Hey it’s been awhile, but now that summers over there’s a lot of blogs ahead, starting with this.
This blog is about the field school we went on to deepen our understanding about the Manhattan project. The Manhattan Project was a secret US government issued project to create the first atomic bomb in WWII. This project used up vast amounts of money and space. But the nevertheless, it succeeded by dropping the bombs on Hiroshima in 1945, and finally ending the war.
That was just my brief summary of the project but while being Portland and Washington we learned so much more about the science behind the bomb, the disappearing town called White Bluffs, creating Hanford and what life was like there, and the affects it all has today.
So let’s get into our journey to Hanford.
After leaving Seycove and saying good bye to our families. During our long bus ride to Portland we stopped at Powell’s City of Books. This was no ordinary library it was huge with three floors and a coffee shop inside. Not only did we browse the wide selection they had but we were given a mission to find the funniest book and recreate it.
The Best Places to Pee in Portland
The next day after staying in Portland we headed to Read College to see the Nuclear Reactor.
Before we left for our trip we learned a little bit about the reactors such as Chicago pile 1, and chain reactions, but at the college I learned so much more.
A Chain reaction
The Chicago pile 1 was created by Enrico Fermi and his team. This was the first successful reactor which was important to the Manhattan Project because it proved they could contain nuclear energy.
After learning all about the science behind the reactor we went to the Marhill museum of art.
Finally we actually went to the Hanford Reserve. We had went on a very informative tour and were even able to interview the guides about Hanford and the Manhattan project in general.
Overall I learned so much more from this experience than I would in a classroom and I truly understand the perspectives of the atomic bomb.
Last year we learned all about WWI, social injustices during the interwar period, and WWII. Though, we never came into great detail on how WWII ended. That’s were this blog comes in. This blog is about how the US amazingly pulled off creating the first atomic weapon of mass destruction, without anyone knowing, and once and for all ending the war.
This video was our final product of this really interesting unit on the Manhattan project. A quick summary would be that the Manhattan Project was established in the United States during WW2 to create the atomic bomb and end the war. It took many brilliant scientists, engineers and military workers aswell as a lot of money, space, and determination. They kept the hole thing a secret until the bombs were dropped an hiroshima band Nagasaki.
This blog will reflect on my learning and understanding throughout the assignments and reasearch we did on the Manhattan Project. I will also describe the process on how we created our video and what I learned from it.
Before we knew what the final project would intail we did a smaller News Reel video about the dropping of the bombs. A newsreel is like a short documentary that contains news stories about what’s going on at that time. In the 1910s to the late 1960s they would display News Reels at the movie theatres.
For this project my group was Sam, Ryan, and Calum. While watching a couple news reals we took note on the style of the film and what we should include in ours:
Announcer voice
Mix of media
Intro text
Music from that time
Black and white
Voice overs
Static film
Telling the audience what to think
Historical perspectives 1945
2 min or less
Now that we understood what the project should look like it was time to get a good understanding of our topic.
One thing that I found very interesting was the Sound Portrait we listened to about the horrors of Hiroshima. It helped me understand what the US was hiding from there citizens and how they made light of the event.
After the bombs were dropped not only did they cause massive destruction and killed 129,000–226,000 civilians, but many more victims were severely burned and were affected by radiation sickness. The US only showed a small fraction of the damages therefore even today people don’t know the truth.
here are the notes I took:
In Japan the destruction wasn’t seen as shortening the war
The first day of having wounds there skin peeled, eyes closed, head swollen couldn’t drink water
The second day there burns turned yellow
There was a city then no city. Could see the ocean
Black rain came down and then the fires started
She doesn’t tell anyone that she was there during the atomic bomb because she wants to move on
the interview wasn’t broadcasted in the U.S
Like usual we made a group google docs to add our notes in and any additional research we did:
Even though, we split up our work evenly, I found that some people weren’t as motivated as others to get this project done therefore we fell behind and didn’t produce our best work. I also think that if we had a second draft it could have been much stronger.
Overall this project gave me a good basis on how the war ended and the Manhattan project but I still had much to learn.
As we started learning more and more of the Manhattan project and its secrets we also learned about the people who worked there. We each chose one of the many employees to research and do a character card on.
