There are many people that create change, such as Leonardo DaVinci  and Galileo, but what you may not know is that with great change, comes an even greater tension. For example, Joan of Arc. She was a woman who fought and won a huge war, but instead of praise and thanks, she was accused of being a witch and was burned at the stake. This is but one of many examples of how people made great change but had their achievements crushed by those who wanted to stay in their safe box where everything and everyone stays the same, and are afraid of things that require you to think out side of the box.

For this unit, we had two major projects. The first one being a note book based on one of six topics. The topics are agricultural, weaponry, transportation, communication, science and medicine, and art. I was in a group with Logan, Lauren, and Marshall, and we were the science and medicine group. In the project, we needed to create a note book about science and medicine throughout the ages and had to answer the question of how epidemics filled medical advances. We had four main points in time to look at, and those were the medieval times, renaissance, industrial times, and modern day. We all split up the work and got one era to work on, mine deign the renaissance. I researched Day and night on my topic and constantly had to try and answers that driving question. I looked at different epidemics, famous revolutionary inventions and inventors, different forms of medicine back then, and how it all links back to the big question of how epidemics fuelled medical advancements. This is our finished product.

http://Notebook.key
The second big project was the sales pitch. With this project, we used the knowledge learned in the previous project to create a revolutionary product of the future that we would then pitch to a company of our choice. Our group decided that we wanted to make a robot doctor. This robot doctor would lessen the effects of human error, be more precise, and would make the hospital a safer and less feared place. We had to put all of our information into words on a script which I did most of. In the script, we focused on human error and used forms of advertising to our advantage. These forms of persuasion are called Pathos, Logos, and Ethos. We used Pathos to get to your emotions when talking about how life threatening and scary it is to you and your loved ones when doctors slip up. We used logos to appeal to your logic when we calculated the amount of deaths per year due to medical error. And finally we used Ethos to cater to your ethics when we listed all of the reasons why a robot can be more trusting then the average human. We also had to make a keynote which included slides with pictures to compliment the scrip. Below is our finished sales pitch keynote and a copy of the script that my group worked so hard to create.

http://Presentation 5.key

I feel that our automated doctors would make a real impact in getting rid of human error and increasing the number of lives saved every year. We even thought of some jobs that former human doctors could enrol in so that they would still be able to have jobs. I believe that with our invention, the world will be changed forever, but for the better. I know that this may cause tension upon the masses because it’s a robot, but then again so did the first drawing of a helicopter, and now everyone knows what it is and it is a common thing among society. It’s the same with Isaac Newton and his theory that the earth was not flat. People thought he was a mad man but now you look stupid if you still think that the earth is flat.

In conclusion, both the notebook and the sales pitch were well worth all the effort and hard work put in, for I learned a tremendous amount on the subject itself and even some other things
Ike advertising techniques and team building skills. This unit was really fun and I hope to do something like this in the future.

Barack Obama, born on august 4th 1961, is one of the top 100 most influential people in the world. He got accepted into Harvard Law, became a civil rights attorney, then proceeded to run for senate. He gained national fame in 2004, when he unexpectedly won at the march primary with 655,923 votes. Born in Honolulu Hawaii, Barack was the first ever African American to be president of the United States, and has been believed to have broken a racial barrier with his presidency. With his kind and accepting personality, It doesn’t surprise me to hear that he was the first ever president to state that he supported same sex marriages. This act has really shown me, and sure many others, how accepting and caring he really is. I could imagine how scary admitting this might have been, as not everyone agrees with those views and they may have frowned upon this. Ignoring what others might have thought, he made his views clear, and I feel that this has inspired many, me included. This being said, not everyone was okay with the change that Barack Obama brought forward. Some campaigned against him and fought to get him impeached and even arrested, not to mention other democrats making racist comments to try and get him to back down from the presidentship. Despite those who didn’t like the change, most people saw Obamas presidency as a sense of pride, and accepted his role as leader of the United States. Below is a picture collage representing him and the changes he has made, impacting the lives of many.

It’s hard to belt that as few as four decades ago, people who tried to register black people to vote, could have been killed, and now a man of colour has been the president of the U.S for eight years! I feel that the change Obama has brought, is that he has shown people that the tides are changing in regards to racism in the United States. This is why Obama is one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, and although he is no longer the president, his impact will go on to inspire others for many years to come.

