Reflecting on the topic and global context:
This product helped me understand both coding and simulation creation in much more detail. Before this project, I originally treated coding as a small-time hobby, and I would only create scripts, websites and simulations for either class assignments or for different events I occasionally participated in (such as the tech fair). However, this project allowed me to delve significantly deeper into the field of coding functional simulations and even allowed me to expand my knowledge of Physics in the process. This is shown with how I had to synthesise both significant portions of my astronomical knowledge along with my coding skills in order to make my product as accurate and as successful as possible according to my created criterion.
Reflecting as an IB Learner:
Throughout the course of this project, I felt personal growth in terms of my skills as an IB Learner. This is due to the extremely complex planning and creation processes i had to focus on in order to fully meet my created criterion. These skills ended up developing and improving through constant usage throughout the creation process.
Thinker:
Prior to this project, I had faced quite a bit of previous challenges that required adept thinking skills in my regularly taught subjects. But there were still many issues and challenges I had to overcome during this project. There were multiple instances where I was required to think of completely new concepts and ideas to present my astronomical knowledge to my target audience with my simulation. I had to use my thinking skills to develop a creative idea (through detailed brainstorming) that satisfied my global context, appealed to my target audience (students) and contained effective educational value. I noticed that I had to use my thinking skills the most during my researching and brainstorming stages of my project. Throughout these steps, I could physically feel my current proficiency in my thinking skills improve and adapt to this extremely complex and difficult project.
Inquiring skills:
I used my inquiring skills significantly during the initial stages of my project. I had created extremely detailed surveys (visible in the appendix) for my peers to gather crucial information on their current knowledge of astronomy. I based my entire project on these initial surveys and I gained invaluable data to help me appeal to my peers with my final simulation. I also used my inquiring skills when contacting my supervisor for my personal project. I used our meetings to ask multiple important questions on my entire project as a whole, and I would be significantly limited without this important and trustworthy data from an experienced source. Overall, my inquiring of others throughout my project allowed me to access otherwise hidden valuable information from multiple different and unique perspectives.
Transferring existing knowledge:
Since I had started my project with previously learnt physics and coding related knowledge, I had an inherit advantage when transferring my prior knowledge into designing and creating a product to present astronomy to my target audience. But throughout the creation stages of my product, I soon found out that my knowledge at the time was insufficient for achieving a successful product that satisfied my created criterion (my initial simulation had significantly downgraded visuals, terrible controls, poor navigation and multiple errors and issues). I made use of this situation to do intensive research on coding so that I could improve my products quality in multiple aspects. I viewed multiple different guides and tutorials to coding different unity simulations (Unity is the program i used to create my project).
After expanding my knowledge of coding through these steps, I decided to implement this new understanding of coding into re-doing/re-create my simulation from scratch, around mid-way through the creation stage. But with extremely clear improvements that will make my product satisfy my criterion to a much higher level. The results of my decision show a more developed product that visually looks and controls in a more polished manner than its predecessor.
Thinker:
Prior to this project, I had faced quite a bit of previous challenges that required adept thinking skills in my regularly taught subjects. But there were still many issues and challenges I had to overcome during this project. There were multiple instances where I was required to think of completely new concepts and ideas to present my astronomical knowledge to my target audience with my simulation. I had to use my thinking skills to develop a creative idea (through detailed brainstorming) that satisfied my global context, appealed to my target audience (students) and contained effective educational value. I noticed that I had to use my thinking skills the most during my researching and brainstorming stages of my project. Throughout these steps, I could physically feel my current proficiency in my thinking skills improve and adapt to this extremely complex and difficult project.
Inquiring skills:
I used my inquiring skills significantly during the initial stages of my project. I had created extremely detailed surveys (visible in the appendix) for my peers to gather crucial information on their current knowledge of astronomy. I based my entire project on these initial surveys and I gained invaluable data to help me appeal to my peers with my final simulation. I also used my inquiring skills when contacting my supervisor for my personal project. I used our meetings to ask multiple important questions on my entire project as a whole, and I would be significantly limited without this important and trustworthy data from an experienced source. Overall, my inquiring of others throughout my project allowed me to access otherwise hidden valuable information from multiple different and unique perspectives.
Transferring existing knowledge:
Since I had started my project with previously learnt physics and coding related knowledge, I had an inherit advantage when transferring my prior knowledge into designing and creating a product to present astronomy to my target audience. But throughout the creation stages of my product, I soon found out that my knowledge at the time was insufficient for achieving a successful product that satisfied my created criterion (my initial simulation had significantly downgraded visuals, terrible controls, poor navigation and multiple errors and issues). I made use of this situation to do intensive research on coding so that I could improve my products quality in multiple aspects. I viewed multiple different guides and tutorials to coding different unity simulations (Unity is the program i used to create my project).
After expanding my knowledge of coding through these steps, I decided to implement this new understanding of coding into re-doing/re-create my simulation from scratch, around mid-way through the creation stage. But with extremely clear improvements that will make my product satisfy my criterion to a much higher level. The results of my decision show a more developed product that visually looks and controls in a more polished manner than its predecessor.