I new I wanted to pick a woman because the Manhattan Project needed as many talented scientists as possible so they took in woman which was less likely during this time.
Once I found Elizabeth R. Graves I was set on her.
What really interested me about Elizabeth Graves is that she moved around a lot with her husband who was a fellow physics major to find jobs. Sadly she often didn’t find a job because of discrimination against woman so once she got her job working with Enrico Fermi and later her job at the Manhattan project she was awfully grateful. Even when she was pregnant she finnished her experiment while timing her contractions with a stop watch. I think she is a great female role model and hope to be as passionate and hardworking with my career.
Now that we all knew a lot about the Manhattan Projects we got our groups and started the final project. This project was called History In 5 because the film has to have historical perspective and each team will select five people, places, and/or events. It was also recommended that we chose a theme that the five topics revolve around.
We also were given a example of a History In Five video that was about life and the woman in the secret cities of the Manhattan project.
My group for for this project was Mimi and Ryan. The first thing we did as a group was pick our main topic and five topics/facts based on it. This is what we came to a agreement on:
Topic: Secrecy
Creating the secret cities (Building codes/bus routes)
While getting hired an FBI study would be completed on you to make sure you weren’t apart of the axis powers
There was atomic spies from other countries. (Krause Fuchs)
Reported leaks and how they delt with them
Telling the world
Once we established who was going to research which fact we got right to it adding all our information once again into a shared google doc.
Aswell as creating our first draft of our script we also made a first draft of our video. This was hard to do because we had to imagine were we would put our clips we were gonna get on our field study and interviews.
Realizing our script needed work we created a story spine that helped connect and organize all of our ideas.
Story spine:
Once upon a time… The American government was hiding a big secret in a very unlikely location.
Everyday… in Hanford they secretly worked on developing the atomic bomb without letting anyone in the outside world know
Because of that… spies from other countries would try to find the secret city
Because of that… They hired the FBI to protect the secrets of the project in Hanford.
Because of that… They made sure no one got their information or spilled it.
Until finally… they dropped the bomb and told the world.
Once we got approved and finalized our treatment there was one last step to do before going on our trip which was the story board.
this storyboard helped us understand where we needed to get shots and what of, aswell as where it would be good to place the interviews.
Once we came back from our trip we created our first draft
Once we got a lot of criteria from our peers. We made a list in Things and split up the editing.
Conclusion:
At the start of this unit I wasn’t sure about this topic, because I thought that all it was about was America creating an atomic bomb and dropping it on Hiroshima. To my suprised this was one of my favourite units so far. It’s amazing how they were even able to create the bomb in such little time. They had to find the perfect place, evacuate the residents, build, bring in all kinds of people from scientists to plumbers, keep the cities secret, test the bomb, and finally drop it on Hiroshima and tell the world. Even though it’s amazing and they did end the war, to this day there is a lot of controversy about the event. As I learned from the horrors of Hiroshima even though it ended the fighting for both the Japanese and Americans most Japanese aren’t grateful. The Manhattan project also created tremendous amount of radiation and pollution. We still don’t know everything about what truly went on in the Manhattan project. As any other great event in history, it’s important to learn about it and discover its secrets because it affected and continues to affect our world today.
Now that the year is coming to the end we get one final shot to wrap up the year with are best project yet. Our final project in our maker class is called Blue Sky! We had one month to create these projects and present them in our exhibition.
You might remember my winter exhibition which you can see here.
This year for Blue Sky we followed the LAUNCH cycle.
L: look, listen, learn
A: ask tons of questions
U: understand the process or proble,
N: navigate ideas
C: create a prototype
H: highlight and fix
Once you complete these steps you are ready to LAUNCH to an audience which we did at our exhibition.
As you can see this is a lot of work to do in a month so let’s see how it goes.
Instead of fixing a small problem in our life’s we look deeper into how we could fix bigger problems. When we were at BCTECH summit one of the presenters Brent Bushnell talk about how his start up fit in with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
These set of goals were adopted by countries on September 25th 2015, to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all as part of anew sustainable development agenda. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years. These goals can only be accomplished if everyone does there part.
