Posted on June 20, 2017
The Most Important Parts of Canadian History
Recently in PLP our class did a unit on the most important parts of Canadian history. We learned about everything from colonization and imperialism in early Canada to the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Our unit started off with learning about the initial exploration and settlement of both the French and British in Canada. Canada started off with very small colonies and a bustling fur trade between the europeans and the First Nations people’s. After that we learned about the 7 year war between the French and the British over who got to own the land of Canada which the British won. When the British won the French and the First Nations people were belittled upon. When more settlements started arising in the province of Canada tens of thousands of Europeans and Americans immigrants in the late 1700s to early to mid 1800s moved to Canada which at the time was called New France. There was a problem with peopl coming to Canada. Mostly men were there and they needed women. Many women volunteered to come and they were called Fille du Roi. Here are two projects I did on life in New France. The first is an Explain Everything I did on Jean Talon and the second is a Comic Life I did on Fille du Roi’s.
Canada divided itself into two parts, upper and lower Canada. Upper Canada was full of people mostly from England with British customs and Lower Canada mostly had the French and First Nations people. There were also the Maritime provinces in east of Canada. The colonies united because of the threat of forces from America taking over Canada and more self sufficient colonies. The problems Canada faced could only be resolved through uniting as one with both Canada’s and the maritimes.
In Canada there were people called the Métis who were part European (mostly French) and part First Nations. They were very discriminated against and were not given rights. A lot of the Métis lived in red river valley, which was the site for ongoing conflict between the government and the Métis. Their land was taken by Canada from them making their families dependent on government funds and resources causing many rebellions. The red river rebellion ended with the government owning the land and dividing it up badly and the Métis living on it.
The next important event in Canadian history was the cariboo gold rush in 1857. The gold rush brought over 30,000 people from all over the world into BC. A lot of people came from California because there was a gold rush there not long before. Because the mining towns were small they could charge extreme prices for food and equipment which really helped the economy. They also built a wagon road that went to the mines so people would be able to get gold more easily. Here is a character card I made of what someone might be like in the Cariboo Gold Rush. 
BC put a lot of money into that road and when the gold rush ended the economy went from boom to bust causing a dept of over 1 million dollars. BC had to do something to get their economy back and relieve their debt by joining the confederation of Canada. This lead to in my opinion the most important event in Canadian history.
When joining the confederation of Canada BC was promised to have the transcontinental Railway known as the Canadian Pacific Railway from coast to coast in only 10 years. The railway would start in new Westminster in BC and go from coast to coast. Some of the people that worked on it were from the praies but it was built mostly by workers from china that needed a job and a place to live in Canada. Here is a poster I made trying to recruit workers from the praies.
They were paid a mere $1 a day and were not paid if they were suddenly injured. Many people died in the building of the railway but it brought more people of different races to Canada and helped make it more diverse. The railway also benefited the economy tremendously bringing more resources to BC and all along the prairies, relieving BC of the debt they owned and giving people jobs who lost their money and earning during bust of the caribou gold rush. The railroad helped transport goods and resources from one side of the country to the other and made it easier to travel across the country. It made it easier for them to transport food without it spoiling. The rcmp were able to get to where they needed to go faster so the crime rates went down. Without the railway Canada might not be as united as it is now and there may have been many more wars. Canada is the way it is today because of the railroad. Sofia and I made a Kahoot about the CPR and you can do it by going to Kahoot.com, making an account, and searching for Canadian Pacific Railway Hisory Quiz.
Posted on June 19, 2017
TPOLS 2017
It’s the most wonderful time of year again. Just kidding. It is once again time for SLC’s but they are now called TPOL’s which stands for transitional presentations of learning. For those of you who don’t know TPOL’s are where you present what you learned throughout the year and why you feel you are ready to advance to the next year. You show examples of your best work and how you have improved from the beginning of the year. You then have to present it in front of your parents and teacher.
First thing is some examples of work I’ve done this year. My work has really improved since September and even since the end of the second term. A piece of work I was proud at at the beginning of the year was my steampunk blog Post. For this post I had to explain steampunk and the differnt parts of it than I had to come up with a question about steampunk and answer it. My question was “What makes something steampunk?” and to answer it I did a lot of reasearch then made a steampunk hat. I was really proud of the information in my blogpost and my hat. You can read that post Here.
Work I’m more proud of from recently was my frankenstuffie project. I really enjoyed this project and found it really fun. It was a great way for me to use my writing skills and I love writing stories. I also really enjoyed some of the stuff we had to learn to do this project such as ecology. My favourite part of this project was the video we had to do. I worked really hard on my video and tried to make it as entertaining as possible. It was really fun to get to make a stuffie then see it come to life in the video. It also really helped me improve my anaimation skills and I learned a lot about making videos doing this project. This project and blog post was way better than my steampunk one I did in the beginning of the year. You can read about that project Here.
Ny favourite project of the year and the one I’m most proud of was the making fanatasy real project. For this project I had to pick an attraction at Disney world than make a video on how it transports people into an imaginary world. For this project of course we would have to experience the attraction so my class went on a trip to Disney world. We also did a lot of other cool stuff in Florida that you can read about Here. I really enjoyed this project because I enjoyed what I was learning about. I love fantasy and think that it is an amazing thing. I also already had a lot of background knowledge on the attraction I was doing which was Pirates of the Caribbean. I was really passionate about Disney world and my attraction which made it even more fun. I really enjoyed getting to experience what I was learning about. Making the video I was really fun. I found the research I had to do was actually very entertaining. Even making the storyboard for this video was pretty fun. This is also one of my projects where I did the best revisions. I really listened to the critique I was given and I worked really hard on the video because I wanted it to be as good as possible. I was really proud with how it turned out. You can read more about the project Here.
