Week 1: For the first task, my partner and I got the opportunity to choose our PBL project. Only one of us came into this knowing what to expect from previous years of doing PBL projects. For the most part we knew we wanted to do a project that was not only educational, but also hands-on and enjoyable to make this project not only feel like a project we were required to do but one that we enjoyed doing. After looking through the list of options, we decided on the project Watermelon VS Rubber Bands.
Week 2: Continuing with the first task, our second week composed of us making an email specifically for the use of our PBL project. This was one of the easiest assignments we were given throughout the entire process. It was important to pay attention to the detail of how to format out email and submit proof to our teacher.
Week 3: This week we really began to work and learn about the project we are doing. In task 2, we had to give the background for our experiment. This required critical thinking and a quick Google search for further research. Important steps like finding out what what the concepts of our project were happened in this week. This background established a basis for the project we were able to build on later in the following weeks. While also doing this, we bought both the watermelon and rubber bands to prepare to do our project.
Week 4: In week four we started on task three, creating the page for STEM SOS. By following the specified directions, we were able to create an informational page all about STEM SOS that people are able to read and interact with to educate themselves more on all aspects of STEM. Creating a page about STEM SOS required us to do a lot of research about STEM to find out certain things like benefits and why it is important.
Week 5: By this point in time we already needed to have done our project to continue on with the next task. An introduction, list of materials, procedure, safety warnings, pictures and action video were all needed to fulfill this task. In doing these steps, people can come to our page and to learn about our experiment and visualize what we were doing.
Week 6: To wrap up this portion of our website we were required to write 4 investigation questions after we finished doing our project. This also required critical thinking and creativity to think of our questions and answer them correctly. For a fairly simple task, this required effort and contribution from both me and my partner. Similarly to all the other tasks done doing this task was made easier by splitting the work between my partner and me.
Week 7: This week marked the beginning of us writing our ELA and SS component. It was important for my partner and I to write something that suited our project well. For our ELA component we had seven options to choose from. We found that the journaling option would be the easiest for us and gave us the ability to be specific as to how or project came about. The SS component required a lot more critical thinking and research to add on top of that. For that aspect, together we decided to focus on the historical connections our project displays. This included the history of both potential and kinetic energy. We found that this task was the hardest to do but once it was broken down into smaller workloads, our goal was attainable.
Week 8: This week we neared the completion of our writing for our ELA and SS component. We reviewed our work, making sure that our writing was correct in grammar and mechanics. As we finished the writing we posted our ELA and SS components to their designated pages.
Week 9: To begin wrapping up our project this week we wrote the script for our video. This was key for viewers to understand what was happening during our video. In our video we introduced ourselves, where we attend school, the materials needed to complete this project, our procedure, the scientific principle, as well as the SS and ELA components.
Week 10: This week consisted of editing our video and posting it to not only our PBL websites homepage but to our YouTube channel as well. As we uploaded our video to our homepage we wrote a brief description of our project as well as our driving question.
Week 11: Nearing the end of our project there was not much left to do besides making a brochure for our project. Our brochure included pictures of our project,our scientific principle as well as a brief description of our project. In order to complete the brochure we had to create two QR codes as well, one to our website and one to our video on YouTube.