Category: 2018-2019

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Python Programming

Python is a language of programming that is known throughout the world, but it’s really new to me. The only code language that I’ve heard of are Java script and block coding. Since it’s new and I missed a lot of hours of coding, I was having a hard time understanding , but with the help from classmate and doing a lot of practice, I felt catching up with the lessons. The last course of Python in January to  was about Boolean, comparisons, if statement, for loops and etc. Down below are some exercises that I’ve done. 

code exercise

exercise output
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Stories of Cambodia

There are many stories that has written in the past by many famous authors. On the last few month of 2018, I got to learn about a famous story written by Mr. Nhouk Thaem called Kolab Pailin or we can call the rose of Pailin. This novel is very educational novel that can relate to our real a lot. I also learned about the water festival because this festival usually happen on November. That was a good lesson to learn because as a Cambodian, we need to know what happen during the year in our country

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Pre Chemistry

In the future academic year, I’ll will be learning chemistry, so I need to at least learn some of its basic. On the month of November and December 2018, I was learning about the periodic table. We learned about who created and rearrange the periodic tale and how it is formatted. We also learned about the elements in the periodic table and  not deeply into every single element, but the common ones in our everyday life. Other than that we took lessons about chemical bonding which include different types of bonds and why does it happen. In order to have better understand about those subjects, we used content from a website called Ck12 to help us.

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Are Single-use Plastics a Big Part of Human Life?

Everything in the world is not perfect. Let’s consider plastic as an example. It has different advantages at the same time it also has disadvantages. Plastic is use to help us with our daily life. It makes our life better and easier. For example, our laptop is made from plastic, but without it, it would take time to do research, to complete assignments, and there would not be connections between people who are far away. Single-use plastics are also made to help you in your daily life. You don’t have to bring big boxes or containers that take up a lot of space with you everywhere. You can just take plastic from any stores that they provide you and then throw it away after you use it. See, easy right? Even though single-use plastics are convenient products to use, we as change agents and humans who should care about the earth, we have to reduce the use of single-use plastics because they are not derived from renewable resources, they harm our environment and especially harm our health.

According to the United Nations environment, single-use plastics are defined as a disposable plastic that we use only once before thrown away or recycled and mostly refer to food packaging. A lot of times, single-use plastics are derived from the hydrocarbons in non-renewable resources such as gas and crude oil. The UN environment says, “If the growth in plastic production continues at the current rate, by 2050 the plastic industry may account for 20% of the world’s total oil consumption.” This means that society has to be careful with the use of single-use plastic also because this can help reduce the oil consumption in the plastic industry. Oil is formed from source of rock that is buried in the depth of Earth and needs a long time to reform. Before oil is turned into gasoline or other material to use there is a complicated process after it drills from the ocean (Oil and gas, Youtube.com, March 6, 2014). Imagine one day if the world is very lack of oil by just using plastics, What will it look like? How can all the vehicles get running without some products like gasoline, diesel fuel, liquified petroleum gas and etc. because all of those products are made from oil?

In addition, plastic industries in this whole world produce more than 400 million tons of plastic every year which almost 50% of plastic waste is food packaging (UN environment). After those single-use plastics are thrown away, they are being recycled, incinerated, end up landfills, dumps and some of them just settle in our surrounding. According to UN environment again, only 9% of those plastics are being recycled either to effectively recycled, lower in value applications and lost in process and 79 % of them end up in landfills, dumpsite and litter in the environment. At the coastal clean up, the most common type of plastic that can find is single-use plastics such as plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic wrappers and even styrofoam. They are very light and flexible that they can be blown by the wind to anywhere when they just settle in the environment. There are so many experts in the UN that study the impact of plastics on the environment. The UN environment mentions, “Did you know that in South Africa, there are so many plastic bags littering in the environment that many joke that plastic bags are “the new national flower.” Does it look good to have plastics to replace flower? It would be nice if they recycled to be something useful or we reduce and reuse it. Another thing when plastics litter in the environment and get in our water sources, they kill many animals. An article titled, “Releasing Balloons at Celebrations Is Harming Some Marine Creatures” in Newsela, balloons are one of the main factors that harm animals. People usually release balloons at any big celebrations like graduation day and they release thousands of them in just a day. After balloons are released, they will explode and drop somewhere in our ocean. Its string plays the role as the net that catch the fish and the balloon itself acts as jellyfish that some animals confuse to eat them (Newsela staff). When eating the plastics, animals result in malnutrition and intentional blockage which lead them to die easily (Grrlscientist). We jeopardize animals’ lives and harm the environment; all this is so that we feel better and want our lives to be easier. Do you think this is okay? Fair?

