Destination Imagination (DI) is something that PLP does every year. This year, our school was the host! Since I just joined PLP this year, this was going to be my first DI tournament, so I didn’t have any experience and didn’t really know what to expect. DI is an opportunity to show off your creative skills and incorporate these skills to solve a challenge. There are seven challenges and there were 4-6 students on each team. The challenge I was assigned to was the technical challenge. The challenge was called Maze Craze. I had 6 people in my group, Kate, Spencer, Isobel, Calum and Sam.

For this challenge we had to include a lot! This challenge involved a traveler to go through the maze, a prop transformation and a prop had to be removed from the maze. All of these challenges within the maze, had to be incorporated into a story.

Check out the  video that explains all the rules!

Before even thinking about the story we had to read over the challenge so we knew it like the back of our hands. This was important because within the challenge there were specific rules we had to follow, and it was important we knew what was and wasn’t required.

An activity we did was reading through the challenge and going in with highlighters. We marked in different colours the mandatory requirements, the things  that we don’t need and the optional requirements. This helped me a lot with understanding our challenge.

Choosing a story definitely was one of the hardest parts, and it took a lot of brainstorming. In class we did an activity to generate ideas. Everyone on our team needed to fill in a chart of ideas for the story. Once’s everyone had filled out the chart, we cut out the ideas and organized them into categories like, story line, props, theme of story, etc.

It took al lot of brainstorming when we decided on a police mission. Everyone also liked this idea a lot. This was a hero/ action theme with the good guys and the villains. We also came up with the idea of removing bombs from a building (the maze being the building). This would involve having the police detecting the bomb and removing it and the villains plantimg the bombs. Another idea that jumped out was the idea of flashbacks. Our story was set so the main policeman was telling his story of the time he was a part of the bomb squad and his mission. To add a sad aspect his best friend on the mission with him got blown up by the bomb and the whole idea was it was his 50 reunion dedicated to the best friend.

Characters:

Villains: Izzy, Kate

Police officers: Sam (young Spencer), Calum

Head of police: Isobel

Older version of Sam, telling the story: Spencer

Once we had a outline we could start filling in the forms. Leading up to the tournament A LOT of planning was involved. This involved filling in multiple forms. These forms included team management, budget (we had a $200 US budget), team goals, story line. This all took planning and time to complete the forms. We also started to work on the script. For the script we wrote a rough draft and throughout the weeks we tweeked and revised it.

DI script-1hznkcn

For planning out the story line, we had a deliverables chart to fill out. This was a chart in one side that had the requirements and the other side was our solution. This is where we started to think about the prop transformation and the removal.

Here is one of the charts:

Since our props were bombs, for the prop transformation we decided to have a explosions effect. We attached lights to the home made papier-mâché balloon and when the explosion happened, the lights turned red. For the removal of the maze, a bombed was removed and the rover pushed it out.

The other element that is required by all the challenges, is to have a team choice element. The team choice elements have to be in your performance that is unique that no one else has. This could be music or incorporating sports into the skit, etc. Our team had a bit of trouble with coming up with ideas. In the end, we used music that Isobel and Kate had created and Kate spoke French throughout the performance.

For the main aspect of the challenge we had to create a rover to travel through the maze. For our story, it was a bomb defuser. Calum is very good at coding so he said he could make a rover and code it through the maze. I was a little worried because he said that he could do it by himself, but we made the other parts of the challenge. Calum had built the rover from scratch which was really cool however, the day before competition day it didn’t exactly work. This left our group a little panicked but by the morning Calum had gotten the rover to sort of working.

However, I was confident with the background and the story! For the background we made it so it was like a story book. Spencer was the cop telling the story and we flipped the pages as the settings of the story changed. My favourite page was the last page. Since Kate and I (the villains) escaped, we cut out a whole that we jumped through at the end!

Competition day!

I was pretty nervous for competition day. First of all it was going to be my very first DI tournament and I didn’t want or mess up. Second, the rover! Let’s just say it involved a lot running back and fourth to Calum’s house to get tools to fix it an hour before. We tested it before the performance and Calum got it to work. Although during our performance the rover broke down and Calum and Sam had to push it through the maze. We had to do a lot of improvisation.

What went well:

Overall I was pretty happy about our performance. Even thought the rover didn’t work, we stayed in character and managed to improvise. The rover also still removed the prop and exited the maze which got us points. Talking about points overall we came 2nd! Something the appraisers loved, was the story and the story book. We got the most points for the story aspect.

Pretty much all of the comments from the appraisers were about how they loved our story book. Also they thought we did a good job with staying in character even though it all went wrong with the rover.

Where we can improve:

Here is our score sheet. This shows the areas we didn’t do so well on,

There was quite a bit that we could improve on. To start off with the main component of the challenge didn’t work. This was all to do with time management. We should have worked on the traveller a long time before the performance. We lost a lot of points in the team choice elements. Our background music was too quiet and our french character wasn’t emphasized enough. We need to work on making them more visible and big to our performance for next time. Next time we could make them more obvious, or even choose different ones.

In conclusion, it was a fun experience and it was interesting to see what a DI tournament looks like. I was surprised by how many people were at our school, I don’t think I had ever seen it so full! We made it to provincials so we can take our feedback into account so our performance will be even better! I also got a participation certificate and ribbon!!

