In round four, another exploration with a new skill has given to me. It was the world of ocean and technology as I would call.
The exploration that I was in was the Marine Species Website. When I initially heard the name, I conceived the image of us all in the group working on our technical skills to develop a website that devotes itself to the marine in Cambodia. Meanwhile, I was mixed with wonders and hopes. I have always been aware of myself that technology is never meant to be my strength, but I repeated in my mind that I would try my best.
Exploration Descriptions
“Sharing Cambodia’s marine environments with Cambodians and global citizens by raising awareness of marine species, promoting scientific discovery, protecting ecosystem services, and inspiring curiosity about the ocean.”
Above is our mission statement, which is our ambition and motivation. The exploration devised to create a website that is dedicated to the marine ecosystem. As the mission statement mentioned, we want to bring appreciation and stewardship to our dignified sea in Cambodia. Its essence has brought our lives to comprehend the word “convenient”. Many fishermen in Cambodia earned their living by the marine’s life. Therefore, the sea needs to be preserved by all of us, and together, everything is possible.
What did we learn? What did we do?
“In order to understand deeper about the marine’s life, I then studied and researched about the morphology of the great creatures living beneath the sea’s blue”
In the exploration, we did discover and learn many things that we didn’t realize until now. It was like we were diving deeper into the ocean to explore the environment and the living life down there in the mysterious world. Specifically, we allowed ourselves to be acquainted with the phyla that can be used to identify the appearance of any species. Those phyla were Chordata, Cnidaria, Echinoderm, Porifera, Arthropoda, and Mollusca. By making it easier and useful, we utilized the lessons we had learned in our STEM class effectively. Certainly, it was a very helpful aid to our exploration.
What we did in the exploration was involving a lot of teamwork and efforts. We had been researching a lot to get a good grasp of everything including ecosystems and website layouts. In addition to the research, I have now known the difference between seagrasses and seaweeds. Seagrass is considered as a plant that has roots, stems, and leaves, whereas seaweeds are algae that neither has roots. We also did some discovery on marine websites to find any interesting points that we liked and wanted to incorporate in ours.
Moreover, we also got help from the LMRT team in our school. LMRT (Liger Marine Research Team) is a group of students in our school that conducts research and survey on Koh Seh in Cambodia. While being facilitated by them, we also took the pictures from their trip to group them into the right phylum. For instance, I saw an octopus in the picture, so I would store the picture to the phylum of Mollusca. That was how we group the species.
On the website side, we were introduced to WordPress, where we have the right to pick any templates that are free and we do not have to do any coding works. Then, in partners, we began to test and learn about WordPress, so that later we will need the skill to build our own website. It was a very enjoyable moment, even though I do not favor coding. I customized some fonts and colors because tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, I would be going to give my best into our own website.
In the hardest moment
“In an unexpected time, we rise and we fight.”
As a token of my thank, I want to express my lovely gratitude that I was given the chance to try something new and step out of my comfort zone. This was the bravest moment I could feel. Plus, getting to observe the greatness and mystery of the ocean, were so special to me. All thanks to Liger! I am very thankful for everyone including my facilitators, Kieran, Max, and some of the first-cohort students. Every one of them would never give up even when we were facing the hardest time. That’s why nothing had halted us to work and express our love to one another. Hopefully, I hope that we can foster this fantastical project to the next step in the future.