Single-use plastics not only harm the environment, but they also harm human health too. There is a chemical called Bisphenol-A (BPA) that mostly adds to commercial products, food containers and hygiene products and it is usually mixed with other chemical compounds to make strong and resilient plastic. BPA gets into our bodies through our diets because this chemical will leak into the food (Healthline) or by the touch of the fingers and mouth (Nordqvist, Medical News Today). When this chemical gets into our body, of course it will do something. Nordqvist, a writer in Medical News Today wrote, “BPA is an endocrine disruptor. It can imitate the body’s hormones, and it can interfere with the production, secretion, transport, action, function, and elimination of natural hormones” (Nordqvist, Medical News Today). As a result, this can lead to many diseases. BPA can lead to reproductive disorder, heart disease, diabetes, fetal brain development, asthma and breast and prostate cancer (Nordqvist, Medical News Today). Thus making us have shorter lives.

Single-use plastics are just part of plastic, but they have massive impacts on natural resources, the environment which is our surrounding, and they even affect each individual person. So, please start caring about this issue before it gets even bigger by just helping to reduce the use of single-use plastic in your daily life. You can use alternative products like stainless steel straw, lunch box, your own water bottle and your own reusable bags to replace those single-use plastics. However, if you don’t want to use those products, try not to use one separate bag for one item or you can reuse those plastics. If you only reduce one single-use plastic per day, that can also help because the longest journey starts from a single step.

Resource page:

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Life and Food

Food is a survival need to everyone of us. In this case, I am studying about the traditional food in Cambodia. Our goals are to find and tell stories of people who make traditional foods in Cambodia and to discover and share how food impacts each individual family, society and culture. In order to complete our goals, we have to go to many places. We were trying to reach out to many restaurants in Siem Reap as well as Phnom Penh to gather stories.

We first took a trip to Tady Chroy Ampil restaurant to interview the owner how do they manage their business, their services, their feeling that related to foods. We also interview some customers about how do they feel about the restaurant services and how the food is like. We didn’t forget about the chefs because they play an important role in the restaurant as well as exploring their kitchen. That was a pre-trip to practice the skills of taking pictures, taking video and especially interviewing to get good stories. We did the same thing when we visited the three restaurant in Siem Reap such as Mahob Khmer Cuisine, Cuisine Wat Damnak and The Sugar Palm, but along the way and during the trip we also visited some local market and local people too. We did go to Skun Market, Bamboo sticky rice shop, Kraom Market, Khmer rice noodle production and Night market. After we come back to Liger, we decided to go to another local market in Kandal which is Ta Kmao night market. We have put together some stories, photo essays, videos in a blog not just about foods, but how people feels about it and their memories.

Interestingly, we found two different definitions between Khmer food and cambodian food from different different people. From Khmer chef’s perspective, there are no differences between Khmer food and cambodian food. Instead, from a french chef’s perspective name Joannès Rivière, the owner Cuisine Wat Damnak, said “Cambodia food and Khmer food is different. Cambodia food is some kind of food that influenced by other countries but has been eaten in Cambodia a long time ago. For Khmer food is foods or recipe that created by ancestors in this country.”. In my opinion, there is no differences between these two thing. 

Team photo with Chef Joannes Riviere
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Digital Storytelling

Stories are told in many different ways not just words. You can use photos, videos etc, but you need to have good structure and skills in order to let people understand your story. I was introduce to Pixar story structure.

  1. Once upon a time, there was …… ( Introduction )
  2. Every day………. ( What do characters usually do? )
  3. One day………. ( Turning point )
  4. Because of that………… ( How the story change based on the turning )
  5. Because of that……… ( What happened next after the turning point )
  6. Until finally……….. ( Ending )

A Non Typical Girl ( Pixar Story Structure )

Once there was a 13 years old girl who wants to become a basketball player but don’t know how because her legs are paralyzed since she was 9. So she has to stay on the wheelchair every time. Everyday after her home school hours, she always watch basketball match, nor her father playing in the court. Until one day, she has seen a match with players who are sitting on wheelchairs like her. Because of that, she decided to ask her father for basketball training. Because of that, she could join the a wheelchair basketball team. Until finally she has succeeded her goal which to become a basketball player.     

A lot of times stories need pictures to support and we can tell stories throughout pictures too. That require photography skills basic understanding of camera.

Composition tips :

  • Straight horizon : make sure the background or anything in the picture is straight
  • Rule of third : try to line something on any of the line
Photo by: Cindy Lui
  • Head room : give some head space to the picture
  • Lead room : give some leading space to the picture if it is moving
  • Symmetry : divide one picture equally by two thing
  • Depth : give order to items is the picture.
  • Frame : put something in front of the view
  • Leading lines : there are some lines that point to one thing

Camera shot types :

  • Long shot : see a lot of views
  • Full shot : we can see someone from head to toes and there are also some space
  • Medium shot : we can see half of a person body
  • Close-up : we can ¼ of a person. Usually from chest to head
  • Extreme close-up : only show one specific part of anything
  • Low angle : we are standing at lower angle than what we want to take
  • High angle : we are standing at higher angle than what we want to take
  • Eye level : same level as where we are standing
  • Dutch angle/ tilt : we take tilted picture on purpose to make the picture looks good
  • Over the shoulder
Photo by: Cindy Lui
  • Bird-eyes view
Photo by: Panha Ly

Basic understanding of camera :

Exposure is the amount of light that come into your camera sensor and that determine how dark or light the photo will be. There are three things that affect exposure :

1.Shutter speed

Shutter speed is how fast your camera take to get one picture. It affect how much light go into your camera. If it takes long times to take one picture, there are more light coming. It measure in fraction of a second. It also affect the motion of the picture. If we take pictures of action, we would want to use fast shutter speed or else the picture won’t be clear.