All the other teams did really well! Almost every team from Seycove got either 1st, 2nd, or 3rd!

For this unit we were learning about polynomials and how to use algebra tiles to solve equations. For the project we were told to make a board game using polynomials and algebra tiles. We had to make up our own rules and design the ya,e our selves. This was a partner project so Mimi and I worked together.

Before we even started the project, we had to learn how to solve polynomials. Basically you can use the algebra tiles to factor, square or expand. We had a few lessons on how to solve these equations. We had to use all three concepts in our board game that we had to demonstrate us solving the problems in the video.

Factoring: To break it up into numbers that can be multiplied together to get the original number.

Expanding: Removing the ( ).

Complete the square: The method of converting a quadratic equation which is not a perfect square into the sum or difference of a perfect square.

For brainstorming we had to come up with what type of game we wanted to make. We had a lot of freedom within the project. We could choose any type of game. It could be a board game, card game, etc. Mimi and I decided to make a board game. We also wanted to incorporate gambling into the game to make it more interesting and exciting. For the game we also needed to create a theme. We decided to go with a space theme.

Making a game involves a lot of creativity. You have to come up with a name, rules etc. Mimi and I came up with the name ‘Thinking outside the galaxy’, to go along with our space theme. I took us a while to think of rules. It took some revisions to clarify the rules. Basically the objective of our game was to winner get to the end first.

Here is our first draft of the rules,

1. gambling game with tokens
Each turn each player is given an equation at random that could either be the answer of an equation or the equation itself.
2. Both players have to solve them and whoever’s sum is the largest, moves on forward 2 spaces, and draws a card with positive movements.
3. if make a perfect square points are doubled

After we got some critique we re-did some of the rules to make them more clear and we added some details.

Final draft of rules,

1. Two player game.
2. Before the round starts, place bets (any of your possessions) in “gamble bowl”.
3. Player A will roll blue dice, the number on this dice will determine how many tile squares you will pick up from the blue bowl.
4. Player A will then do the same for the yellow dice and bowl and the green dice and bowl.
5. Player B will also take steps 3-4.
6. Once everybody has their tile squares each player can pick up one card from both stacks.
7. The card with the number, is the amount of extra tiles you can choose from the tile bowls.
8. The other stack with either the word factor, expand or square is what you are going to do with your tiles.
9. Using the box you are given, arrange the tiles to come up with the largest sum (keep in mind, you have to stick to what the cards tell you to do).
10. The player with the largest sum in the end can pick up a card from the blue pile, these cards will then tell you how many moves you can make across the game board track.
11. First player to reach the end of the game board track is the winner, the winner can then collect the bids in the bowl!

After we had of rules set in stone, we were able to make a rule book for the game. For each page we drew pictures to represent each instruction. This was just for a visual to make the instructions really clear.

Examples of the drawings,

Making the game board,

On the board we needed to have it big enough to fit the tracker on the side, and it needed to have enough room to fit all the tiles inside. We found a decent size piece of cardboard at my house that we ended up using. To add some personalization, we painted the board like a galaxy and it fit the theme of space.

The numbers on the side of the board represent the points for each player, and the first person to reach the end is the winner.

Check out our video explaining the rules for further details!

We got pretty good feedback and only had one revision. The revision was to demonstrate completing the square better. We just re-filmed it and added it to our video. However, we added a lot of personality into our video by adding humour at the end when I won all of the biddings. Overall this was a fun project, we got to be creative and I enjoyed making our own game. As well as having fun I also learned about the new math concepts.

As you may know this units theme is disruption. Disruption is a interference, inconvenience or change in an event. So how is this related to our learning?

Our driving question,

Throughout  history, how has technology acted as a disruption?

I think it’s fair to say that technology has grown and developed new features through time and the usage of technology has changed. In California we visited places that all relate to our disruption unit. For example Google, Alcatraz, Apple and Nature reserves and parks. We were looking at how technology has acted as a disruption in many ways, education, business, transportation, environmentally, etc.

In my California post I mentioned a project about Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. For our field study in California, we had a project that we were going to be gathering evidence from,whilst on the trip. To gather evidence for our projects, we could include interviews, quotes or videos. In California we visited many attractions and our task was to focus on one to do our project about.

This was a partner project. We were somewhat aloud to chose our partners (the teachers mainly made the groups in the end). Looking at our itinerary we could choose any attraction we were going to be visiting to research. My partner was Simon, together we were interested in the first lunch spot Hodad’s, a burger restaurant. The reason we wanted to research Hodad’s because we were interested in the back story of the restaurant. However this idea wasn’t going to work, because we were only going to be there for less than hour (not enough time).

We needed to find another place to research, so we decided on Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. I was interested in this attraction because I was thinking we could get a lot of really cool footage and there would be lots of people to ask for information. I was also interested in the wildlife in this reserve and how they protect the it. Also another plus was we were going to be there on the first day so we could get everything we needed and start to work on the video the rest of the trip.

Another reason I wanted to do Torrey Pines was because after some research, I already had an idea on how it could have acted as a disruption. I was thinking about education. On the website they had a page on how they educate people about this reserve. Simon and I were the only group researching Torrey Pines, the popular attraction was the Safari Park. However, another aspect of the project was to connect our topic with another one. For ours, we could connect it to the Safari Park because they are both about educating people about the environment and they are both reserves and their purpose is to protect endangered species.

