Social Media Unit Reflective Assessment

One of the closing statements of my Ted Talk was, “We are incredibly fortunate to live in a world where our ideas are supported and where we have technology and tools to help bring them to life.” There are new ideas all around us, and there always have been. The position we are in is unique, however, because we actually can bring these ideas to life. Many people in the world would not have access to any materials, or even have their ideas encouraged by those around them. We have tools, technological, intellectual, and physical that can be used to make our inventions into realities. This was a unit of creating, exploring, and ultimately sharing our ideas with the world.

Our society provides us with a myriad of tools of which we can wield in our learning and inventing.In this unit I was able to construct a website centered around one of my projects, which is an ability unique to this generation.

Rain Turbine Website

Tools such as Wix, Weebly, and Blogger have aided immensely in organization and exhibition of our projects this unit. The capability of making a website is a definite learning experience in itself, and an opportunity to expand on the knowledge of the content.I experienced major learning curves in developing videos, displayed below, to be displayed on my website as well. I tested several technological tools including Moovly Studios, Nimbus, Youtube Pro Editor, and WeVideo and experienced much failure and success. 

Though several of these were difficult to use initially, I was able to employ a few of them to conceive successful creations. In prior decades these technological gadgets were not available, and we are fortunate to have them at our disposal. Technology can be used to create and explore, and it is responsible for a tremendous amount of scientific progression.

Finger pricking to get blood for testing.

With and without technology we have been able to understand many previously opaque topics and undergo scientific discovery.One personal discovery that I found, was my blood type, which happens to be A positive. The experiment involved testing for agglutination when anti-antigens did or did not react with antigens on the exterior of our red blood cells. Agglutination occurred for my blood with the anti-antigen A and anti-antigen Rh, indicating that my blood was A positive. Blood typing works based on the subject of immunology, which has subtopics of vaccines and viruses. We further explored these topics by making sketchnotes (shown below), playing “viral tag”, watching many videos, taking notes, and doing a few demonstrations.The natural aspect of it all is that our bodies have immune systems that are wired to remove pathogens such as bacteria and fungi. Vaccines activate our body’s defenses to prepare for a potential sickness or disease. Deviating away from the specific curriculum, I made my own scientific investigation related to an invention made in the environmental unit.The paper I wrote emulated a real scientific journal entry, and explained my experiments of the power that could be generated by my rain turbine. The results may have been flawed, but the realizations that came in the discussion piece could be valuable for future experimenters. This unit has been full of discoveries and new ideas, and social media can aid us in the next step of sharing. 

Sketch note on the immune system

Twitter Account @therainturbine

When an idea has the ability to make a positive difference, it is our responsibility to share it. Atticus Finch knew the first thing about sharing what he believed in, and he did this by appealing for equality in the court scene. Mr. Underwood, of whom was discussed in my narrative, shared his thoughts on the case afterward in a passionate news article. Sharing verbally and through social media allow us to get our ideas into the world, and to introduce new perspectives to others.  I took the verbal approach in my Ted Talk, which explained my rain turbine and encouraged new innovators to step forward. Hearing an individual speak can be very powerful and inspiring for listeners, and I hope that viewers felt that way about my speech. It was a great learning experience for me, as public speaking is something I want to master since it is so important. Exhibiting ideas through social media has always been easier for me, which is why I felt pretty successful with my Twitter account. This too shared my rain turbine and call to action with the world, but with a wider range of people. There was a lot more details involved than it might appear, as hashtags and media were carefully placed to increase the audience. With campaigns of different mediums, innovative and unique ideas can be expanded throughout the world.

In my personal learning experiences this unit, I began to appreciate the importance of using our technology to develop our ideas, and continuing to share them within the world. All our discoveries should be exhibited and used to support ideas worth sharing. These concepts go beyond this unit, but represent the overall meaning of NEW school. We can create, and we can share, and we can inspire. All the tools are at our fingertips, and we can make a difference in this world.

Rain Turbine Complete!

After several weeks of working with the welding class, the first ever rain turbine is complete! It is far from perfect, but it is a great base model that can be tweaked and improved upon over time. I am so thankful that the welding class was so willing to help make my plans work out.

Now that the model is complete I will be experimenting with it, tweeting about it, constructing a TED Talk on it, and helping teach basic physics concepts with it. Super excited to see where things go from here, and how much I can fit in before the school year ends.

Social Media Unit Final Project Commencement

The final unit of our year has begun, and thus we have commenced our unit project. My project is to be an extension of my environmental unit project, although we were given the option to use any topic studied this year. As you may remember, my environmental project was a rain/water turbine. The model took a lot of construction, as I have been working with various sources to assemble it. As it is, the model should be done today, and I will be writing an in-depth description on it very soon. Anyways, the rain turbine project has been much of a success for me and I would like to work further on it during this project.

Essentially I am going to be testing my rain turbine on its development of power. The goal is to apply a force using water, and to alter the time of interaction between the force and the blades. Using rotational kinematic equations I will find the power under different values of time, and analyze my findings. The original guidelines of the assignment was to develop a lab for others to follow, although I am instead going to write a formal scientific paper, which will be a new challenge for me. These papers involve pieces such as an abstract, discussion, theory, equipment, analysis, etc.. A further summary can be found here, which I actually wrote in my AP Physics class, but I find it applicable here. Along with these writing and testings, I will create a website complete with videos, resources, and my findings.

Hopefully this project will be a great learning experience and also successful for my water turbine. I am very excited to see what I find and what this means for my invention.