I have improved so much as a student this year. A big problem I had at the beginning of this year was that I had stopped caring. I stopped caring if I handed in work on time or if I did a good job. I just wanted to get the work done. If I didn’t find a way to start caring again I would keep going downhill as a student. The first thing I had to do was getting better at managing my time. That had been a goal for me ever since I started PLP and I finally figured out how to do it. I started doing woke the day it was aligned instead of leaving it till last minute. I would set due dates before the work was actukky due to trick myself into doing it early. I have improved so much on my time management and almost never hand in work late now. I also figured out how much better it felt to finish a project when I worked really hard on it. That was a good way to motivate me to put more effort into my work.
I learned a lot about myself this year but the most important thing I learned is that I work way better when I’m happy. When I’m happy I have more motivation to do work and it normally turns out better. I’m happy a lot except when I’m stressed. I way I can try to be less stressed is to try and manage my work better so I’m not doing a lot of projects at once. One of my goals for next year is if I know a project is coming up in the future and I have a lot of work I will try and finish the work I have before I get the next project. Another goal for next year is to put even more effort into my work. For example if we have an assignment that asks me to make a picture or a video I will choose a video. I want my work to be even better than it was this year. I’m very excited for next year and I hope it is even better than this year.
Posted on June 19, 2017
Blue Sky Exhibition 2017
For those of you who don’t know Blue Sky is a thing we do in PLP where you have to come up with a problem and make a solution for it. If you would like to learn more about it I recommend you read one or two have my past blogposts on it. There is the Star Wars one, the Spring 2016 one, and the Harry Potter one. We had to follow the launch cycle to make the project that consisted of 7 steps. 
For blue sky the first part of the launch cycle is to look, listen, and learn. I had to find a problem that sparked my curiosity and made me want to work on it. The hard part about this was that the problem had to be for Babies, Toddlers, Tweens, Elders, or Pets. I went around and asked some of my family members and friends if they had any problems. My Aunt said that her cat is very active at night and wakes her up while she’s sleeping. I have slept over at my aunts house many times and her cat always jumps on the bed and wakes me up. I started thinking about this and I was very intrigued because I too had cats that are very active at night. I then did a little research and found out that tons of people have problems with cats at night. I did a little more research and found out that there wasn’t really any solution for this problem so I knew I wanted to do it. I was very excited to get started.
After I had found my problem it was time to ask questions. I went around and asked family and friends with cats what bad things their cats do at night. A very common problem was that the cats wanted to play and would jump on their owners beds to wake them up. One of my friends even said that their cat learned how to open the door to their bedroom to wake them up. Another common problem was that the cats were very loud and would make a lot of noise running around. While the cats were running around at night they would also commonly make a mess. My cats used to take the toilet paper out of the bathroom and shred it up while we were asleep. Another question I asked was “what have you done to try and stop your cat from disturbing your sleep?” And most people hadn’t done anything. One of my friends said they took away all of their cats toys but the cat just found other household objects to play with that made even more noise. Once I had asked all the questions I needed to I started to research.
To help understand my problem I had to do a lot of research. I researched what causes cats to act the way they do. The top reason was because they are normally very active animals at night and have not adapted to the live sod their owners. I also researched to find ways other people have tried to fix this problem. There weren’t very many solutions but the few I found didn’t seem to work very well. I learned that a common way to try and solve the problem was playing with your cat a lot during the day so it was more tired at night. After my research I still had a few questions so I decided to ask and expert. I contacted my friend Angela’s mom who is a veterinarian and owns an animal hospital. She was very helpful and answered all of my questions clearly. It was good to get help from and expert because they knew a lot of things that I could find on the internet. She also gave me a very good idea for how I can solve the problem.
After all of the research I had to come up with a way to solve my problem. I decided that the best way to keep cats calm at night was to tire them out. It seemed to be the best solution to keep cats more calm at night. My first idea was to make a cat treadmill or something similar to that but I thought that might be dangerous. I decided I was going to make a toy that can keep cats entertained when the owner can’t. I also wanted it to be able to be used day or night so I wanted it to be quiet. I was going to have to make something that could be set up and be used for hours so I knew it was going to have to be very appealing for cats. The hard part about this was going to be keeping the cat entertained for a long period of time. Cats love a lot of different toys but can lose interest in them very quickly. I got an idea for the main body of the toy and then quickly came up with things I could add on to make it more appealing. After that I was ready to start my first prototype.
My idea was to make a cat toy that could move around and the cat could chase. I wanted to make it simulate prey because that is how cats use their energy in the wild. The first thing I had to do was get the main body for the toy. I didn’t know how to make anything like that and I didn’t have enough time to learn how so I looked for something I already had to use. I found a plastic caterpillar in my garage that moved on its on and even had a censor in it so it could turn away from walls. The next step was to add on stuff to make it more appealing to cats. First I cat a laser pointer and glued it on to the back. After that I got some spirals made it of felt and attached them to the back of the caterpillar with string. Once that was done I was ready to test it out on my first client. 