To help brainstorm other ideas on how Torrey Pines Reserve acted as a disruption, we created a mind map on what other ways the reserve can act as a disruption. We also did some research to get a better understanding about our destination. It’s kind of hard to see on the images, but our three main ideas were, education, business and environment:

Once we had our topic we had to decide on how we were going to present our research. We had a lot of options, video, podcast, game, puppet show, and photo essay. Simon and I decided to do a video, mainly because Simon brought his camera so we could get some good footage. Almost every group chose either a podcast or a video.

We couldn’t work on the project a lot before the trip, except a lot of research. Also to gather more information and ask good questions for our interview, we started to make a list of questions we could ask. Also before we left we needed to form a thesis that our video would relate back to.

“Torrey Pines is a natural reserve home to some of the rarest pines in North America, making it a unique educational experience”

When we arrived at Torrey Pines Reserve, as a class we walked around and we had a tour guide for the first section. The guide gave us some key information about the pines that we could use in our video. Simon and I had the opportunity to interview the park ranger, Johnson.

I was asking Johnson about how the park educate people about the reserve and the issues within it. He mentioned that they have junior programs for kids and guided nature walks around the reserve. Something that jumped out to me was the bark beatle and non native species. At the reserve the bark beetle is disturbing the Torrey Pines and a way they are trying to fix this problem by setting up traps the capture the beetles.

The other main issue in the park was the non native species in the wet lands. The reserve organizes volunteer programs to get rid of these non native species in the wetlands.

After gathering all the evidence we needed from the park we created our rough draft of the video.

We needed to do a bit of work for our final draft. First of all we needed to cut down the interviews and only keep the key pieces of information in the video. Like I mentioned earlier about thr Safair park, we also needed to relate our topic to another places we visited, so we just needed to add this part in the video.

I was happy with our final disruption video. I thought it showed the disruption at Torrey Pines reserve and we showed how the reserve educate visitors on these problems within the reserve.

Hope you enjoy!

Overall I really enjoyed this project. From this project I developed and improved new skills. Something that we have been developing this unit is asking good questions in a interview. I think my interview with the park ranger went well, something I would do differently is maybe at the end of the interview ask ifthere any further information about the Torrey Pine reserve.

When I was editing the video, I got a lot of flashbacks from California which and making me want to go back!

Another aspect for our disruption unit was to write a synthesis essay. Like I mentioned earlier our essay had to answer,

How has technology acted as a disruption throughout history?

Through out our field study to California, we were collecting evidence for the essay. Our task was to choose three different sources to back up our points. We had a lot of freedom with choosing our sources. These three sources could be the locations we went to in California, they just had to back up our argument. Check out my California post to look at all of our options of evidence for the essay.

From doing my disruption video about education I wanted to do a similar thing for the essay. So my argument was that technology has acted as a disruption towards education. My three points were, technology is introducing new ways of learning and changimg the way we learn, it acts as a disruption, and lastly technology has developed  new tools we use.

My three points to back up my argument;

Hight Tech High,

Wondering what Hight Tech is? Check out my recent blog all about the school!

The Computer History Museum,

Finally Little Brother, a novel we read at school.

We had a week to brainstorm for our essays. For writing the essay, we had two days in class to write. During the week before, we were formulating our thesis’s and writing an outline to prepare us. After brainstorming I finally formulated a thesis;

“Technology has strongly impacted education and is a disruption to students. Technology has introduced a new way of learning as well as becoming a distraction.”

Once I had my thesis and outline I was ready to write my essay!

Here is my essay;

Disruption essay-2kkybop

I haven’t received any feedback on my essay yet. However I think I explained each point pretty well and I had my three sources to back up my argument. Overall I have learned a lot from or disruption unit. I learned a lot about how each location we visited can act as a disruption in many ways. Going into depth with Torrey Pines State Reserve improved my knowledge on how reserves educate the public, inorder to keep their species alive. I was also surprised how much I learned from going to Silicon Valley. Especially from visiting the Computer History Museum. I learned so much about the history of computers, and how much computers have revolutionized. This unit and the trip have increased my knowledge on technology and how much it has impacted the world. As well of the learning aspect I also had a lot of fun with these projects. Filming for the disruption video was a lot of fun! As much as I was having fun, I was also learning a lot about how a lot most everything can have a disruption towards something else.

In science we have been learning all about balanced chemical equations and reactions. In this unit we got to design our own chemical reaction experiment.

For the project this term our task was to design a chemical reaction experiment that clearly identified the presence of a element or compound in an object, material or mixture. The question we had to answer was,

How can chemical reactions be used to identify the unknown composition of an object?

This was a partner project, I was working with Alex. The criteria for this chemical reaction was pretty open. We could choose any chemical reaction, it just had to identify the unknown composition of an object.

After some brainstorming and discussion, we decided on testing soil samples around North Vancouver. With these samples we were going to test for the PH level in the soil, to test if it is basic or acidic. We discovered that using cabbage juice as a indicator with water will turn the soil water either, red (acidic) or blue (basic).

Inquiry question:

How can we test soils if they are acidic or basic in the area ( North Shore) and what patterns will occur?

Hypothesis:

We predict down by the water the soil will be more acid since there is more pollution down by the water, while areas with higher elevations or forest will be less acidic and more basic.

