Elliot Smith's Digital Portfolio
The Climate Change Project
Project Reflection
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What is climate change and how is it different from global warming?
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Climate change is a gradual change in the long term weather of a certain area. For example, the climate in Durango is a high alpine desert. We get hot summers and snowy winters, or we used to, but now as the climate changes. W is getting more extremes, for example, tons of snow (winter 2018-19) or hardly any snow (winter 2017-18). On the other hand, global warming is a gradual increase in the world's temperature that has been occurring since the last ice age. The globe is getting warmer, that's all global warming is.
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Why should we care about climate change, now, when it's been happening naturally since the Earth began?
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Now, climate change is being accelerated by humans. When it was a naturally occurring thing, it moved at a natural pace and the world's species have been able to adapt over time. Now as humans accelerate the process as we have since the industrial revolution, climate change is moving to fast for spices to adapt, and so they must move or die. For example, take the pika. This little round creature holds on to body heat extremely well, and it's natural habitat is the cold Rocky Mountains, but as it's climate warms, they are forced to move upwards in altitude, and as they run out of places to go, they die. Humans are accelerating climate change, and so unless we want to go extinct as part of the current mass extinction, I think we should care.
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How does your project demonstrate your understanding of climate change?
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Our group's project struggled with this. Our film doesn't really show an understanding unless thoroughly explained by Tiernan (the writer). To remedy this problem, (and my grade) I wrote a second piece on my free time separately for our group's project and turned that into Tina to personally prove my understanding. Next time to better ensure that my project meets the content requirements the first time, I will not allow another group member to dominate the project, and make sure that my project meets the requirements.
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What was your largest area of growth during this project?
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I am not really sure what my biggest area of growth is here, yes I shouldn't have let Tiernan dominate the project, but that was just ma basic mistake, not an area for growth, so for the first one of these ever, I can't find one of these. Not that there isn't one, I just can't seem to find it.
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What was your greatest strength during this project?
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Probably my camera operating and editing skills. Me having these skills, and the equipment to go with them, allowed us to quickly work through the filming and editing process, and make up for the time our group lost when Tiernan took a significant amount of time doing the script, and get the project finished on time.
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The Adolescence Project
Project Description
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This project was an interdisciplinary project with humanities. We were asked to study adolescence from both a physiological and psychological standpoint. In Biology, we studied the way the human brain works and how it is developing in an adolescent. As it turns out the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that does cognitive reasoning) is less developed than the limbic system of the brain (the part of the brain that does emotional processing). This was very important for adolescents to learn. It can help them understand their brains and how they need to compensate for their prefrontal cortex to become better people.
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Personal Reflection
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a): My biggest challenge in this project was using my time wisely. I understood the concepts well and nothing I did was overly taxing on my abilities, even the infographic design, and because of that, I had a hard time using my time wisely. I often found myself using my time to learn things unrelated to biology and or adolescence, and more related to my interests. (Woodworking videos, and other such things)
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b): Probably my infographic about the effects of chronic stress on the brain. I feel I did well on this and I am proud of it. I put it just above this reflection for you to look at. I was able to find data quickly and I found a good template that allowed me to put it together in a quick and easy to understand way.
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c): I think I would improve my final infographic. I had a hard time finding data at all to answer this question. I had a bit of trouble with the actual effects of social media on teens, and after I found some info, the data was even harder to track down. I probably could have chosen a better topic to allow for more data, to improve the whole look of my infographic.
