Catherine Nakabugo:
I was so lucky to be in this science class, as I got to learn a lot about Catherine Nakabugo and the school for girls in Uganda, as I feel I would not have been taught this and not had these calls with her along with the whole class if I had another teacher. Just from talking with Ms. Nakabugo twice, I learned so much about her and the school of girls that she teaches at in Uganda. Ms. Nakabugo explained how the girls over in Uganda aren’t in living conditions as good as our living conditions here in Canada, specifically, she mentioned how the girls over there have to stay home when it’s raining to collect water as they face climate problems in Uganda as it’s very hot and dry, and she also mentioned how the girls faced other problems liked not always having electricity for them to do school work with along with the poverty issues they face. This made me think about how we need to take advantage of how we have great living conditions in Canada and that we need to stop complaining and be more grateful as there are many places in the world like Uganda that don’t have all the resources we have here.
This was an image that was taken with all questions the class asked Ms. Nakabugo during the skype call. My question was, “What were your dreams as a kid?/Who inspired you?”. Ms. Nakabugo responded by talking about how when she was a kid she wanted to become a civil engineer, and when growing up was truly inspired by her dad which the class spoke to on the call too. A solution that could help solve a problem that Catherine faces with her school is, to save as much water as possible and only use it for drinking purposes or to clean something as they face problems that have to do with how dry it is in Uganda. Then, they could also try to start a go fund me to get more donations/ or donation from the Ugandan government to help solve the poverty issue they face or to at least make it less worse. Finally another solution could be to either invest in solar power as the they get a lot of daylight everyday which would make sense for their electricity problem, or a solution for the lack of electricity that they have could be to try invest in another natural energy source like hydropower as it’s more consistent and easier to maintain. I think I would have to say what resonated the most with me was when Catherine talked about how they face problems with the climate in Uganda as I feel climate change is something I am greatly interested by and the study of climate change and have found to see that many countries in the world are also impacted by climate change.
Chemistry:
During the period where we learned about the periodic table, we didn’t do too many labs to get the periodic table unit started out but I found this unit taught me so much and was a great unit to start science with. The first lab we did with this unit was the “bag of change lab”. This lab was a lab where we began to use the scientific method which we after used in many different labs after that and learned all the steps of the scientific method and what a good scientific method looks like. That was just a small part of that lab, but the main purpose of the lab was to show how when we added the blue mystery liquid it would make a foamy substance with the other two mystery white solids chemicals when we squished the plastic bag to to mix the chemicals. This image shows the two mystery white solid chemicals in the plastic bag which was prepared to have the blue liquid dropped in it to “actually” start the lab and see what happens in the bag. This lab also taught us about chemical reactions including specifically learning about endothermic and exothermic reactions and how to identify which reaction of those two was represented in this lab.
Along with the bag of change lab, in the beginning of the chemistry unit, we did a lab called “meet the elements lab”, which was a lab that taught us all about the elements, the groups each elements are in, the color of them, their state at room temperature, and more. Specifically in this picture it shows copper, which is malleable and ductile and this picture is shown in the form of a coin which is not common to find anymore in Canada as we don’t have pennies, but when we did was easy to find and was made from copper and other metals like nickel. Copper to me was a significant and an element that I think is definitely good to know a lot about as it is a common element and was probably one of the first elements that I learned about and learned that it’s used in a lot more places than we think and was an element that stood out to me in this unit. Copper was also an element that was used in the “currents from the kitchen” lab which leads us into our next topic, physics.
This picture is from an edublog post we had to make using sway where we had to choose an element that is not commonly spoken about and is more rare than other elements we’ve learned about, and we had to go research and find as much information as possible about that element which for me was Tantalum, as well as finding images of the element or any images related to it to than put it into a sway. This assignment was one of my favorite as I learned so much from the assignment and love chemistry which made it the perfect assignment for me.
Educational Minecraft was a very cool program that I got to use during the semester and I used it various times throughout the semester too. The first time I ever used it was to demonstrate Meiosis in Minecraft, which was the name of this project. Just as it sounds, in this project we were told to demonstrate all the steps of Meiosis in a detailed way using educational minecraft. This picture shows one of the many stages of meiosis which I captured from the minecraft world we made. This project was great for me because before the project I did not understand too much about meiosis and how it worked and was in fact confused about all the stages, but after finishing the project it was clear to me and I was easily able to identify all the stages.
