For our first project in Scimatics we did a screen time tracker where we had to track our screen time over the week.

The very first thing I had to do was to create the chart and set up the sums and percentages in it. I have never used the formulas in Numbers before, but I found it easy to do after I learned how to do it in class.

The next thing I had to do was to track my screen time over a week. I sometimes forgot to input my time so had to estimate. It was surprising how much time I spend on my devices.

The third thing I had to do was put pie charts into the document and program them to change when I added numbers onto the chart. I also did a colour coded graph. Looking at the charts and graphs makes it easy to see how I use my time.

Finally I had to present to the class. I noticed that everyone’s presentation was similar because teenagers usually spend a lot of time on their screens. I am glad to see that I don’t spend the most time in my class on devices.

I feel like I applied my curricular competencies well.

For Applying and Innovating, I learned a lot about myself and others in the class. Also my presentation went well. One thing that was tough was the presentation because I had to speak in front of the class. I got through it by pretending I wasn’t nervous.

For Understanding and Solving, I worked hard on my chart and also learned more about fractions through looking at how my time breaks down. We learned about fractions in class but the numbers and concepts mean more when they’re about things I do every day. The calculations of screen hours in a day helped me understand fractions in the real world.

For Communicating and Representing, I put in multiple charts and graphs to represent different ways I use my screen time. It helped to see the graphs and charts because it made everything clear. The hardest part was picking which numbers to compare to each other that would have meaning, and give them titles and colours that would make them easy to understand. I am proud of making a few charts and graphs using new skills I learned.

I am really proud of the work I did even though I am not happy about how much time I spent on screens.

The Medium is the Message reflection

This term we:

•Did lots of group work and learned how to blog

•Looked at ads from a historical and target audience perspective,

•Analyzed design techniques, persuasion techniques and categories

•Read a book and some extra texts (like McLuhan)

•Designed an ad for a customer

Before we started learning about advertising, I wasn’t really interested in ads.  The only ads that caught my attention were about food or tv shows.  I liked retro ads like “where’s the beef” and ads that are funny, like the ad for insurance for women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIphoZxFJ0k.

In the Medium is the Message, we didn’t only focus on advertising, we also learned how to deliver a message. I set up my first blog, and worked with a few groups.  This taught me how to discuss, listen and learn from other people, and give them ideas and take their critiques of my work.  I also learned how to blog – I found it really tough at the start, but it is getting easier. I was proud of my blog that included posts to music. I had never done that before and it was fun: http://www.blog44.ca/bent/sample-page/

One of the things I enjoyed was looking at ads from a historical perspective. I like old retro ads about airplanes, so was able to find some interesting ones, analyze who they were targeted to, and how well they might have worked, and also thought about my own response to those ads today. My favourite ad I found was the TWA one. It features my favourite airplane. (Picture of  ad)  I also got to interview my dad about his perspective on advertising, and learned that we basically think almost the same thing about ads – we like to do more research less than relying on advertising claims.

We didn’t just look at ads and talk about them, we also learned how to analyze them and even make them.  We learned some design stuff – layout, colour and how to get people’s interest in the ad.  Persuasion techniques were one of the things we looked at in our weekly ad chart – one of the best I found was an ad for a taxi company that made taking a taxi look adventurous. When I first did an assignment to watch TV ads and talk about the persuasion techniques, I didn’t enjoy it, but when I did the ad chart, I started to find it easy to put ads into categories like “water is wet” and the “we’re different and unique” claim.   

The Gospel According to Larry was cool.  It was a book about a character named Josh that used an identity called Larry to motivate people for anti-consumerism. The book wasn’t really my favourite because you didn’t really get to meet the characters and it had no plot to it.  I did work hard on understanding the text by doing the worksheets. I didn’t really like the McLuhan text either. I still like reading though, just not this stuff.

The biggest project was designing an ad for Ahoy.  My blog about that is here http://www.blog44.ca/bent/2020/11/08/advertising-draft-reflection/. I’m proud of the work I did in designing and refining my ad.

Those were some of the projects we did in the Medium is the Message. That is all.

We had to design ads for companies.  My company was A’hoy in Deep Cove.

This project was really cool because I learned how to use Canva to design an ad. It’s my first time ever designing an ad. It was fun seeing how much change I could make to my ad and how I could make it better.

I knew that I was going to share it with my group and see their ads too. I wasn’t really looking forward to sharing with other people because they might not like it.  But it turned out to be really fun.

1st draft

On my first draft I decided to put a font that kind of looks like the one A’hoy uses and I put a picture in the background that fit into the idea of A’hoy – because it reminds me of a nice water setting like Deep Cove.  It looks good in the background.

I used the work we had done in class on placement and colouring and spacing to play around with the ad and fonts until it looked good.

2nd draft

In my second draft I didn’t really change that much, all I changed was that I changed the size of the text on the bottom of the poster and I moved the picture in the background a little bit.

I made the changes because I was told during our group work that the text on the bottom was too hard to read. In the group, I also commented on other peoples’ work – we noticed that someone else in the group had text that was too hard to read and they changed that.  I think we all learned from the feedback.

3rd draft

On my 3rd draft I changed my background picture to one of Deep Cove and I changed the colour of the text to the one that A’hoy uses ( from dark blue to very dark blue).

I haven’t got feedback on this yet. I’m looking forward to that.

I learned a lot about how to make my ad better by discussing it, seeing other peoples ads, and looking at historical ads. I still think that there is more for me to learn about making  an ad.