Humanities

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities

An Average Post About the Dark Ages

Hi! Welcome to the newest edition to my blog. A post about the Middle Ages! Today I will be referring to our “This Changes Everything” project. This project was all about the Middle Ages. We learned about the plague, the crusades and other parts of medieval life. My persona favourite part of this project was when we created our own character for our “medieval life simulation” during this, we created our own character based on the role in society we were given. Is as a monk of the church, this meant, I could read and write but I had almost the same rights as a serf (the lowest point of society at the time). Anyway I’ll mention that all later. So, into the post!

 

Milestone 1: Before I start to talk about this milestone I think that this project needs some more explanation. When this project was started, we were told that we needed to read a book. This book, being, “The Book of the Lion”. This is a book based around the crusades that occurred in the Middle Ages. The book was historical fiction depicting the life of a man that was nearly executed but instead used as a crusader due to his physical ability. Anyway, now you know about the book so this should be less confusing. In the first milestone we were to create a document showing our strategies and plans for reading the book a steady amount per day. This was a minor milestone but it still had an effect on the way most people read the book.

Milestone 2: This was the milestone that I mentioned during the introduction. This wa my favourite milestone even though I didn’t do as good of a job as I would have liked. I enjoyed this milestone because it allowed for a lot of creativity because you create the personality, background, and feelings of your own character from the Middle Ages.

This was the letter describing my character and his life.

Milestone 3: Milestone 3 was different from the rest of the milestones in this project because it happened over the course of 3 weeks. Each week we had a different role assigned to us. Each role had a different assignment. The first week I was an “artist” and  drew a picture of something that I thought was important. The other two ones were connector and summarizer.

This was my piece of art it is the main character’s horse named Winterstar. (I’m not that good at art)

Milestone 4: In this milestone we were partnered up with a random classmate and worked on researching change and continuity in the Middle Ages. I was paired up with Amy Sheardown (check out her blog HERE) and we got to work on our research document. For our change and continuity our main emphasis were on women’s rights and education (women’s rights=change education=continuity).

 

Milestone 5: Present. One word. We created a presentation for our class that explained the continuity and change on the subjects that we had chosen in class. As I said in the section about milestone 4, we chose women’s and education. Everyone had great presentations and we showed what we had learned up to that point. I have a video of the presentation too! But you don’t get to see that…….

 

Curricular competency time!!

Comprehend: this curricular competency is about the strategies you use to learn, read, and just comprehend anything really. I think that I used a lot of strategies that I probably haven’t even noticed because I read a lot and have for a long time, but a strategy that I know I used were to summarize each chapter in a note at the end to help myself understand it better if I needed to come back to that chapter.

Identifying continuity and change: this curricular competency is based of of your ability to make connections from what you read to your life as it is and I think that I am pretty good at this because of the time that I have spent reading and enjoying books that have a main character or plot that I can personally relate to.

 

Thanks for reading this far into my blog post!

Until next time!

-Keenan

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, PGP, POL, Scimatics

An average post about my mPOL

Hey, For this post I will be talking about my learning and reflecting on the skills I have learned throughout this year. This post will include a reflection on each subject covered in PLP. This includes: Humanities, Scimatics, Maker, and PGP. For each subject I will provide an example of my work ethic, habits, and proficiency.

The first thing I would like to talk about is this question. “What is my learning goal that I want to reach by the end of the school year, and how will I meet it? This is a very tough question that will come up a few times in this post because this is something that will stay with me for the rest of this school year. Anyway, let’s get to the reflecting.

Humanities: this is one of the two classes that we have every day, meaning that I have lots of examples of work habits and such. The example that I chose for humanities was actually part of our first humanities project, this being The Media is the Message (you can find my post about this project HERE). I have chosen milestone 3 as an example of my hard work because it shows that when I get invested into something I can put a lot of hard work and effort into it to be the best it can be.

This is an example of some work in humanities that I went beyond the expected work without even realizing it.