My school participates in a project tournament called destination imagination. About a month ago, we had DI regionals. After regionals my group, Logan, Emily, Robin, Austin and I, had to critique and edit our performance. The first thing we did was look back at what went wrong at our performance at regionals. At regionals, our performance didn’t really go as planned. We didn’t even get to finish it before we ran out of time. My group was so focused on other little things in the performance, that we lost sight of the big picture. My group was so worried about fixing and detailing things, that we didn’t spend enough time practicing how to encrypt and decrypt the codes like we were supposed to. Overall, we needed to spend more time on the codes, script, and performance part, instead of worrying about smaller things that we could, in theory, do without. We decided that the reason why we ran out of time, was because our script was too long and took to much time to memorize. We needed to take our three pages of script, and cut it down to one page with short lines, easier to memorize. We also decided that we would practice as much as we could, and review our form of code that we created. The most of our class time, was spent cutting down the script and running through lines. When we cut lines to minimize the script, we only cut lines that were unneeded and didn’t emphasize the storyline or give us points.

We were finally finishing up the script and practicing our lines, when we were told that one of our group members was not able to make it to provincials. As devastating as it was, with only a day or two remaining we had to think on our feet and quickly swap in some lines to another group member. It was a stretch, but I knew that if anyone could do it, it was us. The days went by and provincials was only hours away. I didn’t know if I should have felt nervous or exited, maybe a little bit of both! When I walked in the doors of the school that was hosting the event, the first thing I did was check in with my group, and the teachers. After that, my group and I had about two hours until our instant challenge, so my group decided to wander the long halls of the school that was at least three times bigger than what I was used to at mine.

We had to check in to the instant challenge at least 20 minutes before it started, so once we found the check in, we did just that. Eagerly awaiting the instant challenge, my group sat nervously at the check in until they called us in. When we walked into the room for the instant challenge, the first thing we saw were a bunch of judges, each wearing big funny hats of all different colours, shapes and sizes. To this day, I am still confused about the whole hat thing at DI, maybe it’s just a weird tradition, who knows. Anyhow, one of the judges welcomed us in, and straight away began reading the challenge instructions/outline. If you looked on the floor, there were squares taped onto the ground, each containing a letter, some having the same letter as others. For each letter, there was a certain amount of points given. In the middle of all the tape boxes, there was a small log resembling a tree trunk. The instructions were to basically use the materials given to you, to make branches and get them to touch the inside of the boxes, to give you points. The branches couldn’t be attached to the trunk, only touching. Also, the branches could not hit the ground unless it was in one of the boxes. My team decided to make the branches attached to a cup that would rest on top of the makeshift trunk. The most of the branches touched the boxes containing letters that would give us the most points. We made the actual branches out of paper clips, straws, and mailing labels, but ran out of straws, and ended up using rolled up paper instead. It was easy to agree on an idea, because of how well my group worked with each other. We never just said no to someone else’s ideas, we only further expanded on them. I think it’s safe to say that we all walked out of there feeling pretty good, at least I did.

Now that that was over and done with, all we needed to worry about was the main challenge, the performance that took the most work and preparing for. While passing time and waiting for the main challenge, I wandered around and ended up watching some of the other presentations along the way. When it was finally time to check in for the main challenge, we had gathered all of our props and forms, and were ready to nail our presentation. Here are the videos of us preforming!

I felt awesome once the whole thing was over. Aside from occasionally getting cut off, our performance was spot on! We didn’t run out of time, we successfully decoded the message, we didn’t mess up or miss any Important lines, and we even made people laugh! The rest of my time at DI was spent walking around and waiting to get the raw scores. We got our raw scores, which apparently didn’t count for much, because they were not yet averaged out with everyone else’s. Meaning, you could’ve got a 20 out of 100 and got first place, because none of the other groups scored any higher than 20. The only reason for the raw scores, was to see what elements in your performance were better than others. At last I was finished with DI and all that was left was the award ceremony. All of the teams from all over gathered in the gym. The first awards given, were the ones from the previous tournament. They were not given out at the previous tournament because of a computer mouth function, but at regionals, my group got third for the main challenge and first in the instant challenge. I couldn’t stay for the rest of the awards but I know that we ended up getting first place in both things!

Overall, DI was an unforgettable experience that has taught me to think in a more creative way than ever before. I feel like the amount learned from this learning process will better me in many ways, such as thinking outside the box, dealing with people you don’t always agree with, and keeping my cool when faced with stressful situations. DI was something different, and I will never forget it!

