This is the second week review of our metaphor machine creation. We mainly focused on the planing of our machine by laying out a blue print of our machine and creating some metaphors.  

Here is our blueprint. 

 

  The blue prints has all the basic machines we wish to add to the machine . It also shows the basic structure of how we want it to look and work. We plan to have a marble roll down a series of ramps activating different machines i.e Knocking of dominos/ Ringing a bell. I think the blue print and the idea for our machine is simpleish. The machine has simple machines such as pulleys and scales and I think we will be able to execute in the creation of our machine. 

We also worked on some metaphors.

  

I like the core ideas of the metaphors we came up with but, I think they are bland and I would like to elaborate on them when I get the chance to do so.

Overall I think it was another successful week and am looking forward to putting stuff together and creating the green mean machine.

The French Revolution affect on international society’s. 

The French newly found ideologies were adopted by many nations and the new world such as abolishing the monarch and establishing liberalism. A direct example was Italy as the country was divided by economy, intellectual and physical barriers but, were abolished and the nation now had new found common nationality as Italians. The physical effects of the revolution was that Napoleon just captured lots of countries and elected himself leader or king and making the captured countries pay excessive tax to France. The revolution also created a new bound with the Americans as they both were major supporters of liberalism, legal justice and legal equality. This sprung the creation of the Statue of Liberty as a gift from France. 

Overall the French Revolution allowed other countries to see it is possible to develop better and new ideologies.

  

I am going to reflect on the work I have done to help complete metaphor machine with my partners Nash, Gabi, Michael, Anatolia and Zakaria.

  In the past week or so it has all been planing. First we had to select the revolution we were going to do and we selected the English Civil War. I thought this was an ok choose at first as we really wanted the French Revolution but, after we did some research I think we will be able to put together a good machine that makes sense. 

  

 Secondly we made a time line too our revolution and it turned out great. Gabi did the bulk of the writing as her printing is the neatest and we all brain stormed and researched ideas and facts to put on the timeline. The timeline was well organized, neat and displayed our facts throughly. The only thing we could of improved on was the big picture organization. We had took the 4 stages of Crane Britons Theory of Revolution and put it on the timeline. I think we could of done some colour organization of the series of events it would be more clear cut. 

  

 Finally we created a sketch of our machine it was pretty basic. I think the idea of our machine are very likely to change but, the idea of a marble/ball rolling down a ramp activating machines is a solid idea and I hope we can use it.

  

 Overall I thought we were productive at making a good plan and am exited to move on to the creation of the machine and its metaphors.           

Here is a video on patriotism and its effects.

http://youtu.be/yfkgk0Moh_0

I think this video answered a lot of question on pros and cons patriotism has.

I created this video in IMovie and basically did a voice recording of my script and put visuals behind it. I enjoyed this project and created a pretty good product. In conclusion I enjoyed making this video and patriotism has many positives to building a strong society.

Michael, Nash and I created a video on the Mexican American War. This video highlights the conflicts,why they happened and what happened in the war.

  

http://youtu.be/9bnffuyFpts

The creation of the video. The video started with two rough copies made separately by Michael and Nash on the war. Then we got put together in a group to create the ultimate video. We used Michael’s video as the base and added to it using some of Nash’s video scenes and making new ones. So I kinda hopped on the already moving train with Michael and Nash. 

The positives of the video was are animations, content and flow. Our animations were great as Michael and Nash are both very good at creating fluid animations. We had good scenes were baby’s popped up and demonstrated population growth and bullets moving to demonstrate gun shots. The content that the video had was on topic and allowed the viewer to understand what happened and why. The flow of are video was good as we moved in logical order from the start to the end of the war and inputting info at certain points so the viewer could understand why it’s is happening. Such as at the end when it says America won the war we explained why, because of there superior weapons and supply’s.

The things we could improve on for the video were audio and more but less. The audio was recorded mostly without a mic making background noise. There was also some mic pops when we recorded with the mic. The way we could improve on that is with preparation. Write down exactly what you are going to say and be prepared to make a perfect recording. This is important because you get flustered when you say the wrong thing. So you end up taking a recording that is ok instead of good because you just don’t want to do it again. The more is less idea is key for an engaging video. We could of condescend our content more and added cooler and more animations to make a better video.