We first got put in groups based on our top choices of these goals to do our project on. My group for Responsible Consumption and Production was Claire, Sofia, and Izzy. We all were interested in this topic because we wanted to help our environment by reducing waste in big companies.
As a group our fist idea was to reduce plastic waste. We each had different ideas how we were going to do reduce plastic at a restaurant or café in our area. I wrote down a first draft of my project pitch.
Once we were excepted we could work on our first prototype. For this prototype I drew a photo.
At first we tried to reach out to local restaurants such as Blue House Café and Local Lift.
Both places didn’t want to implement our idea so we decided to focus on problems in our cafeteria.
After observing and talking to people around the school such as our janitor we discovered at Seycove we had a great problem with recycling. Claire and I teamed up to focus on the multiple waste cans and Sofia and Izzy teamed up to focuse on the paper towel bins.
Claire and I researched and found out that because the separate bins for compost, garbage, containers, and refundables was fairly new the students didn’t know what went where. We used the City of Vancouver Recycling Guide to find out what actually goes where
We took photos of what we found in each bin
Our first initial idea was to set up a recycling watch for our school. We wanted to get students to participate in this recycling watch by offering service hours in return. I also created a poster to put up around the school.
Now that we had a plan we wanted to get feedback and permission to go ahead from our Principal Mrs. Craven
We sent her an email and set up a day and time to meet which was Monday at 3:00
She liked our idea and gave us but was concerned that not enough students sign up. After speaking with Principal Craven we decided to go in a different direction to educate the students on what goes in what bins.
We decided to create new custom posters for each of the bins.
In these posters we included items you would find in the caf aswell as the vending machine such as the paper pasta containers and granola bar wrappers. From our research we found that students didn’t know that paper coffee cups go in the containers bin so we included that.
Because we couldn’t fit everything on the posters we also created a website you can see here.
Now that we had finnished our prototype we wanted to get feedback from the students. I created a google form and sent it to multiple students at Seycove.
My grade 10 year has been filled with learning new skills, gaining experiences and lots of growth. Now that it has come to an end it’s time to reflect on the great and not so great things I have done this year. That’s were the tPOL comes in! You might recal in the middle of the year I made a mPOL blog but now that it’s the end of the year this blog will reflect on much more. This blog will provide examples of some of my best work and what I have learned to prove I am ready to advance to the next grade.
Writing
This year I have grown greatly in my writing skills which I have demonstrated in my blogs aswell as other writing assignments.
A good example in which I have grown in my writing skills is my LOTF and Debate blog post called School boys to Savages -LOTF.
This blog proves that my writing skills have grown not because it was my best blog this year, but my most organized. Something I struggle with in writing essays, blogs, or even paragraphs is planning out what I’m going to say before I write. It’s important to know your examples and organize them in a thought out order so the reader can easily understand the point you are making.
In this blog I also included my concept paragraphs we did for this unit. My first concept paragraph concept paragraph was about human nature. This paragraph was one of the strongest peices of writing I created this year because I planned out my thesis and what examples I was going to use. I chose WWII, LOTF, and Donald Trump to be my examples and I put them in order of past to present. I also did a lot of research on each of these topics aswell as using what I have learned.
An essay I am proud of is my synthesis essay on disruption. (Which you can also see here)
We prepared a lot for this essay by going through 7 steps. In these steps helped me learn about and create:
Brainstorm
PAR= purpose, attitude, and role
Thesis
Coherence
Specific and general topic sentences
Supporting ideas
Making a Hook
The seven steps has made me a much stronger writer and I will definetly take them with me next year.
To be a great writer you have to put careful consideration into what words you use and how you organize your writing so that your able to send the message your trying to get to the reader.
Science and Math
I have struggled with multiple science and math projects this year because I haven’t found that perfect balance between creativity and knowledge.
A project I think we all struggled on because of this was the Energy Capture science project. The goal of this project was to create a generator to capture kinetic or potential energy from nature and transform it into electrical energy. This could have been a great project, if done right.
At first each group had there own unique idea of how they were going to complete this task. My group which was Adam, Sam, and Robbie was first going to build a waterwheel with motors attached. After multiple attempts and fails to capture enough energy to make at least 1 LED light shine, we had a new “brilliant” idea. Using our materials we made a mini car with motors attached to the wheels. The problem with this was that we struggled to make a decent in circuit the tiny car we created. In the end every group created water wheels with hand generators.