In class we are doing this thing called My Canada where we must create a thirty second video about what Canada is to us. When creating my My Canada video, the first thing I did was look over the rubric, then I started to think of a topic. It didn’t take me that long before I decided on the topic of nature. I decided on the topic because of how much the forest impacts me, and how it is a place where I feel free to do what I want without criticism or judgement. A place where I can be me. The forest is a part of my life that i hope will never change, and so when we had to explain what our Canada is, that was the first thing to pop into my head.

I then gathered together some photos that I had previously taken, that went with the topic I was going for. I put these photos into an iMovie to go with my video. Once I finished this, I added in a voice over that explained how my Canada was a place where the forest is your backyard and how it was a big part of my life. After this, I began to plan out what audio I was going to use for the background. In the end I thought it might be fun to sing a song and use that in the background of

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my video. This was because the rules state that you are not allowed to use any copyrighted material, so therefore I was not allowed to put in my music of choice. I decided to sing a song that I thought would sound the best in my video, so I decided to sing a song called safe and sound by Taylor Swift. It’s really pretty and in my range so why not! I used garage band to record both my singing, and add the background music to go with. It took me a while to get bother the sound tracks on to the same I movie, but I eventually fixed my problem and my video was finally finished! The very last thing to do was to add the My Canada bumper to the end of the Video. With my finished product, i posted it on the My Canada Website and that was that.

Here is a draft of my video, so that you can see what I fixed from then, until I made the final product. Some of the things that were changed were the sound in the background, and some of the pictures. At first, I had just the singing in the background, but I decided to add piano so that it didn’t sound boring. Also, the video ended up being too long, so I cut out some pictures and text from the beginning and the end of my video.

http://www.heresmycanada.ca/videos/heres-my-canada-the-forest-is-my-backyard/
Here is my My Canada video that I made! Don’t forget to leave me a VOTE so that I can have a chance of winning one of the many awesome prizes that are offered in this contest!

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Oregon was an amazing trip and a great experience for me. We got to visit some amazing places such as canon beach, fort Stevens, and the Hatfield Marine Science centre.
It was a good time with good people, delicious food, beautiful sites, and fun activities.

In Oregon, it wasn’t just a pleasure trip, we did have things to work on such as our oregon book. This book was basically a recap of our whole trip, with a page for every activity that we did and place that we went to. The assignment was to fill out this work book with segments of text explaining the various things asked of you, and to add pictures and really make it your own. It seems easy, but their was a lot of hard work and effort put into this book in order to really make it pretty and unique. Here is the link to my book so that you can see it for yourself!
Oregon book link
If I were to create another Oregon book, some things that I would do differently would be to add some extra pages at the end, and to add some more detail to my paragraphs.

The next piece of work that I was assigned in Oregon, was my Oregon advertisements. The assignment was to create three individual ads. The criteria for each advertisement is in the photo below

The first ad that I created was my business advertisement. When making this ad, me and my group had to use our advertising skills to think of some key questions to put in a survey. We would then use these questions to survey the business chosen for us by the teachers. The name of business was the South beach fish company, and they were a fish and chips place. The fish and chips there were the best I had ever had. After the interview, we took our information, combined with the best photos that we took of the business, and from that, create our ads. Although we created and interviewed the business as a group, the ads were made individually. Below is a recording of when we had the interview, so you can see what the questions were that we asked. Also, beside that is the final draft of the advertisement itself. These are the links to the people that were in my group
Melanie Luca.O Robin

http://IMG_2859-1kq9hsr

My second advertisement was my tourist ad. In this ad, my teachers assigned me a place that we would go to in Oregon, and I was to create an ad about it. This ad was supposed to persuade people to visit that place. The site that I was assigned was called Fort Stevens (non-historic). It was beautiful their and I took a whole bunch of photos for both my ad, and so that I could remember what a great time I had when I visited Oregon. When I went, the ocean was filled with huge waves and the sun was ever so slightly peeking through the big white clouds above. I tried to make my ad reflect all the beauty that I saw their and persuade people that they just needed to go and visit Fort Stevens. Below is a picture of my finished copy of my tourist advertisement.
My final advertisement was my Tsunami ad. We had recently talked about natural disasters in school, so it seemed logical to do and advertisement on tsunamis in Oregon, a tsunami prone area. When finding a photo for my tsunami ad, it was difficult because there was no specific place that I was advertising. Instead I had to take pictures of anything even remotely tsunami related, in hopes of making it work. In the end it all worked out because I found a tsunami precaution sign, but if not for that, I would have been out of luck. The picture Below is the finished product of my tsunami advertisement. On the ad I asked the question, do you know what to do? I did this to reel people and make it so that they would really remember this ad and the message behind it.

