Category: Maker

I’m D.I-ing to go to provincials

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Well, it’s that time of year again. Recently the PLP classes of grade 8, 9 and 10 competed in Destination Imagination and it went ok. It’s a competition where teams are assigned a task and must create a presentation which involves the solution of the task, it is a global event and offers a fun and competitive experience.

This year was my fifth year doing D.I and it went alright, I just think our group could have done better at the competition but overall we did ok. So let me explain what our group did for our challenge this year in di.

I was in the maze craze challenge with Jamie, Emily, Kai, and Lucas. Our group had to make a maze traveler to navigate a maze chosen at random. We needed a prop to transform in the maze and a prop for the maze traveler to extract from the maze. For the transformation prop, Emily built some moving dragon wings that would act as a costume to go with her character. For the prop removal, we had a cardboard apple with a magnet which was to be picked by the maze traveler. The maze traveler itself was an RC car that was able to navigate the maze successfully. In the regional tournament, these all worked really well except we forgot to fully extract the apple from the maze.

I think that we did a really good job in regionals especially as our team pulled a lot of stuff together at the last minute. In the last week, we revised the majority of our stuff and a lot of us weren’t in the best mindset for it. Our team had a few issues regarding decision making and work completion in my opinion. We had a few things that weren’t completed until the last week and we had little time to fully go over our script and performance together. I think that this showed in our performance and it may have hindered us a bit. We have been working hard on our lines since regionals and we are going to have them all memorized by provincials.

My jobs for this year’s di I had to build the maze Traveler, be our team’s organizer, drive the maze Traveler, narrate and paint some backgrounds sounds like a lot I know. During the performance, I think I did well but we did have a few problems where someone forgot their line or a prop fell over or didn’t work properly. We did get second so that’s plus side even if it was out of two teams.

I think the props we made looked good with the story that we came up with. The story was Norse themed and had backdrops and a soundtrack made by Lucas. Other than the soundtrack needing a few more tracks nothing really needed to be fixed in regard to the story which followed a chief as he embarks on a quest to save his village.

Overall I really enjoyed Destination Imagination provincials went pretty well but there’s a lot that I could improve on and would do better for next time.

mmmmmmmmm…POL

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Wow, it’s already 2018! It seems like only yesterday I was in grade 8 (I still think I am sometimes). Since I walked back through the school doors in September, I have been building, learning, creating, and having fun in PLP. Now that I have done all this amazing learning, you might want to know what I have done so far and what I plan to learn next.

So what have I done so far? I have gone to Calgary, made a monster (Frankenstuffy), learned about hot air, crafted some cards, made some revaluations and “star”-ted some “wars”.

Since the focuse of this post is not to dwell in the past it’s to think ahead and show how I can improve my learning, I won’t go into to much detail –     I have other blog posts for that.

So what now? I’ve learnt a lot but I still have a lot more to learn. I am here to show off what I learned and ask some questions to help improve my learning for the year to come.

Let’s start off with Frankenstuffy. I think this project showed a lot of how I learn and what my strengths and weaknesses are. Let’s start off with my strengths. I felt that during this project I was very invested into it. I was wondering why I felt more excited to do this project than most other ones. I figured it was the amount of creative expression I could have on the project. For example with my Revolution metaphor machine project, it had to be about one pre chosen revolution, so I had less influence on the outcome. With other projects such as D.I where I have full creative expression, I found myself more motivated and happy to undertake a new project.

This leads me into one of my weaknesses: motivation when the goring gets tough. I find that when something goes wrong or the project is not as interesting, it is lot harder to complete it. Some things that I think I could do to improve how well I keep on task and motivated is set aside one hour every day after school for homework and chores just to make sure that evryday I at least get one hour of homework done if I have any.

Another one of my weaknesses is not asking for help. I know that I’m having trouble with something but I don’t ask I think this is becuse I feel  that if someone helps or spell checks it takes away from my contribution to the project. One way that i think would make me feel more inclined to ask other people for help on my project would be to be near peaple who want to help. So then I’m in an inviroment that encourages help not in the basement alone.

 

 

Now that I’ve talke about how I learn I want to ask you for some help. I have a question for you and it’s about my learning and how I can improve for the year to come. The question is, Out of my weaknesses witch one is the most important to overcome.

Thank you for teaching me how to learn.

 

 

 

Russian Revaluation

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So we finished our metaphor mashine unit. You might be thinking “What is a metaphor mashine?”. A metaphor mashine is a Rube Goldberg a shine that has an event of action of meaning represented by the section of the Rube Goldberg mashine. So our metaphor mashine was about revolutions and spasificly we learned about crane Brintons revaluationary revalution theroy. His theory was that you could see revaluations befor thay stoped and so there would be no chaos.

Crane briont wrote a book called the anatomy of a revaluation. This book compared revaluations to desises. He said that revaluations had a few stages one where the revaluation started. This stage was when there was something Rong that needed to be changed. The second was where the revaluation started to happen and the final was where the revaluation ended in ithere peace or war.

