Clean It Up Project Blog 11/19/17

Summary:

     For this project what we had to do with a group was think of a substance that could possibly spill and contaminate the ground and make a story about how that spill occurred. You then had to present that story in a news article and create an infographic based on a harmful chemical within the substance chosen. You lastly had to create a lab report based on an experiment you did to try and neutralize the substance chosen, you then had to create a newscast based on everything just said before this. The product I chose was Coke, and the harmful ingredient within coke is phosphoric acid. What I now know because of what I learned throughout this project are info on Coke & phosphoric acid, how to create a lab report, what can happen in a neutralizing experiment, and much more. What I know about Coke is that in a glass (250 ml) of Coke their is about 43 mg of phosphoric acid and in a can of Coke (12 oz) their is about 39 grams of sugar. What I know about phosphoric acid is its physical & chemical properties, fire data, reactivity data, health effects, preventive measures, first aid measures, and uses of phosphoric acid. What I know about lab reports are the certain components needed to make it a good lab report. The components are what is the experimental question, your hypothesis, and references that lead you to believe in your hypothesis. Also the methods you will use, how long the experiment will run, what the independent & dependent variables are, what the control is. Also a model of how you will present your results/data from the experiment, the actual data/results from the experiment, the requirements for organisms, requirements for equipment, requirements for chemicals along with the measurements, and your conclusion. What I now know about what can happen in a neutralizing experiment is that when trying to neutralize a substance it may take a long time to show results depending on the substances. Also that in your attempt to actually neutralize the substance, you actually may make the whole thing worse. All of these things that I mentioned above that I now know, are based on what I learned throughout the Clean It Up Project.

Backward-Looking:

Link

     How much I knew before this project started on this subject was a decent amount. I didn't know the exact things about the subject, such as info on phosphoric acid. But I did know how to create an infographic, how to do a neutralizing experiment, and I did know what some of the questions we had to answer were. The process I went through to complete this project was first for both submissions (the first submission being the newspaper & infographic and the second submission being the lab report & newscast) was first create a first draft type of thing for both. For the newspaper and infographic instead of just having only information on the thing we were going to submit. We first made a document where we put and information and research that is helpful or we would put on the actual thing we are submitting. The problems we encountered during this project were that we couldn't finish everything in class. What we did to solve this was get each others phone numbers and communicate and tell each other what we were doing to help the project on a group chat. This was very helpful because it allowed our group to collaborate and do work at home to be much easier. In the ways I have gotten better and this type of work, that has multiple submissions is by getting better at reading and paying more attention to the rubrics so I can make sure that I don't just do well on one of the assignments, but I do well for all of the parts/assignments in a project. I have also gotten better at the infographic side of things. I have gotten better at infographics by getting better at mixing the two main parts to them, info and graphics. Before, it would be mainly info and less graphic, but now I am getting better at making it half and half where there is an equal amount of both info and graphics.

Link

Inward-Looking

      I feel pretty good about my project. The parts of it I like are the newspaper article and the infographic. I like the newspaper article because it is fun and interesting, the reason I like the infographic was because it did its job very well, which was giving info graphically. The parts of the project I dislike was the newscast. I do not like the newscast because it was rushed and it wasn't the best we could've done. What I enjoyed about our project is that we chose a substance (phosphoric acid) that we did not really know about. I enjoyed learning something new and I think if we chose a substance that we already new about, it would be much less enjoyable for us to write about and present about. What this work reveals about me as a learner is that I make sure that I put as much possible information into my work. I like to fit and put as much as possible in my projects. I like to show that I truly understand the subject and am knowledgeable towards that subject. This is why during this project, almost everything we turned in had lots of information on it and was very long. My standards for this piece of work were for us to put as much effort as possible into this project and truly showing that within what we turned in for the project. We almost met my standards, we were very close but we still did not meet my standards.

Outward-Looking:

     If I was the teacher the comments I would give on our project is that on all the written parts we did very well and gave lots of information. But the newscast was the exact opposite, it didn't have enough of the needed information and the editing wasn't the best. The grade I would give this project as a whole is a B+ or an A-. I would give it this grade because as I said before we did very well on the written part of the things, it is just that the newscast brought us down and was the lowest part of our project. The way my project did meet my standards is the because of the newscast part of the project. It isn't completely our fault that we didn't meet my standards. The reason it isn't completely our fault was because we fell short of time and we just wanted to get the video done so we wouldn't get an F. So we rushed it and did as best as possible with our time. I believe that if we had one or two days longer our newscast would be much better and would get a better grade. But that is not possible, and this is the reason why we did not meet my standards. If someone were to look at this piece, the ways they might learn who I am are that they would learn that I am very knowledgeable and try to keep things as informative and as professional as possible. They would learn that I am very knowledgeable and how I like to keep things informative based on how much was written and how much was said in our newspaper, infographic, lab report, and newscast.

Forward-Looking:

      One thing I would like to improve upon for this project is the newscast. What I would change if I had the chance to do the newscast again is to edit better and spread out the information equally. I would edit better by adding some complimentary graphics and cutting out our mistakes. I would spread out our information more equally by in the newscast saying each part of the project for an equal amount of time. One thing I have seen my classmates do in the process of making this project that I would like to try next time is to really spend a lot of time looking at everything needed on the assignments. I did the same thing, but many spent much more time looking at it then I did, and some of them got better scores than I did. If they did that strategy then maybe I should to, this is why I want to try this. The goal I would like to set for myself next time is to make sure that I have really good time management so an incident like our newscast does not happen again. What I would like to spend more time on in school is creating extra articles and sites to go with our projects like the newspaper we created for the spill. The things I might want more help on are things to look up to answer questions. I have never really been good at knowing what to look up to find the information needed and I feel that if I had that skill then doing this project would've been a lot easier. I would also like to learn more about what is needed in newscasts like these, and what should they look like, and what standard will we be held at for these newscasts.