For my ELA Connection, I decided to do a journal that consists of ten or more entries of my thoughts, progress, processes, and any other opinions I have about my PBL.
Entry 1: First Impressions
Date: November 6, 2014
Starting on this year’s PBL isn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Although chemistry can be a tricky subject, I have two others to help out, and even help take off a bit of the workload since the three of us are doing the same project.
At first, I was a bit disappointed with the project that my teacher had selected for me, since it wasn’t exactly a “pick and choose,” but more of a “first come, first serve” ordeal. But I soon realized that the project was quite simple and had to do with a compound was practically in every household. Even though it was a simple project, finding a good amount of research on the composition and decomposition of hydrogen peroxide was quite difficult. Finding how to break down a complex concept into a few sentences for a short video has been the most frustrating thing so far.
Entry 2: Filming
Date: November 8, 2014
Creating the script for the PBL video has been the easiest thing next to creating the Google Site. Although the things on the site are much similar to the script, the script things that were originally on the script had to be taken out or moved around.
Filming for the actual video was quite awkward. At the moment, I can’t decide on a word that would better fit than ‘awkward.’ Since my group members and I decided to film the video together, we took our script and split it into equal parts so everyone had something to say about the project.
After our filming session, we found that we ended up taking more than 16 shots, counting the parts that went as they were supposed to and the bloopers. Now, my next issue is finding a way to make a video; sadly, I am quite unfamiliar with video editing software.
Entry 3: Creating the Video
Date: December 10, 2014
The video has finally been put together! Uploading will take a long time, but in the mean time, I can update more of the site.
Entry 4: STEM Festival
Date: February 21, 2015
For the next few hours, I'll be presenting and representing my project to people for the school's STEM festival, which is held each year. This gives me the opportunity to better memorize my presentation for May.
Entry 5: Presenting for Central Office
Date: April 16, 2015
On Tuesday, a handful of students and I presented our PBLs for Central Office and it was a success! On May 8th, I'll be going to iSweep at the George R. Brown Center to present my project there with other people from all over the world!