With all of these projects, I learned a lot of new things, as well as reflected on past learning experiences. I learned quite a bit about tsunamis when working on my tsunami ad, such as how their are many routs to get to higher ground in case of one, because Oregon is a tsunami prone area. With my tourist advertisement I learned that Fort Stephens contains a jetty, which blocks the waves from the open ocean and keeps unexposed waters more calm. I learned from my business advertisement that the South beach fish company only uses only hook and line caught fish that is fresh and non-farmed.

The last thing I did in Oregon was not a project, it was a field study. This field study was at the Hatfield Marine science centre. We did three main things on this field study. The first thing was a really cool activity where we used these cool things called shrimp slurpers. We went out on the beach to put them over the holes that you usually see in the sand, and in those holes contained a type of shrimp called a Ghost shrimp . We then took these ghost shrimp back to the science lab for analysis and found out that many of them had a parasite. The parasite feeds off of the shrimp and leaves the shrimp weak and malnourished. Because of this, the shrimp only sticks to its basic needs and doesn’t have time for things like reproduction. This is bad because then, the population of Ghost shrimp massively decrease. We found out the size, gender and weather or not each shrimp had a parasite. It was fun and I learned a lot.
The next thing we did in this field study was an experiment with crabs . We had to follow the criteria. The criteria was to think of what would effect your crab in ether a good or a bad way and then make a question out of it. An example could be something along the lines of this. If a crab has long legs, does that make it go faster? Using the materials provided, me and the rest of my group built a race track, got some crabs, and tested our theory about four times with multiple different crabs. We recorded our final results and from that, saw if our theory was correct and from what I could tell with our info, we were correct. I learned whole bunch in this little project, like the different types of crabs, red crabs and green crabs.
The last field study projects was our R.O.V project where we built under water drones out of pvp pipes and mini engines with a magnet attached to it. Once me and my group created the frame, added the engines, and the magnet, we added some small floaters onto it just so that it didn’t sink. Then we tested out the controls and battled to see who could pick up the most metal with the magnet in a race against the other teams. It was really fun and I learned a lot about under water drones and how they were used to scope out shipwrecks. It was really fun. IMG_1740-29jxivn

Oregon was an amazing adventure. I learned a lot, and most importantly, had fun.

For this project we were learning about Shakespeare’s play called Julius Cesar. My group and I were given a character from the play to research. We had to answer many questions about a man called Gaius Cassius, who helped in the assassination of Julius Cesar. Some of the questions that needed to be answered were why was he important to the play, what is his historic importance, where did he live/work, when did he live, and who was he. Through multiple sights and sources, my group found out this information. These are some of the links to the sites that we used: link1 link2 link3 link4 link5 link6 link7 link8

After this research, my group and I were told to trace out a body on a piece of paper, cut it out, and cover it in symbols, drawings, and paper cut outs that reflected our research. The task seemed easy enough, that was until they followed up by saying that we were not aloud to use any words or text on the body. My group then began to get to work, starting with getting the body cut out and ready for drawings. When cutting out the body, my group and I used red paper to symbolize the wars that Gaius Cassius fought in. We also cut out the body in a position where he had a hand on his hip and another over his lip as if he were motioning you to be quiet. We decided to cut him out in this position because he was said to have always been quietly scheming.

Next, my group added symbols, drawings and cut outs onto the body, which were placed based on their meaning. For example, we put trees and roads on his legs to symbolize his travels and how is legs got him their. We put a cut out brain on his head with some little drawings in it of telescopes, books, and glasses. This symbolized his his study of philosophy. We placed a cut out drawing of a baby on his chest to symbolize his baby boy(his son), and beside that, we put a big shield with a megaphone on it that symbolizes his talent in public speaking and how he could project his voice all across Rome. A key part of the body was a picture frame that had two people whispering to each other on the inside. This symbolized the plot to assassinate Julius Caesar, which was a huge part of Shakespeare’s play, and therefore a huge part of this project. On the arm of our body was a bloody sword that represents how depressed Gaius Cassius was near the end of his life when he ordered someone to kill him, ending both his life and his story.

