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Physic Round 1

This year, just like Khmer class, physic will also be happening four times a week. Physic has allowed me to understand how the world around me work; it illuminates my wonders. In the first round of physic, we focused on motions, both in one and two dimension/s. We had to work closely with trigonometry (SOH CAH TOA) and deal with gravity and the four kinematic equations. I have to say that I have a head start in physic class because of my last year AP Physic 1. Nevertheless, I learned new things and improved my ability to solve complex problems.

The four kinematic equations.
Making a Velocity Vs. Time graph and finding the displacement.
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Statistic Round 1

I love and enjoy learning math. This year, I get exposed to a completely new area of math, statistics. I find statistics to be very different from other math subjects such as algebra and geometry. Most of the time, in stats, there’s no such a thing as one correct answer, it really depends on your explanation and evidence using the graph and/or data. Students that learn statistic will take the 2018 AP Statistic Exam. In the first block of statistics, I learned about different ways to display and describe data using graphs, charts, and numbers. I also learned about density curve. The area under the density curve is always equal to one, and it represents the probability of a given condition.

An example of density curve drew by me for one of the exercises.
An example of displaying data using histogram and boxplot.
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Liger Marine Research Team (LMRT)

At the beginning of this school year, one of the facilitators offered a group of students an opportunity to do a long-term marine research at Koh Seh Island, located at the Kep Archipelago. I applied for this opportunity and was chosen to be one of the eight members of the Liger Marine Research Team (LMRT). Starting from this school year until the graduation of the first cohort, my team will do studies on part of the marine ecosystem and see how it recovers for damages. We will be collecting data and analyze it. Information will be shared among other people such as NGOs, governments, and schools. Our team has received a grant that will help us with the study, research, supplies, and transportation to the island. For this school year, we will be going to the island once every month. At there, we will be learning and working very closely to the Marine Conservation of Cambodia (MCC). We need to learn how to scuba dive, do reef survey, and other essential skills to help us with this long-term project. I am looking forward to learning and gain a lot of knowledge from this project!

The LMRT group with our banner
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To Spray or Not To Spray Exploration

To Spray or Not To Spray is my first exploration of the 2017-2018 school year at the Liger Leadership Academy. The main question for this project is whether Liger should continue to have EnviroCam comes and sprays insecticide at our campus. In this exploration, we focused on learning about pesticides. We took multiple trips to Snoul, CEDAC, EnviroCam, and different markets to understand more about pesticide and organic farming. As we progressed, we’ve decided to write a magazine, where each students chose a different pesticide-related topic and worked on it. I happened to choose and write about pesticide resistance. Pesticide resistance is the ability that allows pest to resist the effect of pesticides, and it occurred when the application of pesticide happened too frequently (find out more about pesticide resistance in the magazine). The main product for this exploration is of course the magazine but to answer the big question of the exploration, one of the students wrote an article called The Ultimate Battle: Liger vs Pests. In there, he concludes that Liger should continue to spray pesticides on the campus with some guide for students and staffs to follow for safety reason.

Insecticide being sprayed on the campus.
Pesticides with Khmer Translated label in one of the market we visited.
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Year Five Changing Cambodia

My fifth year at Liger has passed by really quickly. Like other years, the other students and I have gone through five explorations, three of which are required for everyone to go through. Those three are Khmer Rouge, Waste Management and Climate Change & Human Health related. The other two are Liger Digital Currency and Geology of Cambodia. Each exploration has made at least little changes to Cambodia in one way or another. The two that made the greatest impact in Cambodia are Geology of Cambodia and Ecosystem Services (Climate Change & Human Health related). Besides explorations, I also joined outside-class events that have made changes to Cambodia. One of those events is International Coastal Cleanup Day which led by Soliday and me.

