Category: PLP 8

Worm the hero

Hola 👋🏼

I have something to unveil to you.

It’s magnificent.

It’s splendid. 

It’s…..

A story.

Ok so maybe that’s a tad bit vague.

We used a random emoji generator to pick out a set of emojis to make a story out of. Mine were; 

An then I used the story spine technique to create my story outline. 

I wrote out my story but then I decided that I wanted to take an academic risk and make the story into a video. I don’t know if i will do this again in the future though because it took a lot longer than expected and has almost made me hand this in late. Here is my Emoji story PDF. 

And the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The video! 

I hope you enjoyed my story and thank you for visiting my blog!

As always, Brooke.

Music & I

Ok ask me for my favourite song. I will go through my playlists and literally list out 100 different songs that I love equally. I know all the words and the timing of every interlude. I love my music.

That being said, I don’t like all music. I have a very specific taste but it is also varied. I grew up going to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and started playing violin and piano as a toddler. I also was introduced to alternative music and started playing the drums at age 5. And I also love jamming out to 80s tunes with my mom. 

I was fiddling around with this app called Medly where you can make your own music. Here a short tune that I made:

The instruments that I have played include the piano, violin, drums, baritone euphonium, and I am currently teaching myself the guitar. If I were to generalize my music taste I would say it is mostly alternative with my favourite bands being The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Train, and Imagine Dragons. I seem to have an immaculate memory for song lyrics and I love to just put on my headphones and absorb the music like a sponge. Here is a playlist of my favourite songs:

Here is an Apple Music playlist of my favourite music: 🍎🎵

Here is a similar playlist that I made but in Spotify: 🍏🎶

Well now that you know a bit about my taste in music why not take this music survey so that I can get to know you!

I hope you enjoyed todays post and thank you for reading!

As always, Brooke.

 

PEW! PEW!

For this project we had to make a fully functional laser gun to use in epic battles with aliens……..

Just kidding

This project is about using the Pythagorean theorem and the laws of reflection to        create a laser triangle. 

“LASERS?!? Aren’t those dangerous?”

We aren’t using those types of lasers you see in movies that can cut through metal and slice off fingers. The lasers that we use are just rays of coloured light. Just like those laser cat toys:

Building knowledge 

Atthe start of this project I had no idea what the Pythagorean theorem or law of reflection was. So obviously we had to do lots of building knowledge. We were out into our project groups to come up with all the questions we had for this project.

We then started a project start mind map just to gather all the information that we already knew. Here is a comparison of my mind map at the begging and end of the project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also did a really cool lab to learn about frequency and amplitude in waves.

Now what is the law of reflection? The law of reflection is the fact that the angle of incidence and the angle of reflection will always be the same distance from the normal. As you can see in the diagram below, the normal is an imaginary line that is perpendicular to the reflective surface. We did lots of practise measuring the angle of incidence and reflection with accuracy so that our final project could be precise.

We also had to learn about using the Pythagorean theorem. Pythagorean theorem is used to measure the side lengths of right angle triangles. The formula is A ² + B ² = C ² or Leg ² + leg ² = hypotenuse ². The Pythagorean theorem also states that the area of the square formed by the longest side of the right triangle (the hypotenuse) is equal to the sum of the area of the squares formed by the other two sides of the right triangle, the hypothetical squares look like this;

Our final laser triangle- milestone 5

The end goal of this project was milestone 5, where each group had to create an accurately planned laser model that included at least 1 right triangle. My group didn’t have a lot of ideas for what we wanted ours to look like but we decided that we would try to create the laser off the ground by elevating everything with stands and clamps. The whole point of the model was that it was supposed to be able to be measured accurately, especially the angle of incidence and angle of reflection. We ran into a big problem when every time we tried to set it up something had shifted or changed in height. With only two days left until the project was due we decided to scrap all that we had worked on and remake the triangle on the table like everyone else. We were able to measure more accurately and it was much easier to mark the position of the mirrors and laser. On the final day I brought in my glue gun and some glitter because we basically just had the project sitting on a white piece of cardboard that had marks all over it. What I’m trying to say is that even though our project was fully functional it looked….. bland. But there is almost nothing that glitter cant fix so with a little bit of white paint and pure creativity our project started to look pretty good. Here are some photos of what we made + a short write up;

Final triangle design pdf

 

 

 

 

   Core competencies

  • Questioning and predicting: How can I demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest? The milestones that correspond with this competency are; Milestone1- project start mind map, milestone 3- law of reflection group lab, milestone 4- lazer design lab individual, milestone 5- final laser model. This competency is about using your class time efficiently to do your work without distractions. This competency might not seem hard but definitely is something that I know I can do better on. In the final days of making the physical model my group had to scrap our original idea and start from scratch. It was really hard to stay focused on the project when it seemed like a sinking ship. We ended up pulling ourselves together and I am very proud of the final stage of our laser model.