After we added all that we could to the body, one of my group members created a script that explained our research and our body. We then briefly looked over our lines and presented all of our work. The rest of the class did this same thing with a different character from Shakespeare’s play. I think that I learned a lot from this project, about Gaius Cassius, Julius Caesar, and even a little about Shakespeare. I learned that Gaius Cassius studied philosophy, spent time in the war, was one of the leaders in the plot to kill Julius Caesar, and ordered somebody to kill himself. I learned that Julius Caesar killed Pompey, had great power, and was from Rome. And last of all, I learned that Shakespeare was from Britain and is famous for making plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet.

If I were to redo this project, I would definitely fix a few things and do some things a little bit differently. Some of those things would be to practice my script a little more to improve my performance, to make some of the pictures bigger that represent key points in the play, and pay more attention to the criteria so that we don’t miss anything like how my group forgot to add a spine(it was part of the criteria). With this being said, I still thought that this was a fun project and I learned a lot from it!

Growth mindset is a very important part of success and achievement, as it helps you learn from mistakes, try again, and be the absolute best you can be.

I feel that I have gained a growth mindset perspective on things, and from that, I have become a better and more engaged learner. This can be seen in many of my recent projects such as my body biography project. In this project, my group and I were assigned a character from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Ceasar. We then had to research our character, trace and cut out a body, then use no words, just symbols and drawings to represent our research. Our assigned character was Gaius Cassius, and the questions that we researched were why was he important to Shakespeare’s play, what is his historic importance, where did he live/work, when did he live, and who was he?  Each person in my group was assigned one of these questions, and we all put our answers on a google document.

Once we did that, we thought of a good position for our cut out body. We chose a position where he had one hand on his hip and the other over his lip, almost as if he were shushing someone. When cutting out the body, my group used red paper because it symbolized the blood shed of the wars that Cassius fought in. Then my group proceeded to add the symbols and drawings. Some of the drawings we put on our body were trees and dirt roads that represented his travels, a bloody sword to represent his homicide, some armour on his shoulders to represent his time in the army, telescopes, books, and glasses to represent his study in philosophy. These were only a few of the things that were presented on the body. We then showed our presentation to the class.

I learned a lot when working on this project, about Gaius Cassius, and even about some of the characters that other people researched. I learned that Gaius Cassius studied Philosophy, had a son, was born in Italy, his father was killed by Pompey, and near the end of his life he went into deep depression and ordered someone to kill him. I also learned that Gaius Cassius had a half Sister that was the mistress of Julius Cesar, and that Marcus Brutus was his brother in law.

If I were to do this project again, there would be a few things that I think I would do differently. The first thing would definitely be to practice my script a little more before presenting. Another one would be to add a spine to the body (which was part of the criteria), and last of all, to add more symbols and drawings along the legs of our body.  My continuous reflection on my learning is a good demonstration of growth mindset.

Also, even though I was away when people were building their bodies and adding drawings and symbols, I did not use that as an excuse to limit my participation. I chose, instead, to focus on catching up and working harder. I made a point of having someone fill me in on what was happening, and was eager to get things done and do my fair share of work.

Below are the links to my group members

Kai

Syrah

Alivia

Robin 

My picture above is another example which demonstrates that I have a growth mindset.  When making this growth mindset selfie, the criteria was to create a couple sentences showing growth mindset about something school related. After writing out a multi sentence goal, you would need get it approved and critiqued before you take a selfie to be the background. You couldn’t print your picture until it was approved by the teachers, and once you get the thumbs up, then you are done.

When creating my goal, at first I was confused and thought that it didn’t need to be about school. This was until I took it up to be approved and got sent back to fix my mistake. After this, I came up with a goal related to art (which technically ties in with school because art is an elective). My goal was to “improve my drawing skills by trying out different styles such as realism and anime. This will help me obtain a wider skill set to help me in the future.” After I got the sentences approved, I used a selfie that had previously taken, and made it the Background. After I got my growth mindset selfie approved, the teacher printed it out and put it on the wall with everyone else’s.

I think that my growth mindset selfie was very meaningful to me, and it was not just something that I said I would do and then never did. I took my goal seriously and have been trying to draw in different styles, one of which is realism. Even if I am not the best at it yet, I still Continuously try to improve and an example of this is in the photo below. This is my latest drawing in the style of realism and even though I know there are many things that could be modified and perfected, I am still proud of it
and will keep on trying to imorove, even if it takes a few failed drawing to get there.