 

Geology of Cambodia is an exploration where I got to learn about geology such as the type of rocks, how they form and how can I relate it to a place to see what it’s like long ago. In addition to learning in class, we took three field trips to different parts of Cambodia including Kep, Mondulkiri and Ratanakiri, and Koh Kong to see the type of rocks the region is made of, learn how to identify the types of rocks and come up with a conclusion on the geological history about the place. As the products of the exploration, we’ve created a Facebook Group and a blog. In the Facebook Group, we posted information about different places in Cambodia including the type of rock they’re made of, the age of the place and how this place got there. The Facebook group has a total of 1,066 members. There have been 25 posts uploaded by our group. Those posts include tectonic plates, Phnom Srey, Bousra waterfall, shale and may other geology-related topics. All of these posts are in both Khmer and English. The Facebook group is there to spread knowledge about how some part of Cambodia is the way it is right now, how some tourist sites get formed and some basic information to geology field. Meanwhile, the blog is there to share about the things we’ve learned in class, the field trips that we took, geology’s vocabulary and what we’ve learned. With our exploration products, blog and Facebook group, the geology group has helped to provide basic information about geology to other Cambodian and explain to them how some part of Cambodia is the way it is right now via our Facebook page and blog.

 

Ecosystem Services is my last exploration for this school year. Ecosystem services are all the services that ecosystem provides to humanity. In this exploration, students were divided into three teams and focus on different things. One of the team focuses on creating a play on lightning safety, the other one focus on building an organic farm and the third one focus on creating a survey about the fish stock. The Lightning group create a play on what to do when there are a big rain or storm and potential of lightning. The play involves everyone in the group. The Organic Farming group comes up with types of plants they should have for the farm that’ll be built on our trip and the benefits of those plants. The Survey group created a 17 questions survey to interview villagers on our trip to find out about climate change and fish stock. We work very closely with Song Saa Foundation, and the idea of creating the three teams also come from Song Saa Foundation. Therefore, a big part of our exploration is going to Koh Rong, where we can work closely to Song Saa Foundation. We went to Koh Rong for one week. At there, the lightning group has everyone do the play for two villages, Prek Svay and Derm Tkov to educate them about lightning protection because lightning said to be increasing. The Survey group also survey the two villages to see if the fish stock is reducing or not and to see if there’s a change in their climate. The Survey team then wrote a report about data that they’ve collected in a survey report format. Meanwhile, the Organic Farming team work with Song Saa Foundation on the trip to involve everyone in our group, a couple of other Song Saa Foundation staffs and lots of teens who live in Prek Svay to build an organic farm in Sala Song Saa school. The farm is built as a model to the villagers that they can build a farm to support their family. To sum everything up, in this exploration we educate people in Prek Svay and Derm Tkov on what to do when there’s potential of lightning, we build an organic farm as a model of what villagers can do as climate change is becoming a problem in Prek Svay, and wrote a report about fish stock and climate change based on our survey.

 

After doing the Marine Conservation from the previous school year, Soliday and I were inspired to lead the first International Coastal Cleanup for Cambodia. Together we chose 30 students including the first and second cohort who volunteered to help clean up our beach. Students were trained on how to keep track of trash they’ve collected so it can be put into an international database for the cleanup day. On 17th September 2016, we drove down to Kep and with some MCC staffs and volunteers, we’ve collected a total of 309 kilograms of trash. These were collected from two locations in Kep. The whole event lasts a day long. When we’ve done with the cleanup, Soliday brought all the data we’ve collected from the cleanup day and submitted them into the International Coastal Cleanup database. Since then, Cambodia name has registered on the cleanup day.

 

In conclusion, the three main things I did on my fifth year at Liger that make the most changes to Cambodia are: leading the first International Coastal Cleanup for Cambodia; being a part of the Ecosystem Services and the Geology exploration.

