Author: v1saosuo

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Changing Cambodia: 2017-2018

Changing Cambodia 2017-2018

My life this year started, “Be the change you want to see in the world” (by Mahatma Gandhi). This quote guided me to travel through the rest of the school year at Liger. My ambition was to create positive changes to this country, Cambodia; I want to see changes, and to see Cambodia becomes an outstanding country from other nations around Southeast-Asia by the time I reach my life-retirement. From this ambition, I deemed to take agencies in my life this year. I have accomplished and dispatched in many events: engineering internship, robotics competition, took an AP computer science exam, and give Ted Talk. My next stride will be full of dust and snow, the path will be illusive I do not know what will be happen next, all I knew is Cambodia needs improvement on technology field.

It is my second year of high school, life is always occupied with works. The year began, I realized that in order, “To move the world, we must move ourselves”–Socrates. The two quotes above motivated me to build up my self-esteemed in creating positive changes to Cambodia and to myself. As the passion built up, I began my first step: summer internship.

From years to years, Cambodia takes a very big leap in its engineering field. Based on GeeksinCambodia published in 2015–a news website about technology in Cambodia–has stated that 90 percent of the population each own a mobile phone. The data clearly demonstrates that the majority of the population in Cambodia have access to technology. Our government attempt to do their best to grab its citizens attention on technology by promoting through STEM Festival, Maker Faire, and other collaborative events. These events ruffled numerous of change-agents to get involved into technology: I then knew Arrowdot.  

That was when I move myself!

I spent my summer-break mainly on internship at a startup called Arrowdot. During the internship, I had experienced how the society works in Cambodia. I learned to manage my own budget, transportation, and food. It was the moment where collaboration with university students and I initiated. In the internship, it was an elusive advantageous to help the company while enhanced myself. At Arrowdot, one of the missions was to give extra class to university students. My responsibility in the internship was to setup the plan for the experiments.

That responsibility required me to be familiar with the concept and turn it into an ecstatic experiments. To be honest for some labs, it took me a bunch of time to get it done: the labs was sophisticated for me. The CEO of the company always inspirit me to try again and again even though it was difficult. These hard works that were put into each project payed-off when noticing those students was full of energetic with their lab. All of them leaved the class with smiles! However it not finished, after each session that the students finished, they required to take the exam in order to graduated from Arrowdot. I was awe that some of them admitted their knowledge to me. The students seeked for supports whenever they perplex in any subjects. From this, students can master concepts at university which lead to a higher chance to be employed.

The internship was terminated, I realized that Cambodia has many change agents in technology. That internship made me gained confidence to help my country where that led me to have a Ted Talk about Cambodian Technology.

Ted Talk believes that ideas worth spreading. Yearly, International School of Phnom Penh (ISPP) hosted a Ted Talk event, and I been hunting to be one of the speakers since 2016. Finally, I got selected to be one of the speakers in 2017. I decided to give a speech that combated the old mineset that prevent those intelligent-engineers from being successful. It was a 12 minutes talk, it included example of engineering projects that are inspirational: mind control robots, sand management system, and international robotic competition. The speech has given to about more than 150 participants and has posted in the TEDx Youtube channel.

I believed that it was a number priority to change Cambodian perspective on the engineering field since words is sharper than knife–if that works it will bring many supports in engineering field. This reflects, if majority of the Cambodia keep in mind that our technology is not as high level as other country, than it is a setback that prevents Cambodian engineers to be developed. As mentioned, it is important to first change people’s perspectives while time move on technology will be better and better.

I understand changes does not have to happen from young generations, changes can happen by anyone regardless of their age, skin color, or gender. People always contribute positive changes to the country, they did not realized that they did it because change–to me–happened from one effort of doing it, not from what one think of doing it. The two examples above were the two that I always memorised. Throughout the whole year I might contributed greater than two. Everyone should have a fidelity inside them and they should begin the journey of small actions because “Idea don’t come fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started” – Mark Zuckerberg

Here is my timeline in 2017-2018 (YEAR SIXTH)

Keith’s team project, trying to find your passion and set goals for the future.
My classmate at the Arrowdot lesson, the last day of the class! 🙁
Angkor Thom race
Cryptocurrency Presentation! Listen to two brothers who’s vision was to create a Serey Coin.
Cambodia Eyes Sight check!
Arrowdot Internship during the summer break. This guy is very passionate in technology even though he thinks he not good at it.
An experiment about ultrasonic sensor to measure the distance of objects.
Visited I thinkAsia, an animation company in Phnom Penh, to learn about animation.
The picture of myself, doing a Ted Talk about Cambodia Technology.
This is a project that some of our seniors hosted to collaborate with students outside of the school in order to talk about gender.
Our TosTov meeting about our future plan!
Mr. Hongly repaired the meat with butter on top of it!
This is what it ended up after Mr. Hongly prepared
Mr. Vuthy, Mr. Rithy, and Mr. Davith were running with me. It was very tired!