Scimatics: this is the other class that we have every day! Anyway, in this section I will talk about and mention parts about teamwork and evidence of high quality work. For the scimatics portion of this post I want to talk about our Laser Maze (find it HERE) project. This project was based all around dividing work and teamwork when needed. To be honest, I think I took a little too much of this project on by myself, and made it harder than it could have if I had help from my group members. The thing that I am most proud of in this project was actually the final product. The final product of this project was to make a triangle out of lasers in a Star Wars themed ship/object. We made a Venator class republic star destroyer.

This is the “laser maze” my group made. It’s a Venator class star destroyer from the clone wars.

Maker: this class takes up one of our elective spots, for better or worse, I’m not sure yet, but there have been some great experiences with this class. One of those being the subject for this section! A great experience that I am proud of in maker class was part of the “Power of a Pencil” (find that post HERE) project. The part that I want to focus on is the first milestone A.K.A. name art. The reason I chose this piece was because I was so invested that I even decided to take my time and add to the original and send the second version in. I thought that overall that project let my creativity come out a lot and help me make something that represents myself.

This is the final piece of art I made. I’m very proud of this one!

PGP: PGP definitely isn’t a conventional class. Every month or so a PGP meeting is help where we discuss something important. A part of PGP that I haven’t really used as much as I want to is Things. Things is a great time management app that has a bunch of features built in to help you stay on-track. I try to keep up with things as much as possible but a lot of the time I forget to look at it. I’m looking forward to the PGP meetings ahead of me to help me learn new strategies to keep on top of the game!

This is the Things logo!

Now, for the part where I reflect on my work! (Yay)

This first half-school year in high school has been a huge ramp up in terms of work, but I like that I have to work hard to get better at something like this. Of course, with learning comes FAILure the FAIL meaning “First Attempt in Learning” I have had many of those, but of all of them the piece of work that I am least proud of is definitely my first business advertisement. It was a train wreck and I had no idea if it looked good or bad but I think that over this first half-year I have definitely improved and learned that FAILure isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And now, for the final part of this post! A question! One for myself, or whoever’s reading this.
What new strategies can I use to help further my understanding of what I’m learning?

Thanks for reading this far!

-Keenan

 

 

 

 

1 Comment Posted on Humanities, Uncategorized

An average post about media

How does what we read, hear, and see influence us?
This is a great question that requires lots of understanding to answer. That’s why it was the “driving question” for our media/advertising unit named “The Media is the Message”.

This post is the “wrap up” for our project and it is also a reflection to look back on what we learned and apply that to something to show what we have learned.

We started this project with no expectations for what it was going to become. This was a huge surprise when it became something so impactful and important. In the first important activity we did was the dissection of an apple ad titled “welcome home” it is a very abstract and colourful ad. This all had a purpose though. The purpose of the flashy colours and abstract art style was all to create a memorable, fun, smooth ad. The big idea with these concepts was to make consumers remember the ad when in a store or when they are shopping in the electronics department as a whole. In this lesson we had learned that with big companies they wave the air reputation around to age abstract ads like these with “hidden” messages.

In the second important “milestone” as we call them, we performed a “survey”. This was a “survey” for two people. Yourself and a close family member or friend. This ad was supposed to show the impact of advertising on you or others, for example: one question on the survey was “have you recently bought anything solely on advertising?”. This question was there to show that whether or not advertising had a big enough impact on you for you to actually buy something just because it looked good in an ad.

This is the advertising survey. My answers are black and my mom’s are purple.

The third tsk we had to complete was the “persuasion chart”. It was a chart thats purpose was to have you explain what each print advertisement used in terms of techniques to get the reader hooked. This was an interesting project because you chose the ads yourself. This meant that you had to go find them all and perhaps use ones that had an impact on yourself.

This is the “persuasion chart” this was to show how ads persuade you.

The fourth step in this project was an analysis on a book called the highest tide. This was a book that we had been reading throughout his entire project so far. However this was the reflection that had to explain what effect media had on the main character of the book. This was to show our understanding of the message the book was trying to send to you about the effect of media.

This is the cover of The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

The fifth and sixth task we had to complete were nearly identical. The difference was that one was after the other so that we could use our learning from the first to improve the second. The first of those 2 tasks was an advertisement for a local business. First we interviewed one of their employees for information on what sort of advertisement they were looking for. Next, we would create the advertisement by making drafts. We would get feedback from our classmates on what they all thought was good and what could we improvement. The second version of this assignment was to make an advertisement for a business in Oregon. The only difference between this and the local business were the fact that we got feedback from teachers not students this time.

