For this week’s Student Blogging Challenge, as well as writing a commenting guideline, we had to comment on 3 different peoples posts. I chose three random people, and away I went.
The first blog I commented on was The Life Without “R”… by Raegan Riley. I chose to comment on this blog because I thought it was cool how they went about doing the challenge. Instead of doing a graphic, as I did, they wrote about quality comments.
This is a quality comment because of a few things. Firstly, I formatted the comment as a letter. Second, I complimented their blog and said what I liked about it. Finally, I gave them some feedback.
The second blog I commented on was Celeste’s Blog. I wanted to comment on their blog because I thought it was super cool that they completed this on paper, instead of doing it on a device.
I though this was a good comment, because it was formatted like a letter, along with the first comment. I also asked a question, that may start a conversation. I hope, if they hadn’t thought of doing it in an app, that I can tell them about some cool apps they can use.
The last blog I commented on was Preston’s Blog. This was a really cool post. I wanted to comment on Preston’s blog because I really liked their graphic.
This was a quality comment for several reasons. It was formatted as a letter. Also, I tried to help Preston by pointing out how I saw it as blurry.
I hope my comments help these people, and that they start conversations!
Recreating videos is hard. But this project matched it. Welcome to; Project Live Event.
For this project, we had to film a live event. This is really useful, because a lot of the time when we go on field studies, like Calgary and Ottawa, we need to film stuff that is happening in the moment. Now, unlike the Recreation Video Project, we only have one chance to get that perfect shot.
You can’t really use a storyboard, because you can’t be 100% sure of what is going to happen, and when. So instead, we made an Action Plan. Using Notes, we wrote down all the shots and points we wanted to capture. This was very helpful, because we knew what to film, and while editing, we knew what shots we had to work with.
I decided to film Borscht: A Story because I thought it would have a very interesting story and, well, it would be fun. And it was! I love borscht, and making borscht, so it combined my interests with a school project. My mom was great about it too, so it worked out great! Except we had a bit of an issue with the slowcooker, which you will see in the video.
Then, it came time to edit, using iMovie. This was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Turned out, I actually had about 20 minutes of footage, and the videos could only be 2 minutes long. I had to cut a lot of footage, and trim the stuff I had. In the end, I did get it to 2 minutes, but just barely.
Honestly, I was pretty happy with my first draft. Other than the music, which I though didn’t really match, it turned out great. I never got any critique, so I just edited it slightly and bam. Draft two.
I had a lot of fun with this project. Other than the slightly stressful part about only having one shot, it was a really cool project. I definitely learned a lot, and I’ll be able to use these skills on our next field study!
For this week’s task, I decided to make my own image. Making your own image is a great way to avoid any risk of copyright infringement. I made this image using Sketches Pro, but there are many other apps you can do this with. By making your own images, you can tell the story in the way you want it to be told, and to use your creativity.
Reading is fun. I truly believe that. In grade 10, we have to learn how to read for fun. And, as I explained in my other post, I read Don’t Get Caught by Kurt Dinan. So after we read the book, we had to do the project, which was a movie trailer for our book. There were several steps to this project.
First step was an individual trailer template. It was very interesting, because our teacher was on another PLP trip. And our sub didn’t exactly know what was going on, so we came up with many different ideas for what this was. I figured that it was, well, I’ll show you instead.
It wasn’t great, but I think it got my point across. If I were to to this differently, I would have drawn stick figures, or diagrams, or something more visual than what I had.
Once we finished this, we had to create a group trailer template. In my group, which was Daniel, Lucas, and Jamie, we divided up the tasks and put it together.
In our second draft, we took the critique we got and made it better. We added more shots, and added specifications. Also at this time we had to figure out who was playing whom.
This was a very difficult part. We had an idea, but we ended up completely switching it. We had Tamara as Kate Malone, Lucas as Dave Wheeler, Jamie as Tim Adleta, and Daniel as Maxwell Cobb. I played Ellie Wick. Based on character description, it didn’t really fit, but our video turned out alright.
Click the pic for the full script!
The script was interesting. I wrote the script, and due to how we structured the video, I wanted to use direct passages from the book. Don’t Get Caught is written as if you are in Max’s head, so it was pretty easy to work with. One of the things that bothered me was that the descriptions on some of the characters is limited, so you don’t really know that much about them until the book progresses.
https://youtu.be/0catErfGOBo
Our first draft wasn’t fantastic, but it wasn’t terrible. We had a critique in class, and the basic things we needed to fix were the missing shot, fix some audio things, and move the reviews around a bit. We had a week to revise and refilm, but as this project was part of a larger project, we didn’t have tons of time in class. We did get it though, and I’m actually really proud of how this turned out.
https://youtu.be/58VWb8ZLM-g
I have a lot to reflect on with this project. If I were to redo this project, I think I would have taken more of a leadership role. I tried to direct our group a bit, but it didn’t turn out so well. I would also have to say that for some of our assignments, the work probably could have been distributed more equally. But overall, I’m actually pretty proud of our group. It may sound strange, but we’re kinda like the water tower five. Yup, that sounded weird.
