Work I am Most Proud of:

https://youtu.be/dPYiXvvooCM

Work I wish I had worked more on:

https://youtu.be/W9dgr9HpFV0

For my blue sky design I had a very ambitious idea and little time. However, I was still set on making it a possibility.  I experimented a little with making a patent for the idea as my project but it seemed a little too technical and not very visually engaging.  So I settled for a concept video that you would use in order to fund a project

https://youtu.be/W9dgr9HpFV0

I think that segregation doesn’t allow for people from different races to get to know each other, which makes it harder for change, especially because it makes it easier to hate someone you don’t truly know. This hate manifested itself into violent outbreaks and riots towards African Americans simply for being black. In fact there were even laws supporting it. These laws were referred to as the Jim Crow Laws. Personally, I think these laws sound dumb and often contradict themselves. For example, black people were not allowed to attend any of the same parks as the white folk because they were considered a threat to their children, yet they were allowed to be employed as nannies to look after you kids. Similar situations applied to eating and drinking, they were allowed to serve but not be served. As far as voting goes, despite not being legally disenfranchised they were forced to take nearly impossible tests, pay an entree fee and prove residency. However, the white folk could simply walk in, no questions asked. However difficult they made it to be accepted to vote, they also made it difficult to understand what they were voting for and the importance of this, tying back to the segregation. Of course, African Americans weren’t going to stand for this injustice for long and arose Martin Luther King Jr. He inspired millions and revolutionized the civil rights movements with his great speeches.

Welcome back to yet another Student Led Conference

I have multiple assignments that I played to many of my strengths. For example, in DI, when we had to explain why we had chosen our team choice elements. I am especially proud of team choice element 2, where I wrote: “Nash’s dad is a painter and has inspired him to paint the backdrop.”

Despite this not being 100% accurate, Nash’s dad is in fact a painter. Our group was congratulated by the appraisers on the specific nature of how our team choice elements were to be evaluated.

I am also really proud of the Voting Explain Everything, both for its quality and growth from previous EE. Nolan and I worked together on this piece to create an engaging and moving video in a short amount of time in class so the animation could improve.  Without further ado, the Explain Everything:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7tPBHPibiY

We were among the few groups whom completed it on time and when extra work time was given to everyone else on this we got ahead on our other ongoing projects.

I believe I have shown growth mindset towards my learning from the podcast. Originally, I had a bit of difficulty actually getting into it and about half way through, I decided to embrace it. Despite it still being a work in progress I believe it is on the verge of greatness.  In fact, Jackson thinks my outro is str8 Fire.  All it needs is a little more editing and maybe some additional interpretations of my own on the matter.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g35hmttrzcygl7n/New%20Recording%20%E2%80%94%20Edit.m4a?dl=0

Driving question: How can I create a interesting and fun game based around Star Wars events that can still be fun for someone who hasn’t even seen the movies?

My first planning step was to decide which type of game I was going to make(video game,board game, etc). I decided on making a board game. My next step was to input Star Wars criteria, I decided upon using chronological occurrences in the series in order to give the game a sense of relevance to the movies. Based on the impact towards the storyline(negative or positive) I made them give instructions to move forward or backward. I also included some trivia. The trivia consisted of questions that wouldn’t just get answered by having watched the movies. I did the trivia on this to keep it fair enough for someone whom hasn’t seen the movies to play against someone whom has.

Construction: In order to build this board game I had to make a chart in pages for the trivia questions and board spaces, cut out a pizza box, Glue multiple background sheets of paper so that it would fit the board.  I also made board pieces out of plasticine based on Star Wars characters. The hardest part about the construction was making all the lettering legible while still fitting on the board.
Overall I learnt that homemade board games are not always very fun, and that it is hard to invoke interest to someone who has not seen the movies, and is not a fan

With this essay I encountered various difficulties.  Thankfully various errors were caught in the brain storming process, which I admit to not doing all the time.

Unfortunately, even after having done this I struggled to explain tone.  Tone was specifically difficult to explain because it is very reader interpretive. I decided against using it in my final copy because it was very dry on information.

It  think most of my peers and I can agree that finding a good quote can be very difficult and time consuming, especially in such a long text.  Luckily, Ms Willemse has put us through hell so we can deal with it writhin a more confined time period (Provincial Exams).

I would still like to improve my consistency in explanations on quotes because I have made a few good points in this essay, but there are still some confusing details for the reader.

If I could go back, I would re read this to myself out loud and pretend I knew nothing about anything I had written about to catch these errors earlier on.