 

That was the time where all of the seniors had their bike ride and it was the time where the JourneyOfChange lunch their business!

 

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Mosquito Born Diseases Exploration

The Mosquito Born Diseases Exploration created to help bring awareness of mosquito through writing reports. First of all, what is a mosquito-borne disease? Mosquito-borne diseases are any diseases that have mosquito act as a vector– transmit the virus from one body to another body. Malaria and Dengue Fever are a type of Zoonotic disease– a type of disease that transmitted by animal or insect to human. Malaria is one of the main cause of death around the world; dengue fever also causes sickness. The common factor between Malaria and Dengue Fever is they all transmit by mosquito. 

Mosquito is a type of insects that uses nectar to feed themselves; they use blood to feed their larvae. Mosquito is a main factor in food chain, if we get ride them out, the food chain will get affected. Here is video from Ted ED about mosquito…

In Cambodia Malaria is really well cure, but for Dengue Fever is a major threat that causes kids and adults to get sick. If they don’t cure it on time, death could end up as a result. In addition, if a mosquito carries Malaria parasites, the larvae will not carry the parasites; for Dengue, if the mother has the virus, the larvae will also get that virus. During our Exploration period, it is a rainy season and our government sees a correlation of rainy season and the increase number of Dengue Fever and Malaria cases. Our team take this into an observation in our community, trying determine the potential causes of Dengue Fever. We compare the data between two villages and wrote a report of our study.

Our Study: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L574Z3_Qow6rRFxZIrhXz-2cEp92XMY2oj6hawv1qeI/edit?usp=sharing 

 

 

 

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The Tech4Good Event

https://www.globalcareersfair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Asia-Found-logo-paint-1024×321.png

During the past 3 weeks, Sreyneag and I got invited to participate in a collaborative event at the Asia Foundation. The event was about talking to other startups who play a major role in Phnom Penh. For the first time, I felt a bit shy and did not feel comfortable to do it since everyone in the event are high-level people. From time on, I began to talk to one person, then another and another and everyone would want to come and talk to me and Sreyneag. People would ask me a lot of questions related to Liger, and I tried my best to answer all of the questions. Most of the questions was, “how do you get to learn at Liger?” To be honest this question was a bit boring to me. When I answered it, they started to ask more into it and how can I remember all of it since it was 6 years ago! Indeed, I felt awesome to talk to different people and get to know their experiences. 

One important lesson that I learn about choosing the right person the work is to use the trust. Mr. Morokot was a tech person who owns a startup that now very successful said that: I higher people because I trust that person to do great things to the company and if he/she can not do it there is nothing I can do just to kick them out. That was a phenomenal lesson that I learn from Mr. Morokot! 

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Vision-Setting and Professional Development

First of all, have you ever thought about your career? Do you have any concerns about it? Have you come across to a thinking that in the future you might won’t have a job or education? 

Personally, I came with these kinds of questions a bunch of time. I have a lot of worry about my future after graduating from Liger. I don’t really see my path clearly yet. I don’t really know what are my strength and my weaknesses yet, but I do know what my interests. I try to seek help with when these kinds of questions poke into my mind. So yesterday, I spent my two and half hours participate in a workshop from our senior students. I was a very great opportunity for me to spend those time in finding my career after Liger. In the workshop we sent most of the time answering the questions and discuss in a group of four. It was a bit difficult to me to share my goal with other people, but at the end of the workshop, I started to not shy of sharing. I did define my weakness and my strength, plus I created my plan in order for me to reach my goal. 

Continue reading “Vision-Setting and Professional Development”

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Doppler Effects of Meteorology

 

“https://dopeffect.weebly.com/uploads/1/6/6/2/16622138/948571.gif?401” source.

Doppler effects are used in many types of technology, and this is one example of using Doppler effects to work meteorology. The common design of the weather radar is a radar that covers with the sphere material around it (we can find this in Cambodia, it’s after the Chbar Ampov bridge there is a big ball and there is a radar inside there). The full word of radar is RAdio Detecting And Ranging. Doppler radar has a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter transmits microwaves in 360 degrees into the atmosphere, and then the receiver is waiting to receive those signal that will return back. The signals that receive is called the radar echo. Precipitation is the one that reflects the microwaves back. The information that the receiver receives is in two form: relative and velocity. Relative tells where the precipitation is; the velocity, happens only in the Doppler radar, output the velocity of the wind. If the frequency is high the precipitation is moving toward the radar; if the frequency low the precipitation is moving away from the radar. Here is an example, “If particles switch from moving toward and then away from the Doppler radar over a small distance, the source may be a tornado.” As a result, Doppler effects benefits a lot to human, the concepts can save people’s life from storms like a tornado.

