In this unit of Muir, we have covered several topics and activities, these included orienteering, archery, and snorkelling. The first activity in this unit was orienteering. We first learned the fundamental skills of orienteering, this included learning how to use a compass and how to put Fred in the shed. We played several games learning how to correctly read a baring and how to use a map. After we started to gain the skills, we needed to orienteer we started measuring the baring for the school course where in teams we tried to complete the course without getting soaked. Once we were more capable of orienteering, we went out to piney lakes and manning park to complete a more challenging course in teams. During the orienteering course, we did archery during single periods. This was a great experience to try something new and different. We had a lovely instructor Mary who encouraged us just to give it a go and try our best which is exactly what I did. Towards the end of the unit, I was really getting the hang of it and getting a few bullseyes. My favourite part of archery was when we got to shoot the balloons on the target because I was good at it and it was fun to try something new. Another part I really enjoyed was the sky shooting which was pretty epic to just shoot and let your arrow fall. While I couldn’t go snorkelling at Coogee or go on the Rottnest trip due to my knee surgery, I could participate in the snorkelling in the pool which was alright. We learned the basic snorkelling skills needed to go out in the open water. We learned to duck dive and how to clear our masks from the water.

Capabilities

Some of the capabilities that I developed in this course were organisation, collaboration, and effective communication. These three capabilities were essential for this course as I needed to be organised with all the correct equipment for snorkelling in the pool and making sure I was at the bus at the right time. Collaboration was important for orienteering as we were in teams, and we needed to make sure we were going the right way by communicating and working together to do so. This capability also ties in with effective communication because if you don’t say anything or if you say the wrong thing then you may get very lost. So it was important that our group collaborated effectively and not one person was doing everything and making sure we were clearly communicating with each other and working together to get the task done and to find the orienteering marker. We also used effective communication when out snorkelling by using signals so we can understand what was going on.

Leave no trace.

Leaving no trace was important as we went to many places, and we needed to make sure we are doing our part to keep the environment clean. When we went to Jorgenson, we made our own bin bags and we made sure all our rubbish went into those bin bags and then back to school with us. Before we left Jorgenson we swept the floor making sure we took away more rubbish than we brought with us. This is just a small part we play in keeping our environment clean. Another part of leaving no trace was that it was important to not take things away from any of the environments we visited, this included not touching the coral when snorkelling, spraying and brushing our feet when going into Piney Lakes. This was important to make sure we didn’t bring bad bacteria into the reserve. Feeding animals was a no go as we don’t want them to depend on our food, and there are many risks involved in feeding wild animals. When we went walking we walked on paths and rodes to avoid stepping on vegetation to try to preserve it. We kept our voices down so we would annoy other people and families when we went out.

I enjoyed the Muir course this year and I learned many skills.

Our challenge was to design a building that would withstand a major earthquake. We need to design, build, and test our building made out of only spaghetti and blue tack. 1 spaghetti stick costing $1.00 and one gram of blue tack costing $1.00. We had one trial run and one final run on the earthquake simulator. Our building had to follow the following criteria.

• is quick and easy to assemble
• has a minimum height of 60 cm
• has a maximum base of 30 cm x 30 cm
• remains standing after an earthquake, as simulated by shaking a table for 10 seconds
• is constructed from the materials supplied by your teacher
• costs less than $60 to build, given the material costs listed below

The first thing we did when starting our engineering task was research to come up with designs. When we were happy with our design we decided to start building. Our original design didn’t work whatsoever. It used up way too much money and when attempting to build it kept collapsing and all the pasta kept snapping. We decided to go off our original design and just start building whatever comes to mind and that is how our design was created. When putting our first prototype to the test it withstands the earthquake with no major damage. The only issue was that the pasta on the very top was really wobbly and unstable. All of the joints connecting the bluetack to the pasta were stable which was good, but we use a lot of blue-tack for it. We decided the changes we would make for our second prototype would be to try to use less blue-tack, and the advice given to us by our teacher was to make our base bigger. Our second prototype did withstand the earthquake, but one strand of pasta disconnected from the blue tack, this was because we tried to use too little blue tack but that backfired on use. The bigger base did make out pasta tower more stable because there was more surface area. Our tower did stay up and did reach the 60 cm minimum even after the strand came loose. Overall, I think our design was strong and stable. If I were to do this challenge again, I think I would try to make the tower reach 60 cm without using the strand of vertical pasta to do so I think this would make it more challenging. I would also try to be more careful with the pasta because I did snap several bits.