Even though, our waterwheel completed the goal by using our knowledge of energy transformation and conversion, by the end most of the creativity and personalization in the project was down the drain.
Even though I didn’t have the best term in science and math I am very happy to have ended the year with probably my strongest project. The last project we were given in science was about astronomy. For this project I was partnered up with Claire to focus on the Big Bang Theory. I excelled at this project because I was very interested in my topic, did a great amount of research, showed other things we had learned in science and math such as graphing and elements, split up the work and used my time well.
Working in a group
Something that I learned this year, is that it’s important to be able to be a good team member or leader depending on the situation. Everyone has different skills they give to a project aswell as weaknesses so it’s important to know when you need to step up or step down for a project. I think that Destination Imagination helped me learn what skills I can bring to a project as well as when I should let others take the lead.
For DI my team members were Robbie, Sofia, and Lucas.
We all have very different personalities so it was interesting how well we worked together. One of the reasons we worked so well together is that we all had the same goal: to make the best out of DI. We also all were focused on contributing as much as we could to be successful in this goal. Because of this for everyone was a leader at some point during DI preperation. Something I learned that I bring to projects is being artistic. I used this skill a lot in DI when creating our tie did backdrop, Robbie’s flower pants and the window. Something I learned to let others take the lead on is writing. For our script it was Lucas’s job to write it and Sofia’s job to do the forms. Even though it wasn’t my job to do the writing I still helped editing. I had to hold myself back on editing and adding things because in group projects I usually do most of the writing. Finally I learned that its important to build off of others ideas instead of replacing them with yours.
Moving Forward
Now that I finnished my tPOL and reflected on my grade 10 year its time to advance to the next grade
Human Nature refers to the distinct way humans act, think, and feel naturally. But human nature could simply be an excuse to our actions because we don’t know if there truly are fixed characteristics, what these natural characteristics are, and what causes them.
In Humanities this unit we are reading Lord Of The Flies by William Golding. This novel is a great representation of our human nature and how it affects us. Are human nature is something that could bring us together or tear us apart.
Our project for this unit is The Great Debate Podcast. Two teams of around 4 students will be debating against eachother about a statement that ties in to what we have been learning this term.
To start things of interesting our teacher got us to pick the teams! Knowing us as a class this wasn’t going to go down well so there were a few rules.
There will be around 5 groups.
Each group has to be co-ed, that is at least one male and one female in each group
Every student must agree on the groups that are created
Every group should have a variety of people who have different strengths and weaknesses
Write down the groups on a sheet of paper, with every student’s name in class listed on the sheet.
The class will submit a written explanation of their choices.
Every student will sign their name on the back of the sheet,
verifying that they agree with the groups selected.
We were all very nervous for this experiment, but in the end we had 6 good groups that most people were happy with.
Afterwards we reflected on how everyone reacted differently to this experiment and if it was an example of human nature.
My group ended up being Lucas, Claire and Aiden. I was happy with this group because we all had different skills and I knew we would work well together.
The First thing we did as a team was make a team name. We decided on the New York Islanders because it relates to the LOTF (Lord Of The Flies) and us because most of us like hockey.
In our teams we were able to get points by being on time to class, cleaning garbage, having our iPad charged and more.
As we continued to read the Lord Of The Flies we did 3 team quizzes on the novel. These helped me understand the novel better and motivated me to finish the chapter. If your team got 10/10 on a quiz you could get a 100 points!
I enjoyed reading the Lord Of The Flies because the more I read the more I realized how the boys were acting on there human nature. The group of boys became separated because of this and turned on each other near the end of the novel. The boys acted on there human nature differently and some characters personalities change by the end of the novel.
As we were finishing the LOTF we were also preparing for our debate. My team was on the con side of the statement be it resolved it is in our human nature to put ourselves above others
We learned and practiced debating by doing activities and watching videos.
One of the first things we practiced was impromptu speeches. A few brave students volunteered to do practice there speaking skills in front of the class. As they gave a speech about some topic like there favourite sport we watched for these things:
A very helpful video we watched was the 7 Secrets Of Great Speakers.