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HIV Workshop

https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/sites/default/files/HIV-global_v3.jpg

HIV is one of the topics that I wonder? I used to hear about HIV and AIDs, but I never get a chance to go deeply into it. For the past 3 years, I learned about the poverty in Cambodia and we did come across the topic of HIV. Moreover, we went to a community at Kampong Chhnang where most of the family got HIV and did some interview while I don’t really know about HIV. 

However, our senior students had come up with a workshop about HIV. It was a phenomenal workshop for me, I can get a better understanding of HIV. One of the activity was lean creating an HIV simulation. For people who got HIV, they need to take pills very consistently or else the virus will get worse. So what they simulate was, the participants need will have candy; they need to take the candy that acts as a medicine consistently within 20 minutes. It was a really cool experience for me to do that simulation and I did take the pills very consistent. I learned a lot with this workshop and it worth with the time it took me.

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Data Visualization

Part of the expertise that I have 2 hours per week, Monday to Tuesday, is creative technology. In the expertise, it focuses on engineering and art.  This is the third project that we did in the expertise, which is data visualization. What data visualization is how we use data to display it in a creative canvas. We use p5.js which is part of the Javascript package, to code. My data is Cambodian provinces’ demographic, this also included the poverty rate. I got the data from Open Development which is a website that contains a lot of data from countries in South-East Asia. I represent each province with a dot, the bigger dot the higher number of the poverty rate. I made a logic that if a province that had a high poverty rate then it would take a long time to develop. So as our mouse moves to the right, it represents a high level of development. So as stated earlier, if a province has a high poverty rate, it means that the time it takes for the dot to reach the mouse is longer compare to the time it takes for a province that has a lower poverty rate. As an example, Phnom Penh has a really low poverty rate, so the dot is very very small and the speed to develop is fast!

Data visualization of the poverty rate in Cambodia 

Here is a link to the simulation:  https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/520492# 

Below is an example of the code: 

let prov = [];
class Data{ 
  constructor(pov_rate, speed){ 
    this.pov_rate = pov_rate; 
    if(speed > 5) this.speed = speed; 
    else  this.speed = 2; 
    this.lastPosY = 0; 
    this.lastPosX = 0; 
  }
  
  setTo(posX, posY){ 
    noStroke(); 
    this.lastPosY = posY; 
    this.lastPosX = posX; 
    ellipse(posX, posY, abs(this.pov_rate)* 1.5); 
  }

  runTo(goal, i){ 
    var sp = 25 - (this.pov_rate - this.speed); 
    var run = this.lastPosX + sp/5; hit = collidePointCircle(mouseX,mouseY, run, this.lastPosY, abs(this.pov_rate) * 1); 
    if(hit){  
      fill('#8E44AD'); 
      textSize(30); 
      textAlign(CENTER); 
      text(obj.data[i].PRO_Name, width/2, 50); 
      textSize(20); 
      text("Poverty Rate: " + obj.data[i].pov_rate + "%", width/2, 80);
      fill('#FFC300'); 
    }else{ 
      fill('#5386CC'); 
    } 
    if(run < goal - 20) this.setTo(run, this.lastPosY); 
    else ellipse(run, this.lastPosY, abs(this.pov_rate)*1.5); 
  }
}
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Women in STEM – Women International Day

Our seniors talked about their marine project!

It’s March 8th and it’s also Women International Day most work of Liger stuffs has a day off. Not to be mean but Women International Day in this country seems a little bit quiet. In out Khmer class we had a discussion about why we have this event! I was very happy to learn about this because I can have a better understanding of women’s issue around the world and of course being a good husband in the future. 

Previously in physics class, we learned about women in STEM and we can see that there weren’t that many women in the STEM. So on that day, I was being a part of the participants at the event called “Girls in Science & Technology” lead by Cambodia Children’s Fund foundation. There were a lot of women at there presenting about their projects, and two of our Liger group were there to present there application and marine project. 

It was a very cool event to see only women projects and they are very incredible; I’m proud of them. One of the projects was working with Bluetooth and a car. The car was very fancy and the motion of the car was very smooth which explain to me that they give a lot of hard work into it. 