This is the ad I made for High Life Adventures.

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, POL

An average post about my mPOL (2022)

It’s about time for the mid-year presentation of learning! For the first time since Covid decided it would ruin everyone’s plans. My learning plans though, are gonna stay rock solid through these next 6 or so months until this year’s tPOL comes around.

 

Firstly, the POL declaration.

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

 

Now I want to mention in this post is the learning plans that I made back at the start of the school year.

These were the things that at the time of creation, were what I thought were my strengths and weaknesses as a learner. The growth goals that I had set for humanities had been well represented with progress during the winter exhibition. I have a detailed post which shows that learning here. I think that this specific event is a good example of the progress that I have made there because the exhibition made me go out of my comfort zone and push a pitch of sorts to the people who were at my station. I admit that there were a few holes in the plan I had set up for the exhibition which made progress in this goal a little slower but that’s what we use F.A.I.L. (First Attempt At Learning) for. The exhibition also explored the past wrongs of our own people here in Vancouver and provided more than sufficient reason as to why they shouldn’t be repeated. This event was also a great example of some teamwork (good and bad). The bad teamwork would be referring to lack of communication before the event itself, and the good being that we worked together efficiently enough we pulled through and had an overall successful exhibition.

The growth goals I had set in maker were also represented in the Ology of Apology project, which was the main focus of the grade 10 section at the Winter Exhibition. This is where we learned to see the issues such as the Komagata Maru incident from the perspective of one of the victims or a person being put in that kind of situation. I also think that something that hasn’t even happened yet, DI (Destination Imagination) will be a great opportunity for me to progress to a new height in my learning career.

Now to transition to a different part of my learning plan, the “How?” Section. This section is a part where we would look and think of ways to make our plans for each of our courses successful. In this section, I mention something called a Zettelkasten, which was an idea we were introduced to early in the year that I later found out did not really work for me. Although it maybe an efficient way of storing ideas, you need to be able not only get into the habit of knowing what to note down and what not to, you have to be able to think in a way that allows you to easily access your stored ideas and assimilate them into the work at hand. In my opinion, I think that the Zettelkasten can work amazingly for someone who can enjoy note taking while consuming media, however if you have the kind of thought process where the information you obtain from media just floats around the back of your head until it’s needed the Zettelkasten becomes something of diminishing returns. Hey this might even qualify as growth from the chart earlier!

In this section I also mention procrastination. I think that I started the year off on a great foot, but as the year progressed I slowly went back to my old “do it the night before it’s due” kind of work habit. I’ve thought about this and I’m fairly sure that this kind of mindset when it comes to work I need to get done at home, is because I have trouble getting work started at all when I’m at home. I believe this is because of how I perceive home as a relaxed and lazy kind of place without even realizing it. For example I find it easy to get work done at school, but it becomes much more difficult for me at home because of this unconscious decisions seem to have made.

These were the core competency profiles that I chose at the beginning of the year. When I look back at these, I don’t think I want to change anything. This is because when I reevaluate each of them and look to the rest of the options and descriptions, I still believe that this is what I am capable of and what I want to strive for for the next semester.

Thanks for coming on this journey with me thus far.

Later!

Leave a comment Posted on Humanities, Maker, POL

An Average Post About tPOL 2022

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?

This is the question we are asked to answer in this blog post, as well as our in person tPOL. To answer this question, I want to mention in this post is the learning plans that I made back at the start of the school year.

When I wrote these, I thought that these were my strengths and weaknesses as a learner, and I still do. The growth goals that I had set for humanities had been well represented with progress throughout the year. You can find the more detailed explanations of this in my other blog posts. There have been many F.A.I.L.s during this year, but those ultimately lead to the biggest successes.

The growth goals I had set in maker were also reached particularly in the Project Podcast project this year, which was important to my goals not just because making a podcast pushes past my comfort zone in a way that I’ve never experienced before, but because this project helped me really get used to making use of my habits for making me responsible for doing work when I told myself I would, and the pressure to keep the episodes weekly because of my choice of topic helped too.

