Day: April 5, 2019

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Technology/Multimedia: Coding (Python) Part 2

Python, python, python. It’s a snake! There is a snake called python, but that’s not what we’re referring to. It’s a programming language. Python 2? No, that was last round. It’s python 3 this round! So in this round of Technology and Multimedia, we continued learning the programming language of python, but we used a better, more updated version of it which was python 3.

So what’s changed in python 3? Python 2 and 3 are still the same, I’d say. There’s just a small difference. In python 2, the way you would use the print function is:

But in python 3, it would be like:

On the course of a week, we learned new functions to better expand our knowledge of python, opening new doors for exploration and experimentation. The first function that we learned was ‘define’ and it is a function that allows you to make your own functions using the functions that are already in python. It basically allows you to repeat lines of code by writing whatever you named the function, it’s just like creating shortcuts. The next two things we learned were python lists and dictionaries. These two are similar. A list does what it’s called, it’s a list. It’s a collection of items that has an order, is changeable, and let there be more than one of the same thing; duplicates. A dictionary is like a list except that it is unordered and does not allow duplicates. It took some getting used to the changes in python 3, but we were back to writing code and programming in less than a snap because we needed to put what learned to use. In exercises.

The second week, I worked on two exercises from Code Club, a website that has lots of projects for you to work on in different languages of code. The two I worked on were making a program that chooses teams and a rock, paper, and scissors game. When writing code in programs and exercises this round, I wanted and decided to make my own additions. Like 80% of the time, the functions didn’t work on first run which still made me frustrated, but that frustration wasn’t bigger than the satisfaction of them working on later runs which I loved.

At the end of the round, we had to choose another project from Code Club to work on. Whenever I write code or think about code, creating a game or a program always comes up to my mind. And so I took this opportunity to do it. The project that I worked on was an RPG (role-playing game). When choosing a project on Code Club, instructions would pop up and you would follow them. I followed the first step, which was copying the pre-made code for the project, but then I went off drifting and trying to understand code that I copied. There were comments talking about what the code below them did and I read every single one of them. They taught me new functions and opened the door of possibilities which means they gave me lots of new ideas. I went back and followed all of the instructions. Its goal was to make a simple maze game that was short and easy to play, but it wasn’t the type of simple I liked. So I made my own additions to the game.

It certainly took a lot of time, but I did it and I’m really happy about it. At around the same time I was writing and making the game, I was extremely addicted with and fascinated by a very artistic and wonderful game, Hollow Knight. It is a metroidvania and it was made by a team of two developers from Australia. What I love most about Hollow Knight is the lore and its art and a lot more. I’m still playing it as of writing this. I think it was the source of inspiration when I was writing the game and what drove me to make one in the first place. In the process of changing and making the game, I faced a lot of errors, of course, but the joy in fixing in was still there. There was one time when I lost the code and everything in it, so that was a, I guess I can say, a daunting and sad moment because I had made characters for the game and I had written the story of what was happening in the game. Rewriting the functions was hard, but it certainly wasn’t as hard as rewriting the story. That time taught me to save my code and also have a backup of it in a document and so I did that.

After a while, I finished the game and I made a map for it too (picture above previous paragraph). It’s called Twitfall. You, the player, wake up in a mansion. You don’t know how you got here in this cursed mansion, but you do know that you are stuck. The way you can get out of there is to escape its curse and to do that, you must use what’s inside the mansion. I put in an enormous amount of effort and time into this small project of mine and I greatly enjoyed the pleasure and happiness it brought me. If you want to play Twitfall, go to the end of this blog post and you will find links to it as well as the two other projects I worked on from Code Club. And if you’re going to play it, use the map to help you and always look at the commands when you think you’re stuck because maybe you haven’t tried using all the functions yet. I’m proud of the game and I hope you will at least get a little bit of fun and joy playing it. Lastly, I would like to say I loved learning a lot more about python, I loved that I still got frustrated with errors, still became happy when I fixed them, and that enjoyed making my own game. Thanks for reading!

Team Chooser: https://trinket.io/python/9b52a291b0

Rock, paper, scissors game: https://trinket.io/python/1ef3f217fb

Twitfall: https://trinket.io/python/bfcae35d6f

Map for Twitfall: http://bit.ly/2KVvgRt

It’s called ‘The Woriun Mansion Map’ in the drive.