I took my first draft to my aunt and uncles house to test it on their cat smudge. I turned it on and let it go. Smudge seemed very interested in it but just watched it and didn’t try to get it. The laser light that I attached to the main body messed up the balance so it fell over a lot. It was too heavy and the cat seemed too scared of it to play with it. I decide for my second prototype I needed to take a step back and make it more simple. I removed the laser and the spirals. I then attached just one spiral to its back with a string but it still messed up the balance and it wouldn’t turn. I then glued one spiral to the top of the body and it worked fine. I then took it back to my aunt and uncles house and let them use it that night. They reported back to me the next day that it was still going when they woke up but smudge had seemed to lose interest in it a while before. They continued to use it throughout that day and smudge would play with it every now and then but would get bored of it quickly. For my final draft I needed to make it way more interesting.
When I got the toy back I took the spiral of of the body and started fresh. The problem with the toy was the cat was losing interest in it very quickly. I needed to make it more appealing. I started off with trying to make it look more like actual prey. I tried painting it but the paint wouldn’t stay on. I then glued feathers on to it and it looked like after that I reapplied the spiral too its back. It looked way better than it did before but I was still worried that cats might loose interest in it very quickly. I had to add something that cats were really attracted to so I decided to add some cat nip. I didn’t want it to be super noticeable so the cats would have to use the toy before they found it. I put the cat nip under the feathers to hide it. I gave the toy back to my aunt and uncle and they said smudge loved it. They tested it out for a few nights and were not woken up once. 
The final step of my project was to show it to the world. To show it to the world I was going to display it at the blue sky exhibition. I made a poster board with all of the information. It told people about each of the prototypes and the changes made to each. It also had pictures of each of the prototypes. I recorded a video of my cat playing with the toy and displayed that. I also had a video of cats being active at night without any toy to show people the difference.
At the exhibition night I was in a group of people who also did projects on pets. The theme for our area was a pet store. We had many pet toys for decoration and an adoption centre where you could take home a stuffy. We had a game for our section where you had to find differnt pictures of animals hidden on differnt projects. I had a picture of a golden retriever on my project. We also had brownies, gummies, and animals crackers for food, and sprite to drink. The exhibition went great and many people enjoyed my project. All of the projects in my section were so cool and everyone really enjoyed our section. I also enjoyed going around to the other sections and viewing other projects. It was a very successful Blue Sky Exhibition
Posted on June 11, 2017
The Things I Carry
We have recently started a health and career unit. Most grade 9’s do this unit throughout the year but we have it included in PLP so we have to do it at the end of the year. At the beginning of the unit we got assigned a pretty big project. The project was to make a keynote on the things we carry. In the keynote we had to show 10 things we carry both mentally and physically that help us in our everyday lives. For example something I carry physically is my phone and something I carry mentally is my creativity. This was the first time I had ever used keynote so I was a little nervous. We were given a list of effects our keynote had to include and I had no idea how to do any of them. I was also really nervous because I knew I would have to present this in front of my entire class and I felt like it was a very personal thing and I’m not very close with a lot of people in my class.
The first thing I did was come up with the list if the top ten things that I carry. Coming up wth the mental things was a lot easier than coming up with the physical things because I feel like physical things aren’t as important. After I had chosen them out I wanted to watch some of my classmates presentations so I had an idea of what to do with my keynote. Luckily I was one of the last people to present so I had a ton of time to do that. Once I knew what I wanted to do I starte my keynote. The first thing I did was look at the list of things my keynote needed to have. I needed to have
- at least one image where you adjusted the mask
- at least one image that you adjusted the size of
- At least one image that you used insta alpha on
- At least one magic move
- at least one object grouping
- at least one added animation
- at least one added transition
- at least one object build
- presenter notes
Keynote is a pretty easy app to use so most of these things were pretty easy to figure out. There were a few things I couldn’t figure out so I just asked my sister and my friends. In my keynote I tried to use a lot of my own photography and I also wanted it to be colourful. I chose 4 physical things and 6 mental things.
I chose my cell phone because although it is not my most needed thing it helps me communicate with my friends and family and it is wat for me to take pictures to keep memories. My next thing was my earbuds. I mostly use them to listen to music which can really effect my mood and helps calm me down if I’m nervous about something. They also hall me concentrate on school work by blocking out all other noise. After that was my wallet. My wallet holds my money which I can use if I’m hungry or it can help me in an emergency. It also holds my compass card which gets me to and home from school almost everyday. The last physical thing I carry is my backpack. It holds all the other things I carry and also holds some other essentials I need to get through the day at school like my iPad and some food.
The first mental thing I carry is my creativity. It helps me come up with ideas and can make a boring situation more fun. Next was my happiness. I try to stay happy as much as possible because it makes the days go by faster and smiling is contagious and I love to make people smile. Then I did my memories. Memories are really important because they help make up who you are. It is important to remember the people that have touched your life because you never how they can help you in the future. After that I talked about my energy. When I want to be I can be really energetic. It helps me be motivated to do things like exercise or do work. Then I did my passion. I’m passionate about a lot of things and when I passionate about something no one can seperate it from me. It helps me do better in school if I am passionate about the work. Finally I did my optimism. I’m very optimistic and always hope for the best outcome. It helps me in times when everything seems bad but I know I’ll be able to get through it.
Here is my keynote but sadly none of the animations are able to be seen in my post.