Essay:  http://www.blog44.ca/griffind/?p=90

Venn Diagram: http://www.blog44.ca/griffind/93-2

In the first eight chapters of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood, I felt very connected to John as a reader. This book does a great job at giving his perspective on the matter. The fact that “[His] earliest and most vivid memories involve reading”(John Wood), really sells you on why he is volunteering all his time and effort into this project. Similar to John, some of my earliest and most vivid memories were on creating simple video games with pre set coding blocks in computer class. In fact, this book has inspired me to go help teach younger children to do the same.

The mood of this book is greatly resembled by the “[Him insisting] upon countless rereadings of [classic books]”. This is great proof of the importance of reading to him as a successful businessman to the extent he would even consider quitting his well paying job in order to devote all of his time to this.

“Mr Hughes and Ms Willemse , these are my parents, Janine and David.”

“Thank you for coming. Today I will be leading this conference and have prepared examples from my blog that demonstrate the learning I have accomplished this school year.”

“I will also revisit the goals I set for myself earlier this year and assess my progress towards meeting them.”

“I know that as I show you my work, you may have questions. I would appreciate it if you waited until I am done talking about all my examples before you ask questions.”
PART TWO: SHOWCASE YOUR WORK

SHOW YOUR SPRING SLC BLOG POST.

“I have written a post for my blog that is a reflection on the work I have done this year. I will now share with you highlights of that work.”

Ukraine revolution. This being one of my favourite projects I have already showed you guys it. This is definitely one of my most accomplished ones and most informative. I worked alongside Jayden and the high Tech high kids to create an informational video on a relevant conflict that is still making headlines today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372RY0Yzn24

On this project me and Nolan worked really hard on implementing the information into rhyming lyrics, and created a fun interesting music video. The great thing about this project was that it was really fun to make. At the start we had difficulty coming up with a driving question, so we decided to roll without it and create it later.

As the project progressed we decided it was time to figure out a question. That question was, why were the round heads the most popular out of the two sides?
While doing this we learnt a lot of facts about the English revolution and apparently helped a few other people (outside of flight) study for their socials test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMrxHzVSjnI

PART THREE: GOALS
“During my winter SLC I set three goals for this school year. I will now update you on how I did meeting these goals.”
My first goal was for humanities and it was to improve the quality of my writing. This last term I did not do much writing.
My goal for science was to express my knowledge clearly and effectively, but I did not learn all that much.

My personal goal was to socialize less and change my working habits so I do my homework before getting distracted. This one was the hardest one to complete because I’ve had years of practice at doing the wrong thing. There were one or two projects in which I really took initiative and didn’t let myself get distracted with. As the end of the year got closer though it became much more difficult.

EVALUATE HONESTLY YOUR SUCCESSES OR CHALLENGES WITH YOUR GOALS. BE SPECIFIC AND INCLUDE REFLECTIONS ON WHY YOU DID OR DID NOT MEET YOUR GOALS.
PART FOUR: QUESTIONS

Thank you guys

“Today I have shared with you the work I most proud of so far this school year and shown you have I have made progress as a learner. I have also been honest about my strengths and challenges. I would not like to invite your questions and comments.”

I had nothing to do with this video.

http://youtu.be/lC0CLMPEt7s

Warning: the following may contain mild language and is not suitable for viewers under 14. Parental discretion is strongly adviced 

My group was a huge pain.  I had worked on making a couple of metaphors which we could have used and also did the majority of the construction.  However, for some reason the people in charge of the video decided to suddenly give Joel the main role of executive engineer.  I spent multiple classes attempting to get a small explosion to work consistently.  We decided it was too unreliable to use in our machine.  Later I was told to make a box for some glue, with holes in it so the glue would drop through.  After I made it my group changed their minds and said we didn’t need it anymore. The light that gets turned on by the marble was Joel however he could not get the marble to push another one after, which my group couldn’t have done without me.  It especially pissed me off when in the video they tried their best to make it look like I had done nothing(although I do admit there were a couple of rest days).

None the less this was a great project and I feel like this would have been a much more pleasant experience had my group not had been bitching the entire time.

For this project me and my original group had some time issues and none of our schedules worked together.  We found a date but something popped up and at that point me and Matthew decided to work on this on our own. At this point it was weeks over due and we spent a few days working on it.  Our question was:”Why was the invasion of Russia so unsuccessful?”

This is our product:

http://youtu.be/G9Zf-_uYFKA

We set this interview in modern era and went over the Russian invasion as of we were soldiers in it. Overall had we been in a group just the two of us we would have completed this much sooner.