Tropical Forest Ecology Description

Exploration 4 –

Exploration Name: Forest Ecology

Exploration Dates: Oct 7, 2013 – Nov 19, 2013

Number of students: 12

Essential Questions: (1) What is an ecosystem? (2) What is a natural resource?

Forest Ecology Description:      An ecosystem is the living things and the non-living things connecting with each other. The one example is algae. Algae take the sunlight for food and fish eat algae and then people eat fish. This is one connection. In Ecosystems class we had a journey book to take notes or write keywords that we don’t know what that word means. In Ecology class the first topic that we learned was tropical forest. We did not just learn only tropical forests but we also learned a lot of kinds of forests like conifers and others. A tropical forest is the forest that has rain a lot all year. We also learned about ecological relationships. Ecological relationships mean that one organism and another organism connect with each other. Ecological relationships are divided in five parts. They are parasitism, commensalism, predator-prey, mutualism and competition. Our Ecology group went to Mondolkiri province to study there. We spent six days at Mondol Kirai. We met a lot of people like Bunong people. On Saturday we came back to our school and we shared what we learned.

Crisis Management Description

Exploration 3 –

Exploration Name: Crisis Management

Exploration Dates: November 20th-January 17th

Number of students: 11

Essential Questions/Areas: 1. What is a crisis?

                                            2. How do people, especially in Cambodia, manage crises?

                                            3. What are natural disasters and how are they related to

                                                crises?

Crisis Management Description:     In our crisis Exploration we learned a lot of things that happen outside in the environment. Crisis is the bad thing that happens to people and is unsafe to people. Example: the cars are crashing or the train is falling. We learned about what is a natural disaster. Natural disasters are caused by nature. Natural disasters are: earthquakes, avalanches, and storms, for example. Then we talked about a volcano. A volcano is the mountain that has magma inside. When it is erupting out, the magma will turn to lava. Lava can make islands when it touches the cold place and it turns to the rock. Crisis management is how the aid workers help people when there is a crisis. One way they help is by evacuating people away. Example: when it has a flood, aid workers evacuate people out to the safe place. We also took a trip to share with the students at the government school at Takhmao City. We chose this school because this is the old school that two Liger students have learned at before. We taught the students who were in grades 5 and 6. We shared some things that we learned like floods, storms, earthquakes, and avalanches. The students were very smart to answer the questions and understand the information.

Bags Business Description

Exploration 2 – 

Exploration Name: Bag Business

Exploration  Dates: October 7th-November 19th

Number of students: 13

Essential Questions: Why do we use bags – the purpose of bags?

What is the purpose of creating a prototype?

What processes are needed to create a small profitable business?

Bags Business Description:     When we started this project we thought about Ready-Set-Go, which is a website that helped us get ideas about starting our business. In Ready we thought about our logo, what business and our goals. Then we divided all the students in our group into three different departments. There were Research + Development, Account + Finance and Sales and Marketing. In R+D they worked on how to make our design unique. In A+C they worked on Project balance sheet. Project balance sheet is the sheet that we just think of but it is not happen yet. But S + M is very important because they need to prepare the attitude and be friendly to the buyers who come. After that we took trips to RUFA, Art Gallery, A.N.D, Royal Boutique, Smateria and Wattan. Wattan is a place which made bags for us to paint. At first we decided to make 52 tote bags but then we wanted another 13 ipad bags. In our last day we all painted the bags already and we opened the shop for the students, staff and visitors to buy bags from our business. On that day we also used a mannequin to make up and put the bags on it’s hand. At that day we sold nearly all the bags. We also had 2 bags to raffle. This was very fun. We had the promotion about the tickets and one ticket for the adult costs 1$ and for the kids costs 2000៛. From that day each of us got $5 from when we sold.

Toys Description

Exploration 1 – 

Exploration Name: Simple Machines (Toys)

Exploration Dates: August 12 – September 26

Number of students: 13

Essential Questions:

1.What are simple machines?

2.What is mechanical advantage?

3.How can simple machines be used to create engaging interactive toys and why is toy creation a powerful form of learning?

Simple Machines Description:     In our Exploration class we learned about simple machines and how to make toys using cams (it is like a circle, like wheel and axle) + simple machines. Simple machines can make some jobs easier to do. We learned about wedges, levers, pulleys, inclined planes, gears, screws, wheels and axles. Each of these things have different advantages and disadvantages. Levers are the most used in real life. Levers can be anything you hold. Ex. sword handle, computer lid, all of those things are levers. When we started we learned about how to use simple machines in our toys. We watched a lot of videos to understand and to get new ideas. We first built toys for testing our project. It worked but it was too small and not good enough. We researched more and then we got more ideas from books, computers and videos. When we had enough knowledge and enough information, we got an idea and we worked in teams. We thought that to make our toy more interactive, we have to get some paint to make it colorful. When we finished the toy we planned a trip with our teacher to Takeo province. Our trip was not long just half a day travel and half a day at NFO to teach the students there about simple machines and how to make toys. We came back to set up for our presentation in the big area. All of Liger students came to see us and learn from each other.