Lesson 7: Decipacito

Today, we listend to various language versions of Despacito. Decipacito is the most viewed video on youtube hitting 4 billion views and will soon reach 5 billion. Although it was released only 6 months ago, it immediately passed the record of "Gangnam style". According to Mr.Paterson's analysis, the video became so viral because of its staging and casting. A lesson we could learn from the video and the spread of it is that no one knows what's going to be popular and everything has a chance to be globally famous and viral. I also became a fan of the song and listen to it over and over again even though I rarely listen to music. I thought we can get tips to create attractive video from this video, which we can use for the project. I am actually a video editor for the group so I'm hoping to possibly make a great video that can attract people's attention.
Based on the plans we made in the last lesson, we started bringing some ideas of renovation. We decided which chairs to replace old chairs without backrest, which is the main progress in today's lesson.

Leeson 6: Exploration of the science room

Today, as we have already decided which room to renovate, we moved on to the next step, which is examining and exploring the room. We walked around the science room and searched a spot that could be improved or possibly removed. We also took a few pictures suggesting the dirtiness and uselessness of the room. We mainly took pictures of unorganized garbage and dirt around the sink, which was the most unclean place in the room. The main purpose of our renovation is to provide students more comfortable place and promote more efficient scientific reserch, so we thought carefully of the students' conviniences at all times. Below are the points that we must change to improve the room.

・Overall extremely d

irty

・Many apparatus and shelves not used at all/efficiently

・Uncomfortable chairs; cannot be even considered a chair due to its hardness and form

・Garbage can not used properly

・Get rid of all the shelves on both sides of the class

・Space under the tables can be used in a better way

・Unsanitized sink

・Safety Goggles are not sanitary and safe to use

teachers table are extremely messy

・The place where you put dusk cloth is dirty and not used well

・WIndows too large, too much sunlight --- Sleepy students

・Testing tubes are not kept cleanly

・Cannot see the black board/smart board from the back

・Every items in the classroom are disorganized

・Difficult to write and erase on the table 

Our job now is to come up with an idea to make the room comfortable and functionable, based on the lists above. In the next lesson, we are planning to interview students studying science and think of more detailed renovation process.

Lesson 5: New project

Today, we were assigned a new task o work on through the semester. Although it was a big surprize that we are going to work on the same topic as the last semester, I thought it's a good idea and I'm expecting to make something good in this project.
We had a discussion on the topic and already decided a few important things for the project.
These are what we decided today:
⚫coordinater: me
⚫website editor: Kento and Joseph
⚫Video editor: me
⚫Brochure: Keito
⚫Room that we rennovate: Science room
⚫Things to to
1. Interview students and teachers who use the science room
2. Take a picture of the room
3. Research
4. Budgetary
5. Summarize opinions
6. Make Powerpoint presentation
The reason we have already decided fundamentals is because I failed this project last semester in my previous group due to procrastination and prolongation of a meaningless discussion. I thought it's significant to decide things quickly as well as completing work accurately. I actually recalled the phrase "if you are not fast, you are last" during today's discussion. I'm planning to concretely discuss the  rennovation plan.

Lesson 4:Marshmallow-spaghetti challenge

Today, we did marshmallow-spaghetti challenge. Our task was to build a tower made out of spaghetti and tapes with a marshmallow on top of it. It is an activity that tests many important skills in life, such as creativity, thinking skills, teamwork, collaboration skills both as a group and as an individual. 

Our group made the 4th tallest tower of all groups, which is 33 centimeters. Our tower was way below the average of regular people, which is 50 centimeters, and I immediately felt weakness of the group members. 

Our main problem was a lack of teamwork and hesitation towards try and error. We did not concide with each other and each member tried their own way of building. Also, we did not spend much time actually building the tower because we had prolonged discussion on the shape of the tower and physics. Time management was also a tough task for us and as a result of unsophisticated scheduling, we were left with useless time, which was too short to fix the tower.

According to the Ted talk that we watched after the activity, this challenge has been done many times everywhere and brought interesting results. I was puzzled by the result that kindergarten children built a tower higher than what smart adults built. One thing that I presumed from this results and the talk is that in case of an activity like this, already learnt knowledge and intelligence is useless. Pure efforts and experience are the only thing needed to easily overcome physics in a short time.

If we could do this activity again, I would try to test strong structures of spaghetti, rather than observing them and contemplating my image of the completed structures.