Life is full of events and memorable moments and experiences, so why not capture one of those experiences by creating a live event video showcasing not only a specific event, but the video skills that we’d been practicing for weeks. That’s exactly what we did for this fun little assignment. The criteria explained that we needed to include things like time lapses, still shots, copyright free music, an interview with a participant, freeze frames, and more. I had a really difficult time thinking of an event interesting enough to film because I had nothing interesting going on at the time. Instead I decided to film me and my friend walking to the school cafeteria and back… it’s more interesting than it seems, trust me. I tried my best to keep in mind all the requirements for the shots that were required and filmed the journey started in the science room and walking down the stairs, outside briefly, then to the cafeteria and all the way back. Once I had got all the clips I needed, the editing process began. The I altered the speed sound and length of some of the clips, added copyright music that I found on the internet, added voice overs and text where needed, and a first draft was finally completed. 

Then I got friends and family to critique it, fixed some minor details, and this is what I created. This video definitely taught me to be more free with my creativity in my video because I found it really paid off for this assignment. It was a fun little project and I hope we can do something similar in the future.

For the fifth week of the blogging challenge, the topic is music. The goal is to try and get to know each other through the music we listen to.

Girl In Red

I personally have a very diverse taste in music that ranges from artists like Ghostemane, to other artists like Big L,  Florence+The Machine and Doja Cat. All of these artist produce very different music from one another which just goes to show how all over the place my taste of music is. 

Ghostemane

Some songs that I find myself listening to lately are Pack In My Bag by Danger Incorporated, Collard Greens by ScHoolboy Q, 1000 Rounds by Pouya featuring Ghostemane, Even Flow by Pearl Jam, and Summer Depression by Girl In Red.

Doja Cat

What’s your favourite type of music? Comment and let me know!

For this weeks challenge, we are focusing on emojis. I chose to revolve my post around emoji math. Emoji math is where you create equations where you have to figure out the value of each type of emoji to finish the problem.

I created my own emoji math using as app called Canva, see if you can figure out the answer.

For this challenge, the task was to choose some images, add them to our blog, and talk a bit about the images and how we made them. 

This first image is one that I took last summer. I chose this image because it brings back pleasant memories of the summer when I first started getting into photography. To edit this photo, I used an app called Lightroom. 

This next photo was taken around the same time as the last one, I love the vibrant colours and clarity of the image. To edit this photo I used Lightroom again.

This final picture was taken more recently. When I took this picture I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. I love the moody vibe of the photo and how the dark colours of the background make the colour of her makeup stand out. I edited it this photo using an app called VSCO.

These are the quality commenting guidelines that I have created for those who wish to comment on my blog. I created this image using a cool app called Sketches Pro.

After creating these guidelines I was tasked to check out the blogs of other students that are participating in the edublogs blogging challenge. I commented on the blogs of three individuals, Lianna, Connor, and Jacqui. When commenting on their blogs, I was conscious to follow the guidelines that they had created for themselves and their blog.

These are the comments that I left.

Lianna

Connor

Jacqui

Welcome back to those of you who take the time to read of my blog/learning portfolio. Today we will visit the topic of video making, which happens to be the subject that we have been learning all about in school at this moment in time. We have been practicing and perfecting the art of video making, and everything that comes with it. We started out with a group project which required us to recreate a video called Catch by Joe Hatzler. Recreating this video was definitely more challenging than it seemed to be at the start. I didn’t understand just how much more difficult it is to recreate a video than it is just to make one of your own. Recreations require a lot more attention to detail then you’d think. My group for this video project consisted of Lucas and Adlih. There were many different aspects of the video that had to be accounted for, including the lighting, script, sound, camera angles, setting, costumes, and much more. Time management was key to finishing this video on time while simultaneously meeting all the correct criteria. Some things we probably should’ve put more attention towards would be the the music, and the storyboard which we didn’t even do, at least not for this video. With that being said, there’s always gonna be things to improve, but there’s also parts of this video that were really positive like the overall shots and lighting which I thought turned out pretty well. Despite having little time to get this done, the final product turned out pretty well for a first attempt at a recreation video, and I really enjoyed making it.