 

In this section I talk about my procrastination. This has been a problem all throughout high school for me so far, but I think that I am making steady progress towards eliminating procrastination from my life. During my mPOL I talked about how my progress had slowed, but I think I was partly mistaken. This is because I was looking at the literal aspect of the assignments coming in later, but I found that my strategies had improved significantly and that I can get to work if I am determined to, which used to be very difficult for me at home. I have found that the most effective way for me personally to achieve this is to

 

These were the core competency profiles that I chose at the beginning of the year. When I look back at these, I have only made changes to one thing. This is because I think that I demonstrated these and grew to these heights as a learner, and I think that I can strive for even better next year.

This leads me to my answer to the question “Why do you feel you are ready to advance to the next grade level?”

Other than the obvious fact that I went to school every day for grade 10, I think that I am ready to advance to the next grade level because I believe that the learning that I have conducted throughout this year has successfully demonstrated my ability to satisfy or exceed the expectations that have been set out for a grade 10 level. this is reinforced by the projects that I have completed this year, as well as the habits that I have developed throughout the year that can help me learn in a more sophisticated manner in the future, whether it be the rest of high school, or into college or university.

 

Thanks for contributing to my learning career.

See you!

Leave a comment Posted on Exhibition, Humanities

An Average Post About Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Avatar

Literary Criticism: Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1 - Bianca Montagnese

Despite being written over 400 years ago, Macbeth remains a timeless and powerful work that continues to be performed and studied around the world. Its themes of power, ambition, and guilt are just as relevant today as they were in Shakespeare’s time, and its enduring popularity is a testament to its enduring appeal.

During this project, we read and analyzed the play “Macbeth” with the objective of determining how Shakespeare is still relevant today using the core themes of the play. We learned about the people of the time, as well as the beliefs of the time. One of these beliefs was in an absolute world order, which is represented by this graphic.

I found that, if I believed in this absolute order, the play would be much more interesting, which is almost identical to media we in our modern era where we enjoy watching movies and shows about people breaking norms of all kinds.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth and James Cameron’s Avatar both explore the theme of the corrupting influence of power. In Macbeth, the character of Macbeth is initially a noble and brave warrior, but as he becomes more powerful, his ambition consumes him and he becomes willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto that power, even if it means committing horrific deeds. Similarly, in Avatar, the human characters, driven by their desire for resources and power, seek to exploit and destroy the alien world of Pandora and its inhabitants. Both stories show how power can corrupt and lead individuals to make selfish and destructive decisions.

Both Macbeth and Avatar also explore the theme of guilt and the consequences of one’s actions. Throughout the play, Macbeth is haunted by the ghosts of those he has killed and is consumed by guilt as he becomes more isolated from the people he once cared about. In Avatar, the main character Jake Sully initially goes along with the humans’ plans to exploit Pandora, but eventually comes to understand the harm they are causing and feels guilt for his role in it. Both stories show how guilt can drive individuals to try to right their wrongs and make amends for their actions.

The themes of power, ambition, and guilt in both Macbeth and Avatar demonstrate how these issues continue to be relevant and impactful in modern society. Both stories serve as cautionary tales about the dangers of unchecked ambition and the importance of considering the consequences of one’s actions.

At the winter exhibition this year, our class presented our modern adapted version of one of the scenes from Macbeth, while focusing on one of the themes that we identified in both Avatar and Macbeth. I chose act II scene I.

This performance was rather disappointing to me, as I had a great story that I wanted to portray to the audience, but I felt that the lack of props and time really restricted my ability to set the scene for my performance and show the audience my story.

If you really want to watch my performance, it’s attached below.

Another reason for this being a FAIL in my book was the lack of preparation that I gave myself. for this final performance of the project, I found that if I were to do this sort of thing again I would need to think much more about the performance from the audience’s point of view, which was where I found this play to be at its weakest.