For this idea we needed to decided where we were going to collect soil samples from. I really wanted to collect from Mt.Seymour and the ocean to see if there is a different PH level with evaluation.

However, this wasn’t going to work with all the snow Mt.Seymour has had this season, we would have to dig A LOT to find soil. Instead we just collected samples from around the area.

The places we collected samples from:
Cates park
Myrtle park
Lynn Valley
Lonsdale
Blue Ridge
McCartney Creek park

In each location, we collected around a cup of soil and we also took pictures of the environment around the sample. We took pictures of the plants growing around and a closeup. of the leaves. This was so we could detect if the PH level of the soil affected the leaf colour.

To prepare for this experiment we needed to bring in materials into school. Alex brought in jam jars to keep the soil in. I made the cabbage juice at home by boiling water with half a cabbage and I poured it into a water bottle so I could bring it into school. The cabbage juice smelt so bad!!!

We also created a poster for a visual of our project. In the middle is a map of North Vancouver with string attaching photos of the locations we collected the soil from. After the experiment we wrote down all of the results of what the PH level was.

We did our experiment in front of the class. We got all of our soil samples and put them into beakers so we could measure the amount of soil, water and cabbage juice in order to keep the variables equal.

Here is our experiment in front of the class:

Conclusion:

The results of our soil samples were pretty balanced, there was a good mixture of acidic and basic results. We concluded with our experiment that the soil samples that were closer the the ocean are more basic and the samples from a higher evaluation were more acidic and are part of the alkali family. This is not what we predicted. Our hypothesis was that the samples from the ocean were going to be more acid because of pollution in the water. A possible reason our results was the soil was more acidic with elevation could be because of limestone and the water running through the stone  on the mountains. Lime water is very acid and the water flows down the mountains causing the soil to be acidic.

Overall we did pretty good on the project. We didn’t have to do any revisions. The aspect of the project that we struggled on was the presentation. We didn’t fully explain the chemical reaction happening. However the experiment worked and we got some decent results. From this project I learned a lot more about chemical reactions and I learned about the PH level of soil in North Vancouver which is pretty interesting. I also learned what you can use as an indicator, before this project, I didn’t know red cabbage juice could be used as an indicator!

Since school had started I was already counting down the days until California. For the PLP field trip this year we went to California for nine days. We visited San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco, We went to so many amazing places and had so many amazing opportunities. It was definitely a trip to remember. Our theme this year is disruption and through out the field trip, we were learning how technology can act as a disruption.

While we were in a California we had a task to complete a book about California. Our teachers had made a book for us, almost like a diary that we had to fill in. There we all types of tasks, reflections, pictures and videos. We were told that our final copy had to look completely different from the book our teachers gave us.

Let me take you through the highlights from our nine days in California!

Day1: Fun on the plane

Our first day was a very long day! It started off by waking up at 3am to get to the air port for 4:30am. I was so excited I didn’t even feel tired. The first plane was  a 45min flight to Seattle and Robbie already left his wallet on the plane!!! Then we had another 2 hours ish to San Diego. Non of us were dressed for the sunny San Diego weather. We were all wearing hoodies and long pants and it was around 25 degrees outside! The first thing we did when we got out of the airport was get into our car groups.

Our first stop was at Torrey Pines Natural reserve. Torrey Pines is home to the oldest pine in North America and endangered species of plants and animals. Simon and I were filming our disruption video at this destination. We interviewed some of the staff members and got some great footage for the video!

La Jolla was our evening stop. La Jolla Cove was so pretty and we got there just at sunset. There was a huge grassy field and Alex bought his frisbee so we had a game on the field. Down by the ocean there were seals lounging on the bay! We got some instagram worthy pictures at La Jolla Cove!

First Mexican food of the trip,

Day 2: A grand day at the zoo

A high light of the day was the daily cheetah run. Cheetahs run at a speed of 70 miles per hour and they ran a long a 330 foot track. The cheetah running was Shirley and the San Diego park is the only Safari park where you can watch a Cheetah run off the leash running at top speed. We had to get to the area fast because there was so many people watching and the run goes so fast!

Another highlight from today was the hotair balloon ride. From the top we could look over the whole of the Safari park and you could almost see Mexico! The hotair balloon went higher that the Statue of Liberty!

A really cool opportunity today was we got to watch the Elephants have their check up. This involved cleaning of the feet, checking the whole body of the elephant pretty much.

Day 3: Exploring San Diego

I really enjoyed visiting the Midway. This was the second time I went and this time was the best. I found it really interesting talking to all the veterans from the carrier because they could gave us real stories from the carrier.

The highlight from the USS midway was roaming around the museum we were given an audio tour, so we listened to it while walking around. Also while we were walking around we have some challenges to do from our books. It was a lot of fun filming our videos. My favourite section of the museum was the hospital and dentist. It looked so realistic.

My favourite challenge:

After the museum we went to the Old Town San Diego. The Old Town was the birds place of San Diego. There was a lot of Mexican Vibes, I almost felt like I was in Mexico! The restaurant we went to was Cafe Coyote. The food was so good there!

Old Town: The birth place of San Diego

Day 4 and 5: Back to school (High Tech High)

These two days were definitely highlights from the trip! I had so much fun at High Tech High. My partner and I bonded right away and I got to meet all of her friends. Check out my HTH blog for more about the school!
On the last day of HTH, we were off to San Jose! On the way to the airport we went to In and Out burger. The plane ride was around 1:30 mins, and as soon as we arrived, we went to the hotel and went to bed.

