Hello, welcome to or back to my blog! In this post I will be talking about my most recent and last Scimatics project of the year. Our driving sentence for this project was “Make a comic book on cells and diseases.” As you can tell from the driving sentence this project was on diseases and how they interact with cells. To start off the project we did a MindNode of how cells and diseases interact, here is mine:

We then had to do some research as to what disease/virus/bacteria we wanted to do our project on. I ended up doing the Pneumonic Plague. If you don’t know what it is…

Here are a few facts about the Pneumonic Plague:

• It comes from Yersinia Pestis (Y. Pestis)

• It mostly affects your lungs

• It kills around 3,000 people a year

• It can be easily taken care of with antibiotics 

• It can occur naturally.

The first big assignment we did was a wanted poster for the disease/bacteria/virus. I am really proud of how it turned out and how much information I actually could fit on there! I think the only thing I would change would probably be how I arranged the drawing and maybe if I could have fit something else behind it so it popped more. But anyways here it is:

We then had to critique a few past comic book projects and start ours. We first had to make a rough draft story board. Here’s mine:

We then got critique on it the next class, my critique was: 

More scientific words and interactions with cells and maybe feature your bacteria a bit more in the comic.

I ended up taking that advice carefully and put that all into my comic. Expanding on the story was hard at first but then I got a flow and it ended up really good. I really like my story and how much time it took not just to draw but to figure out a way to include a lot of scientific words. Without further ado here is my comic:

(Word press won’t let me add the comic yet)

If you don’t have enough time to read it here is a summery:

A little girl names Beatrice goes for a walk with her mom everyday but one day they saw a hurt, stray, cat. They ended up helping the cat and its wound. Beatrice ever since wanted to become a veterinarian but then as she got older she decided she wanted to help stray cats instead. She then applied for a volunteer spot to help everyday after school and got accepted. She then started getting sick and she didn’t know why so she went to the hospital and they told her she got the Pneumonic Plague because she wasn’t being careful. Beatrice didn’t know what the Pneumonic plague was so the doctor showed her a video and she was being careful by using lots of equipment to keep her and others safe.

Overall this project was really fun and I enjoyed making something so dreadful and something that could kill you into a story. Even though it was hard I really hope we can do projects like this one again. Something I needed to work on during this project was being less distracted and managing my time more. I ended up staying up super late doing my comic book because I wasn’t managing my time efficiently.

Before I end this post I will be talking about:

~Core competencies~

Questioning and predicting:  Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

I feel like I wasn’t very focused and that I wasn’t using my time very well during this project. To overcome this in the future I will try my hardest to move away from things that are distracting me. Another thing I could ask for extra help or go into tutorial time so I can finish an assignment earlier. I feel like I could have done better then I did with time management and I hope to become better at it in the upcoming year.

Scientific communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.

I used a lot of scientific words and different ways I incorporated them into my comic book, but I go feel like I could have added a bit more. I also could have done a bit more research into more scientific words I could have used. I realize now that I  could have gone into tutorial time and asked for a website they could recommend or even asking a friend. I am proud of what I have I just think that I could have added a few more scientific words.

Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence.

I feel like one of the best parts about my comic book was the part where cells and the Pneumonic Plague interacted. I feel this way because I did a lot of research and spent a lot of time figuring out how to draw scenes and how they interacted with each other. I also had to make sure everything was accurate and I needed to change a lot of things. Maybe in the future I could have stuck to one plan instead of changing it a lot, this took out a lot of time I could have been working on other panels too.

Now its time to end this post so I hope you enjoyed and can’t wait to see you next year!