Final Project Reflection

For my outreach project, I, along with a few other of my classmates and professor Brickman, went to Clarke County High School to aid high school students in the completion and analysis of their soil bacteria project. At the high school, we aided in helping the students extract their results from the soil samples they collected and taught the how to enter their data into the data collection website. This was the same project that our class had just completed in the labs at the University of Georgia, so we were able to provide guidance to the students in finishing their similar project. The goal of the project was to enlighten us and the students of Clarke County High School on the presence of certain bacterias and their dominance in our neighboring environment, as well as their resistance to antibiotics.

During the project, we gathered with the students and helped them to analyze their petri dishes, which contained observable remains of bacteria that had been found in their soil extractions. After identifying them, we told to students to count all of the colonies of bacteria they observed in order to get a better picture of just how much bacteria lives in the environment around us. We then had them enter this data into a data collection site that is being used by researchers to identify different levels of bacteria around the world and their resistance to certain antibiotics. These results along with the ones we completed at UGA will help scientists better understand the bacteria around us and how it differs in various parts of the country.

Three Characteristics of Effective Informative Delivery:

Intellectually Stimulating: Usually, we don’t think about all the bacteria that we encounter day-to-day, because we can’t see it. Thus, I think it was shocking but also very interesting for the students to be able to observe just how much bacteria we’re actually surrounded by. By placing the bacteria in a petri dish and allowing it to grow, we were actually able to see this and recognize the large amount of bacteria that usually goes unnoticed by us.
Relevant to the audience: Everyone uses medicines like antibiotics throughout their life, making this a relevant study for anyone to conduct. It was interesting to find out that medicines I use for things like an ear infection could actually have negative consequences for my body such as increasing the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Creative: A creative aspect to this project was actually allowing the students to go out and bring back their own soil sample collection. This provided the study with different soil types from various places, so it was interesting to see how the bacteria differed from one sample to the next.

Discoveries

I found out that I actually really liked helping the younger high school students with their projects. I could definitely see myself doing something like that again in the future for maybe tutoring or something along those lines.
On the other hand, I also realized how difficult it was to get the high-schoolers interested and engaged in what we were doing for them.

I think that in the future I would need to do something to make the work seem more interesting and engaging, because it seemed like the students got bored rather fast with what we were doing. I also think that some students were a little shy and this caused them to participate less, so next time I would work on bringing those students out of their comfort zone in order to get them more engaged.

By helping the high school students with their project, I was better able to understand the study myself, which makes sense since I had to understand it in order to explain it to them. It was also helpful doing the project a second-time. I understood the process a lot better and why we were doing it the second-time. Next time I do a project like this I think it would be helpful for me to go over the process multiple times like we did here.

I think that I could have been more informed. There were some parts of the project and the data process that even I was still confused about when we were helping the high-school students, so that probably didn’t look good from their perspective. But, all-in-all I think I did a pretty good job in aiding them.

I learned alot from this project, so I would say it was very effective. I never realized how much bacteria surrounded me in my environment and how so much of it was resistant to bacteria. It was very enlightening, and it was refreshing actually doing something in a class and then relating it to real-world problems.

Rooker Hall Meeting

Post-Implementation

Are you yourself composting?

Were residents motivated to participate when first informed about the project?

Have the residents been responsive to the project?

On average, what percentage of residents do you believe are actively composting?

What have been some hindrances to the success of the project?

Has odor been a problem of any sorts in relation to the compost?

Do you have any suggestions for improvements in the future?

Post-Meeting

Do you believe that you were adequately trained to enforce such a project?

Do you believe that this project has the potential to be successful long-term?

Do you have any further questions about the project?

Do you have any suggestions for improvements on the project?