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Locks Breaking

My second independent discovery is about lock breaking. The goal for this independent discovery is to learn how to break locks.
I first began by asking one of the facilitators if I could borrow the Liger’s breakouts’ lock. After having it, I started to mess around with those locks and somehow got the combination of a combination-lock to mess up. I was so worried, but fortunately I managed to figure out a way that will tell me what the combination is.
For the rest of the independent discovery, I went on YouTube and tried to learn how to rake locks and break through door. Unfortunately most of the methods out there didn’t seem to work for me.
So I went on Google and look at ways people have used to break through locks and found out that they mainly use “lock picking tool”. Therefore, for the next round of independent discovery I will learn how to break locks with lock picking tool.

cobination paperclip

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Waste Management

This is my second exploration of my fifth year at Liger. In this exploration, we focus on starting a business that will help to solve waste problems for our community and other places. By the end of the exploration, we’ve written a feasibility study on the business plan and other details. Our business will be about collecting organic waste and turn it into compost because, in Phnom Penh, 60-80 percent of waste thrown away is organic. During the process of writing the proposal and come up with the business plan, we went out to our community so many times to interview people about trash. For example, what kind of trash do you throw the most, do you compose your organic waste and other trash-related questions. 

Link to our feasibility study: 

A small dumping ground for garbage in our community.

 

 

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Year Four Changing Cambodia

This is my fourth year of being at the Liger Learning Center, here are the Exploration I’ve done this year, VIP, Local Libraries, Marine Conservation, Entrepreneurship and Coding.

VIP: Change Liger
Local Libraries: Reading, Trust, Communication
Marine Conservation: Raise an awareness
Entrepreneurship: Learn
Coding: Learn, Better economic knowledge,

Visitor Information Palace (VIP)
At the end of this exploration we have created a visitor welcome center for our school named VIP. This VIP has change Liger a lot, not much for Cambodia though but at least a little bit. So how has it changed Cambodia? It will give the visitor a better understanding about Liger.

Local Library
We have created a small library box and locate it in front of Liger. We also made some for the other students and facilitators to take home. By doing so the other people, especially kids have access to free books in their community. They will improve their reading skill from the books, learn to take care shared-properties and be honest because they need to sign out and sign in.

Marine Conservation
By the end of the exploration we have written a proposal called “Algal farming as an alternative livelihood for Cambodian fishermen” to proposed to Dom and Mr.Jeff for a whole-year project to see if our solution is feasible or not. In the book there’s also a section where it’s about problems that is happening with Cambodian’s marine and marine life which will raise an awareness to the readers. If Dom and Mr.Jeff accept the proposal it’ll take the Change-Cambodia to the next level, which they have but it will only happen in a small scale. Therefore only a couple of volunteered student will be doing it.

Entrepreneurship
We didn’t make any changes for Cambodia. Instead we learn the process of how to start and run a business by using chilli sauce as an example.

Coding
The goal of this exploration is to learn and create a game where people can create their own economy. Player could invest on different sectors of the economy to make their citizens happy. Overall they have to think carefully and critically about how they want to spend their money. Somehow I feel like playing games, video games in specific, help me think faster. I hope the other players find it the same way as me too.

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Minecraft Animation

Minecraft Animation is my first Independent Discovery (ID) of my fifth year. For this ID, I have learned how to animate Minecraft character using Mine-Imator and create a short animation out of it. I primarily use YouTube as my learning source from a guy named AnxiousCynic (thank you very much).

After learning from him I then go ahead and try to animate something by myself. My first plan to make a steve and a zombie pigman fighting but after working on it for a while I realised that I need to practise more before going to something like that because my animation was so sloppy, the character walking is not smooth at all. So I went back and work on something simple than that. Here is what I have, it’s pretty smooth to me (I’m not focusing on the chicken).

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Marine Conservation

The goal of this exploration is to create a proposal to Dom and Mr.Jeff about “Proposal for a Feasibility Study of Algal Farming as an Alternative Livelihood for Cambodian Fishermen” and for them to read it and accept it. If they accepts that proposal all the student can learn about marine life and have experience on snorkel and scuba dive. More important is that we can make changes to Cambodia, Cambodian fisherman, Liger, Marine Conservation Cambodia (an organization we worked with) and Cambodia’s marine. One part of the exploration is going to Koh Seh, which located in Kep province. Koh Seh is a small island (take 7 minutes to walk across) surrounded by coral reef. In the middle of the island there is Marine Conservation Cambodia (MCC). Their vision of MCCis to help protect Cambodia’s marine life by focusing on seahorse.

  • The overall looks of Koh Seh. Taken by drone.