In September of 2019 ( this year ), my PLP 9 class and I went on a trip to Alberta to answer the question, how does place impact who we are? In this blog post I will tell you the journey of the video we made to answer this question.

Part 1: The Lead up

The beginning of this project and the lead up to my trip was sped up since the trip started on the 15 of September only a couple week after school started. The beginning helped us look through social lenses. In this stage of the project we formed our groups, I was in the Albertans group! The other choice included ( but weren’t limited too) Business owners, Artists, tourist and more! My mission as apart of Albertans was to interview Albertans about culture and the impact of place.

Our assignment were: The launch of the project, a creative response about a place that impacted me (I created a poem of east van), looking through a humanitarian lense on a article about Alberta and oil and finally a pre-trip plan, which include a shot list, Question to interview to and even a script to tell you how to start a interview.

Part 2: The trip

We left for the trip on Saturday the 15th and off we went! Our first interview stop was the lake Louise hostel which was a couple days into the trip. Due to different people and me in my groups priorities we weren’t able to get the interview. So our actual first interview was at the Lake Minnewanka boat cruise in Banff which was great because he gave us answers that really helped us to know Banff. I also interviewed a gift store owner in Banff but it was only audio. One of my best questions was how do you think Albertan or ( your Albertan towns ) culture impacts you?

Our next interview stop was “the dinosaur stop” the world biggest dinosaur, in Drumheller Alberta alongside the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller as well. Due to scheduling and different issues with the group, we could get a interview at the Royal Tyrell Museum. But we were able to get a interview from the gift shop owner at The Worlds Biggest Dinosaur! The store owner was great interview as she had some great ideas and answers to our questions. I didn’t want that interview because it also was a audio interview.

Our final interview was at the Lake Louise gondola/ ranger program, where we our trail guide was a great interview as he shown the perspective of Alberta through not only a Albertan but also as a Albertan whose live revolves around the mountain.

Part 3: The Video

After the trip we were in full on video creation mode, and we worked. The first draft was due only a week after, so I wrote and VO ( Voice overed) a script and added my video interviews. The things I had to fix were:

– The Audio was way to low, as some of the interviewees held it wrong

– More Clips

I put these critiques into my final video which you can watch here:https://youtu.be/ZJZfw9kKH_w

Conclusion

I believe that throughout this project we kept getting different answers to our driving question: How does place impact who we are? And all of these different answers helped to form our final, video answer.

Hey Guys! This is going to be a bit of a different blog post as I’m reflecting on my Alberta trip, and the core competencies I used to learn about myself and how I learned through this trip.

Let’s start with the first Core Competencies

Managing Impulsivity: I find that a great example of this is when I was making my Alberta Video. There were many opportunities for me to goof off on location like at the world’s biggest dinosaur, or at Lake Louise Gondola/ Ranger Program but I was on topic and working when it came to the Alberta video.

Gathering Data through All Senses:

Honestly, I don’t think I can find an outstanding example of this though the trip. Most of the data and information I received I think was very audiovisual, while I could have used more opportunities to senses like touch. So instead I will turn this into an ’I Will’ statement. I will gather data through all senses by truly trying to comprehend information with all my senses instead of just Audio and Visual.

Thinking about thinking (Metacognition):

I’d say that a great example of this is My Royal Tyrell museum video. I had to be aware of my working strategies and feelings too, work with, my partner (Julia). So I will turn this to ’I have’ statement. I have thought about my thinking by thinking about my working strategies and how I think of video production to utilize video creation.

Questioning and Posing Problems

A good example of this for me is my Uno! A ghost town video, video. When planning the video out we weren’t familiar with the locations of the conditions of the locations with this video, so I had to with my group, question data such as, What’s the weather going to be like? How much time do we have to film? How big is the location? So I am going to turn this into an ’I have’ statement. I have Questioned and Posed problems by question data needed to finish video production and to utilize location and similar data.

And finally…….