Bio Infographic

What: This is infographic is intellectually stimulating almost the entire way through. To begin with it starts out by pointing out the agricultural and biological advantages of composting along with some helpful statistics. It goes on to display the chemical composition of compost and discusses the chemistry behind the necessary factor of creating the right ratio of carbon to nitrogen in order to create the ideal conditions for compost. The infographic also establishes its relevancy to the audience by addressing common households personally by including them in the statistics. It also addresses the audience when it discusses the convenience of community composting programs and their benefits and when it explains a step-by-step how-to compost for beginners. Through this, the infographic is targeting the average family household. The infographic is both creative in its design and information. The small pictures and overall structure of the pamphlet makes it an interesting read that is easy to follow. In order to make the information creative, the author includes some interesting statistics and not only explains what compost is but also tells the reader exactly what they can do to be a part of this green movement.

Gut: I was very pleased with the infographic as a whole. The creator did an excellent job of hitting on all the major aspects that someone new to composting would inquire about. In doing so, the creator has made it more likely that the person reading this will feel both confident and motivated to take the next step in composting themselves. The structure of the infographic flowed very nicely all the way from why should we compost to how to compost yourself. It’s good that the reader can just about get all of the necessary information that they need just from this infographic alone.

So What: The part of this infographic that I had not thought about before was the segment in which the creator addresses the existence of community composting programs. This is extremely helpful for someone who is new to the process altogether. The idea that composting could be a community process rather than an individual one will make people more likely to participate. The individual will usually follow the herd. I believe that the creator wanted the reader to understand that composting itself isn’t a tough habit to start. The how-to is simple and short and can makes the task seem a little less daunting and laborious. He also seeks to display how beneficial composting is not only to farmers but society as a whole.

Now What: Although this infographic is extremely well made, I feel that we would need something a little more shocking in order to convince young adults. Since the earth’s well-being is the last thing on a college student’s mind, we would need to include facts or statistics that would be sure to grab their attention. Students would only be pushed to really care if they were aware that these composting and its benefits have a major effect on their lives in some startling way. Including some information on how composting can actually save you money in some way would also be helpful, because college students will do anything to save a buck.

UGArden Reflection

“In this picture I see what every average american sees, a pile of garbage.” This is what I would have said had you asked me the day before our excursion. Today, however, I see something much different. In this photo, I see the future. I see my next meal; the carrots that I munch on at lunch and the lettuce that I put on my sandwich at dinner. What looks like the end of life, in this photo, is in fact just the beginning, thanks to composting. For many, like me, the process and benefits of composting elude us. Yet, when I look at this picture, all I can think about is how much beneficial organic material we throw away everyday. For example, if you look closely, you can see the remains of some orange peel amid the pile. I can only imagine how many banana peels, orange peels, broccoli stems, and other useful material I dump in the trash everyday that is shipped off to a landfill, lost among the pizza boxes and milk cartons. This picture makes me feel lousy knowing how much good material I’ve let waste in these landfills when there was an easy outlet of disposing it right outside my backdoor. This picture is meant as a message. It means to tell us that there is another outlet besides landfills. An outlet that will actually put life back into the earth rather than just taking it away. We need to transform our relationship with earth from a parasitical one to beneficial one.

Reflective Writing Assignment 1: Self-Portrait

a & b . I took physics, biology, and chemistry my freshman and sophomore year of high school. At my school, we were allowed to pick one and continue it, so I chose chemistry which I then did for the following two years. I decided to continue chemistry because I excelled in it the most compared to the other sciences, and I also found the real-world implications of the chemistry topics to be very fascinating. This class is my first science class taken in college so far.
I am interested in understanding more about my personal impact along with my fellow humans impact on the earth and perhaps ways in which I as an individual can have an impact on reversing the negative effects of our actions and presence here on the planet. I am looking forward to understanding more about the condition of our planet, because I feel we as a generation are becoming more and more ignorant to it.
What exactly is the role of antibiotics in soil and the process of composing? Where can and do these antibiotics originate from? What are the long-term effects of antibiotics in the soil?
I think that many students are concerned about global warming and the deterioration of the planet, but are reluctant to act because of a lack of knowledge. However, I feel that, with enough repetition and emphasis, students would be most receptive to the issue of global warming.
Perhaps this experience will help me to realize that a single person or idea can actually make an impact on a global issue. I believe that it may also help to teach me how to approach a community atmosphere with major problems such as composting and global warming. I may also learn methods of explaining these topics and making them important to the general public rather than just the science community.