Physics:
In physics, we learned about electricity and everything we need to know about it. We learned how to read an ammeter and voltmeter as well as identifying the different types of electrical circuits and how to make a circuit. The circuits we made included a series circuit and parallel circuit which we made with batteries and with fruit as you see in the picture. Along with making the circuits and knowing the different types, we got to know what symbols represent each part of a circuit when sketching a circuit, and how each color represents different number values in a resistor. Going back to talking about this picture, this was when we did a lab called the “Currents from the kitchen”, and is where we used a piece of fruit, a metal, non-metal and some cables that would hook up to a voltmeter so we could see how many volts each fruit produced. In my opinion this lab was one of my favorite labs in this semester and was so glad that Mr. Robertson set it up for us. Also, to wrap up this paragraph, although it was more to the beginning of this unit, we were taught about the history of electricity, how people many years ago gathered electricity and who were the most famous scientists back than and how their life was studying electricity as well as learning everything about the Ohm’s Law, and how to solve Ohm’s Law questions when we don’t know the resistance but know the volts and current which I found super cool.
This image is an example of a circuit that we drew which is a simple series circuit, but includes the components we learned in circuit drawings and the different symbols in a circuit diagram.
Biology and Reproduction:
Biology is by far my favorite unit in science and for me the most exciting unit to learn about as it’s very interesting to me. During our biology unit in science 9 our learning was mainly about the different types of cell reproduction and how each cell looks like in each stage of mitosis and in meiosis. To get us thinking about mitosis and and to learn a bit more about it, in the beginning of the unit we were assigned to demonstrate with strings and pipe cleaners all the different stages of mitosis and take pictures of them to write about them in an edublog we made little bit later after we made that “irl” demonstration of mitosis.
Another project we made in this unit, was “edible DNA”, and was a project where we used marshmallows, licorice, and toothpicks to make a “double helix”, which is the shape of DNA. The licorice represents the DNA strands, the marshmallows represents the the four chemical bases, guanine, thymine, adenine, and cytosine, and the toothpicks are to connect the chemical bases together while also connecting to the DNA strands so it stands. I really enjoyed making this because we got to make it in real life in a more exciting way while also learning everything about DNA and it’s parts.
Climate/ Earth Science Unit:
In the Earth science unit we made two main projects, and one of them includes this drawing, which was from a project called, “Climate In Canada”.In this project, we randomly got an area of Canada, and had to create a drawing that looked like that area, and included the four spheres, and the abiotic and biotic factors in that area. This project was super cool and exciting to draw to be honest, and remembered me of my Elementary days where we would make drawings like these all the time for projects and have our hands tired because of all the coloring. I have learned so much from my area which was Heartland, from this project and hope to go in that region one day!
Last but not least, we have my minecraft innovation which I made in Minecraft educational edition, and was the “deliver” step of the solution fluency. My innovation I made for this project was boat that is solar-powered, and has a retractable vacuum in the back of it, that takes in all plastic, chemicals and other unknown substances in the ocean. This was a project I was very happy with and loved the way it turned out. I believe one day some company, any company in the world should make bring this to life, maybe even me and Aazmain, because than we could make a lot of money if the buyers are happy and if it’s successful.
Debrief of experience in this course:
Science is my favorite subject by far in school, and I felt this course taught me so much more of science that I did not know before and definitely is leaving me prepared for science 10. For me this course went very well, because I learned so much during the semester that I didn’t know before, I think my experience was definitely great. Since the course is almost over, I can definitely say that the projects and assignments were something that I did a very well job on and it showed with the grades I got from those assignments, but something I am certain about that I need to approve on for next year is to improve on the scores I get from tests and quizzes, and I will do that by studying more as that is something I did not too much of during this semester in science if I am being honest and in my opinion felt my test scores were quite low for what I wanted, but I only have myself to blame as I did not study a lot for those tests. Personally, in this course I felt that my learning goals were met because as said before, I have learned so much the past months in science, and I’m sure what I learned will be helpful to me in my future. My experience with the Connections based learning was great, and for me I found it so cool how I got to talk to Catherine, who although is very far away in Uganda, we got to skype call her and ask her questions about how the school for girls she works at is, and what problems her and the girls at the school face. Lastly, I believe that things that we learned about in this semester, like using natural energy sources like solar panels, would help her and the school to have electricity more often since it’s something she mentioned effects them, because it’s scorching hot in Uganda and they have a lot of sun, which makes solar panels a good idea for them.
References:
Photo by Carlos Pernalete Tua from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/1-euro-cent-730647/
Electric Circuit Diagram. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://stock.adobe.com/ee/search?k=electric+circuit+diagram.