Our first main project was to create a cladogram. Each group was given some assorted hardware parts (nuts, screws, nails, etc.). Then, each group had to create a cladogram to organize the parts. Finally, the team had to write up a story explaining how the hardware pieces could have evolved from one to the other. This project was to help us learn about evolution and the different factors that cause it to happen.
Evolution: A process through which organisms take advantage of beneficial mutations to slowly change to better survive in their environment. Adaptations: Mutations that were beneficial to a species and therefore were spread amongst the population. Speciation: When a new species is created through evolution.
What is a Cladogram? A cladogram is a chart that organizes different things based on their characteristics and how similar those characteristics are to other things in the diagram.
This project was the first of the year. It was generally frustrating. My group while creating a draft got confused about what we had written and had to spend an entire day figuring out what we had done. I also did not like that the project was not all together. Instead of like last year when we got a project and spent everyday of the next few weeks working on it, for this project we got one day a week for many weeks. I think this also contributed to the disorganization of our cladogram. The work days were disconnected and we forgot what we had been working on by the time we get another work day. My team was ok. I felt we could have worked better together. Our communication was certainly lacking. At one point, we had two people drawing the cladogram, one person naming the organisms, and one person writing our story. Yet, we did not communicate. The person writing the story changed some of the organisms names so they fit within the guidelines of the project while the group on the cladogram was writing down the original name. We got to the point where we did not know where an organism in the story was on the cladogram. It was a mess. In addition, we wrote far more than we needed to for the story. This diluted our time. Instead of making a few paragraphs great, we had more than 30 paragraphs done poorly. I am very disappointed in our performance in this project. Since we spent the time on our story and cladogram down to the wire, we had no time to prepare our presentation. I will use this project as a learning experience for the importance of time management, thinking ahead, and communication when working with a team.