We also prepared for our debate by following these Steps To Success
1) Complete concept chart: the concept charts should not have random information but be about concepts we have learned.
2) Consider your strongest arguments: use these in statements
3) Establish your opening statement – Each team will have a 3 minute opening statement. This is when you must clearly state your position and your strongest argument of why you are right.
3) Consider their rebuttals and prepare yourselves for their arguments and your counter arguments – Following the opening statements will be a 2 minute rebuttal. You must listen carefully to their arguments and prove them wrong with specific evidence.
4) Practice, Practice, Practice! – make sure you know what you’re talking amd your group is on the same page. Organize who will say what, and have visual cues that encourage others to speak.
I felt pretty confident going in to my debate because my group had prepared and practiced a lot together aswell as we were the last group to go so I was able to learn from others mistakes.
We set the debate up by having the con side on the right, the student moderator in the middle, and the pro side on the left. We also had the audience facing the front.
Our debate went almost exactly as planned. My team did a good job of making sure everyone had a chance to speak and I thought made a lot of great points. After the debate the students and teachers get to vote for there side. Our group won because the teachers votes were worth 3 points and we got both of there votes.
You can listen to our debate here:
After the debate I felt much more confident in public speaking. Even though it can be terrifying the more you will practice the better you will get.
In the spirit of debates we also looked at a lot of politics this term. One of the first things we learned about was the different types of governments
Each of our teams got one type of government to research.
My group researched anarchy and then presented what we found out.
We also learned about Canada’s government and electoral system. We created mind map of the hierarchy of the Provincial and Federal levels.
Finally while we were learning about LOTF, politics and preparing for our debate we also create 2 concept paragraphs. At th3 beginning of this unit we brainstormed what fits into these big concepts:
Power and Authority
Humanity and Inhumanity
Violence and Destruction
Human nature
Civilization and Savagery
Individualism and Community
For my concept paragraphs I chose human nature
and violence and destruction
For my first concept paragraph my thesis was:
We have become divided because people want to gain as much power as they can.
I really enjoyed this unit because I found all the concepts we learned about very interesting. I found it easy to make connections to current events and things that we learned this year in my writing which is something I struggle with. I also learned a lot about politics and more than ever want to learn more about my government and things like the pipeline. Finally I am glad to have read LOTF because I learned about the affects human nature can have on us and that we shouldn’t take our community for granite.
The origin of Science started with theories and ideas about our world. Proven scientific theories can tell us what is inside our bodies, and even what particles are in the air. We also have created theories about space and time which is apart of astronomy.
Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution.
One theory that you probably have heard of is the Big Bang Theory
Oops I wasn’t talking about that Big Bang Theory
I was talking about this one
As you you can see the Big Bang Theory is a scientific theory about how the universe started, and then made the stars and galaxies we see today.
For our project I partnered up with Claire. We got to choose one of the possible topics about astronomy, (which we chose the Big Bang Theory) and then create a driving question from it.
To help us create our project we wrote down our idea on a big sheet of paper and had our classmates comment on it in a gallery walk.
The feedback we got helped us create a better driving question: What Makes the Big Bang Theory the Most Widely Accepted Theory Among Scientists?
Our only criteria for this project was that it must display learning of 4 of 6 the science 10 curricular competencies, you choose which 4 and write how your project will show them.
we decided to make a slides for our project. We researched the Hubble theory, cosmic background radiation, COBE, WMAP, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, misconceptions and the fate of our universe to answer our driving question
Now that I’m half way done high school it’s time to start thinking about my future after I leave high school. This can be very tricky for some people (especially me) because they don’t know what kind of job they might be interested in. Also because technology is creating new jobs everyday I could end up in a job that doesn’t exist yet.
Even though I will never know where my career will take me it important to get a broad idea so I can move forwards.
In my planning class our final project was to do a job shadow.
By the end of this project the main goal is to be able to answer: How will my career and education path consider both internal and external factors to plan, evaluate, and adapt to changing opportunities?
This project had 4 steps
Brainstorm and create a call list
Create interview questions
Send a thank you letter
Make a Learning Portfolio post
Brainstorming and Call List
Fof my brainstorm I decided to create a mind map of jobs I might be interested in. Something that help me figure out what specific jobs I might I fit well with in terms of skills and personality was MyBlueprint.