Posted on June 2, 2017
Frankenstuffy Epistolary Story
A Beary Cold Adventure
Journal Entry #1Another hibernation season has come to an end. I woke up again not knowing what to expect when I exit my cave. My favourite day of the year is the day when I wake up and look down the mountain on to Great Bear Lake. The climate up here on the edge of the Arctic circle has become so unpredictable. Some years when I peak out of my cave spring is in the air, other times snow is still piled up at the entrance. This year was the latter. A thick blanket of snow still covered the landscape in front of me. I rubbed my eyes several times to make sure what I was seeing was real. I stepped out carefully and shivered in the cold. The wind was strong and blew large snowflakes down into my face. It’s not normally this cold when I wake up. I like the snow so I decided to play around in it for a little while. The snow was almost frozen solid and not as fluffy as it normally is. I didn’t even leave a footprint when I walked. My stomach started to grumble and I remembered how long it had been since I had last eaten. I started to think about all of the delicious fish in the lake at the bottom of the mountain. I looked down the mountain towards the lake and I couldn’t see through the blizzard. I was very confused and a little worried I wouldn’t be able to find my way to the lake. I stuck my snout up in the air and was able to pick up the scent of the lake. I looked back in my cave one last time and started to head towards food.
Journal Entry #2
Normally when I walk down the mountain I listen to the songs of the birds and chattering of the squirrels. This time there was complete silence. The only sounds were of the wind blowing fiercely past my face. I looked around and didn’t see a single organism. It was almost scary how empty Great Bear Lake looked. There was nothing but white as far as the I could see. As I started to get closer to the lake I was getting really worried. Normally all the animals are around the lake this time of year but I didn’t even see a bunny. I stopped walking for a minute because I was exhausted and very hungry. I looked around me hoping to see something I could eat. Way off in the distance to the left of me was a caribou. It was strange to see a caribou alone because normally they travel in herds, which I quickly realized would make him an easy catch. There were no other caribou around to warn or protect him so I started to run towards him. The caribou didn’t spot me until I was about 150m away. He started to run away but he looked tired, almost as if he had just run away from something else. He was still much faster than me though because I was very low on energy. He got very far away from me and I gave up. I had chased him back the way I came so I had added more time to my journey. I stopped for a minute to rest and my stomach started grumbling even more. I needed to get food and I needed it quickly. I turned around and started to head back down the mountain. Even though I was tired I tried to speed up my pace so I could get there faster.
Journal Entry #3
I arrived at the lake earlier then I expected . I was so hungry when I got there I was worried I was going to pass out. Something was off with the lake and I couldn’t put my claw on it. I looked around for anything to eat. I am a tertiary consumer so I can eat almost any organism. There was not a living thing around. I headed towards the lake so I could catch a fish. When I got to the side of the lake I tried to stick my paw in the water. It didn’t go in. I tired again and the water was solid. I quickly realized that the lake was frozen. I took a few steps back and just sat down. I was starving at this point and I was very worried I might die, I had to find something to eat. I went into the forest next to the lake to try and find anything. I looked in trees and under rocks and still nothing until finally my nose picked up the scent of something. I followed it deeper into the woods and found a small rabbit. I was ecstatic to finally find food and gobbled it down and felt so much better. Food had never tasted so good before. I was very tired after my long trek down the mountain and was still hungry, but I had enough food in my stomach to feel comfortable. I found a cave and headed inside for a nap. I knew I would have to find some way to get more food but for now I needed to rest. I would think of something when I woke up.
Journal Entry #4
That night while I was asleep something strange happened. I had a weird dream where I became friends with a Pegasus, a dinosaur, and a fire fly. When I woke up I felt different. The blizzard was still in full force. I was very hungry again and decided to head back down to the lake and try to break the ice. Walking back to the lake I felt warmer than I had before. I also felt like something was following me but every time I turned around nothing was there. When I arrived at the lake I looked at my reflection in the ice and almost passed out. I had grown large, white wings and my nose was glowing. I looked at my reflection some more and realized I had also grown a large spiky tail. That must have been what I thought was following me, as well, my nose was glowing a light purple. I concentrated very hard and was able to make my nose make some sort of beam of light. With this beam of light I could see way further into the blizzard. I then tried to use my wings to fly but they were too small to carry me off of the ground but they did a great job of protecting me from the blizzard and keeping me warm. I wasn’t quite sure what I could do with the tail. Even though I had grown many new features I was still very hungry and needed to get food. I turned away from the lake to try and find a rock to break the ice. As I turned around my tail hit the ice and smashed it, this saved my life. I quickly turned back around and stuck my paw in the water. The water was extremely cold but I grabbed a fish and got out of there as quickly as possible. I headed back to the lake and the water was already frozen again. I continued to break it and grab fish until I was so full I couldn’t stand. I then headed to the nearest cave and curled up in a little ball but it was hard to sleep with my new wings. I tried to get comfortable and all of a sudden my wings shrunk. They shrunk into green wings that were smaller than my paw. That made getting comfortable a lot more easy. That was the best day I have had since I woke up.
As the bear slept a monster ran wild outside of his cave. The monster was 11 feet tall. It had the body of a human with the head of a bull. It also had a very pointy tail. It was called a Liman. It ran around the lake eating everything it saw. There wasn’t much food left because it had ate almost everything the night before. The Liman was mad that there wasn’t much food. He filled with rage and let out the most ferocious roar ever heard. It stampeded through the woods knocking down trees as it went. He was too angry to go to sleep and continued to rampage through till the next day.
