Your blog posts for Scimatics should include:

2) A few pictures of the best parts of your project/where you did your best learning.

3) Write about each curricular competency from the evaluation rubric
write an example of how you used/improved/need to improve each one in a short paragraph.

The last Scimatics unit we did before spring break was Metaphor Machines. We started the project by experimenting with electricity, we then experimented with Rube Goldberg machines that we built in one class. The concept for our machine that Brenton, Melaika and I came up with was this:

We then moved onto the part where we got to make our designs this process to about 1 to 2 weeks worth of classes. Half way through I ended up getting sick so I wasn’t there for the presentation. The final creation looked like this:

The five Core Competencies for this project were: Applying and innovating, Questioning and Predicting, Planning and Conducting, Reasoning and Analyzing, and Scientific Communication.

Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches. 
I used this competency by making a lego creation. I think I did well on this competency.

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained intellectual curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest
I used this competency by helping to build and design our final product.

Your blog posts for Scimatics should include:

1) Short introduction.

2) A few pictures of the best parts of your project/where you did your best learning.

3) Write about each curricular competency from the evaluation rubric
write an example of how you used/improved/need to improve each one in a short paragraph.

The first Scimatics unit we did this year was Like Terms. We started the project by building with LEGO digitally, on a website called Mecabrics. We then moved onto creating our project ideas after learning about like terms, and polynomials for another weeks worth or so of classes. The project that Ryan, and I came up with was to make cookies.

The four Core Competencies for this project were: Applying and innovating, Understanding and Solving, Communicating and Representing, and Connecting and Reflecting.

Applying and Innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches. 
I used this competency by making a lego creation. I think I did well on this competency.

Understanding and solving: Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations.
I used this competency by making cookies, could’ve improved as our project wasn’t very clear.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.
I used this competency by showing our ‘cookie math’ in our presentation, I believe we could have gone more into depth with our ‘cookie math’.

Connecting and Reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.
I used this competency by making a cookies in our final project. I believe that I could’ve improved upon this competency as I would’ve preferred to do something other than cookies.

Part 1: Emojis

Emoji guessing game! Guess the meme!

1: 🚙🔼⚡️

2: 👨🏻🎥🤏

3: ☹️🐱

4: 🐱🇷🇺🍚

Emoji (symbol) math! (hint: shift)

^ + ^ =____

%^ – #(* + $&!^ = ____

! + () =____

Emoji art:

🙃
👕
👖
🥾

Part 2: Holiday

One of the things I enjoy over the holidays is playing games with my faimly. guess what the game is in the photo.

the holidays we celibrate are christmas, winter solstace, boking day, newyears eve.

-Finn

For week 1 we had to write a post about our avatars and update our about me page. Now I will talk about my avatar.

My avatar is a photo of a silowet of me hanging from the mast of my faimly’s sailboat at sunset.

-Finn

After the DI regionals tournament we had to reflect on what went well and what didn’t. We ended up recreating our two team choice elements and our double vision. For the regionals our first team choice element was a “optical testing device” that Rhiann created in SketchesPro, a drawing app on her iPad. The second team choice element was created by Angelo, it was a coded heart monitor, but this time he had added audio to it.

The Destination Imagination provincial tournament was held in West Vancouver at  Collingwood School. There were over one thousand people and seventy six teams. In our age group (middle level grades six to eight) there were five other teams. At the end of the day there was a ceremony in the gym where they announced the winning teams and handed out trophies and medals to the top three teams in each category. My team placed second overall, and first in the Instant Challange. Overall I really enjoyed experience of the DI provincial tournament and would do it again.

-Finn

The big project we were working on in our term two maker class was Destination Imagination. How the D.I. website describes the program is; Destination Imagination is a hands-on, project-based educational experience that encourages creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills. Each year seven new STEAM Challenges are created by our teams of content experts and educators to help students from K to Grade 12 learn how to think, not what to think. Destination Imagination applies the creative process to help student teams create their own unique solutions to the requirements posed by the Challenges.”

In early January our teachers sent us a google form, asking us what were our top three choices for challenges were, and who we do and don’t want to be with. I was put into a group with Angelo, Kaden, Ciara, Kira and Rhiann. The challenge we were assigned was the scientific challenge; A Medical Mystery.