This wasn’t the only recreation we made, we followed up that last one with yet another recreation project. The only difference is that this time we got to choose what video we wanted to recreate.with the same group as last time, we chose a video by Studio C called The 5 Stages Of Netflix. This video went a lot smoother than the last one because for starters we actually made a storyboard to help the filming process go smoother. The one thing we could’ve done differently would’ve been to pay attention to the length of each clip to make it match up more with the original video, but the end product was still a good piece of work that was still humorous and mimicked the original, which was what we were going for.

The last video that we created was a short film where we got to be in groups of two or three and create the most random and humorous video we could in the amount of time we were given. Me and my friend Melika worked together to come up with the most random storyline we could think of and put together this minute long masterpiece.

Something that I learned from all of these video assignments is that these skills can really be applied in all of our work, even outside of PLP, and are just overall good skills to have for the future

Every year, PLP students participate in a little thing called destination imagination. If you haven’t heard about destination imagination before, or haven’t read about it in an earlier post of mine, destination imagination is an annual project tournament with all kinds of different challenges to choose from. The challenge that I chose was the scientific challenge. It was called Unlikely location. In this challenge, we were tasked with creating an amusement park attraction that would be located in a place that wouldn’t normally feature a park attraction. I was put into a group with Melika, Marshall, Daniel, Luca, and Adlih. Together, we brainstormed ideas for the story, attraction, as well as where our Unlikely location would reside. After spending a few classes narrowing down all of our ideas, we all came to a consensus that the location would take place on a dream planet called Phoebe. We also had to introduce three scientific concepts that we would use during our performance.

We came up with a storyline to feature our location and attraction, and it starts off with a kid named Richard sitting in classroom while the teacher talks about electricity and how they would have a test later that class. Richard ends up falling asleep in class, and awakes on the beautiful planet of phoebe. He then meets all of its inhabitants, and they show him around. Richard, being the edgy kid that he is, spots a big park attraction because of its shocking resemblance to a fidget spinner. He asks to ride the attraction, but is told that he must take a test before he is able to take a turn on the attraction. After this, everybody ends up moving off stage, and a character named Millard appears. He states to the audience that he is looking for a box of magic that fuels the dream land, so that he can use it to put to his own use and create a land of nightmares. Whilst Millard hunts for the box of magic, he is met by one of the inhabitants named Remmy, who ran into Millard while searching for Roka, who’s is another inhabitant of Phoebe.

Remmy is shocked when she sees Millard, because usually they know about anyone new that enters the dreamland. Roka and Richard arrive and demonstrate the same confusion when they see Millard. They end up dismissing their concern, and show Millard around the park as if he was just another visitor like Richard. Meanwhile, Richard and Roka stay behind to begin the test. Roka tests Richard with questions about things like Newton’s laws of motion, electricity, and gravity. These were the three scientific concepts that we chose to talk about.

Richard finishes the test and is ready to ride the fidget spinner attraction, when Rocco, another inhabitant of phoebe, interrupts them to inform them that Millard had taken all the magic from the dreamland and must be stopped. Everybody goes to search for Millard, but Richard stays behind to watch over the attraction. Millard shows up, claiming that he was putting the magic back, but Richard isn’t convinced. Millard explains that when he came to the the dreamland, there was another kid there that soaked up all the attention of the people, and he was never acknowledged. He claimed that the inhabitants wanted him to leave, and he felt shunned and unwanted. He explained that instead of leaving, he rewound the time and had a plan to do it all over again, but this time he would steal the magic. He expressed his apologies and promised never to do it again. Richard makes a compromise and let’s Millard ride the fidget spinner if he agrees to give back the magic. As Millard rides the attraction, all the inhabitants return and advise Richard to stay away from evil Millard, but then end up accepting him once Richard explains his situation. Richard finally gets to ride the attraction, when he wakes up from his dream. His teacher explains that he fell asleep and his test in now in front of him. The story ends with Richard completing the test and getting all the questions correct on his electricity test.