Journal Entry #5
I woke up this morning to complete silence. The blizzard had completely stopped and there wasn’t even a breeze outside. You could smell the cold. I looked to my left and many trees had fallen down. The blizzard was very intense last night so I suspected that they fell down then. I didn’t have a very good sleep last night because I was awoken in the middle of the night to what I thought was thunder. I headed back down to the lake and for the first time since I finished hibernation it wasn’t snowing so I could see footprints on the ground. The first footprints were from an animal I have never seen before. They were very large and looked very similar to a caribous but looked almost as if they had talons coming out the bottom. Me, being the very curious bear that I am, decided to follow the prints. They lead me closer to the lake, however as I was walking I started to rethink my decision. What if this creature wanted to harm me? I had never faced a predator before so I had no idea what I was going to do. This creature seemed huge and I worried that I was no going to be able to fight it off. I wondered if this creature had something to do with the lack of food in the area. I knew I needed to find out so I continued to follow the prints. I got close to the lake and it had started to snow again. The snow picked up very quickly and became a blizzard again. I knew I would have to move fast if I wanted to follow these prints because the snow would soon cover them. It was hard to see ahead of me through the blizzard so I used my new nose to help me see. I also grew my wings out to keep me warm. I arrived at the shoreline and slowly looked around. The prints had disappeared a while ago so I had just guessed where they led to. As I looked around I some something way further down the shoreline. It looked small and I thought it may be another bear which would explain that lack of food. It then stood up and was huge. It looked at me and it roared very loudly. It seemed to be annoyed by the light from my nose. I was not willing to stick around to see if it would attack me so I quickly headed back up to the cave. I had know idea what to do. This explains why there is no food, I thought. He needs to be stopped and he needs to be stopped now. I went to sleep and tried to make it down to the lake in the morning to get food. I knew that I needed a lot of energy for tomorrow because I was going to fight the monster. I was terrified.
Journal Entry #6
I woke up this morning and my stomach grumbled. I started to leave my cave and head down to the lake but then I remembered the creature. I headed out of my cave and the blizzard was still going strong. I needed to try and hide my self so the creature wouldn’t find me. I didn’t use my nose light because that would draw attention to me. I wrapped my wings around me to protect me from the blizzard. They were a very similar white to the snow so they helped hide me. I started my walk down to the lake to get food. I had walked down there so many times recently I could do it with my eyes closed. As I walked I hoped that the creature would not find me because I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight him without eating first. I made it down to the shoreline without running into the creature. It was a lot harder to get fish this time because there seemed to be a lot less than last time. I gobbled down the fish until I had enough energy to fight. I turned around to look for the creature and there it was. Standing no more than 15 meters behind me was the scariest thing I had ever seen.
The Liman and the Bear made eye contact. The Liman could smell the fear coming off the bear from miles away. He charged at the bear but. the bear quickly made a turn to the left and started to run towards a large tree. The Liman followed him and quickly caught up. In the last minute the bear turned away from the tree and the Liman ran directly into it knocking it down. He was a little shaken up from hitting the tree but quickly headed back towards the bear. The bear knew he wouldn’t be able to run away this time so he got up on his hind legs and charged back at the Liman. The Liman took one swipe at the bear and knocked him down. The bear quickly got back up and attacked the Liman. They battled for a while and the bear weakened. Just when he was about to give btbinstead quickly spun around and whacked the Liman with his tail. The Liman fell back screeching in pain. He got up and ran into the woods never to be seen again.
Journal Entry # 7
The battle was tough but somehow I defeated the monster. When I saw him again I thought I was done for. I guess my new adaptations also gave me some extra strength or maybe I’m just stronger than I thought I was. I thought I was defeated at one point but I got up and with one swing of my tail he was done. He managed to run away but he was very injured and I don’t think he will last long in the cold. That night I was so tired I slept for a whole day. When I left my cave this morning I was already noticing more animals had left their homes. They all looked fuzzier than usual. It’s probably because they are adapting to the cold too. Any thought I had of leaving had faded away. Even though it is much colder here, I have found out why there was no food and was able to conquer it, I will continue to live here. Hopefully the weather will warm up soon like it normally does. Even if it doesn’t I love the lake way too much to leave. It will defiantly take some time for the populations to get back to what they were before. It seems like most of the small animals were just hiding and the monster primarily ate the caribou and moose. There seems to still be enough left for me to survive until the winter. I will probably have to have a diet of mostly small creatures such as rabbits because there are tons of those here. Hopefully my life will go back to normal now so I will probably not write here as often. Now it’s time to go live my life. I’m pretty excited to see what else I can do with these wings and tail.
Journal Entry # 8
It’s been a few of months since I’ve last written a journal Entry. I’ve been very busy with my life. The first few weeks after I destroyed the monster were challenging to find food. Luckily I had my new tail which made it a lot easier to catch food. For the first month or so I used my new wings a lot but I haven’t used them much since. The blizzards have stopped and the snow is mostly gone. It is definitely getting warmer but is still colder than it has been in past seasons. A lot of the other animals have shed their new winter coats and are a lot less fuzzy. It’s a lot nicer to eat animals that aren’t super hairy. The populations of the animals have grown but it isn’t as big as it was before the monster. I’m actually starting to enjoy the colder weather. Every time I exit my cave it’s very refreshing to enter the cold. The lake isn’t frozen anymore but it is still very cold. I take a lot less baths than I used to and I try to stay out of the water when I’m catching fish. I have already started to eat more food to fatten up for hibernation. If this weather continues I will probably hibernate earlier and longer because of the cold. This is my favourite part of the season because I love eating. The more I eat the happier I am. Speaking of which I’m very hungry now. I think I’ll go and try to catch a caribou.