In our team of 3, we had Emily as the reporter and the speaker, Jorji as the project manager, and me as the equipment manager. Emily’s jobs were a speaker to seek help from the teacher and other class members or outside experts. And as a reporter makes sure that the final presentation is ready by the deadline. Jorji’s role as project manager was to make sure that everyone understands the challenge and keeps the team on track. My role as Equipment manager was to make sure that the materials needed for the task are available and that everyone cleans up after each session. We all had our roles to play but we all helped each other out when needed. In our group, each member had roles when building our pasta tower. Jorji was good at sketching our designs and coming up with ideas. Emily was our researcher and came up with ideas she found on the web and calculated all our costs and how much pasta we will need to make our design. My role was the builder because I could put the pasta and weave the blue tack together to make the joints more stable.  When trying to come up with our design we gave everyone’s thoughts a chance and ago and we all shared our thoughts and ideas.

The capabilities I used when designing and creating our pasta tower were resilience, teamwork, and organization. Resilience was a big part of the project because of how fragile the pasta strands were and how they kept snapping and how the tower would fall over. We thoughts of giving up a few times when everything was not working for us but we keep going and trying to build our building. Teamwork was needed in this task because we all had our roles and responsibilities, and if we didn’t work as a team, we would have made three different models and the project probably wouldn’t have been completed. The organization was important because if we weren’t organised then we wouldn’t have made the timeline of when the stile questions were due.

The engineering process is a sequence of steps that engineers use to help them develop and test potential solutions to challenges. If I could change the engineering process I would have more research time to generate more ideas and have more of an idea of how to build the tower. If there were no $60 limit. If we didn’t have this limit our creations could have been more creative because we would have had more freedom. I really enjoyed this task.

What we did (process)? 

At the start of our $20 BOSS journey, we had many different ideas on what to sell. Our first idea was to do a cake decorating company where we would decorate cakes for parties, but we quickly realized that it was not such a great idea. Our second and final idea was to make handmade, vet-approved dog treats that we called paws up. As a group, we worked hard and figured out all our expenses. We first came up with ideas of recipes that would appeal to all the dogs and a recipe that would be healthy for dogs. We wanted to make treats that would be organic with no harmful chemicals that may harm a dog. We also wanted to make a cute front design to appeal the adults buying the treats for their dogs as they would not be consuming the treats.

What have we learned?

Something that I learned is that people will buy a product when they are prices are high because people want your business to succeed. I have also learned is that you have been a good team if you want to succeed in a business. Your team will have some ups and downs, but you must be strong and work through and get over what petty fight you have had with other members of your group.  

What capabilities we developed?

Some capabilities we developed in our group were teamwork, communication, problem-solving. We used all these capabilities in our group. We needed to use teamwork to be able to work efficiently in our partnerships. We developed problem-solving because we had to come up with our project idea’s, some of the ideas were copied right so we couldn’t do it we had to use problem-solving to come up with an idea that would take off.
we needed communication so we all knew what was happening within our group.

 

Empathy is understanding what people are going through and giving them the support they need, walking in another person’s shoes is another way to say it. people need to use empathy online when say a family member is sick then you send a thought full message to them a key things I learned during this health unit is not commenting or texting without thinking so I can say the right thing before just text and comment without really thinking about what you are going to say. I have learned you need to use empathy to make sure what you are about to say is okay and that it will not hurt the person.

People need to stand up to bullies and they need to know their rights and responsibilities online as well as offline. Bulling is wrong but still, people do it. You need to know how to stop cyber-bullies and know how to not get affected by what people say. Something I have learned is that you need to stand up to cyber bullies to stop terrible things from happening. I have heard and seen many stories of teen kids committing suicide because they were getting bullied online so bullying online and offline needs to stop if you have nothing nice to say then don’t say anything this was one of the main things I can remember when I was young when I was fighting with my brother this powerful quote could save lives if we stop being rude online.

On social media, people think they can hide behind the screen so they can say anything they want with no consequences but that is not true. In this unit I have learned not to be a bio stander but an upstander  so if I see someone being attacked online then you should do something about it, you could not say anything at all if you cant think of one thing nice to say or you could write them a nice message and tell the other people to get stuffed.