How many times a day do you add an emoji to your text message? Nowadays with hundreds of emojis to choose from, it’s pretty easy to find the perfect emoji to suit your mood and topic. However, for this little assignment, each of us had to create something with emojis whether it was a math equation, sudoku puzzle or an art masterpiece, it was up to our creative brains to create one amazing project around emojis!
Since art is a huge passion of mine with dance, drawing, painting and all, I decided to create an emoji picture of me dancing. I’ve used one of my favourite apps called Sketches Pro to recreate a picture of me dancing. Below I’ve shown both the original and recreated picture. Let me know in the comments what you think!
Ever see a photo on the internet that fits what your looking for perfectly? Writing a blog post every now and then, I know how it feels. You see the image and just want to screenshot it and add it straight into your work. Well unfortunately, it’s not always that simple and sometimes, that image you want most is just out of your reach. I’ve created this poster/acrostic poem to show different was to work around this problem and hopefully, using your own creativity, you’ll end up with that perfect image your looking for😊
And, to whom this may concern, yes. I did take the photo in the picture so as to not use any copyrighted image😂. This image was taken last Spring when my family visited Cancún. I also use Pixabay a lot to find images for posters and blogs!
Steampunk, Steampunk, Steampunk! Basically the only word I’ve heard these last few weeks. However, this post is a chance for me to express my interest on the Steampunk topic. It’s also an opportunity for me to learn and expand my knowledge about the topic based on my interests. As you read through this post, get ready to be brought back in time and emerged into an alternate reality of the 1800s. Where everything around you contains either gears, copper, brass, silver, gold, clocks, corny glasses and more. This, is what we call the world of Steampunk.
For this project, each of us in the PLP 9 class had to choose and come up with any inquiry question based on our own personal interests. We would then have to research on this question and topic to come up with an answer to this question of choice. After that, we would each create a blog post containing our process, question, research and answer to this question! For me, I decided to focus on How Has Steampunk Inspired Modern Day Technology?
Ok lets start! I personally thought that the best way to answer this question was to compare some Steampunk items and some modern items. I’ve done a few comparisons below!
Here I’ve chosen a fairly common and familiar technological object. One we’ve all probably seen before and one we most likely have in our home! Both are clocks yet the Steampunk one is noticeably different.
The Steampunk inspired clock is quite a bit larger and appears more complicated with all the visible gears and machinery. Although, the same circular shape and idea of how a clock should look appears in both the modern and Steampunk style. In a way, I guess you could say that the modern clock was somewhat inspired by the Steampunk clock. This means when you look at the two clocks side by side, you can definitely tell that they are the same object, but from different time periods and styles. Below is another example!
Steampunk
Modern
The world famous droid from the popular Star Wars movie! R2 D2 is shown here as both a Steampunk version and a modern version. As you can see, once again, they both show the same similar form but again, the Steampunk R2 shows much more inner machinery such as buttons and visible gears while the modern R2 has some sort of shell.
As I conclude this post, I guess it’s clear to say that the answer to the question How Has Steampunk Inspired Modern Day Technology isn’t a simple one sentence answer. I would best describe the answer like this. All technology seems to have some sort of Steampunk like featuring whether it’s visible on the outside or hidden deep within a fancy shell. Steampunk inspired modern day technology through its use of machinery and yet, it seems as if modern technology kind of inspired the Steampunk look as it has some of the same features such as the clock has the same shape and numbers and the droid has similar knobs and buttons.
Once again, it’s time to hit the road! An early morning start awaited the students of the PLP 9 class as they loaded their gear into the trusty Seycove Bus and buckled their seatbelts, plugged in their headphones and departed on another life changing memorable journey. Before departing to Alberta, we had previously studied identity. This trip would give us many good answers to our driving questions, How Does Land Impact Identity? Last year we visited the Beautiful Oregon Coast (click the link to read more!) and this year, it was a road trip through the mountains and back in time to when the Canadian Railroad was being built!
Filming Our Ghost Town Movie!
First stop, the Ghost Town in Three Valley Gap! What? Ghosts? Yup you heard me, ghosts! But don’t worry, I’m not talking about real freaky ghosts you’d expect to see on Halloween. I’m talking more of the crazy PLP kids running around the peaceful deserted town with iPads, white sheets and horse heads kind of ghosts. I know, probably just as creepy to other tourists walking around the historic site. This ghost town, nestled next to the Chateau in Three Valley Gap was never actually a real town. There were never families and people walking about who lived there. This “town” was made up of multiple rescued buildings from the pioneer days in the 1800s and also featured many cars from different time periods. Our task here was to create a movie using the Ghost Town as our movie set. The film could be about anything! In this project, I worked with Gabby, Luciano and Amelia to bring to life a tragic yet very animated film about a group of friends. In this task, we decided to play to our strengths and base our characters off of our personalities. If you know me, you may have already guessed that I played a little happy girl with a huge cheesy smile on her face. Easy right? Haha no! There was a small catch, as this movie was being filmed in a pioneer ghost town setting, the film had to be era appropriate and therefore would have to be a black and white silent film. No talking and no sound effects. Just music. If you’d like to watch our film and see how it turned out, check out the video below!
https://youtu.be/MPxmLIhNsAI
The next morning was another early start (infact every morning was an early rise and shine!) and once packed, left for the spiral tunnels. Another stop along our journey through the construction of the railroad. Along the way we stopped at a wolf sanctuary center called Northerlights. Who knew wolves were so playful and cute! There, we interviewed wolf experts and learned about the importance of key stone species (such as the wolves). These are species of animals that, if taken away, can greatly impact others. For example, a national park once decided it was a good idea to kill all wolves in the area to protect prey animals from harm. Little did they know that with the wolves gone, the population of elk, deer, squirrels and other prey began to grow to the extreme! The park was soon filled with prey animals! Well, lesson learned, all animals are there for a reason and removing a key stone species can cause a huge impact!
