We’re already two months in to this quarantine lifestyle and we’ve completed our first fully online project. Lead by our two driving questions, “what is the historical significance of your explorer” and “how do cells and diseases interact” we set to work try to understand these topics. Just like our last humanities project, the Renaissance, we combined two completely different ideas and managed to present them in an interesting way. Our teachers thought it would be clever if they could integrate Scimatics with Humanities so thats exactly what they did. Once we heard what the end product would look like, I was unsure if this was going to be my cup of tea. Although I didn’t like the sound of it, I had to push through. We later found out that the final product would be a comic book displaying an explorers life and how a disease interacts in their body.

To launch this new project our teachers made us watch the movie “Osmosis Jones.” Personally I’d never heard about that and thought it would be awful and I don’t think I’m wrong saying it was, but I am really glad I watched it because I gained some good information about diseases and other bacterial ideas. Alongside watching the movie, we had to complete a little task where we had to compare the “Red Death” to COVID-19. I found that this was a good introduction to this project and it helped me in the long run.

We started moving more to the humanities portion of this project and found ourselves reading comics and analyzing them. We did this so we could see how comics are written and how a page works. At the time I thought this was useless and a waste of my time but when it was our turn to make comics, this really came in handy. While reading them we looked for things such as the gutter styles and how to tell what emotion a specific scene is giving off. I’m not the type of guy who reads in their spare time but I actually found myself enjoying the Black Panther and TinTin.

There were two parts in the humanities section, comics and explorers and we started veering to the explorers side. In my opinion this was one of the most important tasks we took part in and that is an explorer research chart. This was also one of the most important parts because we chose what explorer we want to study. This meant we had to research our explorer, but I think I went over the top and gained almost too much information but it just helped me later on. I didn’t really have any reasoning for choosing my explorer but I just felt like he was the person to do it on; and that man is Vasco da Gama.

Once we had a decent amount of research we started drafting out our comics using the storyboard template. I think some people would agree with me saying that this was a tedious task but it was needed so I had to push through. This was important because we had to decide what events to put in our comic and if they show historical significance.

On the scimatics side of things we didn’t do that much, we made a mind map, disease wanted poster, and participated in a few Khan Academy quizzes. Since we were all doing different diseases it would take far too long to explain every single one so that’s where we did the research. I ended up swapping from typhoid fever to smallpox as it was much easier to find information. I needed to figure out how cells interact and all the scientific language. After a good couple of hours of research, I found what I needed to enhance my project.

Competencies Being Assessed

Establish Historical Significance: This means “how do we make choices about what is worth remembering.” In my eyes this means, why am I still learning about this guy today? I think I developed a good understanding on this because in my final comic I only used events in his life that impacted someone or somewhere. For example he impacted India because he found a direct sea route from Portugal. I started off by putting basically his whole life in my comic but I realized a lot of it wasn’t very important so I had to get rid of those events.

Connect: This means “how do I understand my own and other’s personal connection to texts I read, listen, and view?” I showed this by researching and understanding my explorer and incorporated it into my final comic.

Scientific Communication: This means “communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems, using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.” I feel like I did this competency well but definitely could’ve been better. To make my comic even better I could’ve added more scientific language and cell interaction, although I did have some, it needed more.

Evaluating: This means “demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.” I think I showed a pretty good understanding on this competency because I understood and appreciated the evidence that I researched and put it in my comic.

Questioning and Predicting: This means “demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.” I normally show a good understanding on this competency and I would say it’s the same for this too. At the start when we made our mind maps I had a lot of questions about diseases. I also showed interest in the diseases even though I don’t really enjoy them.

That completes our first project online and honestly, I like the whole stay at home thing. At the start of this project I didn’t think I would be enjoyable for me but as it went on, I grew to actually somewhat enjoy reading and creating comics. I am proud of my finished product and I feel a sign of achievement because I did this all by myself with no guidance.