September 30, 2012 - Continuing building

     Once I bought more cedar for the remaining sides and roof of the two new bat houses, I cut the pieces for the next house and followed the same procedure I used to create the first bat house, only on a smaller scale.  I had more technical difficulties than ever before; with the angle cutter on the table saw, not being able to cut a straight line, and much much more, but finally, I managed to get it to all come together and I completed bat houses two and three.  These two houses are standard OBC 1x2 foot bat houses and all that remains is for me to caulk, paint, and find a place for them to go.

September 29, 2012 - The First Bat House

I just finished the carpentry part of the first bat house.  My dad and I took the pieces of cedar and plywood we cut earlier today and screwed them together as per Rob Mies' online instructions.  The angles we cut in the wood were good as it all fit together quite nicely and it was easy to drill and screw together the bat house.  It was a good learning opportunity, gaining first hand experience with all of my dad's various carpentry tools.  I suppose it was unfortunate that I learned the hard way which end was which on the staple gun, but I'm sure my finger will heal soon.  The one thing I noticed, however, was how large the end result was.  I had known from the beginning that it would be two feet by two feet, but just how much bigger it was than the bat houses sold by the OBC hadn't registered.  I definitely think that now I see the size of my first bat house, I will split the second one in half and make three bat houses as that would make my products, smaller lighter, generally easier to deal with, and possibly also more attractive to the bats because they will want to keep close together to keep warm and safe from predators.  This taught me that I should always stop and think about what my end result will be in a project and what will the implications of that be before I dive in headlong and only realize later that I've made a mistake.  I don't think this size discrepancy will pose any real problem other than finding a location to hang my oversized bat house, but it would have been nice to plan ahead and know what I'm going to end up with.

September 29, 2012 - Building

Today I began to build my first bat house.  I am planning to construct two, one for IA, if I can get permission, and one for somewhere else.  I cut all of the wooden pieces for my first house and used the spare cedar to create some parts for the second.  My dad has had to teach me how to safely use an electric saw and cut at angles.  Initially, I was very slow and cut in wobbly lines that didn't follow our template at all.  However, by the end of the day, I could cut fairly accurately as long as the wood was held firm.  This is a prime example of learning by doing because even though my dad explained everything I had to do before I started, I needed a lot of practice before I was comfortable with the saw.

 

New Accounts

Today, I created several new accounts with various web tools in connection with the MYP and Personal Project.  I created a diigo account in order to keep  track of all of my online research.  I put the link to them into my diigo and then connected my diigo to my blog so that it is easy to go to my sites.  I also created Weebly and Wordpress blogs.  Weebly is a very simple website maker.  To design it, you drag elements into the page.  In that sense, it is quite user friendly.  However, past experience with Weebly has taught me not to trust it since it does not save correctly if it has insufficient internet connectivity and thus often loses recently added elements and even entire pages.  Wordpress is a more complex tool. There are many more things to change and customize, once you are used to the layout.  However, at first it can be overwhelming and its complexity gives it a very long loading time.  I personally prefer this tool, Blogger, for website creation because it is generally easier to deal with and I have also spent more time learning it so it is easier for me to understand.  My final creation was a bubble.us account.  This creates mind maps, such as the ones I drew below.  It is very easy to understand and edit.  I will probably use these tools a lot throughout this project.

Here is an example of a bubble.us mind map:

Mind Map Differences

My Original Mind Map

 My Updated Mind Map

Ignoring the fact that these mind maps are on unrelated topics, they differ in other ways as well.  At the time of my original map, I had very little idea of what I wanted to do.  I simply drew out various things related to one of my extra-curricular activities.  Later, I generated a new idea.  When I mapped that topic, it was much more specific and full since I knew exactly what I wanted to do and had done some research into what it would entail as well. I feel that it is far more complete and represents my plan for my project.

September 9, 2012 - Mesh

I volunteer at the Bat Zone, the Organization for Bat Conservation's headquarters, every Sunday.  There, I help to clean the cages of the fruit bats, chop up their food, and handle some of the other nocturnal animals that live there, such as sugar gliders.  I would like to be able to handle bats as well but, being a minor, I need a rabies pre-exposure shot before I can directly interact with any of them, even though they have all been tested for rabies and have no way to become exposed to it.  While there this week, I asked that day's head of animal care, Amanda, if I could have the polyethylene mesh I needed to construct my bat houses.  She was very excited about the project and gave me the mesh before I left.  Now, I have all the materials I need and will be able to start building soon.

September 3, 2012 - Buying Materials

This is the first day in which I worked specifically on my bat houses. I spent the afternoon at Lowes buying materials. I never realized how many different types of paint there are to chose from and I had to be very careful to make sure that I got the right kind of black, outdoor, weather resistant, acrylic, non-toxic paint. Needless to say, it took a lot of searching from my dad and I to find the correct can. We also selected our plywood and cedar. My dad had to teach me about the different types of wood and explain exactly what our instructions were looking for before we could choose our boards. After finding screws, a drill, caulk, and various other ingredients needed to create our bat house, we went searching for the correct type of plastic mesh. We had to use polyethylene tiny mesh in order to best accommodate the bats. Metal or thinner mesh would cut their toes when they roosted and any larger mesh would restrict the number of bats that could fit in the house. After almost half an hour of searching, we came to the conclusion that we would have to purchase the specific mesh from the Organization for Bat Conservation, the bat protection group for which I volunteer.