Day: February 8, 2019

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Technology/Multimedia: Coding (Python)

Coding, a way to communicate to computers, there are many languages of coding – just like there are many human languages. One of all the many different and complicated languages of computer communication is called Python and that’s what we learned about in round 3 of Technology and Multimedia.

A lesson always has some sort of introduction. First thing was the rules. I’ve learnt coding in another a language before – JavaScript, so some of the basic rules of coding in Python were similar and it was easier for me to understand some of the things our facilitator explained. We started learning coding in Python with the basics which included variables and the “print” function. Variables are basically blocks that have value or text. And the print function does what the name says, it tells the computer to print things. We spent most of our first week on Codeacademy, a great website to learn coding in a lot of different languages. Every class would start with a lesson or discussion and we would be off to do practices or exercises.

As most lessons go, they get more advanced or rather ‘head-hurting’. Whenever a new concept is introduced to me in coding, it’s whether or not I understand it even the slightest bit the first time that will determine the level of confusion I would face. I don’t know why or how it works, but it does and that’s one of the things that’s hard about coding. If I don’t understand something the first time, it becomes even more confusing when I try to understand it. For the rest of the round, we kept on learning new and more complicated concepts which included loops, if statements, boolean, comparison, the break function, and the continue function. With more concepts and knowledge of Python coding came more exercises and activities.

Learning about the concepts isn’t as hard as putting them to use when you need to or fixing your code when you get an error you didn’t expect. Sometimes, you might’ve broken a simple syntax rule and sometimes, you might’ve used a function wrong, but hey we learn. One of the things we had to do was write a program that checks whether or not a number is prime and man did that activity take me a lot of brain power. The thing about coding is that there are a lot of ways to make a program work or write a program and when you find a way, you need to make sure that there are absolutely no errors. One error in a program’s code can affect the whole program. Sometimes when you think your program works, you’re really proud of yourself, but then you do another test and find out that it actually doesn’t. But one of the best things about coding is when you try really hard to fix a program with errors and you take a deep breath and run a test to find out that it really works – in the way that it’s supposed to and without any errors. That is what I love about coding. It makes you somewhat happy.

That was coding in Python. All I have to say is that I loved learning about it, doing exercises related to it, becoming frustrated when my code doesn’t work, and becoming really happy when I fix it. This round of technology and multimedia was yet again, another great round. Lastly, I thank you for reading this!

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English Literacy: The Search for Identity

“Round 3, what will we see? What will it be?” Pan said at the end of round 2, excited to finally uncover what round 3 has for all the junior students. “New round, new theme. And that theme is…” said Hannah, the Junior Literacy Facilitator. Pan sat quietly as he waited for the sentence to finish. “The theme for round 3 is The Search for Identity!”.

The Search for Identity talked mainly, considering it’s the theme, about what defines a person’s identity or something along the path of that. Throughout our journey of literacy, we read, we wrote, we listened, we spoke, and we worked as a class. The main things we did, to me, were novel studies and where-I’m-from poems.

The poems came first. A where-I’m-from poem is a type of poem that tells the reader a little bit about the author and where they’re from. In a where-I’m-from poem, there are childhood memories of the author, good and bad, people they miss, details about their past, and feelings of what it’s like to be home. I like to think of them as artistic and ambiguous poems that make you feel farm and cosy as if you’re at home. Everyone in class had to write one and so we did. Click on the link at the end of this post to access my poem in picture form! I really enjoyed looking back at some of my oldest memories while writing the poem and I realized that a lot have changed since when I was younger. Note: I made a mistake saying that the date was 2018. It’s supposed to be 2019.

Halfway through the round, we split into groups and each group was assigned a novel to read about and discuss. There were four possible novels that could be assigned to a group which were The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Wonder by R. J. Palacio and Monster by Walter Dean Myers. My group’s novel was Looking for Alaska, a story about teenage life, love, heartbreak, and friends. One day every week for the rest of the round, we met in groups and discussed while also taking the time outside of class to read the required number of pages in the book. At the end of the round, each team had to put up a presentation for the whole class about the book they read. Looking for Alaska was a book that I will never forget. Ever. I love everything about the book. The plot, the characters, just the entire story. It’s really sad. I didn’t expect the ending at all. That’s all I can give you about the book because I don’t want to spoil anything for those who want to read it

Summing up, this round was another unique and wonderful round. I shall wait for the next round to come and see what secrets it’ll unfold in front of my very eyes. In other words, I look forward to the following rounds and hope that they’ll be as great as, or even greater than, this round. Thank you for reading!

