Our first series of projects were on evolution. What were the projects that we completed you ask? Well we made cladograms, timelines, and best of all, we found results from our OWN DNA (how cool is that). We stuck in the same groups for the most part, so I'm grouping all of the projects together. Our first was the cladogram project, where we were given a container of hardware, and were assigned to organize them into species and genus, then name them. We then had to come up with a story explaining why our species evolved in such ways. We decided to categorize each of our pieces of hardware into shape/material. Our doc is below:
Our next project was the timeline project, where we chose an organism, and researched its past. We had to find its ancestors and explain the traits they gained and how it helped them. We chose the majestic koala. We found that it has been in the marsupial family for a while. Our presentation is below (sorry its a link):
And our final project was the DNA project. We took a DNA sample from our cheek and extracted DNA from it, then we mixed it with gel to put over a black light, and our allele results were shown. We were going to use it to analyze our alleles with others in our class, however we didn't get enough data due to some errors in our procedures. My personal document is shown below:
Overall, we learned a lot from these projects, showing us from our own research what we were learning from the text books and videos. For the cladogram project, we learned how to categorize organisms and what makes a species and a genus. For the timeline project, we learned how adaptations connect to evolution, which is through natural selection and survival. For the DNA project, we learned how to gain information from alleles and how to find them. We also were to find that all organisms contain DNA. However, our outcome from that project was hard to analyze from our errors. But knowing how to work with other people and how to make a proper presentation helped from the previous year. Luckily, I didn't really need to "remember" these skills since they just come naturally now.
I really enjoyed my project group this time. We were efficient, but still had a lot of fun. I think I was very strong in my leadership and creativity. I was able to push our group forward when we would get stumped. I would come up with creative ideas to get the "creative juices" in my group to start up. However, my initiative wasn't good enough, since when we would get stuck, it took a while for me to think of my creative ideas. Thus, we spent a lot of time just analyzing what we had and reanalyzing, which is a lot of time wasted.
I really enjoyed my project group this time. We were efficient, but still had a lot of fun. I think I was very strong in my leadership and creativity. I was able to push our group forward when we would get stumped. I would come up with creative ideas to get the "creative juices" in my group to start up. However, my initiative wasn't good enough, since when we would get stuck, it took a while for me to think of my creative ideas. Thus, we spent a lot of time just analyzing what we had and reanalyzing, which is a lot of time wasted.