Next I created a call list for the jobs I was most interested in.
Call list:
Local Publishing and editing Company Greystone Books
Blair’s my moms friend who works for CTV
Vanleena dance academy or Seymour dance academy
I decided to call the publishing company Greystone books and I was able to get an interview with the publisher and owner Rob Sanders on March 30, 2018
Interview Questions
I thought of around 10 questions that I was interested in.
My questions:
1. What does it mean to be successful in this occupation?
2. What travel opportunities have you been given?
3. What kind of quality do you need to have? Personal/acdemic
4. What is the difference of the reality between the expectations of your type of job?
5. How fulfilling do you find your job?
6. How did you decide you wanted to do this?
7. What has been your biggest surprise ?
8. What have you struggled with. How have you overcome ?
9. What is it like to run your own company ?
10. What would have you have liked to know?
the next thing I did was go on the job shadow!
I definetly learned more than I expected on this job shadow. Not only did I learn what it is like to be an editor I also learned about being a publisher, company owner, and journalist.
I wrote down some notes answering the questions I asked during the interview:
Something that I found really interesting is that for this type of job a high level of education isn’t what matters, the passion for literature is what will get you far. There really is no restrictions on how you want to get an education for this type of job. I also learned that it’s very important to work well with people because most of your job is worker and giving feedback to the writer. To be a successful editor, publisher, or company owner you have to have a creative and positive mindset. Having this mindset will make you much more successful. Finally I learned that a job in the publishing industry is what you make of it.
Thank You letter
Lastly I thanked Rob Sanders for me the experience to learn from a publicist and company owner.
To be apart of the publishing industry my career path will consider if I stay passionate about what I’m doing, and if my education has allowed me to develope the right skills. It also will consider where I live, what companies are in my area, and what type of job are they looking for. My education path will consider how confident I am with writing, reading, and editing literature. It will also consider what programs and courses are available to me, and if I am financial stable.
All of this effects how I plan out my future. For example, I will have to plan on living somewhere that is popular with writers so that it will be likely that there are lots of publishing companies around. I will also have to evaluate what is the best option for me in terms of education. Finally I will adapt to changing opportunities by getting experience in editing, journalism, publishing, and any new job that comes my way.
Teachers always say that everything you learn in math you will use in the future. Though I still don’t fully believe that I think this unit is something that will definitely be useful.
For most of this year we have been learning about disruption! We learned all about the people who are pushing the boundaries of innovation and creating the jobs of the future. These people are called Entrepreneurs. Now it’s time to meet these amazing brilliant people at the BCTech Summit Youth Innovation Day!
Our driving question was: How has BC’s economy been disrupted by the tech industry?
To make sure we got the most out of this experience we had a few tasks when we were there.
1) Choose 2 of the speakers that we will hear from that day. Research their company and how they are impacted or how they drive the tech industry. When we arrive, be prepared to take notes while they speak, snap some photos or videos, and explain
their role in the tech industry.
2) Choose 1 area of tech you MAY be interested in (video games, medicine, art, computer science, communication, etc). Find one/two
schools that offer programs that are designed for this interest area.
3) Interview at least 1 Mentor at the Mentors Table section of the summit. Design your own interview questions around your interests! Your final video or podcast must be approximately 1-2 minutes.
I decided to pick Brent Bushnell and Valerie Song to research.
Research:
Brent Bushnell is an entrepreneur, engineer and CEO/co-founder of Two Bit Circus, a Los Angeles-based experiential entertainment company. They created STEAM Carnival, a traveling event to inspire kids about science, technology, engineering, art and math. The two big circus has robot bartenders, interactive supper club and more. Microsoft and intel took an interest to there passion project which was them making games. Says there just a big band of nerds.
The goal of these games and the curriculum is to inspire kids the way we have been inspired by science technology engineering art and math. Brent said, “The inspiration side of education is even more important”.
I learned that
A nerd is someone that has the tools needed to solve problems and the motivation
It’s easier then ever to make change because there is so much aces ability
“Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it”
Learn to make then you can discover solutions
S.T.E.A.M is the art and creativity with math and technology
Vitural reality, augmented reality, mixed reality together makes you be able to actively participate. This is now being used for things like prescription video games that help pations with ADHD, post traumatic stress.