For the challange we had to research about a disease, illness, injury, bodily change, or other physical and/or mental health condition of our choice, then present what we had learnt about the medical condition through a short performance eight minutes in length. The only guidelines for the performance were: at least one character must be affected by the medical condition of our choice, the human character must experience at least one symptom caused by the Medical Mystery, we also had to a diagnosis, for this challenge a diagnosis is the team’s explanation of the Medical Mystery. In our performance we also had to include a Sympt-O-Matic, a Sympt-O-Matic is device that represents the area of the body affected by the Medical Mystery, the Sympt-O-Matic must be operated by technical methods with the least human interaction possible. We also had to create two team choice elements that would contribute to the story. For the regionals our first team choice element was a sound track that Rhiann created in GarageBand. The second team choice element was created by Angelo, it was a coded heart monitor.

The Destination Imagination regional tournament was held at our school, Seycove Secondary. There were about one thousand people and sixty six teams. In our age group (middle level grades six to eight) there were five other teams. At the end of the day there was a ceremony in the gym where they announced the winning teams and handed out ribbons to the top three teams in each category. My team placed second overall, which is pretty good since it was our first time competing in DI.

Overall I really enjoyed the DI regionals experience and would do it again.

-Finn

During term 2 in PLP the main focus in my humanites class was how someone’s worldview can change through transitions in life. There were multiple small projects that eventually led up to a final project, a recreation of the song; Its The End Of The World As We Know It, by R.E.M.

The first project or “milestone” was to read a book about the crusades called The Book Of The Lion in table our table groups (mine was with three other people, Noah, Lauren, and Kaia). The book is written from a young soldier’s perspective, the main events in the story are true, while most of the things that happen to the main character and the main character himself are fictional. The “project” part of this assignment was to complete a “role sheet” for a different part of the book each week. I enjoyed this milestone because essentially this project was reading a certain amount of chapters a week and then doing a review and researching things in the chapter that we were interested in.

The second milestone was a paragraph answering the question: how did the Crusades encourage a cultural exchange to shift worldview? We had to choose one side of the conflict (Western Europe or Muslims) and focus on how their worldview shifted through the crusades. A learning moment that stood out for me was how the Christians lost the wars but gained something else, a change in worldview.

For the third milestone we had to create a MindNode or mind map on how our worldview changed between elementary and high school through the seven aspects of worldview (geography, time, beliefs, society, values, economy, and knowledge). This project was slightly more challenging for me because my change from elementary to high school was through homeschooling.

For the fourth milestone we had to create a triple Venn diagram on our worldview, our peers’ worldview, and experts’ thoughts about worldview and its change from elementary to secondary school. I found this project slightly more challenging for me than some of the other projects because my change from elementary to high school was via homeschooling.

The fifth milestone was to start our recreation of the song; Its The End Of The World As We Know It, by R.E.M. for the the first part of this project we had to rewrite the lyrics. The new lyrics had to be about our transition from elementary to high school but a main focus on the grade 7 to 8 transition. The second part of this project was to create a photo album for our grade 7 to 8 transition. I found this part of the project difficult because of my transition through homeschooling I don’t have very many photos.

The sixth and final milestone of this project was to complete the song (more into that later). The first part of this project was to sing our rewritten lyrics to an instrumental version of the song. The second part of this project was to force the people in our table groups lyrics together. Then we each had to chose a verse and sing it, with the entire group singing the chorus. Part three of this project was to make an iMovie slideshow of the photos we had collected. Part four was to upload the completed video to YouTube.

-Finn

 In my maker class we are learning about how to take good photos with our iPads. One of the tasks was to take pictures of ourselves by using the photo countdown timer, the timer was useful to take photos from different angles. Here is a slideshow of some of the photos I took.

The next task we did was to make a portrait. Again I used the timer for my portrait. As before here is a slideshow of some of the photos I took.

The next task was to take a photo with the light behind the subject. The photo I used was a photo my mum took of me before my soccer game, it was early morning so it was still cold and there was frost turning the ground white, creating a cool effect. This time I am showing two photos, the orignal image and the edited one.

The fourth and final task was to make a “portait from the past”, a recreation of a image of when I was younger. To make the portrait from the past we had to take a photo from when we were younger and recreate it in a second image.

-Finn

the stars shine overhead

while the fire lights up the rock

a contrast of light 

-Finn