STEM Foundations Notebook

The STEM Foundation’s Notebook was a process in which we took down information, showed our creativity, and learned how to be organized in notes. This STEM Foundations Notebook helped me to better understand my school better and how to function in certain processes and problems. This notebook definitely impacted what kind of student I was at STEM. It impacted me because it showed how to act in projects which is helpful considering STEM does a lot of projects that help us to do better in the future.

 

The requirements of the STEM Foundations Notebook was that you had to love your notebook. This was not a problem for me. If you follow this rule you had to know problem following the other requirements. One of these requirements is that you need to be unique in each entry and to add color and pictures as much as you can. Whenever you make a new entry it will be on a new page, new heading, and an accurate date. This information will be recorded in the table of contents in our STEM Foundations Notebook, which is held in the first two pages. When you attach materials in to your notebook, always use tape or glue sticks. Never use staples! You can use many different types of utensils that bring life to your STEM Foundations notebook. Some examples are colored pencils, pens, gel pens, and more! Also, you never use marker (this could make information on the other side of the page hard to read), instead write in marker on another piece of paper, then you can paste that to the notebook paper. Since you love your notebook we never just doodle without thought or rip out pages. Our STEM Foundations notebooks are composition notebooks and ripping out pages is not what they are meant for. You would like to make a new entry that is not required you always add that entry to your table of contents also. Don’t scribble out a mistake. Be honest instead and simply draw a line through your mistake. We also were required to bring this notebook to STEM Foundations class every day.

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I grew in creativity because I used new ways to show information. For example, I used to only use pen and pencil when writing directions but now I almost always have color in all of my entries. I also learned to connect the context with pictures that helped me to better understand the material learned in that entry. In this specific project, creativity was being more unique and specific to your experience in explaining something that you learned that day in STEM Foundations. To be unique helped me to remember the content better because it was me who made the idea. This is why I don’t really copy off of peoples notes for STEM Foundations. When I find my own way to describe process it helps me more than copying off of someone else.

 

Another example of creative growth would be in my notebook on Page 28 in my Medium Exploration Entry. I feel that I grew in creativity especially in my title because, in the title “Watercolor” I wrote it in different colors, representing paint. I also, put two different kinds of paintbrushes that we learned about: Fan brush and a Round brush. A fan brush is helpful for making an object look wispy. For example, you could make a tree look nice with this type of brush. A round brush is used for crisp painted lines. This makes crisp lines because, it holds a good amount of water and this makes the line crisp and clean with very few loose strands on the line. In between these paint brushes are many dots of color that represents paint that we used. I feel that these colors were bright and really followed the requirement of using color whenever possible. In this specific part I feel that I grew in creatively using my colors.

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When I first got my STEM Foundations Notebook, I really did love it but I had a problem. My water bottle in my book bag spilled all over my STEM Foundations Notebook! This led me to buy a new notebook and then start all over in my entries. Even though this was a big struggle it helped me to be more creative in my new entries. I know that I was more creative from then on because when I started to rewrite new entries and attach paper and draw new pictures, it was being more specific to me.

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I know what my STEM Foundations notebook is because it was unique in its own way to me.This artifact really shows that I grew in creativity because, I was unique and original in my entry of my STEM Foundations Notebook. To me that is what creativity is. This will impact me going forward as I start to make more complex notes in later grades. This creativity experience will help me to better make these notes.

 

I also grew in inquiry because I would ask questions to myself like: Is this helpful for me to know? Is it appropriate to include this piece of content? Also am I using craftsmanship? Craftsmanship is not being a good artist. Craftsmanship is showing effort through making clean and purposeful lines, and making clean cuts when you use scissors. For example, when I cut out readings I would use the base line technique on the edges. This is when you draw a line close to the edge of the paper and then cut starting on the edge of the paper then use the line as the middle part. Inquiry to me in this specific time was to be critiquing yourself on what you do and to ask those questions to get you to your best product.

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This specific shows my growth in inquiry before because, I learned to ask myself where something would go before I glued the content down. The content that is in this entry is the base line technique explained above, the back and forth cutting (zig-zag cutting technique), how to make a spiral, and different tears of paper that you can make without using scissors. These papers required me to use inquiry more than I have before because, I really had to ask myself, is this what the result should be? These questions really helped me to understand Collage Technique a lot better than before.

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Inquiry was used in this artifact because, inquiry(as said above) is, in this case, self-critiquing yourself because, I did challenge my work by asking myself those questions that really pushed me to my best ability.