Research:
She uses all aspects of STEM to develop AVA Byte smart gardens. Gives the capability to grow food in your own home. This technology grows you fresh fruit unlike what you find in grocery stores, “the average fruit you buy in grocery stores is actually 13 months old”. The device simulates the environment that is needed and the pods have the plants in them. For restaurant you can grow up to 200 plants in one machine.
Valerie figured out what the cared about, which was food, and what needed to change which was sustainable food production.
Song says one of her company’s biggest mandates is to employ an equal number of men and women who come from diverse backgrounds, both culturally and in terms of experience. AVA’s team comes from ethnic backgrounds including India, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Italy, and South America
I decided to create a video of my interview with the two mentors I spoke with.
I found it interesting that in medicine they are starting to use coding to create better patient care. I thought this was cool because it really dies prove that we need to teach kids about things like coding because it is being incorporated into jobs aswell as creating new jobs.
In WWII there was the allies and axis powers but every country and every soldier has a different perspective from the rest. Every country no matter how small played a vital role in WWII that resulted in the world we live in today.
For this project we created a website called Perspectives of WWII! Each group learned about one country’s perspective that was involved with the Second World War.
Our driving question for this project was: How do we view and understand war, depending on who we are?
Throughout this project I learned about many battles and important dates in WWII, how to cite websites and books, how to create a website, and what it was really like to be apart of the war.
We also read a novel on the topic of perspectives of WWII that you can check out here
When being assigned our country groups we filled our top 3 choices on an online google form. The country I got was Canada “my home and nation land” and my group members were Ethan and Michael.
For the website we had a list of topics to research:
#1. Your Country post WWI (before the Second World War)
includes: Location, language, leaders/political parties, population, military, prevalent religions, historical turning points, and more
#2. 1939 The War Begins
Includes: Who was your country allied with? Why did your country enter the war? What were their goals? What were the turning points? And Significant battles.
#3. Military/Technology
#4. Timeline of WWII for this country
includes: years in bold with bullet points. visuals. Entry to war, significant battles, political leaders coming into power, the war coming to an end.
#5. Helmut Podcast –
includes: 5 min each or if done in group 8 minutes per webpage.
#6. Details of Significant Battles
Includes: Years, number of troops, number of casualties, location of battle, countries involved. Tell your battle from the perspective of your country.
#7. Soldier Details
Includes: What did your soldier look like on the battle field? What type of training did these soldiers endure? Where were the training camps? Conscription, social aspects of soldier life, pros and cons of soldier attire, etc.
#8. Your Choice!
Includes: Make this page your own! Add some interesting details that are unique to your country that have not been covered in previous sections.
As you can see that is a lot of research so we split up who would do what and created a shared google docs.
I took on: #4. Timeline of WWII for this country, #6. Details of Significant Battles and part of #1. Your Country post WWI
We had about a month to finish all our research
As a class we were very lucky to get the experience to interview an WWII German Soldier named Helmut Lemke.
We each created questions to ask him.
What was the most important thing you learned from being apart of the war?
How did you change as a person before and after the war?
What was the worst experience you went through during the war?
If you could go back and change one thing what would it be?
He answered are questions and also told his stories at the battlefront. Two things that really resonated with me was how he said, “In WWII there was no winners or losers”, which is something that I have always thought about. I also found it interesting when he said, “You are always surrounded by death”. I found this interesting because it made me realize how real and insane War is.
Once we had the peices of the website completed it was time to put them on. Our website was created with an app called Weebly. We all had a lot of trouble with this app on our iPads but on computers it worked better. Some of the struggles we went through was not being able to have everyone work on the website at the same time, work being deleted for no reason (I experienced this when my timeline disappeared) and getting logged out. Even though we did experience struggles I would use weebly again and we managed to all complete our country pages by the deadline.
Throughout creating this website and doing worksheets on WWII I learned that every battle was significant in some way. We view and understand war differently depending how it has affected us and the people around us. Even if you weren’t apart of WWII it has affected where you live, your rights, and your freedom.
