Unit 9 Reflection

  This unit was about the classification of species, and the characteristics by which they are classified. Species where originally classified into 7 levels, however nowadays we classify into 8 taxonomic levels. The levels from broadest to smallest are: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. The Bacteria and viruses vodcast explained how Bacteria can be classified as gram-positive or gram-negative, and viruses infect cells and force the cell to create more of the virus. The fungi and plants vodcast explained their properties and how they are classified. In the many vodcasts about chordates and invertebrates we learned the characteristics of many phylums and classes in the kingdom Animalia. Classification might seem tedious and useless, however it is significant in sharing scientific observations and understanding genetic relationships. I want to learn more about the classifycation of different species and their characteristics so that I can better understand their evolutionary relationships.

Budding video used in What on Earth Presentation

   In this unit we also did a What on Earth Presentation. We had the ability to choose our own organism to research and do a presentation for in front of the class. My presentation was on yeast and it can be viewed below. The requirements for this project where more vague and allowed us the option to research and report on what we thought was important on the topic. This gave us more freedom to choose what we presented about. For my project I did a lot of research however I only presented the parts that I thought where useful and people would like to know, instead of putting in all the information that I could find. For the slides I used less wording and more pictures because it was a presentation and not a report so people would look more at the pictures instead of the words. To enhance people's understanding of the topic of budding I added a time-lapse of the budding process that I found on YouTube to the presentation. To make the presentation more apparent to everyday life I spent most of the presentation describing how yeast is used in everyday things such as bread, alchlohal, or root beer. Overall I think that the presentation went well and in the process I learned how to make a presentation accurate and engaging without incisive guidelines.