Thinking and Communicating with clarity and precision

Honestly, I don’t think I can find a good example of this, I might have overgeneralized and distorted details and data in my research and production. So, I want to change this by doing thorough research and investigating for more information. I will be thinking and Communicating with clarity and decisions by investigating for information and thoroughly researching.

Well, that’s all I have for this post. See ya later folks!

The laws of exponents are one of the fundamentals skills of math. But how does it translate to a game? In September of this year (2019) I worked on a PLP 9 Scimatics project to answer that question.

Introduction and Milestone 1

The introduction to this project was simply, create a game with 2 – 5 dice and the games included exponents,  as it said on the rubric all of our games use logic and problem solving. 

This opening milestone was a good introduction for the project and w as fun. 

Laws of exponents and milestones 2 – 3:

Since this is a math project, we had to worksheets and in doing this we 

Since this is a math project we learned math. We learned all about the laws of exponents, using resources liking Textbook worksheet, guides and videos from math antics. We learned the laws of exponents..

Milestone 4 – 5, the game drafts

when we finished learning the concepts that we were going to use in our game we started writing out our rules for our games and the concepts. I worked with my lovely classmate Malaika  and we decided to center our game around diseases and exponents. The games make mechanic was that: You are on a disease level from 1 – 6 and you have to be cured as different dice rolls affect you.
Conclusion

I believe that this project has helped me learn about exponents and games in a fun  and creative way.

Well it turns out it’s the end of the year, and with that the end of blue sky. In this blog post I will talk about my creativity journey from the idea, to the product!

Take the ‘ L’ ( and learn from it! )

Our first phase was the L phase which was Look, Listen and Learn. I wrote some sentence starters, Like “I really care about _____” or ” It would be great if _____”. I also did some research on a potential idea, a snowboard carrier.

I finished off with a poll about Snowboarding.

A, The first letter of the alphabet, the second letter in LAUNCH! ( + A Pitch )

The next part was A, ask tons of questions. We looked into the different levels of questions and how to ask questions with different websites and videos. We had to make a list of NTK’s ( Need to Knows ) and our action plan, a timeline of events to do.

We then had to pitch our project, I was pretty concrete with the idea of a snowboard holder, and Ms. Willemse approved with a minor tweak that would multi use, not just snowboarding.

U, underestimating the work!

Next up was the U Stage which is Understand the problem or proccess. I interviewed a friend who is a snowboarder and pitched the idea to him, he thought it wasn’t very useful since there are many snowboarding holders.

Here are some highlights!

I then started transitioning to a screwdriver for backcountry snowboarding.

I researched the materials and designs.

N, aNother stage!

The next stage was N, Navigate and bundle ideas, this was fairly easy as my ideas were transited to a screwdriver holder that was fully concrete. Here’s how I bundled the good ideas and bundled the bad ones too!

C, Si senior? Yes, finishing up!

The next to last stage was C, Create! I started with some concept sketches,

And then made a 3D model online using a tool called Tinkercad.

I contacted Mr. Hughes, my teacher who has access to the school 3D printer and asked him to print this model, he happily obligated.

With the model printed it was smooth sailing which brings me too.

H: Help needed? naH.

The final section was H, highlight and fix, I took some criticism but knowing the timeframe , it was a bit late. I created a burndown chart for the remaining work and burnt down the Work!

Which now brings me too…….

Presentation Night!

I will only talk about this briefly, but presenting was really fun! I was in the Unique Sports Group with some Gr. 9’s and a couple of grade 8’s but every presented and we had a fun booth with Games, Snacks, etc.

Overall, I really enjoyed conceptualising and working on a project/ product. It was a great project and a even greater year!

For our final PLP 8 humanities project we created, presented and memorized a Tableaux Vivant which dealt with the question: “How can we use Shakespeares The Tempest to show the effects of colonization?” In this blog post I will Show you my creative journey.

Europeans and The First Nations: In our project, a major part of it and our learning was the relationship between the First Nations peoples and the Europeans. I think the most interesting thing was a paragraph that revolved around that relationship was a paragraph we’re we explained our answer to the question: Why did the first people trade with Newcomers?