 

  • Communicating and representing: how can I represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms? The milestones that support this competency are; Milestone 2- Pythagorean khan academy quiz and milestone  6- the blog post. This competency is about being able to develop a scientific procedure that is accurate and includes all required steps of a scientific method. Even though the project outline only links two milestones to this competency I would actually like to add more. I think that I used this competency in milestones 3, 4, and 5, when I had to write up about the experiments. Overall I think that I improved the most on this competency compared to the other two because I got more comfortable and confident the more I worked on this competency.

 

  • Applying and innovating: how can I co-operativly design projects? This competency is used in; Milestone -4 individual lazer design, milestone 5- final laser model, and milestone 6- the blog post. This competency is about having an accurately planned, labeled, built, and measured laser triangle. This competency also talks about all group members contributing equally. Yet again I would also like to add milestone 3, the law of reflection group experiment, to this competency because that was a group project that corresponded with the values of this competency.

 Now its time for my goodbye statement.

This project was really fun and I obviously couldn’t have done it without my group. Big thanks to Claire, Ariane, and Theryn.

As Always, Brooke.

A game about tectonic plates? How boring…

Ever heard of a tectonic plate? I bet most of you have. But do you know the science behind it? 

As you may have guessed, we learned about tectonic plates for the new project we were doing. The end product of this project is a game about plate tectonics that uses probability to determine outcomes.

We made a list of every question we could imagine on the topic of “How does the movements of Earths tectonic plates cause observable changes and effects?” Here are the questions my amazing partner Cooper and I came up with. You may notice some C’s and O’s and those mark closed ended and open ended questions. 

You also may have noticed that there are questions marked 1,2, and 3. Those are were our top three questions that we came up with and wanted answers to. 

We then started our project start mind map using an app called MindNode. I added the mind map categories of QFT top 3 questions, random questions, key concepts, plate tectonics, game ideas, and tectonic game vocabulary . 

 We did a lot of exercises that built our knowledge of plate tectonics so that we could include the key concepts in our game. We learnt about plate boundaries and faults, the layers of earth and mantle convection, and tectonic disasters. Many workbook sheets were completed to ingrain in us the science behind the movement of tectonic plates. That part of the project was a science curricular competency called; Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence. I really like learning about cool science concepts so that competency was really enjoyable for me.

We also did work on game probability so that we could calculate the odds of certain events occurring in our games. The use of probability falls under the curricular competency of; Understanding and solving: Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving

Meanwhile all of this time my partner Cooper & I were thinking of ideas and rules for our game. After many ideas and lots of refinement we finally got our game rules written down. We started a cycle of testing certain aspects of our game then refining the rules, testing and refining, testing and refining. 

Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest. – Using our newfound knowledge of tectonic plates, we had to prepare for game day, the big end to this project. Game boards were made and pieces were gathered. Dice, cards, and spinners, Oh my! We printed out our final game rules and laminated a ton of cards. And after all of that preparation we were ready for the final test of our game.

Did we do it? Did we make a fully functional game about plate tectonics? I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here is a link to the final game rules: Nothing Left Rules

I usually would have put the driving question at the start of this post but I felt that it fit better here. The driving question was “How are thematic and mathematical elements used in game design?”. I think you can figure this one out by now but just in case you can’t; Our games had to use probability. Dice, cards, spinners, etc. Probability is a mathematical element. If you think about commercial games that are for sale, how many of them use some sort of probability? Probably 90%. Same with thematic elements of games. Our games were based on tectonic plates. Some games have sciencey themes like aliens or viruses, others are murder mystery’s or worlds made of candy. You might think that making a game is just using dice or cards to get a piece from one side of a board to the other, but now I know that there is a lot more that goes into the science and planning behind games.

