October 19, 2012 - Goals

     For my personal project, I am studying bat houses and their benefits for both bats and humans.  I have been working at the OBC Bat Zone for several years and I have come to believe that bats are very important to the environment.  With environment as my AOI, I will research and show how bats are vital to green efforts such as organic farming and control of insects.  A single big brown bat, a creature smaller than your palm, can eat between 600 and 1000 mosquito sized insects insects every hour for up to 6 hours every night.  That's almost 6,000 bugs per bat per night.  Not only do they get rid of the mosquitoes, bats eat many other types of insects such as crop bugs which would multiply immensely if left unchecked.  This makes them vital to organic farmers who rely on bats destroy the insects instead of using pesticides.
     My goal for this project is to build three bat houses and hang them up, ideally with at least one at the IA.  In order to accomplish this, I will need to build the bat houses before the end of October so that I can hang them before it gets cold after Novemer.  With that done, I will work of the research and presentation parts of the personal project until its due date at the end of the semester
     If I have managed to create and hang the bat houses, having found people who are sympathetic to bats or having converted people to see them in a better light, I will consider this a success since I will not be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the houses in any location until the spring.

October 16 and 17, 2012 - Catching Up & Prezi

     As you may have noticed, this blog does not always run in chronological order.  This is because earlier on in the project, I would spend a day or an evening at just building my bat houses and I wouldn't have the time afterward to blog about it.  Therefore, I have been writing backlogged journal entries.  They are accurate as every time I worked on the project I wrote it down on my whiteboard, they just need to be transferred to cyberspace.  This experience has taught me one important lesson: no matter what, always keep up with journals because they just keep multiplying if you miss doing them.  Classes give material for a post, as well as any time I may spend at this project after school or over the weekend.
    In that vein, today, October 17, I also rediscovered my Prezi account from last year and created a new Prezi as per the technology section of this project.  It talks briefly about my project, AOI, how much I have accomplised thus far and how much I have left to do.  Prezi has changed since the last time I used it, so I am still figuring some things out for the next time I use it.  I used to think it was just powerpoint with different transitions and, since I have spent a lot of time making power points, I preferred that tool.  However, this time, I found Prezi much more manageable and clear and I am now more open to using it in the future.

This is my Project Prezi:

Bat House Project Prezi on Prezi

Bat Houses at School

     During class several weeks ago, I had a discussion with my teacher about where to put my bat houses and how best to get them there.  In order to best attract bats, bat houses should be located 15 feet off the ground facing southeast on a pole or the side of a building.  This way, they will receive the maximum amount of sunshine every day, keeping the breeding colonies that live in them over the summer warm.  We agreed that it would be really nice if I were able to post at least one house on the side of the IA and Mr. Pagnani said that he would ask the vice-principal, Mr. Smith, about it as soon as possible.
     The next class, Mr. Pagnani told me the results of his conversation.  Mr. Smith was not adverse to putting my houses on the side of the building, however he was concerned that the school health inspectors would consider bats "rodentia" and would not approve of attracting them to the school grounds.  Aside from the fact that bats are not rodentia as they are chiroptera, more closely related to primates than rodents, this is a valid concern.  Bats are considered rabies vectors in the state of Michigan because, despite the minute percentage of the bat population carrying the disease, sick bats are often picked up by humans, making them bite in self defence and spread rabies.  Bowers Farm, the educational farm near the IA has had a case of rabies in the last ten years.  Thus, school officials may be very leery of bats in the viscinity of a school.  It is Mr. Pagnani's opinion that I should hang them one up anywayas it is "simpler to ask forgiveness than permission."  However, I am worried that if the house is found after bats have moved in in the spring we will still have to take it down and that could hurt or kill all of the babies in the entire colony.  We are now looking for who to ask in order to place the house legally and Jessica Fabian, the head of animal care at the OBC has promised to help me find alternate places to hang the houses if the IA should fall through.

My Bat House Plans

After researching for simple and effective bat house plans online and through friends in the Organization for Bat Conservation, I found this video from which I based the plans for my first bat house. The man in the video is the head of the Organization of Bat Conservation, Rob Mies and I discovered it on the OBC webpage, so I think it is a credible plan.

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.