In class today with Mr. Featherstone we talked all about winder and we are handing it in though our blogs.
First we made mind maps about everything to do with wonder.
Then we answered the following questions about This essay.
1- How was Prinz’s experience with the “ Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus” different from his parents? why?
My answer- He has never seen this kind of thing, thus he was in wonder. For his parents they had see things like that their whole lives, but for him he had never been exposed to such an experience.
2- What are the three bodily symptoms Prinza postulates as components of wonder?
My answer- Sensory, cognitive and spiritual
3- How does Francis Bacon consider wonder?
My answer- Wonder to Francis Bacon was a broken knowledge and a mystified incomprehension that science could cure.
And Finally 4- Describe one moment in your life when you experienced wonder.
My Paragraph-
For me the time that I have been the most wonderstruck was back in February of 2015. Back then I was playing on the Peewee A1 team and we were at a tournament in Quebec. When I stepped onto the ice, I cast my gaze upwards and was in wonder at what I saw. 6-7 thousand people all looking down on me, cheering me, analyzing me, as if they were 6 thousand hawks scouting prey. Then our opponents came onto the ice, the Gatineau Olympique, a favorite to win and the local team. When they stepped on the ice the noise was nearly deafening, cheers, whistles, yells, all aimed at my opponents. But it did not only fuel them, it was my teams nitrous. Giving us an extremely intense focus. The whole stadium melted away as I lined up for the puck drop, I didn’t hear anything it was just me and the 11 other players and goalies on the ice. I could feel my heartbeat rack my whole body like a drum, and then… It began. Surrounded by 6 thousand people the only 11 I cared about were the only ones I saw.
So, a whole project based on Harry Potter. To some people this sounds like the best project because they have grown up reading and watching the Harry Potter books and movies. For me though I was coming in with a completely blank mind, which turned out to be more useful than I thought.
My question was; What would a modern Hogwarts look like? How could it be hidden? And what would it cost?
Designing a new hogwarts tired out to be a mixed bag, I’ll explain in the next paragraph, but first look at the old plan compared to the three floor new one:
For me the most interesting but also the most challenging part was being able to imagine looking at the plan come to life from the perspective of students, teachers and muggles. Not just standing outside it but how it would be to teach learn and navigate in and through the school.
I was most surprised by people’s reactions to be honest. After seeing the caliber of other people’s projects mine felt really small and insignificant. But even Alex’s dad who is an architect was not only impressed by my plan but he said that my pricing estimate was realistic and practical. The pricing chart is below.
But this whole $17,000,000 building can’t just be in the middle of the city, in fact the exact opposite, I chose an extremely remote place. In fact the 12th most remote in the world.
You can choose your own way to pronounce that.
For the presentation part of this project we were split into groups and were told to turn the library into Hogwarts. My group of Tatum, Spencer, Kate, Claire and Quinn were given the racetrack, a long table with a projector at the end and a huge whiteboard next to it. What other part of Hogwarts would we pick for a long table then the great hall.
(At Christmas time of course)
We hung candles from the ceiling (fake ones) for the floating candles that were in the great hall.
Amd covered the table with different kinds of Christmasy treats. Ms Pye (our science and math teacher) even brought in a chocolate fountain!
I had my project projected on to the whiteboard and me on the other side of the table talking about it.
In conclusion, the whole project was much more exciting and entertaining that I thought it was going to be. I thought I was going to be lost in a sea of nerds arguing about tiny details of Harry Potter’s plot (well that kinds did happen but…) I did enjoy the process of this project more than I thought I would.
How has my chemistry super hero project going so far? No comment… But I will write a blog post.
So for my group of Kate, Reid, Sofia and obviously me, we creatively named our selves K.A.S.R (Kate.Adam.Sofia.Reid) smart right? So anyway, our fist assignment was to make a flag with our name, a flag that we had to create and our element. (Hydrogen is not colored because we didn’t know if the was our final decision)
Then we made a giant periodic table (even though we had so many in the room)
For both of the assignments my group has functioned very well together, we combine skills and interests together so that we can do work. Right now we are also starting to build an atom of our element so that will be added to this post soon.
If you have been reading my last few posts on my lame excuse for a blog, you will know that we are currently experiencing a true whirlwind of a project. If you haven’t read my last posts, read the next paragraph.
