Nolan               Menchaca

STEM is all about group projects and working together. We have had a lot of projects in the 8th grade that we worked with a partner or more. But when you work in a group you are probably going to have problems and disagreements. Problems came up in these projects and it was difficult to solve them. Some problems were harder to work out than other because I was with a partner and we would disagree. I knew we were going to need to solve these problems because if we didn’t we wouldn’t have been able to complete the project. Out of all of these projects and classes, sciences has helped me grow the most in collaboration.

 

In science, a project helped a lot and this was the plate tectonic project. We had to build a model that could teach someone about plate tectonics. My partners were Abdul-Azeez and Yue-Shan.  We had some disagreements when we were working with each other. These weren’t terrible disagreements but we knew we had to solve the problem. One of these disagreements were about the prototype and model. The prototype was the model we were going to base the final model off of. We were supposed to build the prototype like the final so we could see what we needed to change. One problem we had while building the prototype was if it was going to be single or double action. Single action meant to have a mechanism that you push on it, that would move and that would cause something else to move. Double action is when you push a foam plate then take your hands off that and raise a lever in two different steps. If we chose single actions there would be less confusion on how to use the model but if we used double action there would be less chances for it to break or to have problems. We talked about it and decided to do double action so the people using it wouldn’t be able to break it as easy and it would last longer.

 

We had disagreements when working in the group but that’s was not a bad thing, it’s just turns into problem if we couldn’t settle the disagreement. The disagreement about the prototype wasn’t bad because we got past it pretty quick, but one problem we had was when I accidentally ruined a final piece to the model. This was a problem because my partners didn’t want me to work on that piece anymore but we needed to finish that part. I messed it with the dremel. We were able to make a new part in a better way by using the table wire foam cutter. We made a new part and were able to finish the final model. The final model looked better than what we were expecting. The parts fit together and the mechanism worked well and all the tape looked smooth with little creases. The final model really showed how much we worked because the prototype had a lot of problems and the foam was cut without straight. All of our working together is showed in our collaboration log. The collaboration log is a log where we grade another on how they worked and if they participated. At the beginning of the project, are scores weren’t very high because we weren’t getting much work done or weren’t communicating well. Going through the project we worked better with each other and we made sure to put that on the collaboration log.

 

Even with all these problems we were able to finish our project with good craftsmanship. Since we now know we are able to work out problems pretty quick I think we will be able get work done quicker because we won’t have to worry about fighting and disagreeing. This is going to really help us in the future if we have other projects that we have a partner. That is how all the problems were helpful.