Now these videos will haunt us forever. Because they won’t just be on our blogs, no. Our school has ‘reading group’ copies of these books, and our teacher put QR codes linking to our videos on the books. So Seycove will forever be reminded of our PLP 10 class, through this! Oh god, I hope no one I know watches this.
Hello Australians! Ha, reference to our video. Anyways. So, for our first blog post for Scimathics this year, ima talk about something really complecated. Triginometry. Yay.
For the past month, ish, we’ve been learning about the math for, well, triangles. Triangle math. Tri, three, angle, angle. It’s all about the angles. Using triginometry, you can find out all the side lengths and angles of a triangle (as long as you have two points of data previously). Sine, Cosine and Tangent.
For this project, we had to create a video where we explained how solar panels are used and how you can use triginometry to find the optimal angle.
In PLP, we make a lot of videos, which is a good skill to have. Usually, we have to create everything from a story spine, to music for the videos. But for this project, we didn’t.
Project Recreation was a project where we literally, just, recreated a video. Our first video was chosen for us, Catch by Joe Haltzer. Everything was supposed to be exactly the same, with angles, costumes, editing, music, all that jazz.
I was in a group with Tamara and Kai. For this video, it was not a requirement for us to make a storyboard, so we didn’t. We just had our script, and the video. While filming, we decided to join another group. We each had only one male in our group, and the videos needed two. So we filmed together, and edited separately. Honestly, looking back, I don’t think that was a great idea, but that’s in the past. Learn from your mistakes. Anyways.
Editing is not one of my skills, but that was my part in the group. The video was to choppy, and the sound effects weren’t great. We got a lot of critique, which was great. I think a second draft would have made great improvement.
Also, mic’s. Our audio isn’t great, and mic’s would’ve greatly improved that. The audio was a huge part of this story, and it could’ve been better.
Our next video was a huge, well, huge half-step. This time, we had to find a funny video. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention. These are supposed to be humorous. Our unit is called ‘Funny or Die’. So, keep that in mind. Anyways. We had to find a school appropriate, short film with a beginning, middle, and end. This was harder than you’d think. In our same groups, we spent a long time looking for videos. Finally we found this BBC short.
I have watched this video so many times that I find it funny, but I’m not sure if everyone would find it funny. Moving on.
This time, we had to do the whole shebang. Story spine, screenplay, storyboard. But in the end, it helped a lot. Understanding the story made helped us understand the characters better, and the purpose of the story. Plus, having them help film. Except for the storyboard. And I only say this because the video was in one shot. Usually they are very useful. This one was just, less useful. It was still helpful.
Filming was intense. There was a thunderstorm happening when my group was trying to film, and they had to wait for the thunder to stop while filming. After about a dozen takes, they finally got it, and then we went to editing.
There was not a lot of editing to, because it was one shot. There were lots of sound effects though, which were a bit difficult to find. But it turned out well, I think anyways.
https://youtu.be/mEz–vGQ8p0
In the end, I learned a lot. I learned about how the internet is a scary place. I realized how important mic’s are, and how mad the teachers get when we don’t use them (which is understandable). I definitely learned a lot about time management. Overall, this was a really cool project, and I am glad we did it, because were gonna be doing a lot more videos!
Grade 10. Wow, I’m old. Anyways. So, for my first blog post of this year, I will be talking about a project we just started in humanities. The driving question is ‘ How do authors use text to teach us more about ourselves?‘
Beginning this unit, as you’ve probably guessed due to the question, we had to read a book. But, because in grade ten we are supposed to ‘read for enjoyment’, which I do anyways, we had several options in which book to choose. The books are as follows:
The book that I chose for this was Don’t Get Caught. It’s about a kid who is looked over in high school. Then one day, he gets a note from this group called the chaos club to meet at the local water tower. I won’t say anything more, just in case someone hasn’t read the book.
For a prediction in the book, I think that the chaos club is going to get really mad and accidentally give themselves up.
Every Tuesday and Friday in class, we have these mini book challenges. For the first one, I worked with my group Jamie, Lucas and Daniel to create this video to show some important parts in the first 5 chapters in the books! Here’s the video.