Posted on May 31, 2017
My Future
In health and career this week we learned about Careers and Education. This was the first time I have ever really thought about my future and what I want to do after I graduate higschool. The project for this unit was to make a fairytale video about what we want our future to be like. To do this we had to do some research into our past to find out how we got this way and then do some research into what jobs would be best for us.
In class we did a writing on being gifted at something. We were shown a writing a professional did than had to write something similar to it about becoming gifted at something else. I chose to write about becoming gifted at writing. 
The first thing I had to do at home was make a timeline of my life. I had to think of at least 10 milestones that had helped make me th person I am today and end off with this project. Than I had to think of 5 events that I want to happen in my future. Coming up with things I want to happen was easy but it was a little challenging coming up with 10 milestones because I haven’t been alive very long. 
After the timeline was done I went onto Career Compass and took three tests to help come up with ideas of jobs that would work best for me. I took three quizzes. One was on my abilities, one was on my work preferences, and one was on subjects I like and I’m good at. The careers these quizzes gave me were actually very surprising. I got a lot more technological jobs than I was excpetcing. I was excpetcing to get more jobs in sciences and buisness. To be honest I didn’t know a lot about the jobs I was recommended so I did some research. I can’t really see myself doing any of these jobs but maybe in the future the will appeal to me more. 
Once I was done all of that I started my video. I started off by doing a storyboard to plan out exactly what I wanted to happen in my video. Once that was done I wrote the script of the video. I wanted to make sure I included my interests now and how they might affect my future. Once that was done I did some animations in Explain Everything and edited some photos using Comic Life. I also filmed a couple of shots. Once all the shots were done I put them together in iMovie then did the voice overs. Finally I added in some sound effects and music. Once it was done I thought it looked pretty good. I really hope my further turns out just like it does in the video.
Posted on May 30, 2017
Frankenstuffy
In school we recently fisnished an interesting and engaging unit of study. In this unit we worked on Math, Science, and PLP. Our question of inquiry was, Who is in control, Humans or the environment? In math we learned how to calculate the volume and surface area of shapes. Once we learned that we had to make a monster, then calculate the surface area and volume of each of it’s body parts. You can read more about this in a Blog Post I wrote in March. Once everyone’s math monsters were finished we started our unit in Sciencs. We learned about ecology, which is the study of the interactions between organisms and the environment. We learned about the different roles an organism can have in its environment and how it affects the environment. We learned about abiotic and biotic factors and the difference between a habitat and a niche. We also learned about the main things that are killing our planet and how they are killing it.
In PLP we began this unit by reading The Martian. It is a book about a man who gets stuck on Mars and has to find a way to survive. We divided the book into 4 sections and completed a discussion sheet after each section. We then analyzed that section with our groups and discussed who was in control, Humans or the Enviroment. We also did some Common Lit readings about the environment and humans and we had to talk about who was in control. I found that most of the time the environment was in control but the humans were occasionally in control.
Also in PLP we learned about the different geographical regions of Canada. We also learnened about different types of precipitation and climates in different parts of Canada. Once we had learned everything it was time to start the final project. The final project was to write an epistolary story then turn it into a video. An epistolary story is a story written in the format of a journal or diary or something similar to that. The story had to be about an animal that lives in Canada. There had to be some kind of disturbance that the animal had to adapt to. It also had to include the math Monster. Before I got started on the story I was assigned the northwest of the interior plains to be my setting. The next thing I had to do was pick the exact area for the setting and then pick the animal I wanted to write my story on. I did a little research and decided that my story would be placed at Great Bear Lake. I then had to pick the animal and I decided on a grizzly bear. Now I had to start writing the story.
To start the story I first came up with the plot. I decided the disturbance was going to be that it was way too cold and all the animals were hiding. The bear would have to go on a journey to find food and would have to adapt along the way to survive. He will also have to fight the monster because he is eating all of the food. My story had 8 chapters and it changes perspective a couple of times. You can read my story Here.
Once the story was finished it was time for the fun part. I got to make my animal with its adaptions. My animal was a grizzly bear and it’s adaptions were that it grew wings and a long spiky tail to help it survive. My job was to spew my Frankenstuffy. I had to find stuffies that had the parts of my frankenstuffy. I went to about 5 stores before I found the stuffies I needed. I bought a grizzly bear and a stegasourus.
I cut the tail off of the stegasourus and attached it to the bear then I needed wings. The story originally asked for big white wings but I was unable to find some so I had to change the story a bit. I added in how the bear’s wings start off small and green and grow big and white when he needs them. I used the big scales off of the stegasourus’s back for the wings. Making my stuffy was really fun and it turned out really well. 
