to 3-d print, to know how to cite our sources properly, and to know how to do proper research. We need a lot of things from the makerspace downstairs like a microbit, alligator clips, a 3-d printer, a USB to send the code from my computer to the microbit, a battery, an ultrasonic: Bit distance sensor, and some LED lights. I was sent a tutorial online about how to make an ultrasonic distance sensor by Mrs. Yorke. I then followed the tutorial and built a machine that can measure the distance to an object. then I made it so that if the machine can sense if something is in-between the distance that I set it to. So, now all I need to do is try to make it work with an LED light, so that when something comes into the path of the Ultrasonic distance measurer lights go off, and the beekeeper will be notified of the fact that an external threat came to their property.

Dream:

My very first idea I had when I was brain storming was to make a motion detector that would send some kind of notification to the beekeeper letting them know that there’s a predator on the farm. But then, Malcolm found out that honey badgers don’t like bright of flashing lights. So, we decided to combine the 2 ideas into 1 and we would make motion detector that would send a notification to the beekeeper that there was a badger, or something of the sorts that got detected near the property, but also make some LED lights go off, with the hopes that it will scare off the badger. The part of this I feel is the most important to focus on is the motion detector part. If I do a good job on everything else, but I can’t make a functioning motion detector, nothing else will work. Of course, my hope is to make every part of this to work, but I feel that having a good motion detector is key to making this project work. The people who will be helping me the most for this project are my 2 teammates Malcolm and Breadon, Malcolm who 3-d printed the shell for our motion detector, and Breadon who helped me research for the motion detector. But there’s also Saul who told our group what he needed help with during our zoom call, Mrs. Yorke who helped my find a website that would help me with my motion detector, and Mrs. Henderson who gave me suggestions on what parts I can use for the motion detector. People who can help us out further in the future can be other beekeepers who deal with honey badgers a lot, and we can even have another chat with Saul, asking advice from him about the honey badgers. 

Debrief:

I feel like the process of making our solution fluency post went very well. I made a motion detector that works, with the resources that were there at our school library, and I made this solution fluency post with my Define, Discover, Dream, and Debrief. Everyone in the group also had something to do the whole time. In my post I could have added more images, and had a better intro. But I feel like my post does a very good job of explaining my 4 D words, and I get my point across well. Something I could have done better was used my class time more effectively while making this post. I use my time well when I was trying to build my groups motion detector, but when it came to making this post I didn’t focus on writing this sometimes, and instead I did nothing because I couldn’t focus.

Adding media:  

Here is a picture from the very first Zoom chat we had with Saul as a class:

Here are some pictures from the second Zoom call with Saul:

Here is our very first drawing of our rough draft that we made in class. It’s the same idea that were making now.

Here are some Real pictures of the motion detector that I made out of a microbit and an ultrasonic distance sensor in my room. On the left, the machine with the 2 silver cylinders is the motion detector, and the thing on right is the microbit.

Bibliography:

BCR, C.@ (2022) Getting started with the ultrasonic:bit for BBC Micro:bit, BC Robotics. Available at: https://bc-robotics.com/tutorials/getting-started-ultrasonicbit-bbc-microbit/ (Accessed: December 1, 2022).