#womenGoGO

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In the Zone, VEX Robotics- PID

On the third round of the exploration in year six, VEX Robotics is my exploration. It was introduced to me since last year, Liger Advanced Robotics Competition, where we participate in a VEX Robotics Competition 2016-2017. This year, it is the same competition but different challenge calls  In the Zone. Last year the competition took place at Taiwan while this year it is in Bangkok Thailand. Another difference is the teammate, now Liger team divides into two teams boys and girls. The two teams represent Liger and Cambodia; we worked together really well representing Liger and Cambodia at the competition. It turns out really great success compare to any other robotics competition that Liger had. Well, the girls’ team got First Place and the boys’ team got Third Place. 

I was one of the boys’ team, Botijsu. Not to brag, but at the beginning of the competition, our team seems very outstanding compared to other teams. Our robot can do mobile goals lift, low cone stack, and high cone stack. Our mechanics also seem complex. Sadly, when the game starts the robots stopped working because of the floor of the competition, IT HAS A LOT OF FRICTION! We were frustrated, after one game to another we always loose. It was our last match while we changed our robots a lot, but it was a good change. We won the last game, yey, but we were at the bottom of the table. Botjisu were hopeless the only hope that we had were to get selected from the top team at the selection stage (were the top six high point team have to select their alliance). Yes! We got selected from the four top team and we lead them until they get to the third place at the end of the competition.  

This video is one of elimination stage!

As part of the robotics exploration, I was on a team call the programming team. In this team, our role is to get the code ready for the competition and for testing. In the process of building the robot, we found out that our robot doesn’t go to the point that we need it to be. So we research about different controlling systems that is easy and give more accuracy; we found out a control system calls PID. The full word of PID is Proportional, Integral, and Derivative; each letter represents different equation.

After doing the research we then start to test those system on real robot. On the first day of the testing, we didn’t get anything, the robot went crazy! It took us about 5 days to work on that control system, and it didn’t work then we decided to give up on it and begin to focus on other tasks. We were really ashamed of the time that we put into it. Luckily, I was still learning at Arrowdot (a class that I took for about 8 months) and they teaches us about PID! I was really happy to hear that and at last I finally understand the concept of PID. In the robot we actually use only proportional and integral.

float Kp = 0.25;
float Ki = 0.01;

int encoder = 0;

int totVal1, totVal2 = 0;
int average1, average2 = 0;

int err1, output1 = 0;
int err2, output2 = 0;

int currentPos1 = 0; // To display the
int currentPos2 = 0;

int sp = 500; // Set Point
int p1,i1 = 0;
int p2,i2 = 0;

void pid(){
  int motorLimit = 80; //Limit Speed
  for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
    totVal1 += SensorValue[potentiometerScissorsLeft]; // left potentiometer
    totVal2 += SensorValue[potentiometerScissorsRight]; // right potentiometer
  }

  average1 = totVal1/10;
  average2 = totVal2/10;

  err1 = -1 * (sp - average1); // -1 because when go up the value is smaller
  err2 = -1 * (sp - average2);

  p1 = Kp * err1;
  p2 = Kp * err2;

  i1 = Ki * (i1 + err1);
  i2 = Ki * (i2 + err2);

  currentPos1 = average1; // just to display
  currentPos2 = average2; // just to display

  output1 =  p1 + i1;
  output2 =  p2 + i2;

  if(output1 > motorLimit)  output1 = motorLimit;
  else if(output1 < -motorLimit)  output1 = -motorLimit;

  if(output2 > motorLimit)  output2 = motorLimit;
  else if(output2 < -motorLimit)  output2 = -motorLimit;

  totVal1 = 0; totVal2 = 0;
  average1 = 0; average2 = 0;

}
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Gender Submit

Gender Walk.

In our literacy class, we learn about gender! The final result of list lesson is to write a news article about gender. My topic is about the insulting word call “Bitch”. I have a concern why this word is so popular in current world; personally, I think this word bring women’s value to the ground very hard. 

I went to do some research on the web and interview people at the riverside at Phnom Penh, Cambodia. There were a lot of responses, both good and bad, to this topic. There were plenty of challenges to me in doing this project: One, is the time, our facilitator helped to push us this project because she needs this for the Exploration project. Second is the structure, I found out that it was very hard for me to write a news article (since that was my first time). As a result, I end up finishing the project on time with my friend helped to edit.

Students from different schools.

Moreover, Liger hosted an event called “Gender Submit” and I also participate in that event. That was a very great event for me to get in-depth about gender, so I can use this idea and help to distribute to people in my village. I think that gender equity is one of the main issues where people in this country don’t really think about it. Men were more educated than women, while women were more likely to leave work after giving birth. 

These are the problems, participating in “Gender Submit” provides me stronger ideas of how we make changes in my country. I was very excited to have other students from a different type of schools to join this event. I have a dream that every school in the world should have this event once a year as a door for children to see the real world because this is not a women issue, it’s human rights issue.