In a day, many of the decisions that we make will make an impact on the environment. Wether good or bad, the smallest choice or change can make a huge impact. Here are some of mine:

In a day I do many things, and use many products. Some of the things that my daily routine would consist of are: eating, traveling by car, showering, using lights, and washing my clothes. Looking in more throughly at each of these, for example eating, some important parts of that, that would effect the enironment, would be where the food is coming from, the packaging, and even food waste. These can effect the environment by the life that the animals will live (if it’s an animal product), the packaging that the food comes in, as it could effect the environment, and even throwing away food to create more of a land fill. Normally, all of my animal products that i eat are either free-range, or cruelty-free. The packaging for the food I eat is not always recyclable. Most of it is, while still not all of it is recyclable. While I also may not eat all of the food that I get, we do use a “food waste” bin, which is what is what goes into our greenwaste bin. Overall I feel that my impact on the biosphere (which is the sphere where all living things are, so it overlaps with the hydrosphere (which is the water sphere), lithosphere (which is the land sphere), and the atmosphere ( which is the air sphere).

Traveling by car can effect a lot of things. Since almost all cars that are used are run by gas and are not electric, the gas causes a huge impact, which is more negative than anything. Some of the effects to the envirnoment are Air Pollution, Fossil Fuels, CO2 in the atmosphere (burning a gallon of car gas can cause about 22 pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere), and more. All of these problems effect different spheres. Air Pollution will effect the atmosphere, Fossil Fuels will effect the geosphere as well as the biosphere, and CO2 in the atmosphere will effect the atmosphere. It is hard to defend something like transportation, since almost every electric car is not a very praticle purchase for most because of thier very high prices, while you can also look for cars with good gas milage, or an efficient use of gas, these aren’t always options for everyone. And, while you could just say “ride the bus instead”, as this is a good alternitive for someone to do so rather than having ten cars using the gas, you can have one big one. But this also is not always convienient for everyone. And while most people want to help the environment and use electric cars, it’s not always an option for most.

Everyday, I take a shower. This usually lasts for 20 minuets to half an hour. I don’t see how many problems showering for long periods can effect our spheres or really our environment here, since we don’t have a water shortage. If you where somewhere else in the world where there was a water shortage, then it could have a bigger impact on the spheres and the environment. If I did live somewhere where there was a water shortage, this could have a big effect ont the hydrosphere, as it would be low on water, which would effect in turn the biosphere as well, since the hydrosphere also effects animals and plants. This could effect many things such as the water cycle, since if there isn’t enough water or if there was no water, the cycle would stop, causing the lakes and rivers to dry up, giving us no source of fresh water.

I also wash my clothes regurlary. While this is not a daily process for me, I do do it quite frequently. I have water saving options on my washing machine, as well as cold water. While I normally will not use bleach to wash my clothing if I don’t have to, I will use deturgent, and recycle the containers once they are empty. I will dry my clothes in the dryer, but I will also hang some of my clothes to let them dry, to save on power. There is also a power saving option on my dryer, so this also helps save on power, to create less waste from the electricity that would have to be used.

Throughout my day, a crucial part for me, is using lights. I do this without even thinking about the impacts that this could have on the environment, each time I turn on a light, or leave one on. We do these things without even thinking, since it’s just such a second nature habit for us. We don’t always know where the light soure is coming from, or how it is getting to us, be we know that light is always something that is there and that we’ll have. And for that, I feel that we can sometimes take theset things for granted. If you look at our Engineering Brightness project, places like the Dominican Republic don’t always have access to light sources, or t any light at all throught thier day, so in my opinion I think it is at least important for us to know where the light we are using is coming from. Each time that we turn on a light, it is effecting the environment by its source. It can come from many different things, being, coal, solar panels, naturel gas, hydroelectric plants, oil and more. Some of these sources are better than others for the environment, but they all do create a form of waste. And this form of waste can be hard to recycle. For example, coal turns to ash, which is usually thrown away to landfills, which creates more intense landfills. Or some sources can create radioactive waste, which can stay radioactive for thousands of years, killing plant species, amoung animals and even humans.

