There is an Army Inside my Body?
What if I told you there is an entire army living inside your body. That’s right, there is so much more happening inside you then you may think. When you are sick, while you’re lying down, sleeping and watching movies all day, your immune system is in action fighting for your health.
Over the past month, we have been learning about cell biology and the immune system, we learned about the cell theory and types of cells, the basic functions of the immune system, and vaccinations, all while trying to answer the driving question, how does our knowledge of cell biology contribute to public health?
My Answer to the Driving Question
Our health as a society relies greatly on doing our own individual parts, wether that’s washing your hands, or staying home when your sick, or getting a vaccine, all of these actions are the reasons we are a relatively healthy group of people. Our understanding of cell biology is the reason we have discovered all of these tactics to keep ourself’s healthy. If we didn’t know anything about why we get sick we wouldn’t know anything about how to prevent getting sick. Knowing about bad bacteria and how our immune system works is allowing us to perfectly create things to eliminate viruses without causing excess damage, keeping our overall public health clean, safe and healthy.
How Did I Get There
Swabbing the School Field Journal
Something that helped me answer the driving question was swabbing the school and creating a field journal for it. In this assignment we were assigned with creating a question that could be answered by swabbing the school. I was curious about which water fountain in the school had the least bacteria. We then had to create a hypothesis and prediction. I thought that the downstairs water fountain had the least bacteria because it is tucked away in a place with little classrooms, therefore it is used less. However, when I swabbed all of the water fountains, and, over the span of 2 weeks, observed the bacteria I came to the conclusion that the middle floor #1 water fountain had the least bacteria and the downstairs had the most. Through this project I learned a lot about how to conduct an experiment, I learned about bacteria, and I improved my design skills while creating my keynote.
Character Cards
Creating immune system character cards was the thing that helped me answer the driving question the most. We had to create character cards for the different immune cells in the immune system. We had to personify them as if they were characters in the story of our immune system and describe their roles and functions within the body in protecting us from unwanted invaders. I decided to turn the cells into the Simpson characters. I learned a lot through this activity because it forced me to research a lot about the immune cells and write a description that anybody can understand. This made me understand how all of the cells work together which makes it easy to understand how vaccines and other tactics that we do to keep us healthy work.
Media Campaign
Another thing that helped me answer the driving question is the media campaign. I created 3 media posts about vaccines and the public perception of them. I decided to do my posts about how some people think vaccines cause autism. I reaserched a lot about this idea and came to the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. This assignment taught me about how the public’s perception of vaccines effect public health. I also learned about bias and how important it is to consider all perspectives.
F.A.I.L (First Attempt In Learning)
If I were going to do this project again, I would take more time to do my media posts. While creating them, I was very rushed and did not take enough time to really create a clever and understandable post. I would come up with better headings and make each post more different from one another.
What Did I Learn
At the beginning of this project we were asked to write down everything we knew about cells, and I had absolutely no knowledge of cells at all.
Now that we are done, I am very knowledgeable and easily understand how cells work together to keep us healthy. Through this long process, I learned how our immune cells (T-cells, B-Cells, Macrophages, White blood cells, and Anti-bodies) work together to eliminate pathogens to keep our body and overall public health healthy. I learned about bad bacteria and what happens when it enters our body. I learned how to conduct an experiment and improved my keynote design skills. I learned what vaccines are and how they work. I also learned about the public’s perception of vaccines. I learned about bias, and how to do research in order to consider all perspectives.