2.Aperture

Aperture is how big you len is open. It affects the depth of feel and it measure as f-stop. The smaller number the f-stop, the wider the lens open, the more light coming in and it has shallow depth of feel.

3.ISO

ISO is how sensitive your camera is to light and it mostly refer fake light that is added to your picture. The higher of the ISO, the sensitive your camera is to light and your picture will be brighter.

It is also great to tell your stories using video. Here are some tips

1. Steadiness : don’t zoom and pan constantly and make sure each video is at least 10 second. Use tripod if needed. You should hold your camera using both hand and make sure it is close to your body and also bend your knee a little bit. 

2.  Sound : use a microphone to record because good sound can make your video more effective.

3. Lighting : find a good spot of light that make your video bright ( people don’t want to see dark face )

4. Different types of footage : A-roll is an interview video of one or two people. B-roll is action video that can gives details to A-roll. 

5. Shot set up : choose good background. You don’t want anything to distract your video while shooting.

 

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Matter

S for science, T for technology, E for engineer and finally M for math. This school year we are focusing on physical science which is the study matter and energy. This round 1, we had study about Scientific research, properties of matter and what is in matter. In class, we did experiments, playing educational game about science and I also had a chance to teach my class about protons, neutron and electrons. I really love those activities especially teaching my classmate because I had to do research to know everything in order to teach the whole class. That helped me understand more about the topic because I had to dig deeply into it. I learned a lot in this class at the same time I also have fun. 

This image shows the branches of matter
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5A Primary Mathematics

When it come to math, I always think that we have to go to school in order to know, but actually it is a practical subject that we use everyday in life. However, we go to school to learn the complex math. As a junior I study the Primary Mathematics ( Singaporean math book). we am now learning the 5A because we finished the 4A and 4B last year. Within the first seven weeks, we learned about whole number, order of operation, fraction and introduction algebra. We actually learn some of them last year, but indeed we need to level up our knowledge on it. In class we work in team, doing math problems and a lot of more. I found out that it was really helpful to work in team because if I have any struggle, my teammate could help explain or finding solution together.In the case where we finished our work early, we could practice the lesson on the Khan Academy( website for many subject), do some puzzles, Sudoku or finish up our homework. We also make a poster having the phrase ” Make the most of your learning poster ” which can remind us to give the best of our work, stay on course and not to waste our time. I really enjoyed learning math because it has been my favorite subject since I was young and whenever I have struggle on something I can expand my knowledge by doing farther research with my friends and teacher.

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Adobe Software

Multimedia was introduced by a facilitator named Cindy. I got to learn how to use the Adobe software such as Adobe Indesign, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom which I could use it for my learning. I first didn’t like it because I was new and I couldn’t  catch up with the lesson but then I found that it was fun to edit things after asking a friend to explained all tools in those software to me again. I have made a poster to show that I learn something. The last week of class, I was introduced to coding which I learned the basic code and how it works.   

This is the software that we learn in class
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SAY NO TO SINGLE USED PLASTIC

For the first round of year 3, SAY NO TO SINGLE USED PLASTIC is my exploration. Our goal in this exploration is to eliminate the single used plastics that are being used at Liger because nowadays plastic is really popular and really important to human but it affects a lot of things in the world such as harming marine life, destroying food chain, causing different pollution and last it affects us, human. So we as the Liger student, we would love to create change for our community and then spread it to the world because “ A long journey starts from single steps”.

For the first two weeks, we were focusing on general information about plastic such as finding cons and pros about plastic and putting ourselves into other people perspective. On the third week, we had narrow our topic to only focus on the single-used plastic because a lot of reusable things are made out of plastic such our computers, car and a lot more. We also went to collect trash in our school to use as our referent in the future. Week 4 and week 5, we tried to convince people not to use straws by pitching our ideas and making people feel guilty when they use it. We also visit a shop called BetterU that they use grass straws. Week 6, we had created a Facebook page named “ No Plastic Cambodia” to spread our action to the community. By the last week of our exploration, we had found a lot of alternative sources such as stainless steel straws, bamboo straws, grass straws, cornstarch straws, cornstarch box, stainless steel lunch box, nylon bag and more. We also launch our campaign of stop using single-used to all the student and staff at Liger and it was really successful which we gave out reusable bags and straws to everyone and explain them to use Liger core values for their responsibility to make the change. I hope that people will stop using single-used plastic and start to change their habit from now on.

Trip to BetterU to interview about grass straws
Trip to AEON first to get reusable bags and some alternative products