Completeing these acts without knowning the direct consiquences is a big problem. While I do admit some of these things are nessacairy, and are quite difficult not to use or do, we all have to start making small changes one at a time. Because if we don’t, who knows what might happen. While I do feel that some of the things that I do on a daily baisis are good for the environment, I do also feel that a lot of them are not benefitting the environment, and these things that I do are not nessecairy to use all of the time. I plan to change some of the things that I do, by, trying to walk more to places that are close enough to me, for example, walking home from school, instead of being picked up every day, also I will turn off the lights whenever I am not in a room, or using that room. I plan to make as many small changes in my day to help make a big difference in the end. While I may not stop using all of my lights, or taking longer showers, or even walking everywhere, I do plan to do my best to change some aspects of my life that will and can better our environment, because we have to  stop what were doing and make a change. That’s why I feel this knowledge is so important, to understand what we do is impacting the environment and why it is, and to be able to understand what we are doing that can be changed to help make a better environment. We all can change it. There is my day.

I think that we helped adress light poverty in de Dominican Republic, by connecting with multiple schools, and students who are interested and are completing the same project we are. This helped us decide the kind of light we wanted to make. We talked with New Brunswick as well as the Dominican Republic, to get thier help as well as thier opinion on the project, what they are planning on creating and thier ideas on the project. I think that this really helped our group, since we were able to collaberate with others and get thier opinion on how we could make what we are doing even more effective than it already was. When we first got the project, we had to first decide on a design. With collaberation between the two schools, we were able to get input on many different design ideas (kenetic energy, solar panel, battery ), to finally decide on wich would be the most effective in the end, we compared the pros and cons from each skype call that gave us feedback, to finally decide on a design of using a battery pack, to charge the flashlight, (the batteries being recharable).

After we decided which design we would use, we started to plan out the actual design of the flashlight, which was convienient for us since one of the members of our group (Kaleb), is in Industrial Design 10, so he had direct acess to the 3D Printers. So, while we added our opinions to how the design should look, and work, Kaleb was the expert on how the flashlight would work best, and also how to print it. This process also involved lots of reasearch from the whole group, of what designs worked and how, what they where, and when we did decide on a type of flashlight, how the body would look to make it the most effective that it could be. During theis project, we also recived help from “Matt”, a grade 12 who helped us with our project, by creating our circuit board for the light. Once both sides of the light were built from the 3D printer, we assembled them together. We have not yet created the light to come from within the light body or structure, but we will soon. We have bothmain parts that we will need to really create the light, so now all we have to do, will be to assemble everything together, to create the working light. So, our group has almost created a working light.

I feel that I have gained many skills from this experience. I have obviously gained a better knowledge of electricity, and the different types of it, as well as how it works. I have gained a better ability to reach out to others, that I could have possibly not known how to do prior to this project, but more than that, I have gained the opportunity to communicate with others that I could have possibly never have met if I had not been a part of this project. I feel that I have really met the learning goals that I had set for myself, not only did we manage to create a light together, but we really took the opinions from others and used them to our advantage, while making valuable connections with others, and using our own ideas to really leave it to us to figure out how to create a light, which is a really open idea of learning and teaching.

I have made connections throughout this project that could possibly benefit me throughout the rest of my learning carrer, and have learned that others have valuable knowledge that you can be benefitted from as well as them. I also really learned, that connecting to others, and the idea of CBL, is much more benefitial than I had before presumed. I think that it is a very modern way of learning and it really brings together connecting with others to another level, which will be able to help most of us with the rest of our educational careers (like I already mentioned), but also for some of us, the rest of our lives, as it will be a very valuable skill, to be able to connect and work well with others, and to be able to work in many different types of situations (in school, or life). I feel that our group worked well together, coming up with good ideas, and communicating together well aswell. But, I think that we could have worked on our time manegment, to get the most done in the least amount of time, to really give us a lot more time afterwards to perfect the light as much as we possibly could. But otherwise, I feel like we really succeded from this project, gained alot, aswell as accomplished a lot, created many new connections, and just really got a good idea of how to connect with others and collaberate well with each other, as well as collaberating well with other groups or even other schools, I am very happy with how this project turned out and how it went. I really enjoyed the learning process and the project idea in general.

For that, I would like to thank everyone who gave me the opportunity to participate in this project, as I feel that I grew, steping out of my comfort zone more, and I made so many new connections, and gained a lot of getting an idea of how sykpe chats in the future will work, and how I can reach out to others on my own. I also really enjoyed that this project was very collaberative with others, as I now know that reaching out to others for thier oppinion and help is benefitial. For example, we would not have been able to create a circuit board for ourr light, without the help from another student. I also really liked how we got to physically see our end result, as it really gave a sense of purpose to all of our hard work. I think that it is increadable that we were capable of creating this light in the end, as I was not sure that we even had the ability to in the begining of this project, and for that I would like to thank everyone who made this project a possibility for everyone.