My story anyway, was about a playwright in England, who worked under a famous man known as Shakespeare. Our main character, Quakespeare, heard from a fortuneteller that he was going to become great. While fully believing in this prophecy of sorts, he became impatient. He wanted to become great right at that moment, so he decided he would kill his famous superior and as second in line at the theatre, take it over in all its glory. When my scene starts, Quakespeare has just left his home to enact his plan on the highly dedicated Shakespeare who was staying at his theatre late to finish writing his newest masterpiece. While making his way to the theatre, Quakespeare runs into one of the actors from their theatre, and they exchange a few words as seen in the video above. Our characters take their leave and Quakespeare makes a short speech before going to murder Shakespeare, and the scene ends.

The timeless themes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, such as power, ambition, and guilt, reveal a lot about our society today.

One of the main themes in the play is the corrupting influence of power. Macbeth starts off as a noble and brave warrior, but as he becomes more powerful, his ambition consumes him and he becomes willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto that power, even if it means committing horrible actions. This theme is still relevant today, as we see examples of people in positions of power acting corruptly or abusing their power for personal gain.

The theme of ambition is also timeless, as it is human nature to desire success and to strive for more. However, Macbeth’s ambition ultimately leads to his downfall, as he becomes consumed by his desire for power and lets it consume him. This serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked ambition and the importance of maintaining a sense of morality.

Finally, the theme of guilt and the consequences of one’s actions is also timeless. In the play, Macbeth is haunted by the ghosts of those he has killed and is consumed by guilt as he becomes more isolated from the people he once cared about. This theme is relevant today, as we see the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and the consequences that can come from not doing so.

Overall, the timeless themes in Macbeth reveal a lot about the human condition and the dangers of unchecked ambition, the corrupting influence of power, and the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Leave a comment Posted on Exhibition, Humanities

An Average Post About Impact

Hello and welcome to the exciting final post of this school year. This post will be about our humanities project that was showcased at the PLP spring exhibition, titled “Cray Cray Yay Yay”.

This project had us find someone we were interested in on the north shore from the past or present time that has had or will have an impact on North Vancouver. My choice of person was Alfred Wallace, who was an important figure in the development of North Vancouver.

Here you can see my short write up that was on my table at the exhibition.

The goal of this project was to research and share your impact maker’s importance at the spring exhibition where we invited parents as well as the impact maker themselves, or if they were no longer alive we invited someone close to our impact maker. If you took the time to read my brief explanation of my impact maker above, you would know that Alfred Wallace was the founder of Burrard Dry Dock, which was a massive dry dock in Burrard Inlet. The person that I invited to the exhibition was Paul Hebson, who is the VP and GM of the Vancouver Drydock Co. which is owned by Seaspan and is located partially on the land that Wallace’s drydock was located, where the original drydock was several times larger than the current drydock. This is not just because the land in North Vancouver, especially on the waterfront. The other reason for the drydock being so much smaller nowadays is because of the use case for the drydock. Back when the Wallace family owned the drydock, mostly in the war times like WWI and II, the docks were used to construct navy ships very quickly, and navy boats being as big as they are, they needed a lot of space to be worked on. But that’s not it, because of the efficiency of the drydock, they were able to construct multiple ships at the same time.

Here you can see my portrait, which depicts Alfred Wallace. You can probably spot some of the important decisions I had to make while creating this portrait. The first and most obvious one, the face, or lack thereof. This decision was the start of my thought process for the portrait because as hard as I searched, there are no recorded photos of Wallace (probably due to the lack of cameras during his lifetime). This decision was also reinforced by the fact that Wallace is mostly known for the boats that were produced at his drydock rather than his person. That is the next important part of this drawing. The silhouette is made up of boats because of hit boat building reputation, and each boat was chosen because they were very similar to or the same model as the ships that were built on Wallace’s drydock (the Queen of Tsawwassen was one of them). The last important choice that you might notice in this video is that the water is a somewhat odd colour. This was done to make the scene look like a storm, indicating the hard times that Wallace went through throughout his life, especially WWI.

Presenting this at the exhibition was a lot of fun because I got to tell everyone about the cool things that I learned not just about Alfred Wallace, but also about the development of the North Shore as well as how drydocks work thanks to my tour of the drydocks.

 

Thanks for reading this far!

Later!