Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Group 4 project

By Nishtha Rampuria

The group 4 project is an integral part of the IB requirements as it provides us with the interesting opportunity to apply knowledge and skills learned in class to real life by collaborating with people of other disciplines. This year we decided to apply this project to produce a real-life greenhouse in the school. The project allowed us to indulge in an interdisciplinary project wherein we got the chance to work with teams who specialized in the subjects of Computer Science, Business/Economics, ESAS, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. I was a part of the Biology group and we were majorly looking to investigate what plants to grow, how to improve soil quality etc.

We began by conversing with the gardener to fully comprehend the problems he faces in the current greenhouse which include not receiving enough compost, soil quality, types of plants grown. To address these problems, we divided our work into three parts- an experiment wherein we compared different fertilizers with each other, an experiment wherein we compared compost soil with fertilizer soil and a control of plain soil and finally an experiment to understand the stomatal density of each plant identified to understand how much oxygen they produce. My friend and I realized the imperativeness of starting the compost pit which exists, however, does not function. We began by doing research regarding the amount of waste and the management of it to start off. We were appalled when the management informed us that over 200-350 kgs of biodegradable waste is produced every day in our school. We did further research and gained information on what kind of waste produced in school can be utilized for the same. The support received from the management and school staff was overwhelming. Compost is considered a soil conditioner and can improve almost any soil's quality. Through research, we found that commercial compost only provides the elements carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus however homemade compost also provides the nutrients of manganese, copper etc. The goals we planned to achieve through the compost pit are: Minimize and utilize waste from the kitchen, garden, DT lab, and horse riding area, use the waste to create compost with the final goal of having completely organic plants grow in the greenhouse and across the school, promote an environmentally conscious mindset in the student body and promote goals of GREEN PATHWAYS.

We are now in the process of creating a formal proposal and investigating other organizations and companies that have expertise in this. Hopefully, through this, we can promote an environmentally conscious mindset and sustainability. Personally, I found this project extremely intriguing as I got the opportunity to apply skills I will require in my real life when I start initiatives. Additionally, this helped me understand how to start initiatives and gave me a sneak-peak into entrepreneurship. I would like to get into research further in life hence this was a great opportunity to perform experiments relevant to real-life. It also helped me understand the importance of teamwork to produce some diverse and intriguing work. We were all working on very different tangents however managed to connect it all together with proper communication skills. The IB learner skills I improved through this project were:
Inquirers because we did intensive research putting our subject's knowledge into the project. Additionally we inquired about the problem that exists in the current greenhouse and tried to improve the same, knowledgeable as we gained extensive knowledge about our specific fields and knowledge of new skills, caring as the entire project was surrounded around the theme of environment and we hope to improve it, open-minded as we interacted with various subject groups, imbibing and altering our project to include their inputs, being a communicator was crucial given this was an interdisciplinary project, thinkers as we had limited resources from which we had to get relevant research from it, reflective as we failed a few experiments initially and understood how to improve the same and finally risk takers as we ventured into a project that results into a real life project. 

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