We had created and edited a script for this story, which was mainly done by Adlih. Also, we had a full sized, working fidget spinner attraction that would actually spin, and could fit one person. The attraction was built by Luca, Daniel, and Marshall. Me and Melika worked on the two huge backdrops, finished the data forms, bought and created all of our props, helped write and revise the script, and organized who would do what and when. The last thing we needed was the music. Luca made a soundtrack that would later be used as our team choice element. A team choice element was something that we added that showed our unique skills and creativity. We needed two team choice elements, one being the homemade soundtrack, and the other being our masks that we created and soldered lights onto. We practiced our performance quite a few times, memorizing our lines and perfecting the little things that needed fixing, and we were finally at a point where we could present.

It finally came down to the day of the tournament and I was really nervous, but I didn’t let that stop me from giving it my all. When it was our tern to present our challenge, everything thing seemed to go smoothly. That was until we were told that our homemade soundtrack couldn’t be our team choice element because the music itself was considered part of the requirements, so the points couldn’t be counted for the second team choice element. Even with this setback, we kept going and just accepted that what’s done is done and it’s just something we need to focus on improving for next time. We kept going with our presentation, and soon figured out that something was wrong with the connection of the speaker and it caused the music to cut in and out, which sounded quite bad after a while, so I ended up just turning it of completely. That was a major problem that we plan on fixing by ether using a different speaker, or just not using a speaker at all, because the music is pretty loud just playing from the iPad. Anyway, we had kept going according to plan and had finished with confidence. Other then those few setbacks, nothing overly disastrous had happened. We ended up getting third place in our category, which wasn’t too bad, but there could definitely be some significant improvement before provincials rolls around. We have already started to plan out how these improvements will be made. We have planned to completely create a new and improved team choice element. This team choice element will be a homemade bongo drum that the magic from the story will be stored in. We are also going to create a holder for the speaker/device that the music will play from, and this speaker holder will be shaped like a tree and will hide the speaker from the view of the audience. Other than some minor tweaking of things that we already have, this is what we plan to complete before the provincial D.I. Tournament.

Destination Imagination has been a great opportunity for me to work on my skills with time management, because without it, our project wouldn’t have come together at all. The main thing that I wish I would’ve improved upon was my ability to better memorize my lines. Other than the few minor setbacks that me and my team members faced, I honestly feel that the work that we produced turned out pretty well, and it was something that I was relatively proud of.

If the title didn’t already give it away, this year’s first exhibition theme was Star Wars. Like many exhibitions I have done in the past, this project was led by an inquiry question that related to the overall theme (Star Wars). We had recently studied the difference between open and closed ended questions, and how to refine our inquiries to sound more knowledgeable, well put together, and possibly more simplified or broadened depending on the question. With this new information, we could come up with more professional inquiries that take more effort to answer than a simple yes or no, but still aren’t too complicated to present and explain to an audience. With much thought and research, I came up with a question that I found both suitable to my interests, and was open ended enough to promote proper research and investigation.  My question was “What are the similarities between the animals on Earth, and those on Alderaan?”, which was a more narrowed down and less sloppy version of my original question of “What are the similarities and differences between the plants and animals in Star Wars and the plants and animals in Earth?”.

The research portion of the project began with watching the Star Wars Movies, which was helpful for somebody like me who had never seen Star Wars before then.  Every Friday they would play one or two of the Star Wars movies after school for anybody who was interested to come and watch. Unfortunately, I missed the movie that would’ve contained any information on my topic, so most of my research was founded from a handy website called Wookiepedia. Although not all of my information was obtained from this site, it was indeed the most helpful.  When searching the web, I was specifically looking for anything regarding three animals from Alderaan that I previously picked out. Those were the Vorn tiger, Grazer, and Iraida.  I was searching for any possible links between these foreign animals, and some similar creatures found on earth that could have influenced certain traits or features that the ones from Alderaan portray.   I took what I had learned, narrowed down the key points to feature in my presentation, and found ways of rewording my information into a state that could be understood by everyone, including those who knew nothing about Star Wars.

The first Alderanian animal, the grazer, had the plump complexion of a chunky farm animal such as a pig or cow. That, and the fact that they are both farm animals used for their meat and milk make the pig and cow perfect candidates. In addition, the grazer is a herbivore and has big udders, just like the pig and the cow.