Link for my where-I’m-from poem: http://bit.ly/2JzXj8C

P.S. I made a mistake writing the date at the end. It is supposed to be 16 Jan. 2019, but instead, it says 2018.

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Physical Science: The Black Snake Experiment – Lab Report

Everything set up by my team was the first attempt, we followed the directions given. A type of soft-looking bright gray to dark gray foam-like substance began forming at the edges of the mixture on the sand as the fire made by the match spread over it. It felt cotton-soft and would break into smaller parts when squished, also leaving blackish dust, like charcoal, on the hand. The formation of the substance began slow when the match was lit, but progressed throughout the hour of the experiment nevertheless. At times of the experiment, more alcohol was pumped onto the bowl’s top into the sand and mixture, and that seemed to have affected the substance’s formation speed, so the speed of the formation might’ve depended on the amount of alcohol there was. From my observation and perspective, sugar that was in the mixture might’ve been the leading cause of the formation of the soft substance as the composition of the mixture was mainly comprised of sugar, 20 grams to be exact, and the substance seemed to only form on edges of the sugar. In the first endeavor, the formation of the substance slowed down drastically halfway through the experiment even though alcohol was pumped onto the bowl constantly and soaking the mixture and sand, thus another bowl was set up with the help of our facilitator. My team’s endeavor in the experiment resulted in a short and wide pillar consisted of the substance and was slightly tilted in a direction. The change of speed formation might’ve been because there wasn’t a sufficient or sustainable-enough amount of alcohol soaked inside the sand before the experiment began. The supposed result or outcome other teams got was a serpent-like structure composed of the soft substance. The second endeavor, despite the first one, ended in a success as the formation speed was noticeably faster because there was more alcohol and by the time the hour of the experiment elapsed, there was the serpent-like structure as expected. It was then that I saw why it was called the way it was, “The Black Snake” because of the result.

Explanation:

For the past few weeks in Physical Science, we learned about Carbon and then we decided to do an experiment called the Black Snake! Below are some more details of the experiment if you are wondering. The paragraph above is a report from my perspective when doing the experiment.

Directions: From what I remember, the following was done chronologically:

    • We first measured a 25-gram mixture of 20 grams of sugar and 5 grams of baking soda (sodium carbonate).
    • Sand was poured into an aluminum-foil-covered bowl and on top of the sand, in the middle, came the mixture.
    • The sand was then soaked thoroughly with alcohol.
    • A match was then lighted and put in the middle of the mixture in the bowl.
    • From there, the experiment began.

Thank you for reading! Oh, here are some more photos from the experiment:

The start of the first experiment, it didn’t go that far, but it was an attempt.

 

The start of the second experiment. The picture at the start of the post was what this became.
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Outdoor Leadership

I thought that I’d camped in the wild before, but that had occurred to me as false when this exploration came to be in round 3. The students from this exploration last round had talked about their trips repeatedly after they ended, about how amazing they were. And that made everyone else want to be in this exploration.

I, too, was excited for my turn to be in the exploration. What I had expected was lots and lots of trips, but there was more to it than that, than just going on trips and having fun. There was more. And that all changed and became clearer when I took part in the exploration of Outdoor Leadership.

The first week of exploration, we went over the guidelines. One of the guidelines said “Play hard, play well, play fair, and play safe,” and that was one thing I kept in mind throughout the exploration. Then we got an introduction to Outdoor Leadership, the exploration, and started on lessons.

Two out of three main goals of the exploration as said by our facilitators were “We want you to involve yourselves more with nature and just appreciate what it has to offer,” (reworded by me). I was particularly happy about those two goals because I did love nature and two out of three goals being ones that aimed for us to love it even more made me – put in the simplest way – happy or happier. The other goal was to learn how to survive in nature or rather, how to become an outdoor leader, which is why this exploration is called “Outdoor Leadership”.

At times in the exploration, we did an activity called “Sit n’ Spot” which is almost exactly what the name says: you sit, you spot, you think, and you write. This was basically an opportunity to observe and sort of appreciate nature and write about it.