Day 7: The tech day (Silicon Valley)

Today was a very Tech day. We went to Google followed by Apple, the Intel museum and then interviewing Brendan and Scott and bowling. Outside of Google, they had all the statues of the Android updates. All of the names of the updates are dessert names (hence the reason the stautes are all desserts)!

The Apple visitor centre was so cool. The building was like a glass box, and we got to test out all of Apples products. We got some of the employees to show us how to take the best pictures with the IphoneX.

After interviewing the Tech giants, the whole class got to go bowling!!!
Another highlight of the day was going to the Sonic Runway and the whole class running through it. It was basically a long stretch of lights and the lights would move with the speed of what ever went through it.

Day 8: Visiting my dream university

In the morning we visited the computer museum, luckily we didn’t have to get up too early so we got to sleep in a bit. It was very interesting at the computer museum to go through time and see how much computers have changed. I also got to go inside the new Google self driving car.

Stanford was also so fun! We walked around the whole campus and now I really want to go to Stanford! I was so happy because I bought a Stanford hoodie. It was pretty funny because almost everyone bought something from Stanford so when we were walking around the next day with our Stanford hoodies on, we looked like we went to Stanford!

The other Highlight was I got to sit inside a Tesla and now I really want a Tesla!!! It’s going to be my future car (hopefully).

Day 9: Train to San Francisco

Our final destination was to San Francisco and we got a hour train from San Jose. We dumped our bags at the hotel and got a tour around Twitter HQ. My favourite part of today was going to the Golden Gate Bridge! I have always wanted to visit the bridge. We got lots of photos!

Day 10: Wild Wes walking tour and Alcatraz 
The tour around San Francisco was definitely a highlight of the day. We got a tour of the Castro and Mission. Our tour guide was also a lot of fun, he carried his guitar around and sang songs he wrote about each place.

The other highlight from today was Alcatraz. A long with the Bridge, I was also really looking forward to exploring Alcatraz.

We were given the audio and it was amazing. As we walked around the museum we were being told stories from Alcatraz. It was really interesting to walk through the prison cells and we even got to go inside them!

Day 10: Home rebound

The whole last day was our journey back home. It involved two flights. I think most people were excited to go home. I was happy and sad at the same time. I wanted to stay because it was so much fun but I was also so tired and needed a good night sleep. Let’s just say I had the best sleep in a long time!

While we were in California, we had the opportunity to go to High Tech High (HTH). HTH is a carter school located in San Diego. Charter schools are government funded and you don’t need to pay to get in.  Just like PLP, HTH is a project learning based school except instead of only a portion of the school involved in HTH, the whole school is project based. Before we visited the school, we did a bit of research about the school and we watched a video for an introduction. A quote I liked was, ‘the school on the outside looks like a box but on the inside it’s completely different, it doesn’t even look like a school’. This quote made me very excited to visit HTH, because in the video they described the school, different and unique so I was very interested to see what it was actually like.

We visited the school for two days and were assigned a buddy to work with. Our task was to interview our buddy to create a podcast. I think everyone was a little nervous when our teachers said we were going to be working with people we had never met before! So the teachers could pair us up, our class made introductory videos that we were going to send to HTH. Our introduction video had to represent us and show who we were. We were told to include hobbies, family members, goals/ambitions, nationally, etc.

Here is my introduction video, hope you enjoy!

We didn’t find out our partners until we were at the school, so the whole first few days of the trip everyone was wondering who we were going to be working with. At HTH we were told to wear a button up shirt and everyone looked very professional! When we arrived I remember walking up the stairs up to the front doors and seeing our buddies inside. Right away when we walked in the door, we were assigned our buddies.

My buddies name was Keana. Right away we both bonded and I was very happy to work with her. They chose all the buddies really well, everyone got along with theirs. After we were introduced to our buddy everyone went into the humanities class, Anna’s class. We were spilt up into groups to get a tour of their campus. On the campus there is a elementary school, HTH international and media arts and HTH (the school we were at). We headed straight to  media arts and Just from walking through the front doors I could already see so many differences between HTH and Seycove. First of all the hallways were filled with art work and students projects. I also noticed that most of the class rooms had glass walls. This is so the students can see what’s going on and see other art work inside the class rooms.

(All the art work was done by the students including the wooden bridge!)

On the two days we were at the school, we were going to be shadowing our buddy around. So I went to all of Keana’s classes and had lunch with her. On the first day I went to her math, English and multi media class. In math we did some problem solving and the teacher was talking about Canada. I was also introduced to some of Keana’s friends and they were all friendly. They were all interested about what Canada is like since non of them had ever visited Canada before. It was kind of funny because we definitely looked like Canadians because almost half the class wore a flannel (which is very Canadian). At lunch time we went to the food court. The school in conveniently right next to cafes and a food court so I got a tray of sushi from Trader Joes. Since we were in California, I got California rolls. On the campus there were so many places to sit an since San Diego is sunny, unlike Vancouver, we saypt out side.

The podcast:

In school our focus is storytelling and getting a good story out of someone, this involves formulating good questions. Throughout this year we have practiced interviewing and making them into podcasts. For the last class of the day we had English, and we interviewed our buddies. Before we came to HTH we were told to brainstorm questions. The criteria was pretty open. We could ask our buddy anything we wanted to know about them. It could be education, family, nationality etc.