Like my opinion on the subject most of the research is around the camps in New France and the surrounding First Nations tribes, the location of the tribes greatly affected the fur they traded which in effect affected the materials they got.

Here’s a photo show the different prices of items.

My points in the paragraph boiled down to these.

– The Europeans respect of them affected the First Nations attitude of trading with the French

– The availability for different items with different companies gave the tribes many options for things to trade for

– The vastly new and more powerful resources gave them even more incentive.

You can see the paragraph here.

Shakespeare and The Tempest:

If you didn’t already know, the tempest was wrote by William Shakespeare and it was one of his last plays. Throughout this project we also talked about the themes it showed. I will know talk about those themes and the themes in our tableaux.

A brief synopsis of the play would be this: The Tempest is a play about magic, betrayal, love and forgiveness. It is set on an island somewhere near Italy where Prospero, the one-time Duke of Milan, and his beautiful daughter, Miranda, live with a sprite called Ariel and a strange wildman called Caliban. Prospero is a powerful magician who creates a storm, or tempest, that sets the scene for the play. In the events that follow we see a plot to murder the King of Naples, a drunken scheme to kill Prospero and a romance between Miranda and the King’s son, Ferdinand. In the end everyone is forgiven and they all set sail for home.That synopsis was from BBC, you can find the original article here . A large portion of the play is dedicated to Prospero who’s themes and character arc parallels Shakespeare himself as both characters careers ( and lives ) were ending as this was one of Shakespeare last plays.

The other themes are betrayal, love and forgiveness which I feel translated well in to our tableaux’s .

Conclusion:

Overall I believe that the themes we learned by reading ( and watching ) the Tempest really helped us alongside our research of New France on answering our driving question.

Well the time has come to reflect on my learning in Grade 8 of PLP. In this blog post I will show how I have gained knowledge and skills from the beginning of the year to the end.

1. A evolution of learning

This was a answer from my first project in Humanities 8 and honestly I don’t think that it was a unique or honestly good answer, it’s a single sentence and represent me or the novel ( The Highest Tide ) interestingly.

This is a answer for a similar segment for a later book study ( The Book of The Lion) and I think it’s a better paragraph as it shows my thought on, Current Events, The Story and is overall better written.

As I kept learning in PLP I developed better writing and creative skills ( E.g Singing, Drawing, Photo Creation etc).

2. A cleaner schedule

Right now time blocking is not only really affecting and helping my life with my responsibilities and schoolwork, but it is helping me stay on top of subjects.

3. An evolution of teamwork ( and a arduino!)

As the start of my PLP journey I attended my first two Destination Imagination tournaments and DI has really helped me with teamwork, responsibilities and failure. Even though me and my group didn’t make it into the top 3 in regionals and provincials, we accepted it and tried to improve. I was in charge of the technical element, which worked sometimes…… But overall this project helped me work in a group.

4. Presenting and praying

The first exhibition in the winter was a new experience and helped throughout the remainder of the year. In the exhibition ( if you don’t remember) all of the grade 8’s exhibited there religion they study with snacks and activities. This really helped me with presented because, usually when I’m presenting I’m stuttery, nervous and fidgety even when it’s something small, but the exhibition really helped build my confidence.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, I think that this year I have experienced a lot and worked a lot through the Good, Bad and Ugly and not only has it helped me as a learner but it has helped me as a person.

DI, DI, DI…….. Destination Imagination has been an emotional and (sometime) Mental roller coaster.

So let’s start by strapping in, shall we? Right off the heels of Spring Break we went back to our DI groups to reflect and to talk about what we should at the next DI tournament (provincials). We had some talk over spring break at we already had some ways we where going to improve. We decided that instead of our Team Choice Element being Noahs dad joke song and his art to being a song between Kaia and Zoe and a puppet and a cape made by Noah based on The Incredibles character “Edna Mode”.

I was tasked with fixing the arduino circuit board from last tournament, despite the fact the team didn’t understand that the original arduino working was a fluke I had to fix it.

On top of that the door on our game container broke. I decided to rewrite the story as it was one of the lacking parts of the presentation.