Reflection
I learned a lot about a wide range of subjects throughout this project. Each lab we did - chromatography, DNA fingerprinting, testing blood samples - I learned new and valuable skills from each of them. We learned a ton about DNA and various experiments we could preform on it. As for legal stuff, towards the end we looked up a lot from the California penal code to see what convictions we could get and to read up on laws specific to murders in California. Therefore we learned convictions for different offenses, how to classify different murders, and specifically to our presentation, convictions for being an accomplice to murder. I would like to learn more regarding California law, although this doesn't really pertain to sciences as much. I was very interested in all of the experiments that we used DNA in, so I would like to continue manipulating and experimenting with it.
Next year for this project, I think the students should research the legal aspect of this more. Although we did do a good amount of it, I still think it could have been a lot more clear, especially since the point of our overall presentation was to gather enough evidence to issue a warrant for an (or multiple) arrest(s). What constitutes "enough evidence"? What does a warrant even do? Does this lead to a conviction? All of these, in my opinion, should be questions easily answered by the groups of students doing this project, although I doubt all of them could. Thus, the legal aspect is extremely important to the project - the goal is to receive an arrest warrant after all. If the project had been based purely on evidence we gathered ourselves and tests we ran ourselves with no jury in the end, it would have been forgivable. But students should research more heavily into law next year.
I stayed on task very well during this whole project, I have never had any issues like that when I work with this group of people. I do wish I would have practiced my slides by myself over break more, I stumbled on my words a couple times. I also think that I could have memorized them, so I wouldn't have to glance at the screen every couple of seconds. .
I thought my group and I stayed on task very well for this entire project. My group and I (we have worked together many times in the past) have never had any problems with goofing off or not getting our work done together, so we did fine. We put a lot of effort into our presentation, making the powerpoint and even printing out evidence packets for the jury, which we bound into little booklets. We wanted to seem more professional to score more points with our audience, and it definitely worked. I do wish that we had practiced our presentation more though, we stumbled on our words a handful of times, but I think it went well.
Next year for this project, I think the students should research the legal aspect of this more. Although we did do a good amount of it, I still think it could have been a lot more clear, especially since the point of our overall presentation was to gather enough evidence to issue a warrant for an (or multiple) arrest(s). What constitutes "enough evidence"? What does a warrant even do? Does this lead to a conviction? All of these, in my opinion, should be questions easily answered by the groups of students doing this project, although I doubt all of them could. Thus, the legal aspect is extremely important to the project - the goal is to receive an arrest warrant after all. If the project had been based purely on evidence we gathered ourselves and tests we ran ourselves with no jury in the end, it would have been forgivable. But students should research more heavily into law next year.
I stayed on task very well during this whole project, I have never had any issues like that when I work with this group of people. I do wish I would have practiced my slides by myself over break more, I stumbled on my words a couple times. I also think that I could have memorized them, so I wouldn't have to glance at the screen every couple of seconds. .
I thought my group and I stayed on task very well for this entire project. My group and I (we have worked together many times in the past) have never had any problems with goofing off or not getting our work done together, so we did fine. We put a lot of effort into our presentation, making the powerpoint and even printing out evidence packets for the jury, which we bound into little booklets. We wanted to seem more professional to score more points with our audience, and it definitely worked. I do wish that we had practiced our presentation more though, we stumbled on our words a handful of times, but I think it went well.