Index IntroductionWhat is Personal Project?InvestigateThe GoalGlobal ContextWhy I chose this topicPrior LearningResearch SkillsPlanningDesign CriteriaResearch PlanSelf-Management SkillsTake ActionProduct DocumentationThinking SkillsCommunication and Social SkillsReflectionProject ReflectionIntroductionAs part of the process I complete my program for the central years of the International Baccalaureate. I have to complete an independent project called Personal Project in 10th grade. For my Personal Project, I decided to learn more about the sustainable reuse of motorcycles. We currently live in a state of crisis where we are destroying the environment around us and we must do whatever it takes to reverse the damage we have caused to the earth until it is too late. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The Personal Project Guide states that “the Personal Project offers students the opportunity to focus on an area of ​​personal interest and expand their knowledge of a chosen subject,” and this is an opportunity for me to develop my skills within my personal interest (motorcycles). The project is conducted over a long period of time and will provide a challenge that will test my ability to research and organize information, apply knowledge and skills and reflect. about my skills. The Personal Project should be an interesting project that I ultimately enjoy spending time on and working with. I specifically choose this topic because I truly believe we can all help and do something about it; , not directly, but somehow we have to use transportation. My personal project focuses on how we can relate to it and gain situational awareness. I developed the project within this specific community because I wanted to highlight to my peers the problem of our city, our country and the world to show them that we are not far from the problem and that on the contrary we are contributing to it. However, we can still do something about it. This personal project, which I am developing, is directly related to the global context: “Globalization and sustainability” because it addresses the following topic: The impact of decision-making on humanity and the environment, among other issues this context invites us to explore the interaction between people and the natural world; how humans use their understanding of scientific principles; the impact of scientific and technological advances on communities and environments; the impact of environments on human activity; how humans adapt environments to their needs. With this project I propose to develop some solutions to mitigate the effects of modern transport. To meet my expectations and those of my supervisor, coordinators and every person involved in the project I had to overcome obstacles, follow orders, lead groups and others. This will all be explained later in this report. What is the Personal Project? Before starting to present my Personal Project, it is essential to explain better what Personal Project actually means? According to the IB, the Personal Project is “significant work that is the product of the student's initiative and creativity”. While I completely agree with this definition, I would also like to offer my definition of a personal project, having experienced it firsthand. After these few months that I spent working and developing my Personal Project, after longnights, long research, heavy schedules and strict deadlines, I can proudly say that a personal project is not just meaningful work that comes directly from the student's creativity. A personal project, I believe, is more about the process and enjoyment of the journey, than the product and destination. A personal project is a demanding procedure. If you wish, the Personal Project should be an excellent and enriching experience; everything you do, take from it, learn from it, will depend on you. I have come to the conclusion that a personal project is a way to get to know myself better. It's a way to test myself and see how far I can get. During your personal project everything you achieve will be the result of what you do. You will have the supervisor and the coordinator, but they don't push you, they don't punish you, they don't run after you, you are the one with that responsibility. In the end, you and only you are to blame. A personal project is an individual and independent experience. Investigate The Goal The goal of my project is to restore an old pocket bike to (in a sense) give it a new life. So instead of throwing away the pocket bike and buying a new one, I restore the old one. I therefore have less impact on the environment because the total carbon emissions from dismantling the old bicycle, manufacturing and delivering a new one would be much greater than if (instead of buying a new pocket bike and throwing it away) the old one) simply had repaired and renewed the old pocket bike. There's really nothing (in terms of engine work) that can't be restored, even if that means taking the entire vehicle apart and replacing most of the parts. Global Context The global context of my project is "Globalization and Sustainability", I think I chose "Globalization and Sustainability" as the global context for my project because I want to restore an old pocket bike and "bring it back to life" (which is more sustainable). So by restoring an old pocket bike, I'm more sustainable by not throwing away the old one and buying a completely new one. This helps the globalization of sustainability because then one more person will be more sustainable, which is a step in the right direction (which is where everyone will be sustainable. I specifically chose to restore a pocket bike because I have never restored a pocket bike , which is quite different from what I know (dirt bikes). The engine used in pocket bikes is also different in a way because most pocket bikes only use lawnmower engines much more compact than the usually larger dirt bikes that I am used to and the layout of the parts in pocket bikes must be different from that of larger dirt bikes. Why I chose this topic I chose to do my project on motorcycles and the sustainability because I love riding motorcycles (especially dirt bikes in the summer), but I'm also quite aware that motorsports are not the most sustainable hobbies in the world, so I've already started to take action for this cause by purchasing a dirt bike electric to be kept in Belgium, instead of having two large petrol cars burning motorcycles (one in Italy and one in Belgium). However, this is not enough, so I want to restore a small pocket bike that would leave less carbon emissions rather than buying a brand new pocket bike, which I would throw away in a couple of years anyway. Previous Learning I knew some pocket bikes use lawnmower engines, which are pretty cheap, I heard it from my friend: Charly Dumon. I checked this online and learned that pocket bikes use various motors, whichthey may come from an old lawnmower, but usually commercially