This was a fun project. It was really cool to be able to learn about something new (tectonic plates) and be able to apply that knowledge into something bigger (a game). I learn best when I am interested in the topic and this project definitely made me interested in tectonic plates and the mystical planet called earth. I grew as a learner in this project when I asked questions, found the answers, and was able to use the answers to aid my game. However I did not do this project alone. I would like to give a big thanks to my amazing partner Cooper, we worked extremely well together and I couldn’t have done any of this project without him.

As always, Brooke.

Am I a screen addict?!?

New quarter, new class. Our first scimatics project was rather short- Just for us to get a feel of what scimatics would be like. The driving question for this project was “What fraction of our time is screen time?” From my calculations, I spend just over 1/4 of my week on screens.

In this project, we made a spreadsheet that calculated what time we spend doing things like screen productivity, entertainment, exercise, sleep, etc. We started right away on making the spreadsheet so that we could track a complete week. Most of us did not have a bunch of previous knowledge with the Numbers app so we learned some really cool tricks on how to use numbers and how to customize cells. The competency that went along with this part of the project was Understanding and solving: Visualize to explore mathematical concepts.

Another one of the competencies we were learning was how to represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms. We were showed how to add pie charts and graphs to display the data we collected in different forms. The goal was to find as many ways to display the data as possible. I made 6 pie charts, 4 bar graphs, and 1 line graph. 

We also did lots of homework practise sheets to strengthen our knowledge of fractions, decimals, mixed numbers, and percents. I was pleased to find out that I’m actually pretty good at working with fractions because I know that those skills will help me in the future. I used the competency of applying and innovating by being productive and using my class time wisely. My table partner and I talked often and helped each other out when we got stuck on a question or task.

I really enjoyed colour-coding my screen time tracker and it was super fun to try to find different graphs and charts to make. I was glad to find out that I don’t spend an incredible amount of time on my screens but I would like to try to bring that number down a bit. Also I’m not entirely sure what I was doing on Thursday but apparently I had a lot of screen time that day. Anyways, thank you for reading my short reflection of my Screen time tracker 2020.

As always, Brooke.

How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?

Summative reflection time!

Finally, the end! Hopefully you have read my earlier post on my reflection so far. If you haven’t read that, I would suggest you go read it before you finish this. My previous reflection was based on the technical aspect of the process of creating the individual advertisement drafts.

But wait, what about the DRIVING QUESTION?! Ah yes, the driving question. “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us?” Where to start, where to start? Advertisers use a variety of techniques to engage their target audience in buying something, doing something, going somewhere, supporting something or someone, etc. All ads we see are created to catch the attention of a specific group of people. Sometimes media uses something that you can relate to to influence you. You can also be subconsciously influenced if you don’t recognize the appeals that you are connecting to. In my opinion, I think that in this case, ignorance is not bliss and that it is better to be aware of how you are being influenced. That I guess is the answer to the driving question.

All of the project was basically ramping up to milestone 6, the final advertisement!

“Wow!” “Oh my goodness really?” “That’s so cool.” “Yayyyyyy!”

But seriously, north groups were scrambling to get the best collaborative advertisement finished and sent to the business ASAP. We had to take all of our feedback that we have received and refine it all down to one amazing advertisement that is ready to be seen by the public eye. Are you ready to see my north groups ad? Drumroll please! *Cue dramatic drumroll*

TA DAAAAAAA!

Lets now talk about the competencies that we used to help us complete the project. We used competencies from English, social studies, and maker. The english competencies we used were ‘Comprehending texts’ and ‘Designing texts’. The ‘Comprehending texts’ competency was very helpful to me because I learned a variety of different strategies to help me understand and analyze different types of texts. I think I greatly improved my text comprehension skills throughout this project. 

I really saw my growth in this project when we made the individual advertisement drafts. (Yet again please go read that post.) My first draft was pretty bad and I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing but by the time that we were finishing our final ads I actually was using knowledge that I gained over the project. I was learning new skills and I could visually see the progress I was making. Let me tell you, it is really cool to be able to look back on your work and see how much your skills have changed.