In this unit, we are working on scale diagrams in math, circuits in science, and metaphors and revolutions in P.L.P. All of these topics combined to make the legend Metaphor Machine unit. Each group was given a revolution. My group of Quinn, Mimi, Ethan and I were given The Xinhai Revolution. In our Machine we were supposed to make a Rube Goldberg machine machine that using metaphors told the story of our revolution following Crane Brinton’s theory. They also had to be the aesthetic.
This post will all be about building, for the planning check out the following.
We have recently finished the project, it took a very long time, a lot of materials, work and sadness to make this nightmare somewhat manageable. The most nightmare-ish part was making it all work. The first problem was the track. Originally we were going to make a track out of a plastic tube cut in half, like Ethan is doing in the first photo, but then we progressed to a chicken wire and wood combo.
Also a very difficult part was making the ball transfer, it had to represent the transfer of power to the young leader. Or in this case from the small marble to the large one.
And to go with the machine we created a video.
So for all the grade 9’s in British Columbia we have to participate in a take your kid to work day. Along with that we have to fill out two sheets, one where we ask different people at that workplace different questions. The other where we write about our experience I don’t have to do because I’m in P.L.P and that makes me special I was told.
Anyway, where my day was very different from most is that I went to my Aunt’s work, not any of my parents. Why? Because I find her work interesting. She is a planner at The City of North Vancouver, a career that I also plan to pursue. Now, because I was going to be where buildings, parks and more are planned through the whole tour, I was not allowed to use my phone. That means no media. Sorry.
Because I was involved with the City I got a full tour of not just the City hall, but also the fire hall and police station which as awesome. I learned all about being a firefighter and what they do, I don’t think I want to do that, it sounds frightening. As far as the police station goes, I got a full tour, even the secrets stuff so I don’t know what I’m allowed to say other than it was cool.
For the second half of the day I met the mayor, which was really awesome and then I really did some work.
The photo above is me tallying and making a chart using data collected from different sessions. All of them out stickers on an activity, item, or development idea for a park in North Vancouver.
After filling out the sheet that turned out to be completely unnecessary, I learned a lot about the requirements and types of planning. Like my aunt you can work for the government, or you can work for the private sector. The difference is planners for private sectors plan and propose the idea to the city, whose planners propose it to the mayor.
The most surprising thing I learned was how closely City planners work with the mayor. Every time you want to present an idea for development you have to speak in front of board her is on, while you are on T.V! Even though it is a difficult stressful job, I do see myself possibly becoming a city planner in the future.
If you have been reading my last few posts on my lame excuse for a blog, you will know that we are currently experiencing a true whirlwind of a project. If you haven’t read my last posts, read the next paragraph.
In this unit, we are working on scale diagrams in math, circuits in science, and metaphors and revolutions in PLP. All of these topics combined to make the legend Metaphor Machine unit. Each group was given a revolution. My group of Quinn, Mimi Ethan and I were given the The Xinhai Revolution. In our Machine we were supposed to make a Rube Golberg machine that using metaphors told the story of our revolution following Crane Brinton’s theory. They also had to be the Steampunk aesthetic.
Anyway, at this point we are about halfway done the physical building of the project. Before we built we had to make a timeline. It looked like this;
https://youtu.be/0NDPy3yJM9s
It took a few days and one frantic lunch hour to make, and comes with a cut bibliography at the bottom courtesy of me.
Then came the building, so far the hardest thing has been making a working track that a marble can roll along without falling off. We started with an idea to cut rubber clear tube in half like Ethan is doing here…
https://youtu.be/RTBpdx8CC-U
And then after that failed miserably, we made a new system.
So far the hardest thing has been having to engineer on the fly, plans constantly go wrong, and you have to alter them almost every day! But it has been fun, and I’m excited to see where it goes.
If is is asked you what friends are for, you would say support, comradeship, fun and more buzz words. But in this case in a group of me Claire and Kate it’s all about irritating Kate. Just kidding, but why were we in a group? Well we are currently in the math science section of the Metaphor Machine unit. The math part is blueprints and scales. For that we designed kitchens, apartments and calculated square feet of floor and walls.
The project was designing a dream house. That’s why we were a group. We used an app called Room Planner which is so awesome and made this.
My room is the dark wood floor, and as you can see I’m sandwiched between to very large rooms. But I got back at them by making all of Kate’s room lilac.
