Unit 9 Reflection

    This unit was called "What On Earth Evolved?" In this unit, we learned about the taxonomy of different organisms. The first vodcast taught us the basics including the the order of classification, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, and etc... As we went further along we went deeper into each kingdom, to see what makes it up. We learned about the different domains. Within the domains we went deeper into one of the most  important one, Eukarya. In Eukarya, we learned about the main kingdoms in it including: Plantae, Animalia, Protista, and Fungus. Because of how much information was in each kingdom, we decided to focus most of our time for the kingdom Animalia. One of the main ideas was how Animalia have two different types of organisms, vertebrates (meaning with a back bone) and invertebrates (which do not have back bones). The phylum vodcast were divided into invertebrates and vertebrates. One of the most important organism we learned about in these vodcast was the Tiktaalik because this organism was the first one to come out of the water to go on land. This move then eventually led to many different land creatures, us included. This then us to learn about mammalia, the phylum we are in.
     After completing this unit, I still have some unanswered question, even with all the information we were given. I am still curious about the kingdom, Protista. We learned that it was a kingdom in which organisms, which did not fit elsewhere, were put, but I still wonder why scientist are still unable to make a categorize them differently. At the same time, I would have also enjoyed learning more about the Protistas, for I think they seem very interesting. I also felt that this unit did indeed answer some of the unanswered questions and further question from the from the Timeline lab, my reflection of that lab is here.

    Another large part of the unit was the What On Earth Evolved presentations. Everyone in the class was given an organism to research and later present to the class. I decided to go with wheat. Through this project, I learned a lot about my organism and how it helped shape the world. Through this project I was able to better my talking skills and also managing my time. I was also able to research about something that I did find interesting. I felt that I was able to manage my time pretty well in making the presentation, but on the other hand, I feel that I should have practiced the speaking part more because during the presentation I talked too fast. This then resulted in not being able to reach the time goal. Another thing that occurred that was bad was that I got very nervous when I went to talk in front of the class, which caused me to forget/miss important parts that I had memorized. Overall this was a great learning experience, not only for learning more about wheat and other organisms, but also to realize what I am not very strong at. This will definitely make me change my approach to presenting. In summary, this unit was full of interesting things both in subjects and labs/projects.