 

 

so now that you know the history of this project you might want to hear what we actually did.

We were a asignd the Russian revaluation. The Russian revaluations included the start of WW1 and the rise of the Soviet Union. Another part of this project was that we had to give our mashine a steam punk design for the English portion and it also had to include circuits for the math portion.

Now that you know the history of this assignment here’s the history that we researched.

Now that you’ve seen our video I’ll give a play by play of what happens. The first step of the revolution was Bloody Sunday, so to represent this we had dominos falling down. We chose dominos to show Bloody Sunday, because the dominos are a metaphor for all the people who fell as they died protesting.

The second step in the revolution was World War One. A metaphor for the beginning of World War One, was a book falling. This symbolizes the quick snap that surprised many when World War One started.The book lands on a wire completing a circuit.

This triggers a pulley, which is a metaphor for the soviets rising to power. The pulley also raises a red flag symbolizing the rise of Vladimir Lenin, which is a red flag for the rest of Russia.

When the flag goes up it knocks a ball down a ramp. This is a metaphor for
the provisional government falling down, and how russia is going down hill.

The ball rolls down and hits a cup full of confetti, and knocks it into a fan. This is to represent all the people who died in the Russian civil war. The confetti is people and the fan is well, bad news.

Though the fan does blow open a flag, representing the beginning of the Soviet Union.

So thats the end of my revolution project, I hope you learned something new about the Russian revolution!

Take Your Kid To Work Day

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So recently we had take your kid to work day. Well for me it was take your brother to work day. But anyways it was still a good learning experience. I was there from 10:00 – 3:00 and while I was there I helped sort the back room of the store.

That day I also interviewed my brother(Owen) about what he dose at the store. We were supposed to interview 3 people but it was only him working that day.

After going to work for a full day here are my reflections on that day. I feel that if I were to work there it would not be a permanent job it would be a job to get some money, get some work experience and then move on. I feel that I would be good at organizing and managing the social activities of the store. If I were to work there some skills that would be useful for that job would be being patient and calm also having a good work ethic.

Beakers-head

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Recently I went with my class went on a fun and interesting trip to Calgary for a city-wide science art and engineering fair of sorts it was called beaker head.  That was only one of the stops on this busy trip. Our itinerary was full. Here are a few daily highlights.  I would love to link that awesome itinerary here but I have tried 3 times and it causes my page to freeze. Trust me. It was cool.

 

Day 1. We stopped at Craigellachie. This is the place that I chose for making my short film. One of our tasks was to tell the story of a place with a 3 minute video. This is where the last spike of the trans Canada railway was placed.  Many hardships and delays were overcome in the building of the railway that linked Canada from East to West for the first time.

Four second stop was Three Valley Gap Ghost Town.  This is a collection of buildings brought to the site from ghost towns around the province to create a full ghost town that we could tour.

 

Day 2.  Wolves!  There were 6 wolves in the sanctuary.  We learned how important they are to the ecosystem and food chain.  Unbelievably, we even got to pet them.  Later, at the Banff Park Museum I found the taxidermy animals were less exciting after seeing live wild animals.

Day 3.  We found ourselves trapped in a room.  Actually this was an escape room where a team has to solve puzzles to get out of the room within an hour.  Two hours and 17 puzzles later we were still trapped.  Good thing we aren’t detectives.

That afternoon we visited the Glenbow museum packed with Canadian history.  The best part was we had the whole museum to ourselves.

 

Day 4.  More museums!  This time about dinosaurs.  It was a long drive to the badlands where we explored dry, barren landscapes.  There were a lot of cool dinosaur fossils.

During that day we had to make a 1 minute second video on a dinosaur that we found there.

Day 5.  Beaker Head.  We toured the city and checked out art installations that were a part of the city.  That night we saw Serpent Mother, which was a fire-breathing animatronic snake which made quite the spectacle at night.

Day 6.  This was technically the start of the trip back but was also one of the most action-packed days.  We went to the Calgary Tower, Cave and Basin national historic site, Lake Miniwaka, and the Banff Hot springs.  My favourite part of that was the stellar tour guide of the Cave and Basin who gave us the history in a fun and entertaining manner.

Day 7.  This was a day of walking on ice and nature’s beauty. It was spectacular to walk on a glacier at the Columbia Icefield and drink glacier water full of minerals.  Then on to the Glacier walk which was a glass bridge 30 meters out from the cliff and 300 feet above the riverbed that was carved by the glacial runoff.

Day 8.  This was our final day and a long haul home.  8 hours and 15 minutes of driving.  On a school bus. Full of sick kids.  We stopped at the Enchanted Forest where we made a 1 minute video of a fictional story including  props we found in the forest.  I would have liked to have more time to explore but my time was occupied on the project.

Overall I thought this trip was a very good experience.  It is different travelling while doing work like, creating videos, compared to when travelling purely as a tourist or for fun.  It’s hard to see everything and get the job done.

 

The Second Installment of the SCLs/tPOLs

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The school year is coming to a close, so most people are happy for the summer break to be here and have some more free time to do personal activities. This final blog post for the year will be a reflection on the year’s learning and will be explaining why I’m ready to go into grade nine.