Sexual and asexual reproduction:
Sexual reproduction is a form of reproduction that requires a male sex cell (sprem) and a female sex cell (egg) that are referred to as gametes. These cells are formed in ovaries for women, and the testies for men. When a male gamate and a female gamate are joined this is called fusion, this is how fertilization works. That is why this stage of sexual reproduction is called fusion, since the gamates are fused together. Gamates are also haploid  which means that there is only one set of chromosomes, therefor making the zygote diaploid, which means that there are two sets of chromosomes, since it is getting both chromosomes from the mother and the father. Gamates are formed by the process of meiosis.

There are two main cell forming processes. Mitosis and meiosis. There are four stages of mitosis, Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase and Telophase. Each stage of mitosis is a different role in the process of cell division. Prophase is the first stage of mitosis, and during Prophase, there are two duplicated chromosomes, called “Daughter Cells”, these two chromatids come from already formed cells called thier “Parent Cell’s”. The daughter cells, are identical replicas of each other. They are not yet considered individual cells, because they are still attached together by the centromere. During prophase, the nuclear membrane begins to form, chromatin will condense (chromatin is the DNA, protiens and nutrients, that are in the nucleas, making it possible to see the chromosomes begin to form). Chromosomes are formed from a single piece of a DNA. Chromosomes replicate to create more identical copies of themselves, and these are called “sister chromatids”. After this, spindle fibres begin to form, these are long pieces of protein that have a tube or straw like body, that are going to be responsable for the seperation of the two daughter cells.

The next stage of mitosis is Metaphase, during this stage, the DNA from the parent cells is transferred to the daughter cells. The chromosomes will allign themselves into the middle the cell. The sister chromatids will remain at the centromere of the cell, because that is where they were in Prophase. The third stage of Mitosis is Anaphase. In this stage all the chromosomes are split into two by the spindle fibres, creating there to be two working chromosomes for each one there was in Metaphase and Prophase. There are two chromosomes at each poles (ends) of the daughter cells, and the spindle fibres are attached to those chromosomes. At the same time as this is happenening to the chromosomes, the daughter cells are unattached at the centromeres. Spindle fibres will then pull all of the chromosomes on each cell to the poles of thier cell.

The final stage of mitosis is Telophase. During this stage, the nuclear membrane will form around each of the cells chromosomes, to seperate them from the cells DNA from the cells cytoplasm (Cytoplam is the fluid that fills the cell). The cells chromatids will also begin to uncondense, making the cells less dense and diffuse.

One of the main differences between mitosis and meiosis, is that meiosis produces gamates (sex cells), while mitosis produces new cells.

The process of meiosis is similar to the process of mitosis, as it had similar stages, with, Prophase I, Metaphase I, Anaphase I, Telophase I, Prophase II, Metaphase II, Anaphase II, and Telophase II. During Prophase I, two chromosomes will pair and share DNA with each other, create what are called recombinant chromosomes, chromosomes also begin to from closer together, to create chromosomes consiting of four chromatids (also know as bivalents). During Metaphase I, the chromosones line up in a double row along the metaphase plate (a line of spindle fibres that divide the cell). While the pairs of chromosomes are randomly lined up around the metaphase plate.

During Anaphase I, the bivalent chromosomes seperate to opposite ends of the poles of the cell. During Telophase I, the cells become less dense and diffuse, and the nuclear membrane is reformed. Meiosis II is different for both males and females, since they both have different sex cells. The folllowing charts will help explain meiosis II in both males and females.

There are a few differences between mitosis and meiosis. As I previously mentioned, mitosis is new cell creation, and mieosis is sex cell creation. Meiosis has two rounds of seperation and cell division, while mitosis only has one. During mitosis the daughter cells are identical to the parent cells as well as each other, but during meiosis, the daughter are not identical to thier parent cells, nor to each other.

In human reproduction, every gamete contains exactly 23 chromosomes each. So when the two sex cells fuse together they become a zygote. Which is what the embryo is, as it will contain the 23 chromosomes from each sex cell, giving the zygote a total of 46 chromosomes. Exactly half of these chromosomes are from the mother and half are from the father. The zygote is diaploid, which means that there are two sets of chromosomes, since it is getting both chromosomes from the mother are father (two gamates that are haploids). The fetal development will then begin, in three trimesters, each for three months each.