The lessons in class started off with simple things about walking outdoors and camping, then got longer and more informational as the exploration went on which I was very thankful for but, not too keen about, and I did acknowledge that they played important and essential roles in camping trips.

Some lessons talked about the three basic needs when going outdoors which were food, shelter, water, and some lessons talked about being cautious when trekking out in the wild and some others taught us how to build a fire. We covered a lot. At the end of the second week was when we talked about our first trip which would happen on Wednesday the week after.

A beautiful park in Kampong Speu called Kirirom was where we were headed on our first trip. We spent two days of learning there with an additional one of sitting on the bus, traveling. One of the things we learned before the trip really started was how to ‘go to the bathroom’ when camping. The goal for that trip, I think, was just for us to get used to walking long distances and practice some of the skills we learned in class. And that’s what we did, we walked, or more precisely, trekked, a total of about 30 kilometers, which is about 30,000 steps; 20 kilometers on the first day and 10 on the second.

The first day, we went to a place called “The Heaven Cliff”. It was a cliff high up the mountain and was known for its view. On the way up there, we got lost a few times, but we did our best to bear with each other and I was proud of that. The mountain was covered with trees, nature, and it was just beautiful.

The cliff was beautiful and the view was amazing and we saw lots of cool birds, too, mostly hornbills. We camped at the cliff for the night and left the morning after. We also did a Sit n’ Spot there before we left.

Our second campsite for the second day was a big lake all the way back down the mountain. The area was surrounded with big tall pine trees and it looked more beautiful than the last campsite in my opinion. We woke up with a beautiful sunrise at the lake and then we left. This was a great first trip and I had lots of fun and learned a lot, too. Two weeks later, we would go on another trip which was harder and really tested the knowledge and skills we learned in class.

In class two weeks before our second trip started, we learned about the more complicated lessons and things about being outdoors which included scary medical scenarios and how to save a person’s life. We were headed to Mondulkiri and we would spend 2 days of learning there and two additional days on the bus. Our one and only campsite, the one we would sleep at every night, was located at Resource Development International (RDI), a non-profit organization.

The first day, we trekked to two waterfalls and walked through a grassland which took us about 25 kilometers and it was extremely harder than last trip because of the steep and rocky terrain. We were going up and down mountains and in forests.

The second day, we went to another waterfall and it was just as hard as the last two. There, we learned how to make a soup made by the Pnong (indigenous) people of Mondulkiri. It was called the “Proung” soup and it was made entirely out of vegetables, hence very healthy. The way it was cooked was interesting, too; it was cooked over a fire in bamboo.

Lunch was amazing. And even though the soup didn’t look appealing, it tasted really good. We had the soup along with fish and pork cooked over the same fire.

We had Sit n’ Spots and activities throughout the trip. The activities included saving a person’s life and building a shelter. That second day, we walked about 15 kilometers. So we walked about 40 kilometers in total. The moment this trip started, I knew it was going to be my favorite because our walks were longer and the nature there was just beautiful, despite the difficulties and terrain.

Before this exploration started, I had thought that I knew what it was like to camp in the wild, but really, it had been false until this exploration. Even though we didn’t really camp at the waterfalls we went to or in the forests, I could tell how hard it was just by trekking through them which was extremely hard.

Throughout the exploration, I feel like I’ve changed a lot in terms of being an outdoor leader. Even though I didn’t enjoy the long lessons in class, I was grateful that they were taught to me because they were very important and could probably save a person’s life one day, if I ever decide to go out trekking with friend. Those lessons made the trips we went on way much easier than it would’ve been without them. At times when we, including me, were eating on trips, people changed from “I haven’t gotten food yet” to “Have you gotten food yet?” which is, to me, a big change. Being an outdoor leader is about sticking and working together in the wild, making sure everyone is okay, thinking about others first, and bearing with each other when we got lost or faced a problem. It’s also about knowing how to survive in the wild.

I was a bit sad when we went on the two trips because sometimes, I saw trash everywhere which was harming the environment and no one was doing anything about it. But we aren’t like those people who just walk over them without doing anything, we picked up the trash and made the place better, saving the place.

To all those out there, please, be careful of where you throw your trash because it can have some serious effects on the environment. Well, that’s it from me about this exploration. I had lots of fun as well as learned a lot and I loved being in Outdoor Leadership. Also being an outdoor leader. Lastly, I wish the people of Outdoor Leadership good luck, it’ll be fun and exciting!