My favourite part of this whole project would probably be any work I did with my north group. We had such good times and shared many laughs XD. A big thanks to Gabi, Dylan, Sabrina, Erik, and Judah

I learned a lot about advertising in this project and how media is used to influence me. I know that I have gained knowledge that I will carry with me for a long time.

Thank you for reading my post and I hope you enjoyed!

As always, Brooke.

The medium is the message- My Reflection so far.

Wow I can’t believe that it is already almost the end of this quarter. Time has flown by since the beginning of this new project we started. In PLP we always start the project with a driving question. Our driving question was “How does what we hear, read, and see, influence us?”. My first reaction to hearing that was “Oh it’s probably going to be something about media and advertising.” And I was right. 

As per usual, we kicked off the project with the Launch. We were told that throughout this project, we would have 4 separate teams to work on things with. The teams were North – our main project group, East – design/photo group, South – analysis group, and we had our West group – advertising. One of the first things we do in a project is develop our ‘need to knows’. For this, we were in our north groups because these are the people we will be spending the most time with on the actual project. We had a whiteboard-sheet-thingy and our group had to sort the NTKs into three categories: 

Product – What will we make to share our learning?  

Process – How are we learning? How are we gaining new knowledge? and

Content – What are we learning? 

We would be coming back time and time again to this sheet to add more questions and park the questions that we already answered.

Each north group got to choose a local business establishment to create an advertisement for. My north group chose to do The Raven Pub & Liquor store. We contacted them via email with some questions about their business to help us when we create the advertisements. We got a reply back with answers so we were ready to start preparing for our drafts. We learned about what makes a persuasive ad, layout and composition, advertising techniques and appeals, images and copy. The first drafts were made that night and then we went back to school the next day and continued to learn more about how to make a professional ad. We would get time to share our drafts with our north group to receive feedback and critique to then go make another draft. At this point I have now made 4 advertisement drafts.

 

Draft 1 ⬆️ – This was my first advertisement draft. I did NOT like how it turned out. I didn’t like how the ravens feet were lost in the title, I didn’t like the layout, the text was all mismatched, it just wasn’t working for me.

Draft 2 ⬆️ – I tried to change it up a bit from the first draft by adding a actual photo from the raven. I also changed the copy.

Draft 3 ⬆️ – After lots of peer feedback I rearranged the text boxes and yet again Changed the copy text.

Draft 4 ⬆️ – I wanted to try to do something completely different with this draft and I think it paid off. I chose a completely different layout and background. This is by far my favourite draft because I love the minimalistic tone to it while still representing the rustic raven. I wish I had made more of the text match though. (Definitely will do that for my next revision.)

  • Draft 1. My individual ad for the Raven pub.

It has been especially cool to relate this projects learnings to my everyday life. I can now look at ads and try to gain further knowledge of how they are influencing me and what techniques they are using. I can think questions like: Does this ad use pathos, ethos, or logos? What is the message this ad is trying to send? Who is the target audience? Am I the target audience? 

Anyways thank you for reading my post and I hope you enjoyed!

As always, Brooke.

Project “My user manual”- a summative post.

Our first English project this year was to create an iPhone user guide but for ourselves. We also had to create a Memoji of ourselves with laptop stickers. Our driving question was “How can I creatively communicate who I am?”.

Here is my User guide 2020.

Reflecting is one of the best ways to really understand what you have learned so we were of course asked to do a reflection of the project.

A reflection of My User Manual:
We started off with the launch to answer the question “How can I creatively communicate who I am?”. One of the main things I needed to know was who I was. During the building knowledge phase, we did a lot of exercises trying to describe who we are. I found that I was pretty ok at describing myself but sometimes I was at a loss for words. We learned lots of iPad and app tricks that I found really helpful. When choosing the stickers for my Memoji laptop, I think I did well at finding symbols that represent who I am. I liked doing the peer critique because I enjoy receiving feedback on my work. My favourite parts of the user manual were writing the settings, warnings, and tips to maintain optimal performance, because I kind of liked making fun of myself a little bit.

Sticking with the theme of communicating who we are, everyone choose/designed laptop stickers to put on our Memoji. The stickers had to uniquely represent you in such a way that someone may be able to tell who the stickers belong to. This was mine:

 

Despite the fact that this was my first PLP project, I feel I did relatively well and I am ready to take on the next project with more confidence and new-found knowledge.

As always, Brooke.