I already had idea what I wanted to ask, because Keana was new to HTH this year, so I wanted to know how different HTH is compared to regular high schools. For the interview, we were put into groups of four. My group was, Keana, Anjoli, Jayden and I. We sat of the grassy field and we had a lot of fun recording. It was a very casual interview and my buddies asked me some questions about Vancouver. We mostly talked about the differences between HTH an regular schools. While we were recording there was a lot of planes flying over so it could be hard to hear some of the audio. Almost every 5mins a plane would fly over the school. In this podcast you will notice that the microphone glitches quite a bit. This was a microphone technical difficulty!

Here is my first draft:

When we came home we did in class feed back so we exchanged with a partner. The feedback I got was to make a stronger conclusion and try and fix some of the audio. I tried to cut our as much as the glitches as possible and I re did the conclusion for the revised draft.

Final draft:

For the last day I was pretty excited to go back to HTH.  The day was simular to day one however, in multi media, we made these mini books called Zeens. In them we had to tell a story of what we did in the past two days at HTH. In our interview groups we each made one and exchanged them at the end with our buddies. I’m definitely keeping mine that my buddy made for me, for good times!

The two days I spent at HTH went like a flash and will definitely be remembered. I met so many amazing people at the school. To keep in touch, we all exchanged Instagram (as you do)! As well as meeting new people it was also a learning experience. I learned a lot about what San Diego is like and what there is to do in the city. There was a lot of discussion about the differences between San Diego and Vancouver. The big differences was the weather and after school activities. For example, in Vancouver we have ice skating and skiing and in San Diego they do a lot of surfing. I also leaned a lot about the school it’s self and there way of learning by going into the classes. Something I want to bring back to Seycove is how they have art work all over the school. I don’t think I saw one blank wall. Saying good bye to Keana was pretty sad but hopefully we will stay in touch and I’m really hoping our buddies come and visit us in Vancouver and come to Seycove!

Not going to lie I’m not really sure what to call these conferences. I have never done them before, and I have heard people call them TPOLS, SLC’s and MPOLS. Im pretty sure these ones are MPOLS. Anyway, it’s that time of year when PLP students participate in MPOLS. Basically MPOLS are for students to present to their teachers and parents work we have done throughout the year, and to demonstrate how they have grown as a learner in PLP, and how they can keep improving as a learner. I think it is important to measure how you have grown as a learner and how you can improve, because like anything there is always room for improvement.

The four PLP courses (humanities, maker, math and science) have all demonstrated how I have grown as a learner. In math and science I have learned new concepts and demonstrated my learning in my projects. For example the very first math project, I showed creativity as well as demonstrating the math involved with it.

Some evidence of work that I have shown hard work and I think it is the project I am most proud of is my History Week video. This was a partner project and Mimi and I worked really well together. In this project I branched out used Explain Everything instead of iMovie. This was good for me to be comfortable with using other apps, since every app has different features. I think from this project I proved that my editing skills have grown since I started PLP. I was very proud with the outcome of the video. Also the blog post to go a long with it I thought I did well with the structure of the post and I included links, photos and videos. At the start of the year my blog posts were not something I am too proud of. There was a big improvement from the History Week post and my very first post (Camp Capilano). I am more comfortable with writing posts, and I have a clearer understanding on what I should be including.

In PLP I have encountered times when I have been frustrated during projects. For our Sins of The City podcast I had fun but also I was pretty frustrated. Especially since we had to re-write our script around 3 times, and dedicated five hours at Starbucks one day to write our scripts that we then ended up having to re-do. I think if I was to do this group project again, I would make sure we could find more days that everyone could work on the project and this fits under time management. I think from having more practice with working in groups my time management skills have improved a lot. Now I will contact everyone in the group to find days people are around. This would benefit my group so that we had more time to work on the project outside of school. Even though it was pretty frustrating having to re-write and record the podcast, I learned how important it is to revise work, and there is always room to improve, and in the end I was happy with the end result. This goes to all projects I have done. Almost every project I have done my revisions to make it the best work I can.

As I said earlier there is always room for improvement, and there are projects/work that I am not too proud of. For example my first draft of the individual Sins of The City essay that we wrote, definitely wasn’t my best work. Something that I need to work on is essay writing. I can find it challenging to write a well structured essay, and it is a skill that will take practice to succeed. I guess a part of that is getting my ideas out of my head onto paper that will make sense. Also something that I need to work on is fully reading over any paper before handing it in. I may even have to read it out loud to catch all the errors. Writing a well structured essay will take a lot of practice but it is something to work on.

I think it’s fair to say that I have grown as a learner throughout this school year. I have shown growth throughout my blog posts to video skills. For me coming into PLP was definitely a good decision. The way we learn fits with my way of learning, visual and projects. This is my first year in PLP, which just shows that there is even more room to improve on and I think after more years with being in this program I will keep growing as a learner.

Throughout the year, we have been working on our story telling skills and how important they are. We were introduced to Story Corps to help us have a better understanding on story telling and and important it is to listen. Story Corps interview people and make them into podcasts to publish on their website. So our exhibition was going to involve us making podcasts. However, not just any podcasts, they were going to be interviews.