Once my stuffy was done I took a bunch of pictures of it for my video. My video was going to be done with animation so I took pictures of my stuffy from all angles. Before I could actually start my video I had to make a video storyboard. My story was already written so this was pretty easy. I just had to decide how to show each part of the story. Once that was done I was ready to start my first draft of my video. It took me a long time to do all of the animations and put it together. I did the animation in Explain Everything . I also used Comic Life to edit some of the pictures. When my first draft was done I handed it in and waited for feedback.
Draft 1
The first round of feedback was from my peers. It was very specific and I knew what I had to change for my second draft. I added some music and changed a few scenes than I handed it in.
Draft 2
For the second draft the feedback was from my teacher. It was specific and very helpful. For the third draft I changed the music, edited some of the script, and added some sound effects. I also edited a couple of the animations. I’m really proud of my final draft.
Posted on May 22, 2017
You are What you Eat
I just watched four very informative videos on health and the foods we eat and I am honestly shocked. These videos taught me so much about the foods we eat and their affects on us and the earth. The first video was about a guy who lived for a year eating extremely healthy and living healthy. He had to eat right, exercise, meditate and many more things. Noise pollution can effect your health because loud noises initiate your fight or flight response which can effect your cardio vascular health. To help him with noise pollution he had to where earplugs a lot. Another thing he had to do to be heKathy was wear sunscreen almost everywhere. He had to put on a shot glass amount of sunscreen on eveytime he went in the sun to help protect his skins health. Doing all of these things were good for him in the fact that his cholesterol went down and he lost weight but they were also bad for him. A lot of the things he did were very time consuming so he didn’t have a lot of time to be social. He didn’t get to spend much time with his family and friends therefore his mental health went down. After watching this video I learned that being physically healthy is important but being mentally healthy is important too. Joy is very important to your health both physically and mentally so you have to make time for things that bring you joy.
The second video I watched I thought was a little gross at first. The video is about eating bugs. Eating bugs may sound strange and gross to us but 80% of the world already eats bugs. Insects are considered a delicacy in many places in the world. You may not realize it but you accidentally eat 500g of insects a year. Insects are in our foods such as tomato soups. They are also used to make a dye that is commonly used to dye fish is sushi. We need to stop think insects are gross and start eating them. People are getting wealthier and are eating more meat. Eating meat is bad for us because it creates a ton of waste that is ruining our environment. We are also closely related to the meat we eat so we can get diseases from them. We are not closely related to insects and they make significantly less waste than the animals we eat. Eventually we will have to eat insects because we will run out of meat if we keep eating it the way we are now. Insects have lots of protein and are healthy for us and for the environment so we should start eating them now. I have never eaten insects before but I am definitely willing to try them if it will help our environment.
The third video I watched was about how livestock is killing us and our planet. Livestock is the second highest contributer to atmosphere altering gas. Nearly 1/5 of all greenhouse gas is gernerated by livestock production. This is happening because when cows toot they produce methane which warms the earth’s atmosphere 23 times as much as carbon dioxide does. This wouldn’t be that bad but we have way more cows than we need. 70% of all agricultural land is used for raising livestock and 30% of all of the earths land is directly or inderictly devoted to raising livestock. This wouldn’t be half as big of a problem if we limited our meat intake or stopped eating meat all together. 2 billion animals are killed in the USA every year. Everyone thinks we need to eat meat to be healthy but we would be way healthier without meat. It might be very hard for people to completely stop eating meat but we eat way more meat than we are supposed to. It is recommend that adults eat just over half a pound of meat a week. If we ate what was recommended not only would we be healthier but the earth would be healthier.
The last video I watched is about hunger and obesity in the world. Millions and millions of people are hungry all over the world. Just in America 49 million people are hungry and 16.7 million of those people are kids. In some places in Africa we can buy kids school lunches for a year for only $50. Not only is a lot of america hungry but a lot of the people there are obese. 1/3 of American children are obese and 67% of American adults are obese. The reason so many Americans are obese is because of the amount of processed foods they eat. Humans aren’t supposed to eat as unhealthy as most Americans do but the children are brought up to eat that way. 1/5 of the children in America drink soda before they are 2. 1 billion of the people in the world are obese and 1 billion are hungry.
After watching all of these videos I looked really closely at the food I eat. I have a pretty decent diet. I do eat a fair amount of processed food and meat but I also eat a ton of fruits and vegetables. The video that inspired me the most was the third one I watched on livestock. I realized that I probably eat way too much meat. Reducing my meat consumption is definatley something I am going to try to do. I will also try to convince my family to eat less meat. Watching all of these videos taught me a lot and I am ready to change my diet to make me and the world more healthy.
The project for the little unit on healthy foods was to make a self portrait. The fun part about this is I got to make the portrait digitally out of foods that I eat. I picked all of my favourite foods and layered them over a picture of me to make a delicious portrait. I used Comic Life’s tool called instant alpha to edit all of the photos and put it together. I also used Paper 53 to outline my photo. My hair is ice cream, my head is an apple, my neck is french fries, my chest is pizza, my left arm is chicken nuggets, my right arm is churros, my eyes are ravioli with cucumber iris’s, my nose is spinach, my mouth is a grapefruit, and my eyebrows are carrots. After spending lots of time working on it I am very hungry and get a craving for ice cream every time I look at it. 