The Vorn Tiger, which is blue in colour, has tremendous horns, big pointy teeth, and a muscular build. The obvious choice of an earthling doppelganger for this animal was the Tiger. With the major similarities in physical features such as teeth and body shape, as well as a similar hunting style, the connection is hard not to see. Tigers are solitary hunters, as are Vorn Tigers.  They both also mark their territory with scrapes and scratch marks.  The only difference between the two is that the Vorn Tiger does this using its horns rather than its claws.

Lastly was the Iraida, a big brown furry creature with humongous ears and a pointy snout like you wouldn’t believe.  I found many resemblances to a bat when I researched this animal. The ears for one, grant this creature impeccable hearing, which is one of a bats most well-known qualities.  Iraidas are also quite intelligent and have a higher success rate that other animals when hunting, similar to bats.

The research was completed and it was time to start thinking of what I could do to creatively and effectively showcase my information.  I wanted to go  beyond a poster board, so I decided that instead I would make models of the animals out of clay, and would paint a backdrop to have a place to show what my question was and what the world of Alderaan looked like (before it was blown up and wiped out of existence).  I gathered all possible materials I would need and got to work.  By the time I was finished, I never wanted to touch another clay figure again.  The amount of times my figures cracked and pieces broke off was more than I could count.  During this project, hot glue was my best friend.  With that said, I still managed to pull it off and was happy with my final product.  I displayed all three figures on white boxes with a little description on each one. Behind the figures was the painting that I had made, which turned out great in my opinion, and that would also display my inquiry question.  I added a splash of colour to my mostly white display with some small fake trees, which really added to outdoorsy Alderaan setting.

While I was in the process of perfecting my project, I also had to work with the rest of my class, plus the grade eight PLP students, to plan and decorate the room that our exhibition was taking place in. Everybody was put into one of two categories based on their question; you were ether on the light side or the dark side. I was put into the light side.  We had different students devoted to different aspects of preparing the room.  Some people did the decorations, some did the food, some mapped out the room and where things went, and some organized interactions with the audience, such as skits and games.

We decided to all dress up as characters from Star Wars that would make sense for our inquiry questions.  I went as Breha Organa, the adopted mother of Princess Leia.  I chose her because she was one of the only important characters from Alderaan that wasn’t Leia (I couldn’t do Leia because someone else already chose her). Then we started to list food items and games that we could create and bring and listed who could bring what.

From there, we divided everyone up into sub groups again based on their inquiries.  There was the science group, philosophical group, and the tech group. The room was divided into three, each area contained one of the three groups.  We all decided to model the room after the rebel base on Hoth. Hoth is an ice planet so we added cotton on the windowsills to act as snow, tinted the lights blue with coloured paper, and made the room cold by opening the windows. The first section of the room was supposed to be the outside of the rebel base.  There we had all the people with scientific questions set up their stations.  We used bed sheets to act as walls that divided the three sections. The second section was the first half of the rebel base where the tech group was, as well as the Admiral snack bar and the pin the lightsaber on Yoda.  This section was also where the stage was for the skits that some students prepared, acting out important scenes from Star Wars. The last section was the philosophical group who were stationed at the far end of the rebel base.

When people first started making their way through the exhibition, my anxiety was off the charts.  I was nervous that nobody would like my work or would find it boring, but to my surprise, they seemed quite engaged in what I was saying.  With this said, there is always room for improvement and there are actually quite a few things I would change if I had to redo it all over again.  For one, I would bring a sweater; that room was freezing.  I would also get some better clay that didn’t fall apart so easy.  I wish I would’ve left myself more time to do something more with the boxes that I displayed my figures on, but due to lack of time management, I couldn’t go ahead with my plans of painting them to look like tree stumps, or painting them at all for that matter. There are always details that you wish you could go back and fix, but overall, I was very proud of myself and my work and am excited to see what’s in store for the next exhibition to come.

These are some photos of my final project and how everything turned out in the end.