One thing this year that I think that I have improved on the most is my cooperation skills. Over the year my part in group projects has become more prominent by helping others get work done or doing a bit extra if need be. One of the goals that I set in my last SLC was to make sure everyone in the group had an equal role and I feel that I have accomplished that and I am quite happy about that goal.

 

One goal from my last SLC that I did not accomplish, was the enrichment of work documentation. I think I failed this one because I was normally too distracted on the work being done to remember to document it. I think this was because I normally felt a bit rushed, so I focused on the work and not so much on the documentation.  If I had scheduled better I think that I would be able to manage all my activities, and I  could balance work and therefore giving me more time for documentation.  I hope to apply these skills for next year.

One assignment that I had a lot of fun with was my science and light project at the end of the year. I feel I enjoyed the project a lot because of the open-ended nature of it, and how I could pick something related to light and just learn about it. For my learning style I think that was better for me than just doing a work sheet and handing it in.  Having choice dramatically increases the enjoyment and actual learning that I get out of a project.

In conclusion I know that I am ready for grade 9 because of my willingness to improve old skills and develop new ones.  I have had encouraging feedback from my teachers which also makes me believe I am ready for grade 9.

SLC March 2017

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So one of the luxuries of being in PLP is that twice a year we have to do a student led conference, SLC for short. This is like a parent teacher conference but you show your parents what you have done this year.

So I will be showing you some of the work that I am proud of and the three goals I have set for the rest of the year.

The work that I am the most proud of this year is D.I. I think this is because it had a lot of hands on work like making a boat or a ramp or costumes and script writing which made it more engaging. We got second place in regionals and first place for our instant challenge (which is pretty good). If you want to read more about Destination Imagination Click here!

So a great place that has shown my learning has been my learning portfolio. I think this becuse if you look at one of my first blog posts it had just text and one photo and barely any spacing or links. Also the grammar and spelling is bad.

 

 

 

but now my blog posts are longer and go into more depth about the subject even though the grammar could use some work I think that they’ve improved by a lot!

One thing that I showed a growth mindset was in my grammar/spelling. I think this becuse befor I thought “I am just bad at spelling and grammar” but know I think I just have to do multiple revisions to get better.

Now let’s talk about some goals that I have set for myself for the rest of the year.

My first goal is to help everyone in a group have an equal role or job. I think this is becuse sometime I feel feel in charge of the group but it should be everyone’s responsibility to help out equally.

My second goal is to make my blog posts more enriched by larger and more complex words. Its hard for me to do that becuse sometimes I have a wonderful word but I don’t know how to spell it so I just don’t ad it in. So now I will try harder to look up the word or dictate it to improve my posts.

My third goal is to record my progress during projects. What I mean is I want to take more pictures and videos of the progress. I want to do this so I can fill up my blog with some interesting posts with more pictures and videos.

Mindfulness

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A lot of people think you need to be born smart, physical or have a good voice. The truth is, anyone can be successful as long as you have a positive mindset and are committed to doing the work. If you are determined and confident about learning something or getting better at something I belive that you can accomplish it.

Our Unit in Growth mindset.

During our unit in growth mind set I have learned that these skills can be applied to school or just anything that you want to get better at. I think one reason I like PLP is because we do not just get marks for just completing a project but for the effort we put into it. Also, you have a growth mindset, you perceive failure as learning.

My famous growth mindset paragraph.

One of the first major assignments this unit was to write a paragraph on someone famous and see how they showed a growth mindset.

Famous person: Michael Phelps

Olympian Michael Phelps showed us how a growth mindset can be life changing with his comeback at the RIO olympics. After his success at the 2012 Olympics he fell apart, ending up in rehab in 2014. He was able to be successful in 2016 because he changed the way he viewed himself. Phelps said, “I thought of myself as just a swimmer, and nobody else.”.He got help to change the view of his character which he says was critical for his success. This inspires me because if you are passionate about one activity it doesn’t mean you can’t try more activities and change yourself.

My Growth Mindset Selfie!

Our final project in the growth mindset unit was to make an inspirational poster with a quote made by us. For my picture I chose me with my dog in the snow because I love hanging out with my family and being outside in the snow. (Awww cute pupper – editing Raina)

I used Snapseed for my poster

Reflection

I feel that this unit has thought me vary useful and practical skills that I hope to keep using. One of the other things that I think was important to learn was how to keep a positive mindset when you fail and how to cope.

Camera Angles Comic

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img_0058Hello this is my first blog post today we worked on camera angels.

 

The first thing we did in this project was defied the class into two groups. One group had to play an action paced game so we could get some good and funny pictures. The other group had a list of camera angles, they had to to take a picture from each angle.

 

This showers how easily emotions can be expressed by just changing the angle of the camera. One thing that I learned from this is that changing an angle can change a story. This project was good becuse I learned how to use comic life, if I use it in future projects I will have that information to use this app.

I used Comic Life 3 to make this image.