In the first trimestre of growth, the fetus will start developping orgam systems, (fingers, toes, eyes, brain, spinle chord.), and the sex of the fetus will be determined within one month after the first trimester. During the second trimester, the fetus’s eyes will open, the ears become larger, the carrier will be able to feel the fetus move around, and if the fetus has to be removed from the body, it will be able to be safley removed, and still be capable of surviving and living outside the body. In the third and final trimestre, the fetus will have rapid weight gain, and grow, to be prepared for its birthing.

Asexual Reproduction, is a form of reproduction that uses only one organism. As a result of only having one parent organism, the offspring of that organism are exactly the same genetically as thier parent, so that would make them clones or each other. Asexual reproduction, can take place in plants, animals, . It is different for every type of plant that uses asexual reproduction, for some, they form underground food organs that store it, to help create the next plant and care for it. For others, they create lateral buds (similar to a seed from a tree), some plsnts will also have long branches with plantlets (small seperate plants) growing on them, and others form runners with plantlets on them (like strawberries, for example).

In animals, assexual reproduction, generally only happens in certain animals, such as sea anenmie, starfish, and generally in bacteria (microorganisms). Aniamls can asexually reproduce through four different types of asexual reproduction: Fission, Budding, Fragmentation, or Parthengoneisis. Binary Fission, is when a cell divides into two cells to create two daughter cells. In Fisson, the cell and split into two to create two individual organisms. Or, it can split into two again from the indivdual cell, creating another two individual cells. Most sea animals (starfish, sea anenemies, coral) will asexually reproduce through this method. Budding, is the overgrowth of a cell, splitting it into two individual cells. This type of asexual reproduction is usually used within coral. Fragmentation is when the body breaks into two halfs, this process generally only occurs in starfish. Parthengonesis is when an egg becomes fully develpooed without fertilization. This will generally occur in bees, and species like them.

One of the main differences between sexual reproduction and asexual reproduction is that reprodution is thereproduction between two cells, while asexual reproduction is the reproduction is the reprodution within one organism. But some of the advantages and disadvantages between sexual and asexual reproduction are that during asexual reproduction, is that during asexual reproduction, it requires less time and less energy than sexual reproduction, but there is also no variation during asexual reprodution, so if the one parent cell is sick or has a desease, then the rest of its offspring will have that desease and could kill them all. But, during sexual reproduction, there is more variation within the organisms (not all the same, could not all get sick from the same desease), and the organism is more protected during sexual reproduction. But sexual reproduction requires two mates, as well as more energy to complete sexual reproduction.

First Peoples principales of learning, inlude many valuable lessons to students, that cannot be taught through a PowerPoint presentation, nor through tests. It is a concept that can be applied within projects, such as working together, wanting to learn more deeply into a subject, or finishing your work to the best of your abilities.

  The first peoples principales of learning incoorperate patience, respect as well as curiosity into thier teachings. These are very important lessons for students to developpe, since these are things that they will carry with them throught the rest of thier educational carriers, and even throught our jobs. These are not only important things to be able to incooperate to learning, but also within social aspects.

We have already applied this into many of our projects, for example the SSEP project. This project involved patience, respect and curiosity. Patience, took place in finding out how an idea would work. Respect, was present in accepting everyone’s ideas, and curiosity in finding out what our project would need to be able to do to work.

  If we are able to incoorperate these lessons to students from when they first start learning, it will be something that we will be able to subcontionsly prefrom. Which will in turn create better learners.

Our Engeneering Brightness project has the same uses within the principales of learning, as the SSEP project did, although, they were different tasks that required different principles. For example, we needed to decide whether we wanted to fundraise, or create a flashlight, which would require respect of everyones opinion. We had to choose a type of light we wanted to create, which requires patience to decide and inquire. We had to design the flashlight, which took curiosity to find out more of how designs would work, be built, and how to work them.

So, with every assignment we work on, we apply the principles of learning, as the teacher incoorperates this, to be incoorperated into the assignment. Whether it is figuring out how to do something on our own, or finding the answer to a question on our own, or really even working together in groups, as for the sociable espect, putting everything together, with the principales, the social aspects, the teachers teachings, and the work, we are able to work as our best selfs, be our best selfs, and reach our full potential to being not only independant learners but, independant people.