sold pocket bikes use engines that may resemble lawnmower engines, however they are usually made by brands such as Honda who sell these engines separately to the brands that assemble and sell the pocket bikes. I also knew that pocket bikes usually behave the same as usually larger motorcycles, so you have to change the oil if the pocket bike has a 4-stroke engine, or mix the oil with gasoline if the pocket bike has a 2-stroke engine. In addition to this, I knew that pocket bikes use a chain, instead of a belt (like the one usually used in scooters) or a driveshaft (as we often see in BMW motorcycles). During fifth grade, we started and completed our PYP project (my topic was sleep deprivation). We had to write and rehearse a 5 minute presentation, write a diary of over 2000 verbal elaborations (which includes a bibliography) and set up a booth where people could go to learn about my topic during the PYP exhibition. A very important concept I learned while writing my PYP process journal was the importance of creating a bibliography and how to create one. I understand that the citation mode of choice in St Johns is the MLA format. Since then, I always remember to make a bibliography for my projects at school. Research Skills When I started this project, I had several research skills, here they are: My first research skill is that I know how to search keywords when I try to learn more about a certain topic through web search or while searching in the library book catalogue. My other research skill is that I know how to cite sources in MLA format, this is important because it is very important to be able to cite your sources for any project and work for which you use external sources for your help. Another skill I have is that I can discover the validity of a source by doing small checks on the author of the source, or even the type of source. For example, if my source is someone's blog, they might simply pretend to be an expert on a topic they barely know. I further developed these research skills and various other research skills through the project. Planning Design Criteria After Definition My goal for this project was to create criteria that I could reference to measure the success of my product. Instead of creating 2 or 3 general criteria with 7 levels of achievement, I created 11 specific checklist-style criteria, each with only 3 levels of achievement (fully achieved, mostly achieved, and partially achieved). In my opinion, it is more affective to have a larger number of very specific criteria than a smaller number of very broad criteria. Because it makes more sense (and is more efficient) for me to measure the success of many smaller aspects of my product, rather than thinking long and hard about the success of very complex and broad aspects of my product. In the past, I only had one criteria for how my product looked visually in terms of using different types of colors to achieve a nice aesthetic, however I soon discovered that this type of classification for good graphics is mine, and may be subjective just for me. As a result, I had created another criterion in terms of the appeal of my product's aesthetics to the public coming to my booth. The way I will measure the success of this criterion is that, during the show, I will ask my audience to give me their opinions on the look of the pocket bike by giving me a number out of 10, I will put it in a table and calculate the average score. Search Plan I used two different toolsplanning to record and help me achieve goals on time: the MYP Personal Project St John's International School Pacing Guide included in the Personal Project Guide OneNote, I also used a Student Planner (a sort of checklist) that I needed to make for the December 17th (day dedicated to the development of our Personal Projects). I chose to use two simpler planning tools because I don't like to plan for too long, I prefer to take action, otherwise I would waste all my time on a plan and not have time to actually work on my project. The MYP Personal Project Pacing Guide was very helpful to me because it indicates all the due dates for the personal project process and has a perfect pacing guide where I can see which days and how much time I have for each part of the project. I provide evidence of having completed my first and second interviews (which occurred through good planning) with my supervisor (Ms. Rose), as you can see in my MYP Project Academic Honesty Form, you can see that the first interview took place on November 12, 2019, and the second interview took place on January 17, 2020. I did not change my research plan while developing my personal project. Self-Management Skills Self-management skills help you manage things like time and energy, and while I had the knowledge of them, I wasn't very good at using them much before the personal project. I already knew the strategies to overcome distractions and I am very tenacious and persevering. When I started this project, I always had all the important deadlines in my virtual planner (located in my phone and laptop), and this helped my self-management as it reminded me to finish important parts of the personal project. During the project, I learned how to organize my time and energy over longer periods of time and understood how I could use technology effectively and productively. I did this by listening to music at high volume, so as to block out all distractions (kind of like a white noise machine), this really helped me get rid of distractions. Another method I've used to get rid of distractions is to put my phone on airplane mode, so I can't receive texts, calls, notifications, etc. that could distract me. To top it off, somehow when I turned up the brightness on my laptop and my room lit up, I was more focused on work, this could be a placebo effect, however it worked for me. Take Action Product Documentation The product of my project is a small motorcycle, more precisely a restored minibike, which runs by inserting regular gasoline mixed with 2-stroke engine oil (to lubricate the engine). It achieves my goal of restoring an old pocket bike to give it a new life. It is linked to the global context, globalization and sustainability, as it is a demonstration that we can all be a little more sustainable if we commit to it. The product is a demonstration of the knowledge I have gained through the projectThinking SkillsThe use of thinking skills such as analysis helped me in the project during the research phase. Before starting the project, I didn't use a lot of thinking skills in terms of school work, for the most part I just considered multiple options and used knowledge, understanding and skills to create solutions to fairly simple and broad problems. During the project I began to develop the use of several new skills: I demonstrated my ability to apply existing (and new) knowledge to complete a task where I needed to restore a malfunctioning pocket bike. I apply my skills…