Welcome back to my blog. This post is for the first Action Project of the STEAM course, Cure. In this unit we have continued our learning of different diseases from last term and started studying treatment, vaccines, and public health. Keeping up with current events, we have looked at the three coronavirus vaccines and how they impact the health of our community. With each vaccine we studied their efficiency rates and combining that with the coronavirus reproductive rate, we found the herd immunity percentage. Herd immunity is the point at which a certain percentage of the population is vaccinated against a disease to keep it from spreading or immunity from developed antibodies. The herd immunity for COVID-19 is between seventy to ninety percent which means our efforts to get everyone vaccinated is at a good pace but can be faster. For this Action Project we were asked to choose a disease and create a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of game that can be played by other students or anyone viewing the blog. This game is supposed to help someone investigate a disease and discover what it is by using math and research given to them. The game should also be designed so someone with no knowledge on the course or topic can still play and learn.
This AP was done in groups of three. In our game you are tasked with finding the disease and creating a public health strategy to reduce the spread of the disease and possibly eliminate it. While following the story we have created, you will learn the symptoms patients have, how the disease is being spread, and information needed to find the vaccine’s efficiency. I hope you enjoy playing our game and can discover the disease.
We also had the opportunity to play the game the other group in our class made. Their game was pretty fun and I noticed some of the jokes that were put in that represented their personality. The time we were given to work on the games was about 4 days. Working in groups of three, I felt the work could be split evenly and could be finished on time. It is not my intent to criticize all of their work but the project did feel a bit unfinished. Although the game went from beginning to end, there were some parts that were missing. One piece that stood out to me was the math portion of the game. The group had set the player up to do a math problem but didn’t include the formula or some of the numbers needed to solve it. Making this project available to be played by people who haven’t taken this class is a big part of the assignment and for someone who is new to the concept, it would be very difficult to do that section. Overall I did enjoy their project and I hope they took their feedback and got the game completed. For my group’s revisions we added some more information to help the story move along better and make the slideshow more clear. We also looked back at the project rubric and worked on what needed to be included from there.
It is also important to look at conditions that can possibly lead to more outbreaks. In this Gapminder chart I tried looking at the mortality rate for measles per country based on how much aid that country receives. As the chart moves forward from 1989 you can see there are some countries that are receiving more or less aid and also some countries that drop or rise in mortality rates. While time goes on, the overall mortality rate for measles lowers. India stays at the top of the graph and is the country with the highest measles cases right now. In 2015 India is not on the lower end for aid received and has a high mortality rate which means the money they have been given is not being transferred to medical support or the country doesn’t have enough support in the medical field to use the aid efficiently. Indonesia also has a high mortality rate but has a very low aid received number. This is common for many other countries on the graph so we can say that countries who are not receiving much aid are at a higher risk for causing an outbreak for measles.
After completing this Action Project I think our group did a great job and had a fair contribution to the work. I hope that if you have tried out the game, you were able to complete it or learn about what we were doing in class. Also, if you were wondering what disease this game was about or wanted to see if your guess was correct, it was measles. I had a lot of fun working on this AP and I know my groupmates feel the same. I enjoyed learning the math and being able to calculate vaccine efficiencies and herd immunity percentages. This unit was very interesting and the use of current events in the curriculum was fun to learn about as well. Thank you for reading and playing the game if you did. I hope to see you in the next post.
Works Cited:
“Increase in Measles Cases - United States, January 1-April 26, 2019.” CDC, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6817e1.htm?s_cid=mm6817e1_w. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) Vaccination: What Everyone Should Know.” CDC, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“The basic reproduction number (R 0) of measles: a systematic review.” PubMed.gov, 2017. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28757186/. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“Top 10 Countries with Global Measles Outbreaks.” CDC, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/measles/data/global-measles-outbreaks.html. Accessed 19 May 2021.
This AP was done in groups of three. In our game you are tasked with finding the disease and creating a public health strategy to reduce the spread of the disease and possibly eliminate it. While following the story we have created, you will learn the symptoms patients have, how the disease is being spread, and information needed to find the vaccine’s efficiency. I hope you enjoy playing our game and can discover the disease.
We also had the opportunity to play the game the other group in our class made. Their game was pretty fun and I noticed some of the jokes that were put in that represented their personality. The time we were given to work on the games was about 4 days. Working in groups of three, I felt the work could be split evenly and could be finished on time. It is not my intent to criticize all of their work but the project did feel a bit unfinished. Although the game went from beginning to end, there were some parts that were missing. One piece that stood out to me was the math portion of the game. The group had set the player up to do a math problem but didn’t include the formula or some of the numbers needed to solve it. Making this project available to be played by people who haven’t taken this class is a big part of the assignment and for someone who is new to the concept, it would be very difficult to do that section. Overall I did enjoy their project and I hope they took their feedback and got the game completed. For my group’s revisions we added some more information to help the story move along better and make the slideshow more clear. We also looked back at the project rubric and worked on what needed to be included from there.
It is also important to look at conditions that can possibly lead to more outbreaks. In this Gapminder chart I tried looking at the mortality rate for measles per country based on how much aid that country receives. As the chart moves forward from 1989 you can see there are some countries that are receiving more or less aid and also some countries that drop or rise in mortality rates. While time goes on, the overall mortality rate for measles lowers. India stays at the top of the graph and is the country with the highest measles cases right now. In 2015 India is not on the lower end for aid received and has a high mortality rate which means the money they have been given is not being transferred to medical support or the country doesn’t have enough support in the medical field to use the aid efficiently. Indonesia also has a high mortality rate but has a very low aid received number. This is common for many other countries on the graph so we can say that countries who are not receiving much aid are at a higher risk for causing an outbreak for measles.
After completing this Action Project I think our group did a great job and had a fair contribution to the work. I hope that if you have tried out the game, you were able to complete it or learn about what we were doing in class. Also, if you were wondering what disease this game was about or wanted to see if your guess was correct, it was measles. I had a lot of fun working on this AP and I know my groupmates feel the same. I enjoyed learning the math and being able to calculate vaccine efficiencies and herd immunity percentages. This unit was very interesting and the use of current events in the curriculum was fun to learn about as well. Thank you for reading and playing the game if you did. I hope to see you in the next post.
Works Cited:
“Increase in Measles Cases - United States, January 1-April 26, 2019.” CDC, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6817e1.htm?s_cid=mm6817e1_w. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) Vaccination: What Everyone Should Know.” CDC, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/mmr/public/index.html. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“The basic reproduction number (R 0) of measles: a systematic review.” PubMed.gov, 2017. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28757186/. Accessed 19 May 2021.
“Top 10 Countries with Global Measles Outbreaks.” CDC, 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/globalhealth/measles/data/global-measles-outbreaks.html. Accessed 19 May 2021.
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