Comic Cells Final Post

Comic Book

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog!

Today’s blog will be about a recent project I have completed in PLP Scimatics 8. 

This project is called “Comic Cells”, and the goal of this project was to create a comic where you demonstrate the interaction of cells with diseases. To create this comic, we used the app “Comic Life 3”.

The driving question in this project is: “How do cells and diseases interact?”. My answer to that is that they interact by trying to overpower one another and eliminating one another.

To demonstrate my learning, I will be highlighting the milestones/stepping stones that helped me answer the driving question best.

 

 

The first thing I will talk about is the Launch Entry Event, where we watched the movie “Osmosis Jones”. Osmosis Jones is about a white blood cell who’s mission is to stop an invading virus. I found this movie to be pretty funny since Bill Murray was the lead actor.

Watching this movie also helped in giving me a preliminary understanding of what cells are and what they do. It also gave me some ideas for what to include in my comic book.

 

The next thing I will talk about is milestone 2. Milestone 2 was our Disease Wanted poster. The overall goal of this milestone was to chose the virus we were going to include in our comic book, as well as include facts about our chosen virus. This helped with answering the driving question because it gave me an opportunity to get a better understanding of not just how my chosen disease works, but how other diseases work as well.

The disease I chose for my comic book was Marburg Virus. Marburg Virus is similar to the Ebola virus, and it originates from humans and bats.

Here’s my Poster:

 

 

 

The next Milestone I will highlight is milestone 4. Milestone 4 was our Comic book “Storyboard”. In this milestone we were just laying out the building blocks for our final comic. 

This helped me in my learning by giving me a chance to show what I know about cells and see what needed work. 

Here’s my Milestone 4 Storyboard.

 

 

To further demonstrate my learning, I will go over the Cirricular competencies and show what I did well, and what I could improve next time. 

The competencies in this project were Questioning and Predicting, Scientific Communication, and Evaluating. 

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. 

I think I accomplished this competency well and used my class time to my advantage. I feel like during the last couple of days we had to finish our comic I was really locked in and focused . I learned that its always better to finish things as early as possible then at the last second.

Scientific Communication: Communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies. 

I think that I gained a complete understanding of cells from this project. I did that by completing milestones and reading about my disease and how it interacts with cells. I learned to show that growth by making a Comic book about cells and diseases.

Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

Overall, I think my comic had logical outcomes incorporated into it. At first, when I was making the outline, the outcomes were a bit shaky. But, I improved in that aspect in my final comic book. 

 

In conclusion, I really enjoyed making my own comic book!

I also found learning about cells and diseases to be quite interesting. The hardest part of this project for me was coming up with my own original comic book. 

In all, I enjoyed the comic aspect of this project and I hope I get to make another sometime in the future!

 

Ultimate Design Challenge Post

Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog. 

Today I’ll be writing about the recent project I have been working on in Scimatics 8.

This project is called the “Ultimate design challenge”, and is all about creating a model of an object that either maximizes volume or surface area.

The driving question in this project was; “How can we design an object to optimize its shape?”.

My answer to that is that you can design an object to optimize it’s shape by using design softwares and by using various math strategies.

This project was a group project, and my partner was Zach. Here’s a link to his blog: Zach’s Blog

 

 

To demonstrate my learning, I will be highlighting the milestones/stepping stones that helped me reach an answer to the driving question. 

The first milestone I will be highlighting is milestone 2. The goal of milestone 2 was to finish our Tinkercad model and also have completed formulas to calculate each shape of our design.

My partner and I chose to model after an Alienware gaming PC and a Steelseries Apex 3 gaming keyboard. (I created the keyboard and he made the PC.)

 I think that I really underestimated how hard making this model would be. For example, it was hard to move shapes around, set shapes at the right angles. And also, it was hard to keep my composure. However, the more I used the software, the more I understood it. 

The next step after completing the model was to get it 3D printed, unfortunately, my model wasn’t 3D printed.

 

Here’s the formulas I decided to use to calculate my objects☝️

 

The next milestone I will be highlighting is Milestone 5, which was our presentation to the class. 

In this presentation we demonstrated to the class what we did, why we chose to do it, and our final calculations. 

One thing that I was really proud of from our presentation is how we talked more about the process of doing everything than just taking about the calculations. 

If you want to look at our keynote deck, click this link: Ultimate Design Challenge Presentation

 

 

Every project we do in PLP is guided by the curricular competencies. To show my learning, I will describe what went well in each competency and what I could improve on.

The Cirricular competencies in this project were, Applying and Innoavating, Reasoning and Analyzing, and Communicating and Representing.

Applying and Innoavating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches.

I think that at times during this project I was off task, however near the end I was really locked in and was focused on getting different tasks done. For example, in milestone 3, (which was our calculations of our models), I focused more on getting it done with quality and not with speed and it really paid off. 

Reasoning and Analyzing: Model mathematics in contextualized experiences.

When I first started modelling my object in Tinkercad, I had lots of trouble navigating the software. However the more I attempted to understand the different functions, the more used to the software I got. I learned to show this growth by completing and demonstrating my fully completed 3D model.

Communicating and representing: Explain and Justify mathematical ideas and decisions.

When I first started learning more about surface area and volume in the worksheets it was pretty difficult to understand. However, the more I did practice in the workbook, the easier calculations different objects got. I learned to show this growth by calculating the various shapes of my model in Milestone 3.

 

 

In summation, I found creating a 3D object in Tinkercad to be really cool! At the beginning of the project my understanding form technology was very minimal, and by using this software I think I expanded my knowledge. I also benefited from the extra math practice that this project had. In all, it was a fun project with many challenges.

Thanks for reading today’s blog!