That same day, our class also visited the very famous world renown Lake Louise. For those of you who don’t know, Lake Louise is a very famous lake found in the Banff area of Alberta. It’s natural beauty such as the lake’s unique mountains draw many people from all over the world to visit. There were many photographers and people from all around the world trying to capture every memorable moment of their visit to the lake. During this time, I thought it a good opportunity to interview a few of the tourists about where they were from and what drew them to this location as I thought it would be a good aspect to my Identity Video. Everyone from our class left the lake with many pictures. Definitely a highlight of the trip.
Talking about natural beauty and tourism, another highlight of the Alberta trip was Banff. Very much like Whistler, Banff is a small resort town in the mountains that mainly relies on tourists to keep businesses running. Souvenir shops lined the streets of this small town and people were everywhere!
Now, who could go to Alberta and not see Dinosaurs? Drumheller was a very unique and historical place. Although the land is currently flat and dry, evidence shows that millions of years ago, greenery and rivers use to be there. The museum was incredible and showcased many displays of different dinosaurs and their different habitats. We also got to do a small workshop where each of us created a different cast of a fossil. A cool fact I learned during my visit was that the Albertasaurus (yes it has he word Alberta in it because it was the most common dinosaur found in Alberta) was actually more dangerous than the all mighty T-Rex! Infact, the T-Rex species wasn’t around for long before all dinosaurs got wiped out! Along with the workshop, each of us had to create a short video about one of the artifacts in the museum. I immediately chose the large ammonite that was fossilized in a gem stone called ammolite therefore giving the fossil a gorgeous gem like texture and colour! To see my video, click below!
R2-D2 was at Beakerhead!
Another important aspect of the trip, although not the most exciting at times was Beakerhead. This is a unique Arts and Science Festival. Engineers and artists use both art and science to create or invent a machine or sculpture like object. If your still confused about what it is, Beakerhead is best described as Destination Imagination or D.I. on steroids as in it’s basically D.I. for adults. For each “Beaker” we visited, all students were required to think about the importance and science behind each of them. The exciting part of this event was actually Beakernight. This was the main celebratory night featuring many live shows and demonstrations! It was very exciting to watch all the inventors demo their inventions or their knowledge through experiments. As the night came to a close and our toes began to freeze, we decided it was time to head back to the hotel.
Our final stop that although kinda creepy and weird in ways, was the Enchanted Forest. I know, sounds like a very happy fairy tale child fantasy location, but in reality, the place was rather creepy. Basically, the story behind the Enchanted Forest was that a lady loved to hand create these pretty scary looking concrete statues of fairy tale creatures such as the three little pigs, little miss Muffet, the cow that jumped over the moon, Snow White and more! Because these creatures were made by hand without the use of any moulds, well, I guess it’s safe to say that that’s what made the place creepy. Many of the statues had deformed faces or missing limbs or terribly chipped paint. Here, we had to create another group video. Like the Ghost Town project, this video would have to tell a story. I worked with Fraser, Jackson and Amelia to bring to life a crazy yet creative story we call The Rodeo Steed and Pink Piggy. Our take on the classic Romeo and Juliet Fairy Tale. To watch our movie, click the video below!
Wow! What a trip! There were so many amazing memories, highlights and moments, it was so hard to choose just a few to mention in this post! For that reason, I’ve created a video briefly showing the highlights of each day during our trip. I hope you enjoyed this post ans stay tuned for more awesome learning, discoveries, projects and more inside looks at my life, Flow Through School. My Journey Through the Process! Until next time!
It’s time to hit the road! As you may remember, around this time last year, our class visited the Oregon coast and made many memories. This year, it was time to step it up a notch and go to Alberta! So for those of you thinking “why Alberta? It’s so cold and flat!” Well I have to agree with you. While we were there, the weather was kinda like Vancouver in the middle of Winter. It was cold, rainy and it even snowed! But not only did we get to stay in some pretty snazzy hotels (now that’s a huge step up from the Oregon yurts 😉) but the main reason why we visited Alberta was to help answer our driving question for this unit « How Does Land Impact Our Identity? » And that’s, exactly what this post is about!
Ok let’s get real here, Identity isn’t something most people talk about, and wouldn’t it be weird to just go up to some stranger and ask to interview them about their identity? Well…haha that’s exactly what our teachers made us do! There definitely is more to it though. But to begin, let’s go back to the basics. What is identity? Well identity in short is how we see ourselves or how the world sees us. You may recall from last year us studying about Worldview. Well the difference between that and identity is that Worldview is how we as individuals see the world and things around us and identity is how we see ourselves or how others such as friends, peers and family see us. Pretty simple! Well the big task came when my teacher told us that we had to create a full on 5 minute video documentary about identity and how the land around us can impact it. Now this is when our trip to Alberta starts to connect with our driving question. You see while in Alberta, we had to use multiple resources to answer this question, and going back to asking random people about identity was one of the available resources. Besides interviews, we also visited many sites such as Lake Louise and the Rocky Mountains to experience first hand on how the beauty and nature around us can change a person and their perspective in life. I’m sure each of us who went to Alberta learned something new that way. Just by observing. We then took the knowledge and footage we took home from the trip and created our identity Video to hopefully help you understand How Land Can Impact Our Identity!
