I have written a practice extended essay for Integrated Humanities this year. My research question is “To what extent can investment appraisal in everyday product and green technologies  be understood using traditional factors such as risks and return ”. The content of the essay are economics and business. For IB next year, I choose Economics and Psychology. For writing this essay, it can help me a lot for the courses of economics next year and also business in the future. It can also give me a lot of experience for writing my actual extended essay next year. After writing the essay, I learn a lot about how to write the extended essay, but I also find lots of weaknesses while I write the essay.

On June.6th, I had a meeting with my humanities teacher, Mr. Paul Sharry. The meeting was based on the feedback of the essay. During the discussion, we fixed some problem which based on some grammar mistakes and uses of phrases. We found that the biggest problem is the using of the language problem. My sentences are not well organised a lot in the essay. Another problem is not focus on Investment Appraisal techniques.

My major weakness is language, which found out by Mr.Sharry. He gave me some advice to improve English. He suggested me to read more books during the summer vacation and try to learn more of formal language. For sure, I also need to remember to focus on the argument. I am easy to get distracted from writing about to the selected argument to another useless argument.

Sustainability is the process of people maintaining change in a balanced environment. People need to reduce their ecological footprints to become more sustainable. Ecological footprint is the biggest factor to affect sustainability. More ecological footprint will produce more carbon footprints, kill more animals, damage more plants and the balance of marine ecosystem.

I have two habits which contribute to my ecological footprint. One is food delivery. At usual, I prefer food deliveries for my meals, especially weekends. I order food for every meals at weekends. Those produce lots of waste. There are lots of plastics, paper bags and sometimes food waste produced each week. Plastics can’t be recycled, so that will cause pollution what ever land pollution, water pollution and air pollution. In Singapore, we know the government would like to burn the garbage into ashes and pour them into the sea for more land. When burning the garbage, especially plastic, that will release dangerous chemicals, such as hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, dioxins, furans and heavy metals. When pouring the ashes, that will also cause some water pollutions and damage part of the marine ecosystem.

Another one is always eat meat, especially beef and lamb. Beef and lamb are my favourite food. At usual, I will eat 300g beef or lamb every day, sometimes every meals. Those will cause lots of cows or bulls and sheep die. It will give a bad influence to the land ecosystem. If the consumption increases, there will be more deforestation and water shortage from farming, and vast ocean dead zones from agricultural pollution. That will cause the greenhouse effect of the climate change. The temperature will increase a lot more.

I know those two habits are really bad to the ecosystem, so that I would like to make some changes there to reduce my ecological food prints. First thing I would like to change is reducing my food orders and going to the restaurant directly instead. That can reduce my ecological footprint to the pollutions, reduce my garbage production. Second one is reducing taking taxi, but take public transport, such as MRT, buses, or walking to the destination. It can help reduce the carbon dioxide and contribute more of nature. Third one is reducing consuming meat. It can reduce the greenhouse effect, deforestation and water shortage. Fourth one is recycling. I don’t do a good job on it, whatever in China or Singapore. At usual, I just put all the garbage together and throw those at the same place. I rarely separate them into recycle, non-recycle, harmful and glasses, so that will create lots of issues for the cleaning staff to separate. If I change, I think that will provide some help of recycling to protect the environment. If I need to choose one thing to change for the rest of my life, I would like to choose to reduce food orders because that is easy to solve. I order food because of laziness, but I think I can overcome my laziness, so I would like to reduce the food orders.

The best part of the project was the research and the solutions for our client because there is a great amount of information to describe why he should do and how he can do. During this project I have learned research, time management and group work  are the most important things. The most challenging thing for me is research because for vertical gardening walls, there is lack of information of sources to buy the walls. It cost me a lot of time to find that. I had to be creative idea when I gather my client information because I need to get some ideas or solutions of becoming more sustainable. In my team I was organised mostly (sometimes I was a little bit slow for our rate of progress) because I can finish my work properly and mostly on time.

What we did well

• Communication : Because both of us are capable of speaking Chinese, we were able to communicate with some of the Chinese speakers there. Additionally, both of us are capable of speaking English as well, which allowed us to communicate with the English speakers of the elderly.
• Action: Both of us were not the organisers of the activities, but we were useful to help run the activities. We used our language skills to help elders understand the game when they were confused. When the organisers needed help, we did our best to help them run the activities by encouraging them.

What we need to improve

• Working Attitude during the service: Both of us were a little bit shy while we helped elders. Maybe we can try to chat with them more for next few sessions. Then we may have a much better attitude than the sessions before.
• Attendance: Even though we had moments where we could not come to the service due to personal and academic reasons, I think we could still improve on our attendance so that we can fully participate in the service.

Idea for next sessions

• Play some card games to get close to the elders.
• TV games.

https://irlpodcast.org/season2/episode2

I think we don’t need to worry too much about the effects technology has onour lives because though we all use technologies and spend pretty much time on those, but not everyone is addicted to technologies. From the notes and the podcast. that proves most people can control themselves and keep them in the safe place when they use technologies. People can choose what they want to do.