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English Literacy: Happiness

In English Literacy, we had happiness as our theme. We read articles about happiness, learned what makes us happy, what doesn’t make us happy, how to be happy, and many other happiness-related things. A lot of poetry was also involved. We learned two new forms of happiness which were the Found poem form and the Golden Shovel poem form. Near the end of the round, we had to write poems. We could choose to write either of the two new poem forms we learned. I chose, or at least tried, to write a golden shovel form. The line I choose is from a song called “falling in reverse” by EDEN. The reason for that is because the song is so much different from any that I’ve listened to. It’s like a message and I really like it. So here’s my golden shovel poem talking about happiness. Enjoy the poem!

Line: “Don’t let the monsters inside your head become your fears.”

“Hollow Oxygen”

Stars fade and become forgotten in a matter of time, they don’t.

For flowers to prosper and flourish, its world had let.

 Every night, they come, the

whisperers of anxiety, you call them monsters.

Come out and sprout, don’t hide inside.

There is nothing that’ll make the sky fall in front of your

very eyes. It’s all in your head.

You come out. And with one deep breath, you look at them. In less than a second, you realize that nothing, but thin, empty spaces of air they’ve become.

It was then that you knew, you can always overcome your

demons. You look at the moon, it tells you, you are not afraid of your fears.

Don’t let the monsters in your head become your fears.

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STEMgineering: A Project for Government School Students – Changing Cambodia (2018-2019)

Cambodia in the past few years, from my perspective, has developed so much. The economy has gotten better, education has improved, and more Cambodians have access to the online world. What I’ve been seeing a lot of and really like is Cambodia and its education involving more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). There have been more STEM festivals and events, giving the opportunity to many people and students to not only learn, but also share. It’s basically a chance for people to put up projects related to either any of the STEM categories for other people to see – a fair as I’d call it.

When a STEM fair takes place, schools that are not too far from it sometimes take the opportunity to send their students there when they have available transportation. That’s great, but what about the schools that don’t or can’t afford transportation or schools that are too far? Not a lot of government schools actually send their students to STEM fairs due to multiple reasons like some already mentioned, so their students are missing out on a lot of great opportunities to learn. The majority of Cambodian children go to government schools, but they, especially those in rural areas, don’t get to learn a lot of STEM. Shouldn’t all schools in Cambodia deserve the chance to learn STEM? A step towards solving that problem was taken in the fourth exploration of my second year at Liger. That exploration was STEMgineering.

Credits: Josh Lowry, our school’s photographer.

The goal of this seven-week project was to get students in government schools more involved in STEM, but it was emphasized on engineering in this exploration. The way we decided to work towards that was to create small, fun projects to show to the students. Those projects would have instructions, in both English and Khmer, on how to make something that is engineering-related. There were things we needed to keep in mind however. The main thing was that we needed to make sure the materials needed to make the product of each small project are Cambodian-friendly which means that it should be very easy to find and get anywhere in the country. Our target students were those between 3rd and 7th grade, those who weren’t too young nor old.

The first two weeks of this project, we spent time on learning engineering before we could make small projects about engineering. We learned about the basics, including but not limited to simple machines and the design process. We split into groups for the first time to try out instructions from a website called Instructables, a website made for people to make and share instructions for making different things. Part of our main goal was to upload the instructions we were going to make onto there. Because it’s such a great resource for STEM projects and other things, we wanted Cambodians to use it too, but the only problem was language. There were barely, or even no, Instructables that were in Khmer, thus our instructions were going to be written in both English and Khmer. We then split up into teams, brainstormed on what product to write instructions for, and started making the products. From 15 students into 5 teams of 3.

My team, after a time of thoughtful and fruitful discussion and brainstorming, decided to make a shooter, a simple, little gadget that can shoot things. And the first time we thought about it, safety was one thing we were concerned with, but we still chose it because we prioritized excitement and engagement above all. We wanted the kids to learn while also having fun, so to do that, we needed to make the workshop as exciting as possible, to get engagement, making them want to take part and falling into the trap of learning. After making a few prototypes of our shooter, we started writing instructions and making more shooters. While that was happening, we also came up with new designs for the shooter and that was because we wanted the kids to get creative as well, decide how they wanted their shooter to look while using the ones we made as models. Writing instructions took the longest because we needed to take pictures, translate it into Khmer, upload it onto Instructables, and print them out for workshops. After all of those things, we were ready to present them to kids in government schools.