This week we did a mini-project on the impacts that railways had in the industrial revolution in Britain. This is all leading up to our metaphor machine project that I will be blogging about in the coming weeks.
We were told to make an Explain Everything explaining and enforcing three causes and consequences that we believed were the most influential. The document below is my outline…
And then I made the Explanation Everything…
But between those two steps we did two peer revision sessions. In my first one Quinn suggested making my commentary more energetic and interesting, so that it was engaging and interesting. I did this throughout but especially in the middle section, the one where I had the least amount of enthusiasm.
In the second and most recent one Spencer didn’t have much to say, just mostly about pronunciation, which I went back and tweaked as well.
Sources:
Currently we are reading a book called Leviathan. It is set in a retro Victorian steampunk WWI. We are also just starting in on revolutions. Two units that will connect, so stay tuned. For the past two weeks in the grade 9 PLP class, or FLIGHT, we have been asked a driving question regarding that novel and its themes. Last week the question was about Crane Brinton’s theory of revolution.
This week our question was about the steampunk aesthetic that we did not talk about in class. Mine was, if all of our vehicles were steampunk looking and running would it be an advantage or disadvantage.
I decided that I would make a vehicle fight night. I would pitch two similar vehicles against each other. Compare their looks, stats, and practicality. I chose one car matchup and one motorcycle matchup to compare.
Check out a video of Tom’s awesome bike.
The reason that I only had two comparisons was that I could find very few sites with detail information about the steampunk vehicles.
What Tom did with the bike showed that steampunk could be practical for lower BHP motorcycles. Not only did it look and sound better but it performed more impressively.
As for the car I think it would not be as practical as a daily driver, it has a low ride height which could impart it as far as rough conditions.
But practicality aside, it is a truly awesome car to look at and I don’t know why you wouldn’t want one as a weekend and summer car.
I took my knowledge I had learned from the comparison stage, and designed my own steampunk vehicle. Bred to roam the streets and mountains of the west coast.
Recently in class we have been researching, discussing and learning about revolutions. How they shaped our world today, but more importantly what they are.
We looked at a man named Crane Brinton, in 1938 he released a book,The Anatomy off Revolution. He compared revolutions to a fever, how it spreads and affects us.
The diagram above describes his Theory in a circle format.
We were told to ask a question about his theory. A question we could research and answer in the end. My question was since the 1930’s we have developed a stronger social, racial (and different kinds) of acceptance, also all people are given a voice, it’s the law, so if all the previous statements are true how would a revolt be the same?
Wikipedia says a revolution is this; A revolution (from the Latin revolutio, “a turn around”) is a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities.
To me ‘The population rises up in revolt against current authorities’ sounds like anything you see when you turn on the news. Nowadays rising up against authority is not revolutionary, but simply activating your rights.
In a social system like the one below it is easy to believe that the bottom one, or even two classes have very little input and voice towards the top one or two rankings.
So when they do rise that is revolutionary yes, but nowadays society does not follow this diagram.
Today our society looks more like one big mosaic. People of all beliefs, races, classes and more all blended together in one beautiful mixing pot. I learned about all this Here
We have leaders yes, but they do not work the same as the lords of long ago, the operate more as representatives of countries or parts of countries.
The following is a poem that I wrote last year that I discovered recently that relates to the topic of equality and diversity.
Religions as diverse as the rainbow
You can be peaceful like the Buddha on a Path of Enlightenment
Or as committed as Muslims, 5 prayers a day
Hang out for a while let the water flow like Lao Tzu said
Have some order. Strict as Confucius
Be as resilient as Sikhs, clothing and items all the time
You can be as free as a Hindu, with no set prayers
Let the water flow like molasses, on its own accord
Be as free yet important as the sheep
Be as diverse as our world
If all my talking did not convince you how we have changed look at this video linked below.
I understand that is a representation, that kind of race never happened, but still that is the war that some people fought. Some won, but unfortunately some lost. We have learned from the pain of strangers, because nowadays we all see ourselves as one powerful, genius, strong race.
We may believe in different things but that does not mean you can divide us into categories that go up and down in a way that the bottom gets so little rights and the top gets so many.
In the end Cranes theory is out of date. A revolt is no longer a revolt, now it is bravery to speak out. Because that is allowed by law, that is not revolutionary.
The document below is an added piece I found that helps my theory hit home.