The task for the exhibition was to work with a grade 12. At first I was pretty nervous about this because I didn’t know the grade 12s that well. The grade 12s got to pick who they wanted to work with. My partner was Luciano. I was ok with this since I knew him already. The grade 12s role in this project was to be the producer. We being the grade 10s, were the ones recording and editing.

Grade 12 interview #1

The goal was to have three podcasts at the end of the whole project, so almost like our own mini series. The very first podcast was to interview our grade 12 buddy. The story could be about anything. The first step to creating a podcast is to create a list of questions to ask them. Luciano had a story that he could tell, so we thought of questions that can relate to his story.

Here are all the questions we came up with:

Once we got them approved, it was time to record. We wanted to make the podcast sound as natural as possible, therefore we didn’t write a script, we just had our list of questions. Recording the interview was a challenge, since everyone needed to record, we needed to find a quiet room with no other groups. Luciano and I recorded outside since it was the quietest place.

For editing we were told to use the app Ferrite. I had never used Ferrite before, therefore I had to figure out how to use it. To learn how to use the app, I watched a few YouTube videos and I finally got the hang of it! For some reason I had an issue with downloading my Garage Band song into the podcast. It took some time but I finally figured it out. Now that I knew how to use the app, the project became a lot easier. The parts I edited out was any long pauses, and a few of my questions so it was mainly Luciano telling the story.

Here is the finished podcast:

You could say this first podcast was our practice since we were going to be making two more.

Family Podcast #2

For our second podcast, we were going to be interviewing a family member. Just like the first podcast, it could be any story. We were told to be told a story we didn’t already know. I decided to interview my mum, because she could tell a story that had been shared throughout my family. In the past I have always wanted to know the story so this was a good time for her to explain what happened. Basically the story is about how I got my American side of the family. Since I didn’t really know the story I had to be engaged so I could ask questions.

Family podcast:

While we were working on these podcasts, we learned more about how to make a good interview. Something that is key when interviewing is listening. To practice this skill, in partners we listened to a few podcasts from Story Corps and recorded on pages the following,

For this activity we needed to be engaged so we could answer the questions. From this activity I realized how important it is to listen to the interviewee. You definitely don’t want to be in the situation when you can’t think of a question because you weren’t listening!

Exhibition night!!

Finally the night everyone had been waiting for, exhibition night. This was going to be my first exhibition ever, so I was a bit nervous and didn’t really know what to expect. Now that we had interviewed our grade 12 and a family member, we were now going to be interviewing a stranger that was visiting the exhibition. The goal was to interview three people at the exhibition, and by the end we could chose one to create a podcast. While we were interviewing people, the grade 12s role was to find people for us to interview.

When I say stranger they were parents of the students, not completely random people. This was quite a long process leading up to the night. Since we were interviewing a stranger, we needed to ask a powerful question to get a story from them. Once they had a story we could then ask follow up questions. I think the starter question was the most challenging part. The question couldn’t be specific since we didn’t know anything about them. It had to be a question you could ask anyone. In class we had a few lessons on how to ask a broad question. We then had to brainstorm a list of our questions.

The topic I was most interested in was travel. I wanted to hear about other people’s adventures.

Our interviews would be take place in class rooms. We had a limited number of class rooms we could use, therefore we were put in small groups of three. I had Mimi and Kate in my group. If you were being interviewed, would you rather be in a boring class room sitting at a desk, or in a more relaxed environment? Well our task was to transform a class room into a non stress, relaxed environment. This was going to be a challenge and a lot of our creativity skills would be involved. Every class room was different and some better than others, therefore each group picked a room out a hat. Luckily we got French room that isn’t too big. Of course each class room has chairs and tables and somehow we needed to move them out of the way. To make the space as welcoming as possible we needed to bring our own furniture in. As a group we decided to go with the boho
 vibe. We also brought in some cookies and tea for beverages to give the interviewees.

Setting up!

To set up there was my group and our grade 12 buddies helped us. We were told to take a picture before we started moving everything so at the end of the night we could bit everything back together, like we were never there. I took us maybe an hour and and half to finish setting up. We started right after school until 4:30.

Overall I was really happy with the end result of the room. It was very inviting and definitely would make the interviewee feel comfortable. We got many compliments from the interviewees 🙂

Recording!

Our group made a timetable so each person had time to record. We each had around 15mins to record each interview. When the doors opened for the visitors to come in, the grade 12s were busy looking for people. The first person I interviewed was called Tylo. I sort of knew him because he is friends with my brother. He told me about when he hiked the West Coast Trail. The interview went pretty well and it was a good practice. Luciano had asked his parents to be interviewed. I didn’t know his parents at al so it worked well. Also both of his parents had done a lot of traveling so I asked about their trips they had been on.

From listening to all my three podcasts, I decided to use the interview I had with Giovanna. The audio was a lot better than the others and I thought it was the most powerful.

First draft:

We got our grade 12 to listen to our podcast and they gave us some critique. I am happy of how the final podcast ended up.

From do this project I felt like I learned a lot from it. Not just the aspect of telling making a good interview, but working with others. This whole project, we were working with a grade 12. For the last interview (the exhibition, I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone. I was pretty nervous to interview a stranger, just because I was worried I would be stuck with thinking of questions, and just the fact you are interviewing a stanger. However, I did learn a lot about how to create good questions and how to run an interview. I also learned how to use Ferrite. Now that I know how to use it, I will use it for other projects.

