"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do" – Steve Jobs
Category: Explorations
Explorations are project-based experiences during which students work together in groups to explore a relevant, often complex question, problem or challenge. This project-based learning is almost always enhanced with intensive activities that involve student immersion in real-world experiences outside of the classroom.
LigerSat team visited the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia (NPIC). There we met the professors to talk about their ground station and the process to acquire amateur radio license. We were surprised that they have to go through a strict and time-consuming process to get the government approval for their ground station. Only two professors passed the technician amateur radio test last year. Anyway, Dean of Engineering suggested our team to talk about our CubeSat mission to the Ministry of Telecommunication to approval for building an Earth station as well as the satellite. After the meeting, we were delighted to have a tour around their campus. We were amazed by the hand-on equipment and diverse facilities.
Meeting with Engineering Dean and other professors about CubeSAT
NPIC telecommunication lab that consists of transmitters and radios
Getting a tour from a young professor
At NPIC robotics lab with manufacturing demonstration
LigerSat joined the first satellite symposium in Xi’an, China to better understand CubeSat concepts, and most importantly to network with experts and mentors that able to help our CubeSat project. We met teams from Bangladesh, Israel, China and experts from Japan, Caly Poly University, China, Costa Rika, and the United Kingdom.
I have learned that CubeSat constellation will take over space and form a network like an internet. This constellation will provide real-time data and benefit to many industries.
There are presentations, some are simple and most are technical. Listening to technical concepts help me to improve my listening skill as well as get expose to something new. Besides listening to presentations, we networked with experts and companies because our team needed supports in human resources, satellite components, guides, ideas and strategies to developing a CubeSat.
The last Exploration of the year 2017-2018 was performing a play, titled “the Network”. The play displayed the view of using social media, concerning in relationship, advertising or even abusing by inappropriate posts on the network.
My character was a flighty guy, who flirted with a girl and then posted her hot photo to social media during her birthday. After that breakup, I flirted with another girl, but sadly it was not successful. However, the main character didn’t enjoy using social as I did. He faced many social problems when using the Network (social media), so he wanted to destroy it by spreading a virus and he did.
Previously, my Dinosaur Exploration had suspected figures like dinosaur footprints at Battambang Province, though we couldn’t verify them as dinosaur footprint a 100 percent. Therefore, we invited two Thai paleontologists to validate on the footprints based on their background in biology and geology.
We were all thrilled about these footprints. If these footprints are agreed by experts to be dinosaur footprint, it would be the first dinosaur footprint ever found in Cambodia. Unfortunately, one of the paleontologists was convinced that they are not dinosaur footprint, they are flute casts, it was caused by the river flow and small rock on the bed. We were really disappointed; however, I think it is what most scientists experience during their discovery.
As a project-based learning school, Liger opens opportunities for students to explore in STEM. As part of that, robotics is one of them. For myself, I enjoy building robots since Liger introduced Lego robotics four years ago. Last year, 2017, I moved to a more advanced robotics calls, VEX, and joined its competition in Taiwan. No surprise, this year I was given another opportunity to be on Liger team to compete in VEX competition again but at Thailand.
What my team has learned from the 2017 competition we applied to our strategy this year. Some of the strategies we have observed from other teams were that they use aluminum instead of steels, two batteries instead of one and Omni wheels instead of standard wheels. One strategy we heard from a team is that design in computer software before it assembles the robot.
Because I had experience from the previous competition, I had to give support to freshmen and freshwomen that were given for this robotics opportunity as well. Liger has two teams. I was in the male team calls Botjisu, and a female team calls Beta-B. A lot of time, people that were new to robotics were struggling in both programming and mechanic; thus, I gave them advice and techniques, especially how they assembly pieces together.
Our team aimed for the champion for this competition. Because we have enough materials we decided to make five mechanisms on our robot to be capable of doing all the tasks. Our robot was huge and heavy. During the testing at our Lab, our robot worked well. Though, sometimes the wheel motors became stalling (overheat) even when driving the robot on a smooth surface. We don’t want it to be stall during our competition.
After giving up the time to make this robot be alive for the competition, finally, the day had come. I had hope that our robot will succeed. A lot of people was amazed by how cool it looks and its ability to do many tasks. Unfortunately, our robot became stalling on the battlefield in a couple matches, even when the robot was moving, it moved slowly. This issue putting our team below the chart. We made a tough decision at the last minute to remove three mechanisms away to reduce its load, though we gave up two matches to have time removing the parts away. We made the right decision, in our last qualifying matches, our robot became a hero. It was so fast that it could score so many points for our team and allies-team. The moment was the most exciting for us. For the final tournament, we allied with two other teams. We crushed first couple games, but sadly on our semifinal game, the scores were so close. Our competitor team won. Even though we didn’t win anything, however, we won our heart to work as a team. This competition made me understand, “Keep it simple” mean. A simple robot could be a champion.
I couldn’t really describe how much I was proud of my team that we made till the semi-final!