To present the projects we created, we picked and went to different schools in Phnom Penh. Each workshop took around 2 hours to complete. The first thing we did when we got to a school was split the students into groups according to the number of projects and started the workshop. The five projects our teams had come up with, finally mentioning, were the PVC pipe trash bin, the popsicle bridge, the slingshot car, the shooter and the mini Ferris wheel. Some projects finished earlier than others and some finished way later. During workshops, we answered the students’ questions and taught them little engineering facts, too.

Me helping two of the students at Bambujaya during the workshop. Credits: Josh Lowry

The first trip was to a private school called Bambujaya. Despite it not being a government school, we still did a workshop there because Liger has done many projects with them in the past and we wanted to expose the students there to STEM, too. Our plans ended up differing due to the fact that the students were very young. We did not do the PVC pipe trash bin project because it wasn’t suitable for them and there were times during the workshop when we needed to get them to engage because they got shy. But apart from that, everything went smoothly and was a success. It made me very happy to see them happy, gaining joy from playing with their creations.

Credits: The facilitator of this exploration, Jakub Kukielka.

The second trip was to a government school. We did the workshop with around 60 fifth-graders and it went almost how we wanted it to. Some teams finished too early and some finished a bit too late with their projects, so that was one of the things we could’ve done better; time-management. The other challenges we faced included managing the whole group of students, communicating with them, and making sure everybody learned. It was my first time leading such many people in an activity and it was quite the task for me. My teammates helped students when they got stuck, answered their questions, and took turns deciding and helping them use tools. We had a lot of fun doing leading the workshop. In spite of all the challenges, the smiles they had when they finished their products made us smile. It was a very rewarding experience to introduce and teach them an almost completely new subject to them. Is this the type of joy teachers get at school? To change peoples’ lives? I’d say this trip was another success.

The STEMgineering exploration was one that was very fun to be a part of and one that was very successful. It helped me understand one of the many problems with the current curriculum of Cambodian government schools and made me think in ways I had never done before. Not only that, but it also created change in the lives of the students of the schools that we went to. To hear laughter and see joy in the faces of the students that took part in the workshops created by us Liger students was an experience that I’ll never forget. I hope that I will get the chance to be part of another exploration like this one again in the future because I immensely enjoyed being a change-maker and temporary teacher.

If you want to make a shooter or any of the things the teams did, you can do so here.

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Math: Percentages

You’re walking in the mall and you’re trying to find a thick hoodie because you have a trip to the arctic next week. Some of the shops you’ve passed did sell hoodies, but they didn’t have what you wanted and the price didn’t match the quality either. You look to your right and spot a hoodie you like. It costs $25, but you only have $20. You’re about​ leave, but you see a sign that says “Special Offer: All is 25% Off!”. Now, you actually might be able to afford the jacket and avoid 3 more hours of walking and searching for another hoodie in another store in this gigantic mall. But how much is 25% off? How much is the hoodie now? And how much will you have left?

So the price of the hoodie without the discount is 25$. The discount is 25% off, so we need to find 25% of 25$. Then will you be able to figure out how much is left and how much the hoodie costs with the discount. 100% of the hoodie’s price is 25$, so 100/100 = 25$. 25% of 25$ isn’t known yet, but we know that 25% = 25/100 just like the 100%. To find 25% of 25$, just basically take 25$ times 25/100. We also know that 25/100 = 25 ÷ 100. This can be done using many different methods. Here is the one I’m using:

25 (the price) x 25 (the discount %) = 625 ÷ 100 = 6.25$ (25% of 25$)

Now we know that 25% of 25$ is 6.25$. All we need to do now is find the new price and then will we know if we can buy the hoodie or not. 6.25$ is just the discount. The new price is the difference of the normal price subtracted by the discount. So it’s done like: 

25$ - 6.25% = 18.75$

The price of the hoodie now is 18.75$. You have 20$. You have just enough! Well lucky you. How much will you have left after buying the hoodie? I’ll leave that one for you to figure out. Just simple subtraction.

And that about sums up what we did in round 4 of math. We learned about percentages and to write a portfolio about it, I chose to create this short problem! I learned a lot about percentages as well as enjoyed it. It’s really fun to learn about, doing problems like these and it’ll make figuring out discounts (and solve other real life problems) much easier. The next time you visit a place that sells something you like and has a discount, you know how to figure it out! Thanks for reading!