In PLP we have been discussing a lot about technology. To be specific, how technology has chaged the way we live through out history. We have also discussed how technology can act as a disruption. For this project we had to pick a technology or a concept mentioned in the novel we recently read called Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The technology I chose to research was called Slashdot.

What is Slashdot?

Made in Paper 53

Slashdot was founded in 1997. It is a social news website that was created by Hope Collage students, Jeff Bates and Rob Malda. Slashdot is a place where people share news stories, and can discuss events with other users. The stories featured on the website are about science, technology and politics. Each story posted becomes a discussion among other users. As I was scrolling through the Slashdot website, a story that I discovered was ‘South Korea Plans to Ban Crypto Currency Trading’. I even went through and had a look at the discussion below. There were 71 comments of users debating and talking about the article.

Here is a screenshot of what the website looks like:

As I mentioned earlier, we had to pick a technology from Little Brother. Slashdot was mentioned in the book. Little Brother is all about technology, and how it can act as a disruption. Here is when it was mentioned in the book, “A lot of websites chronicle the fight for cyberliberties, but few go at it with the verve of Slashdot, “News for Nerds, Stuff That Matters”(ch.1). As I said earlier, the website is for sharing news stories. Slashdot is similar to the Xnet, a huge part of Little Brother where users communicate anonymously. Slashdot is similar in the way, it is a public website where anyone can share their opinions and communicate online.

This website (Slashdot) is a big part of the outside world. Pretty much all top news stories are shared, and all have a long discussions between users, giving their opinions and thoughts. Some examples of top events that have been shared are, the Strike in Iraq, 2005 London bombing and 9/11. This whole website allows people to discuss major problems in the world and connect them with each other.

Over time Slashdot has become more and more popular. It was a hot spot on the internet for news information and computer geeks. In 2012, Slashdot had around 3.7million users per month and received 5300 comments per day. In fact in 2001 Slashdot was launched in Japan. It was spreading so fast and you could basically find any information on the site on the news. Many could say that Slashdot could act as a disruption with its creation throughout history. Think about it, it is a website where you share opinions on huge topics. It could be used as a disruption, since it is all anonymous and anyone can write anything on the website.

There are so many types of different websites on the internet that all have similar purposes, sharing information, giving opinions ect. Slashdot is just one of the many websites out there.

You may or may not have heard of the golden ratio. It is used in art work and architecture. In this project we had to demonstrate how you can you the golden ratio in artwork/architecture.

I had never heard of the Goledn Ratio before. To get an understanding of what the golden ratio even was, we did a small activity in class. We had to find five objects around the room that used the golden ratio. We also had to research and find images off of the internet with the golden ratio. To see if the object had the golden ratio, you measure the two side lengths and divide them, if they equal 1.61, that is how you know the golden ratio has been used.

What is the Golden ratio?

The golden ratio is used in architecture, nature and art. It was actually founded by the Greeks. The symbol is the Greek letter, phi. It is a number approximately equal to 1.618. To draw the ratio, you measure the object and make sure the measurements were going to equal 1.618 (the golden ratio) and then make a square out of the rectangle.

The phi symbol:

An example of architecture that used the golden ratio is the Parthenon, a temple in Greece. The fact that it uses the golden ratio, makes it look neater and more appealing to the eye.

Like I said earlier, many artists use the golden ratio in their art work. Leonardo Da Vinci and many other artists use the golden ratio their art work. The golden ratio is found in the face of the Mona Lisa. To answer the question on, how if math used in art to create patterns and appeal to our sense of aesthetics? Well, it is proven times to be aesthetically pleasing to the human eye!

How I used the golden ratio for my project,

This project was pretty open. We could show the golden ratio with pretty much anything. Some people made sculptures and some drew. I chose to draw. For my golden ratio project I used the golden spiral for a lot of my objects. To do this, I measured the object that I was trying to draw, and then made sure the measurements were going to equal 1.618 (the golden ratio). To make the spiral over lay, I make a rectangle around the object and then made a square from that rectangle. And then you keep cutting it. The spiral has to follow the object. All of the objects in my drawing follow the golden spiral.

Here is my original drawing:

For my project, I used Sketches Pro. The reason I used it was because, there were many different types of tools I could use. I could also use the layers that was helpful when it came to drawing the golden ratio over top of it.

I showed how the golden ratio is found in nature. I was actually pretty surprised on how many times the golden ratio is found in nature. I got inspiration from the internet  for the parrot I used a parrot to show the golden ratio in animals. This parrot follows the golden spiral.

The Golden spiral is very similar to the Fibonacci spiral, but is based on a series of identically proportioned golden rectangles. You can use the golden spiral to help draw and get the right proportions of an object.

I also showed the golden spiral in flowers and trees and even the moon. So this just shows that the golden ratio can be used in pretty much anything. This is whole project just shows how important math is when it comes to art. Math literally used in everything.

There were a few things to revise. I needed to make sure all of the spirals lined up with the object. I also changed the background to a sunset to make it look a bit more interesting.

Revised project:

As you can see the spiral lines up better with the drawings. It is easier to see that the object has follow the golden ratio.

Overall this project was pretty fun, we got to be creative and make our own creations. This project shows how important math is, and how it is used everywhere.