#ib535

Continue to observe nature for your own inspirations!!!

I organized this PBIA to follow the course throughout the weeks chronologically. Starting with week 1 at the bottom, all the way to week 8 at the top. For each week, I included the discussion project, vocabulary, reading I found interesting, and a synopsis of the lesson and how I reacted to this weeks topics. At the bottom of each post I added hashtags to organize the information by keywords, such as what week it should be included in, the main point of the post, and if it was a lesson, reading, vocab, etc. At the bottom of each discussion I added what I learned from it, and what I will do with the information in the future. For the readings, I summarized why it was helpful and most interesting underneath the description. In each lesson review, I added the dates of questions I came up with during that unit, to mark my progression through the course.

I have learned so much from this course, especially about bioinspiration. My vision for the future would to see more of these ideas and designs incorporated into the world around me. For example, I would love to see the Seawater Greenhouse be incorporated into every area that struggles growing food and finding freshwater. Right now California is having a severe drought. This technology can be used to water the crops and food being grown there. I have learned that nature is not easy to replicate. Because science and the biological systems we study are so complex, it is best to keep bioinspiration ideas simple, do not replicate everything about the idea, just one main good one. I want to incorporate a lot of the ideas learned in these 8 units into my biology classroom this year. First, I would like to introduce my students to bioinspiration and biomimicry. I will admit that I even as a biology teacher did not know too much about this topic before the class. Showing students how so many amazing good inventions and ideas can come from nature, will hopefully inspire them to look at nature differently, like I do now. I ask more questions, what is the purpose of that system? Why is it constructed like that? etc. Second I would like to incorporate more clean energy ideas into my classroom and have my students create a presentation discussing a specific type of clean energy. I will explain to my students the harm of our current human systems, and why a closed loop system is better than a linear one, like we use now.

I have changed so much from this course. The first thing I learned was that bioinspiration and biomimicry is not the same. Although something is inspired by nature, like a solar panel is from photosynthesis, does not mean it completely mimics nature. Plants use chloroplasts to absorb energy from the sun, where we create solar panels, that use different chemicals and technology to absorb the energy. That is not biomimicry but bioinspiration. I have also changed by wanting to add more alternative energy sources into my life. During the energy unit, I began researching new ways to save and reduce my dependency on running water. There are so many great ways to conserve water, and one of them is collecting rain water to use for watering plants and the lawn. I plan on building a rain water collection device out of a couple sealed garbage cans, and a pipe that runs from my gutters, then at the bottom of the garbage can, I will have a hose attached that I can use to water my plants. Also I would like to research energy saving windows that reduce the amount of heat absorbed from the sun, and brought into my house. Another interesting thing I learned was about some home that filter their air through tunneling underground, that cools the air in the summer, and heats the air in the winter. I would like to research this idea in the future, to see what I can incorporate into my home. Obviously some of the ideas we learned in the course are far from being available to the public in the near future, but I would like to do what I can to have a  less negative impact on this Earth, and start using closed loop systems.

The best reference for my IB535 course. For every project, lesson, vocab I start with this website. It gives short background information about the biological system, while giving ideas of bioinspiration about the system.