Liger Digital Currency is the first application developed by Liger students that had launched. It not just a simple application, it is a digital currency system that is more likely a PayPal that uses only for Liger campus. Many students had involved in this project since 2016 until the official launch on November 20, 2017. We developed this system from scratch with Node.js platform and we hire none other developers to build this. The developers are 15 years old Liger students and this is including me. I am the main developer, coding in many pages of the application. I am a hybrid developer meaning I code the back-end and also the front end. Throughout, this application, I had exposed of many web skills, such as Login Authentication with Google, working with Postgres database, cookies, HTTP requests and so on. Beside coding, I involved in discussion and meetings with the school director about the problems and the solutions to make the system works as best. This is the biggest project I work so far and what I get was a lot of experience.
“Rawr! Raw! I’m the T-Rex, I’m gonna eat you little pig!” That what is kid might play with their dinosaur toy during their childhood.
Anyway, mentioning about dinosaurs, these creatures had walked on the planet Earth about 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs fossils and prints had been discovered over all continents but there were no discovery found in Cambodia. Our dinosaur Exploration will change this because we are investigating on dinosaurs footprints found in Battambang Province, Cambodia by Thai paleontologists. I didn’t faith about the footprints until I travelled to the site. As I investigate more, I was blown away and I have a strong faith that at least a few of them are dinosaur footprints. We went to the site and I wrote a blog post about the whole trip: Link. During the trip, we made field method of the footprints casting. I had a big responsibility flying the drone, taking eye bird view picture of the site geography for mapping and documentary. I also involved in making casting the footprints which is hard.
During the class, I made the map of the site and labeling the casting. We need the map because it is a piece of evidence that needed in our report to validate if the footprint. We wrote a report about the find, analyzed the footprints and send it to paleontologist. Not just that, we gave copies of the report to the Director of Mine Energy and Resource and those report he presented in South East Asia Geology conference. The most amazing part is that we contacted to many paleontologists and couple of amazed with us and want to help.
Scientific research about dinosaur was very new. I even had difficulty pronouncing terms, especially “Paleontologist” term. During class discussion, I played a role to share ideas. I took also initiative leading the team to brainstorm about outreach possibility. Our brainstorm were narrowed down to podcasting adding dinosaur, curriculum to government education and creating kid book.
Being a part in the Exploration, I had exposed to the science field, and I always excited to learn about dinosaur because I think dinosaur are cool like what most kids think.
You also can check out our website we built for including information, stories about this research. Link
This is our documentary about our dinosaur investigation.
On August 24, 2017, I traveled to Battambang Province with my Dinosaur Exploration to conduct an investigation about dinosaur footprints at a site. Our team spent a day walking around the area to do field method for possible footprints such as taking notes, measuring the length and the size of the footprints, identifying rock type and recording geographic coordinates and elevation. We then used clay and plaster of paris to make casts of the footprints for more investigation in class. Besides doing the casts, we interviewed some people around the area whether they believe in dinosaurs. It turned out that they don’t believe in dinosaurs at all, they just saw them on TV. I was such shock to see rocks that have weird looking holes, almost like something more than nature made them. Honestly, I wasn’t convinced that the rocks my learning coordinator showed from his photos in our class were possible dinosaur footprint, until the visiting to the site. Still, my assumption cannot be the conclusion of the investigation, we needed a deeper investigation to answer are these genuine dinosaur footprints? The experience that I drew back from the trip was immense even though it was only from a day. I never have done a field method nor casting a footprint before. Our team even develop our own casting method when the technique from the internet didn’t work. It was a hard-working, casting under a hot sun, walking through bushes and even harder when we don’t have a paleontologist to guide the investigation. Hard work was not a problem because of the excitement just anchor in our mind, just to think about the revealing of this mystery.
Coding Exploration has 16 students that passed the brain test. Before the Exploration, we have an expertise by Skype with Michael, learned to use git commands. After git, we moved to Javascript, practiced and learned it in Codecademy. The goal of the Exploration is to make an economic game using Javascript. We have four teams are UI team designs user interface, data team gets data from data sheets and write it in Javascript and gives it to game engine team, game engine team writes code how the game works and tutorial team designs tutorial pages. All teams are collaborating with each other to make the amazing game.
Our school does Project based learning and Liger students love it. Dr Hang Chounaron Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport came to our school and he’s very interesting what we are doing in Liger. He wants to try to do PBL at government schools. So, he asked Liger to help to make sample projects, to teach teachers how to do projects and to evaluate.
We have three Explorations that worked together for the mission are PBL, STEM and Evaluate. I was in PBL doing about Moral & Civic Education. Our role is to make a presentation how to do a presentation and do a project about the Moral & Civic Education. So when we go to Kratie school we presented to the teachers at public school how to do a presentation and the product we had done one the topic.
For our project, we have to interview six women and pick one of them to present. After we interviewed them we wanted to make a role play. It’s not easy to act out an angry man yelling at the girl like that, but I did my best to do that.