Quotes from the Episode:

• Texting without words
• Texting with only stickers and emoji
• Using emoji and stickers to represent meaning of words

Conventions:

In conventions, there are four major stages to evaluate a eligible episode. They are pre-intro bumper, standard introduction, chunked segments and standard outro. For pre-intro bumper, the episode did well. There is a clearly introduction of texted only in Emoji for a month. It told you what would happen during the episode. For standard introduction, For standard introduction, it had about 15 seconds to introduce. It was less than 20 seconds. For chunked segments, it mentioned the benefit of text with the emoji. It also tells us how they text with emoji together. For standard outro, it has the goodbye message and outro music. It helps me to figure out which one should be really tough for me, which one should be easy for me. For my group, we choose to turn off the notification. We would like to face the tough challenge instead of facing the easy one.

Questions:

How do they can keep doing that but others not?

If the emoji cannot represent the meaning, what should we do?

Respiration is a chemical reaction that happens in all living cells, such as animal cells, plant cells. It is the way that energy is released from glucose so that all the other chemical processes needed for life can happen. There are two different kinds of respiration. One is aerobic respiration. One is anaerobic respiration. The formula of aerobic respiration is glucose+oxygen–carbon dioxide+water. In aerobic respiration, glucose and oxygen changed into carbon dioxide, water and release energy, In anaerobic respiration,  glucose breaks down without oxygen. Anaerobic respiration produces lactic acid. This can lead to painful muscle cramps. Respiration is necessary because no respiration, no food for plants; no respiration, no humans will be alive. Respiration is really important. Hope that help. Hope you will not be stuck by the homework of respiration.

For stop motions project, I worked with Andy for the project. For our partner agreement, we mostly obey that. We tell others what he needs to do for help, when we need to work online together. It was well organised actually. For things we need to add on, I think that should be the technologies thing. Sometimes, I am confused how to do the work for my part, but I know how to work on his part. May be a suitable division of the work is necessary to add on our partner agreement. During the project period, we all working on our work. We have a clearly division of work, so we know what we need to do for purpose. We all help each other well. If he needs me to do something, I would do it in the correct way. So, he was able to rely on me when I helped him. I can try to learn more technically skills, such as editing videos. If I know more, I will become more helpful for my partners.

Reflection of Rationale

What is the ‘emotional significance’ in this moment (what should the audience feel and why?) Nostalgia, Safety, Warmth, Resonant?

Resonance as in they understand and realise that everyone has some types of objects that they emotionally rely on. Nostalgia as they recall what everyone of their favourite possessions carry. Explaining that hoodies protect the writer of this vignette shine light on how individuals use their items as an emotional shield and support. Using images that imply protection created by the hoodie like hoodie pocket providing heat for cold hands gives off warmth toward the audience.

What is the tone you want to convey in your work, and how does that reflect the original word choices in the passage?

The final work should create a comfortable atmosphere with little tension, and just a casual story about hoodies. “Mitten”, and “warmly baked goods” are outstanding examples of a casual, warming tone. The writer used an informal register as if he is talking to you face to face. The work should feel intimate and engaging. “Care about you very much”, “what it”, and “but”, all these words create a reassuring tone, the audience is being trusted with the author’s protection and insecurities.

Should the interpretation have voice over, music, dialogue, or a combination of all? What guides that decision?

Yes. Because those elements will affect the atmosphere we are trying to create. We will look back at various stages of production to determine whether we have created the atmosphere we wished for, and go on from there.

Summarise the scene in three words and explain why you chose them:

Protection, Memory, Trust. The hoodies protected the writer from the outside world but also hid his insecurities, supporting him throughout. Every hoodie is unique to him and carries special memories. He would only exchange hoodies out of trust because every hoody means something.

What is one question you would want your audience to wonder about and why?

I would want my audience to wonder how hoodies would carry such significance. They would be more interested in the story plot and how it came to be.

We all communicate clearly when we make the video. We have a clearly division of work. We all know what we need to do. The quality of the video shows our achievement for the project.

Video

After we finished the lesson, we did SWOT Analysis as the reflection for our lesson. For the opportunities that the TIFs identified, they would like to use small games, such as, Simon Says. This game can help children to learn new things faster. They need to repeat the word which they learn for many time which is repetition. Repetition is good for their memory of knowledge, easy to remember. It can also make them become active instead of sitting there and listening. We still have other activities, such as memory games, designing their own patterns, sharing their work which is gallery walk. Those can also make them creative and familiar to others. For the TIFs, they have a unit which includes culture. They would like to use some of sources from our group to help to support their lessons. For the adaptions, the TIFs suggest that they would like to make the language chunks become easier. Our language chunks are a bit harder to children. By the way, the TIFs know how to speak the local language. They would like to include some of local language to help children understand the statements or key points of the lessons.

For our lesson, I think we did a good job for that. All of the contents were based on Songket Textile which was the traditional culture. The activities or games we organised were all related to 21st century thinking and collaboration skills, such as Simon Says, memory games, design patterns as a group, gallery walk. Our group put every thing on the whiteboard and print the rest of resources out. We drew the patterns which exist already and make the memory card. Simon Says and memory games also made them become much more active during the lesson. For the language chunks, ours were a bit harder than for children’s age. We should make it easier and know more information of their levels of English. For our activities plan, I think we followed most of the stages, but still, some part felt like missing organised. By the way, after we tested for our lesson, we added some activities or stages to help connect our lesson. For the SWOT Analysis, we correctly reflected our lessons and found strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats there which represents on the image.