Posted on May 19, 2017
Worlds of Fantasy
My favourite unit this year was a unit full of magic. We did a unit on what makes something fantasy and it was fantastic. The project for this unit was to make a video explaining what makes something fantasy but there was a twist. The twist was the video was going to be on a ride at Disney world. In this video we had to answer the question “What Draws us to Imaginary Worlds?”. Of course if you are doing a video on a ride you must have gone on that ride. Well not everyone in my class had been to Disney world so we got to go there for the class trip. We flew down to Florida and not only did we go to Disney world, we went to a ton of other cool places such as universal studios and Kennedy Space Center. You can read more about Florida in my Blog Post I wrote on it.
One of the other things we did on this unit was read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We read this book to try and understand fantasy more and to try and figure out how the author transports his readers into an imaginary world. Imaginary worlds are great things that give us a break from reality. This is a blog post I did on the very beginning of this unit. To start off the big final project I had to pick a ride at Disney world to do it on. I had been to Disney land before and their rides our very similar to the ones at Disney world. I thought about all of the rides I had been on and which one I felt transported me into an imaginary world the best. Pirates of the Caribbean was one of my favourite rides at Disney land and it does a very good job at transporting people into an imaginary world. I had to think of a few other rides in case I didn’t get that one but luckily I did.
Once I knew I was doing the pirates of the Caribbean Ride I got to get started on my storytelling graphic organizer. I decided how I wanted the story to be presented and how I wanted to show every part. 
Once that was done I had to do a storyboard. I decided to do my storyboard on real paper that is made from a tree. I’m pretty sure that was the only time I used regular paper in PLP the whole year. I had a lot of shots that I needed for my video so I had to fill out 8 story boards each with 6 shots. That was all I had to have done to get ready for Florida. I knew all of the shots I needed and was ready to go to Disney world and make this video a reality. 
When I arrived to Disney world I was so excited. From the second I left the hotel to when I was pulling out of the parking lot at Disney world I was taking pictures and videos. I took pictures of the entrance, the castle, and pictures of adventure land. I got tons of pictures of outside the ride and while I was waiting in line. I had lots of time to take pictures in line because it was a 45 minute wait. While I was on the ride I was really thinking about all of the little things that made me feel immersed into a world of pirates. I took at ton of pictures on the ride and my friend filmed the whole thing. It was a little challenging to take pictures because it is a very dark ride but I managed to get a few really good ones. After the ride I interviewed a couple of cast members and asked the some questions about the ride. Sadly the audio didn’t work on one of the interviews so I only had one. I wanted to go on the ride again after that but the line was still very long and we had a lot of other stuff to do.
Later in the week in Florida we went to the other Disney parks and I continued to get lots of pictures and videos there. When we returned home from Florida we had exactly one week to hand in our first draft of the video. After a couple days of recovering from the trip I was ready to get started. I spent a lot of time going through hundreds of the pictures and videos I took and editing them. I already knew which shots I needed so I just had to pick the best ones I took. I started to put everything into the video and it was really cool to see all of my hard work finally come together. The first draft of the video was ok but it wasn’t super great. You can watch it Here.
Once the first draft was done I got it critiqued by my peers. Getting my worked critiqued by my peers is great because they are all really smart and no exactly how I can make my work better. Once it was critiqued I had to do my second draft. I tried to make my video more exciting by adding in another perspective. I also eliminated a few unnecessary points so it wasn’t so boring. I handed in my second draft and this time it was getting critiqued by my teacher. You can watch it Here.
Finally it was time to do the third and hopefully final draft . I looked over the critique from my teacher and I still had a lot to change. I had to add in some smoother transitions and crop some photos and videos. I also didn’t have enough videos so I had to add more. Working on my third draft was my favourite part of this project because I really wanted my video to be good and it finally was. I handed in my third draft and I was very nervous to find out if it was good enough. Luckily I was one of very few people who’s video was good enough to be done.
This was my favourite project this entire year. I liked it so much because I actually got to experience what I was learning about. It was a very fun project and I even got to pick the ride I did it on so I wouldn’t be stuck with a boring one. I like projects with choice because then I will never be bored with the work I have to do. I’m really proud of this video and I hope everyone else enjoys it.
Posted on May 12, 2017
Strawberry Lab and DNA Model
Recently I had a very fun week in science. We started to learn about DNA and its jobs in a cell. To start off the unit we got to do a lab. In this lab our job was to get the DNA from a strawberry. To do this we had to follow a few steps. The first step was to place the starwberry in a plastic bag then add 5ml of dish soap, 2.5ml of salt, and 25ml of water.
The best part of the lab was after everything was in the bag we got to crush it. Once it was completely crushed we poured it into a test tube until it was half full. We then added 10ml of ice cold ethanol in the test tube. We waited about 5 mins and all of the DNA from the strawberry rose to the top of the test tube. 
It looked very strange and I kinda wanted to eat it. Once it was all at the top we pulled it out with a bent paperclip and put it on a slide and looked at it under a microscope. It looked a lot different than I excpectex but it still looked cool. This was probably my favourite lab I’ve done this year. 
A few classes later we got to make a model of DNA. We first learned what DNA looks like and how it is a twisted ladder. We learned what the ladder is made of and what connects the sides. For example DNA has four letters A,C,G, and T. An A must connect to a T and a G must connect to a C. We were given many materials such as pipe cleaners, straws, beads, pompoms, amd macoroni to make the DNA out of. My group made a DNA molecule out of pipe cleaners and beads and it turned out really well. The pink flowers represent C. The orange flowers represent G. The blue beads represent T and the pink stars represent A. It was a very fun project. 