Monthly Archives: April 2018

We came third place!

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I want to start off by saying that I think Provincials for D.I. went a lot better than regionals in terms of an environment and fun. But for the presentation I’d say it was pretty similar.

If you haven’t read my previous D.I. Blog post refer to the box below.

A D.I.ssapointment in D.I.sguise

My group members where Fraser, Jason, and Kyle.

Destination Imagination Provincials

The Sequel Is Never as Good as The Original.

http://www.blog44.ca/kyled/2018/04/11/di-pt2/

For provincials we had to fix several things from Regionals. Our biggest change was probably making a backdrop instead of using a projector in our presentation. We took a big piece of cardboard and then we covered it with paper. Then Fraser took it home to paint it. We also added some smaller pieces of cardboard painted like a temple and a sign. We tied these with ropes to the backdrop so we could flip them up when needed. The backdrop was painted on both sides, one was the Phobos landscape and the other was the inside of the Temple.

WIth D.I. there were five stages.

Stage 1: Recognize:

We had to recognize our flaws from regionals so we could make better performances in provincials. This included my friend Jason consistently showing his « sexy » back to the audience and not his face. This also included me not talking loud enough and not showing much emotion.

Here is a picture of Jason with his back towards the audience.

 

Stage 2: Imagine:

We then had to imagine how to solve our problems. Our projector idea from regionals hadn’t worked to well, so we decided to make a solid background. This way it would also be harder for Jason to cover it and make a negative impact. One of our Team choice elements was live music played by Fraser with a cello. In regionals we had lacked the cello so Fraser and I sat down and looked for more spots in the script were the cello could be played.

Stage 3: Initiate and Collaborate

For the third stage, we starte making the backdrop, Jason worked on his back facing the audience, I worked on my expressions and volume, and we snuck in more cello playing into the script.

Stage 4: Assess

To assess we were pretty much already at the school to present so we could only hope everything was ready to go. It turned out pretty great even if all our rehearsals were trash as we were focused more on chilling before our performance. Or at least me.

This is me in our group photo sitting on our sick ride with a VR headset on.

Stage 5: Evaluate and Celebrate

We were the only team in our class to place on the podium. We came third. We made sure to rub it into our classmates. That was pretty great. We thought we had nailed our performance at provincials but the Appraisers clearly didn’t. We significantly improved several aspects in my opinion but the Appraisers were harder on us on some things they didn’t even mention in regionals which to me makes them bad Appraisers just like bad refs in a hockey game. Of coure it’s nearly impossible to have good ones. Unfortunately I do not have my performance on tape nor do my group mates.

This is me and Fraser with our trophy and medals.

These are the Seycove teams in a group picture.

Here’s a picture of our group.

Below is the link to an article released by D.I. that is proving by some psychologist that D.I. is supposed to be making participants more developed in learning. Apparently it makes students more confident, tenacious, and creative. 82% of participants have reported that their teamwork skills have improved. D.I. participants have been able to brainstorm ideas more easily. I find some truth in this article but so far I haven’t enjoyed D.I. or felt like the benefits of D.I. be worth the time spent not enjoying something.

http://www.destinationimagination.org/proven-results/

If I’m forced to I’ll do D.I. again because I was forced to. Otherwise it was an interesting experience but I’m not to interested in doing it again.

That just about wraps it up for this year’s D.I. folks.

Stitch in Time: Feudalism and the Dark Ages

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Stitch in Time: Feudalism and the Dark Ages

Introduction:

Back at it with writing yet another Humanities post. I don’t remember saying this in other posts but I honestly hate writing blog posts but unfortunately (for me) it’s part of the program I’m in. Hopefully it helps me with something further on in my life because I could have been doing something fun instead of writing this. Any ways let’s get back to the main topic for this post: Feudalism and the Dark Ages.

Book of the Lion:

At the start of the unit we were given a book to read. It’s title is: Book of the Lion. The book is based off an adventure of a crusader and his journey to get to the Crusade. Every third of the book we had to complete our role sheet. There’s were three in total. An illustrator role where you would draw something you read in the book. Below is my illustration.

The second role was a connector role where you had to connect some part of the story to a real event, an experience that you’ve had and a movie, book or piece of literature or media. The third role was an investigator. You had to find a word or passage in the book that you were interested in deepening your knowledge in and research it, I researched war hammers. Like the one below.

It wasn’t my favourite book because the start and the end were a little boring but in the middle I was hooked.

Here’s a the cover.

Quilts:

Our main project for the unit was to make quilts with a story tied to them. It was a group project. In my group were Taylor, Anika, and Nik. We had to start off by brainstorming ideas for a story based in Medieval times with two sides to it by having to separate main characters that meet in the story at a certain point in time. Our story was about a Christian man who’s wife got kidnaped and taken to Jerusalem. She escapes her captors and ends up in a farm close to Jerusalem where a Muslim finds her and takes her in. Her husband meanwhile plans a trip to Jerusalem with some hired knights to rescue her. When he stumbles upon the house his wife has been staying at he starts fighting her rescuer thinking he’s her captor. After she tells him to stop and explains what’s happening they al become friends and the Christian man and his wife go back home.

After that we had make designs that would sort of tell the story on a square and piece them together into a quilt. Once they were sown together, we added somethings to spice them up and that was our finished project. Below are pictures of us with the quilt.

Heroes: 

To create the story we needed a hero and a villlain. Since we needed a hero we needed to learn about how to create a fictional hero and how stories revolve around the hero. We had to learn about the hero’s journey.

We learned that if you look at any story either from Disney movies or from teenage books, the hero’s journey is always there. The picture above shows the cycle a hero goes through.

They start off in a boring, familiar world. The next step, they discover a person or an object that tells them about an interesting world. At first they don’t want to go because they’re scared that something will happen. Eventually they give in and leave their boring world. On the way to the interesting world they meet a mentor who has gone through a similar journey and will help them along the way. The mentor, then, eventually has to set off and the protagonist is left to make their own friends but at the same time make new enemies. After meeting their allies and friends who will help the protagonist along the way, and their enemies that will try and stop the main character from achieving their goal, they will start approaching their main challenge, where everything starts getting harder and harder. They then finally meet their nemesis or their biggest fear, that they will have to overcome. After beating their biggest enemy, they get the reward. They then have to start going back to their normal world. They come back a different person, usually better and wiser. They then will start their journey all over again.

Percy Jackson was probably my favourite hero as a kid. (Above).

While we were learning about the hero’s journey we found out that the hero’s journey is the same in every story because it makes stories relatable to humans. We go through a hero’s journey every day, wether it be your afraid of heights or it’s a hockey game.

Myths:

During the unit we also learned about myths. Myths are a stories that are based off tradition and come from a truth/fact or they can be completely fictional. Many myths come from religions or are old myths when humans looked for explanations of natural events since they weren’t as technologically nor scientifically advanced as we are today. Below are some famous Ancient Greek myths explaining things or exaggerating a real event.

Well, you have reached the end of this post, so good luck with the ones coming up. See you soon on my next blog post.