Overall I liked and succeed at this project. My group created a good video that wasn’t perfect but pretty good. I learned a lot about explain everything and the subject I was researching.

Why did English Civil War battles look so basic?

 

The English Civil War battle tactics might seem basic and outright crazy. Marching up to the enemy in unmissable line of flesh. Well it actually wasn’t that dumb. If you split your forces it would mean you could deliver less fire power to a certain area. Think about it this way, if you have 100 soldiers and the enemy has a 100 soldiers and you split your forces into 10s and the enemy keeps his 100 together. You would end up fighting 10vs100 soldiers 10 times. More often then not the enemy with 100 soldiers you’d lose less then you with 10 soldiers. So it is important to keep your soldiers together to offer maximum fire power. Here is a video on the basics of English Civil War battle tactics.

https://youtu.be/HOX60Pr8vTg

This video was just to show a little bit more of a visual aspect to tactics.

I talked about flanking in the video and it was very effective tactic at allowing you to concentrate your fire power and leave the enemy scrabbling to reposition.

 

Overall I think the tactics were basic, but there wasn’t a better strategy that was available at the time.

Debate is an interesting and sophisticated  form of communication. We learned about debate for about 2-weeks as we did a mock debate on vegetarianism. I was assigned a new debate topic, be it resolved that field trips do not represent an educational value equal to their cost. I was assigned the affirmative side AKA field trips suck side. I was also put into a group with Michael, Youni and Ben. We assigned roles and I ended up with the third speaker as the final rebuttal and summarizer for my team, Michael was the very first speaker, Youni was the second speaker on our team and Ben was our research guy.

  

Our team started researching right away and we came up with 6 points are best ones being that not all kids can afford field trips and a lot of field trips aren’t educational they are just fun. After my group finished are research I wrote a summarization.After the summarization I began to think of what they might say so we could rebuttal their arguments. Are best rebuttal was the Be it resolved statement because we knew the other team was going to talk about the great experience but that’s not what we are arguing we are arguing the educational value to its cost. Now since we were prepared it was time for the debate. 

Michael started with strong opening points and hammering home that the be it resolved statement was about education not experience. Youni was are second speaker and made are best point on how some kids can’t afford field trips and cheaper options are available. Finally it was me and I made some mistakes when I was making my rebuttals and forgot to tell my sources for the info. Other then that minor hiccup I was successful and engaging the audience and getting my ideas across. We ended winning the debate. 

Overall this debate project was engaging and I learned a great deal about my subject and debate.

Nash Jacoe and I created a keynote on Elizabethan housing. 

Here is a video of are presentation.

These are the picture of are slides.

   

         

  

My periodic table of basketball players helps organize and compare players stats to each other.  

I organized my graph with 5 key statistical per game stats points, rebounds assist, field goal percentage and free throw percentage. I choose these 5 stats as I thought they were the most important and represented the players the best. I used a certain colour string to represent each player and placed the string on tac that represents that stat they get per game. Let’s use Lebron James as an example he gets 27 points 7 rebounds 6 assists and shoots 57% from the field and 75% from the free throw line.

 My graph also helps show the versatility of a player and overall skill. The players with the largest surface area are the most well rounded such as Kevin Durant and Lebron James were Kay Thompson is one of the worst. The most skilled players have the longest perimeter length such as Stephan Curry but he is not the most versatile player because his surface area isn’t that large. Overall my periodic table helps tell you who are the best basketball players statistically and the worst, out of the players I choose.

The Vegetarian Debate was my first crack at a semi organized debate and it went pretty rough. The keys that I learned for having a successful debate is having six strong points and make them real.



 “A debate is won or lost based on the research done by the debater. The arguments you make will be more persuasive if your make them REAL:

• Reason

• Evidence

• Analysis

• Link” Bryan Hughes. 

This was the skeleton for my debate arguments and I was only able to build a skinny skeleton. I was on the side that was pro vegetarian and are best idea was how much resources is needed to produce meat. I was able to make the argument REAL with the reason being that many people are starving in the world and we could use animal feed to feed the starving. The evidence being that it takes 7 ponds of wheat to produce 1 pond of beef. The analysis being that we could feed the 1 billion people who are starving if we were vegetarian. We failed to link the argument. Are side managed to win the debate and I gained valuable experience in being able to improve on my debate skills in the future. Overall the biggest take away was be PREPARED!