ELA Component

PBL Journal Entries

Journal #1: October 1, 2013

Today I found out what PBL project I will be doing. It is called “Double Ball Bounce”. I unfortunately did not get to choose my project, but rather my Physics teacher, Mr. Kahraman, chose it for me. I was a little upset that I was not able to choose at first, but upon further inspection of my project design, I am now excited to be carrying out such a cool experiment. My project is pretty simple in design. All I do is bounce two balls one on top of the other, and watch how high the top ball will bounce. I feel that this project will help me explain things like momentum and kinetic energy. I am looking forward to keeping you informed on my project.

Journal #2: October 15, 2013

Tonight I began to gather some background information on my experiment. I googled the history of momentum. At first it was difficult to find historical information on such a broad topic. But at last I found a great website that explained how the concept of momentum came about during the Byzantine era, and how the term “momentum” was coined later on. This was really interesting to me because I enjoyed reading about how the idea of momentum evolved over time. It’s cool to see how such a relevant topic to my experiment came about. I will put this research into my social studies connection so other people can also learn some cool new information on momentum.

Journal #3: November 1, 2013

Today I went to my physics teacher and we talked about my project. He also gave me the Astro Blaster toy, which I will use in my project. He demonstrated how to use it and I also got to try so he could make sure I was doing it the right way. The Astro Blaster is really neat, and it also perfectly demonstrates the driving question of my project. I also talked to my teacher about my project in general. We talked about what I would film in my action videos, and what was the best way to carry out the experiment. He also thought the history things I uncovered were interesting.

Journal #4: November 14, 2013

Today was a big day for my experiment. I performed my experiment and filmed my action videos. My experiment was pretty easy to carry out. The only difficulty I had was filming my action videos. It was a little hard to get the actual action part in the frame. When the balls bounced, the tennis ball shot way in the air. because this happens, I had to re-film the action part over and over until I was finally able to capture it. The action video of the Astro Blaster was even harder to film. Hopefully when I make my digital presentation movie, I will be able to slow down the video in order to make the action more visible. I also worked on task 12 of the PBL tasks and I will be able to post those soon. I’m glad the main part of my project is done for this quarter.

Journal #5: November 28, 2013

Today I worked on some major edits for my PBL website. Originally my site was quite boring with the plain and bland background, but today I found out how to change the theme to make my site more pleasing and entertaining. I also uploaded task 12 to my project page and I got the pages ready for my Social Studies and English connections. Task 12 took me a little while to finish because some of the guiding questions were a little difficult to answer but thankfully I was able to work them out. My site is coming along nicely so far. In a few weeks I will begin working on my video for my project. Also I am halfway done with my journals as of this entry so I am getting really close to being done with PBL.

Journal #6: December 1, 2013

Today I created the About My School page on my site. This page as information about me and about my school. It also contains information on Harmony Public Schools. I have a picture of my school and the Harmony logo. If you visit the page you can read the Harmony motto. I think this page is a cool idea to have on my site. It allows random visitors to become informed about our awesome school and school system. It lets them know why we do STEM and PBl and makes Harmony look good. I really enjoyed creating this page.

Journal #7: January 6, 2014

Today I gathered various images to use in my video, brochure, and around my site. Here are some that I collected:

Journal #8: January 10, 2014

Today I created my video. I used the iMovie video editing software. I combined my previously filmed action videos and voice over to create a 3 minute video that explains my project and my two connections. The video took me a few hours to make and my favorite part was making my action videos go in slow motion. The hardest part was getting the video uploaded to Youtube. It took forever and at one point I thought I lost all my progress but I finally got it uploaded with all the tags. The video was one of my favorite parts of PBL because I really enjoy making videos and hopefully other people will enjoy it.

Journal #9: February 10, 2014

Today I uploaded everything to my site and I can officially say I am done. I uploaded everything and did some final edits to the layout and theme. It’s a great relief to not have to worry about PBL assignments anymore except my last journal entry which I will do tomorrow. I hope everyone learns something by visiting my site and watching my video.

Journal #10: February 11, 2014

Here we go, last journal. Today I would like to talk about PBL in general. At my school most kids have had their fair share of hard feelings regarding PBL, myself included. Honestly at first I was a little annoyed by all the work that PBL entailed. Most people didn’t do any of the work in the first place, but for those of us that did do the work, we learned a lot of important skills. Firstly, PBL like activities are done in college, so since we are doing them in high school, we will be extra prepared for college. Also PBL helps us with time management. At the beginning of each quarter we are given a list of tasks that need to be completed and then left on our own to do them. This really teaches us how to get things done and accomplish things on time. Overall I feel that PBL taught us a lot even though it was time consuming at parts.