Have you ever wondered what your parents really do when they go to work everyday? Well take your kid to work day is a time where you can learn all about your parent’s job and what they do day in and day out to keep food on the table.

Since my mother is a principal, I spent the day at False Creek Elementary School.  While I was there, I helped fifth graders with their projects, watched my mom type out some important “principal stuff” and met some of my moms colleagues.

One colleague that I interviewed was a woman named Maika who works in the school office as an OAA (office assistant administrator/secretary). She reported that you have to have many different abilities in able to excel at her job, one of which being organization. In this job, you would need to be quite efficient and organized in order to keep track of important documents and files. In a job like this, losing a document could be a lot worse than it seems, because they aren’t all things that can be quickly redone or replaced. Another portion of Miaka’s job is first aid. This means handing out ice packs and bandaids at recess and lunch, cleaning scrapes, and determining whether the ill kid wandering through the office is well enough to stay at school or not. To apply for this job, you should’ve had some previous University schooling or already had experience in this field. At the least, you would need to be quick, flexible and able to learn on the job.

Throughout my day at False Creek Elementary, I also met and interviewed a kindergarten teacher named Judith MacPherson. Judith, like Maika, has to be quite organized in her line of work, and also has to be very bright and quite understanding when working with small children all day. Being a teacher means that you have to be a people person, because you are working with a wide array of different student abilities and personalities that all learn at their own pace and have their own learning style. During a regular day on the job, there are some tasks that are to be done regularly like taking attendance, creating your lesson plan, and in doing so, also modeling something, teaching it, then letting the kids try it for themselves. There is an old saying that says at the beginning of the year, you are the sage on the stage, then you move to be the guide on the side. Being a teacher requires you to always be on your feet, grow with what’s happening, and have high standards, but before you can begin your journey as a teacher, there are some specific requirements that you must have, as there is for all jobs. Before Judith could become a teacher at False Creek Elementary, she was required to have a bachelors degree in the educational fields, and it helps that she had had previous experience in teaching before she worked at False Creek. If Judith were to feel the need to take her job to the next step, she could potentially work toward a VP position or eventually even a position as a principal, which would require a masters degree.

This is Judith with one of her students

So far I have talked to teachers and secretaries, but I haven’t touched bases on the one person that made my visit to False Creek possible, my mom (a.k.a the principal). My mother’s job is basically to run the school. This job necessitates that you have not only people skills and organizational skills, but that you also possess leadership, public speaking, Communication, and Diplomacy skills. You need to be the kind of person that can see the whole picture and has an educational vision for the school. A principal always has work. Whenever another teacher, parent, or student has a problem, it’s the principal’s job to do one of two things, either solve the problem or help them solve the problem themselves. Every day there are certain jobs that need to be done, some of which are morning announcements, sending memos to teachers and running various meetings. But these aren’t even the beginning, there are some jobs that aren’t necessarily done daily, but are equally as important. These consist of writing the monthly newsletter, running student leadership programs, talking with parents, running assemblies, keeping track of what kids are to be put in what classes, and hiring new teachers. These jobs are all crucial to maintaining an organized and smooth running school, and it’s all up to the principal to keep it this way. In order to even become a principal, you must have received a masters degree, and go through a highly intense and stressful interview process. Only then can you be placed to work as a principal. If my mother was ever to wanting to climb the metaphorical ladder of the educational profession, the next step would be to become a director of instruction. From their you could become an assistant superintendent, and at the very top you have the superintendent.

This Is me and my mom having a mother daughter selfie

This whole take your kid to work day has made me think more about what I might want to do in the future. At this point in time, I don’t think that I could see myself working in this field, mostly because I’m not overly passionate about it, but that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be capable of pursuing a career in this particular area. I actually think I could be a pretty decent secretary, or teacher, or even principal. I feel that I have very strong people skills, and am quite good at problem solving, which are both attributes that would be looked for in something like a principal. I can learn quick and am not easily angered, this is also another skill that I pride myself on, because keeping your calm helps you think straight when it comes down to dealing with things or perhaps that especially get on your nerves. All these skills could be deemed very useful in many situations that anyone working in a school would face all the time in their line of work.