Monthly Archives: November 2018

Christmas has 9 parties in my family!!! (Week 8 of SBC)

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Christmas has 9 parties in my family!!! (Week 8 of SBC)

Hello, I’m back.

This week’s challenge was to make a holiday post.

I decided to make mine about  something that my family celebrates.

First thing is that my family is from Colombia. According to them this tradition has its origins there. They’re called Novenas. Now what are these? How my family celebrates it is nine parties in different houses leading up to Christmas Eve where the biggest of the 9 happens. These Novenas come from Catholic traditions. They’re nine days of prayer.

To understand why Novenas before Christmas come from Colombia, is because Colombia has a vast majority of people who are Catholic. My grandparents and my great parents and everybody else before them have been Catholic. My parents however aren’t really believers in a religion anymore even though they were brought up that way.

The Novenas are usually started off with a bit of prayers with some singing here and there, Spanish Christmas songs to be precise. After the prayers comes my second favourite part. The food. The host family makes food for the whole group and other families will bring a few things like dessert or drinks. After the food is my favourite part. We kids are free to go play around or watch a movie.

Eating time at one of the Novenas last year.

 

The Novenas are celebrated with friends and family. You can have 1 family come over or many more. Some of the families we celebrate it with are however more devout Catholics. They always start on December 16th no matter the day of the week. The last day is Christmas Eve.

I was never brought up with any religious beliefs at my house. So personally sitting down in prayer is a bit boring but if they’re your beliefs, go for it as long as you’re not hurting anybody. It also gets a bit more boring for me because I have absolutely no idea what they’re saying throughout the prayers so I just kind of sit there quiet and waiting.

The past few years however I have been missing more  and more novenas. Why? Because I’ve got soccer and hockey, my religions.

Well that’s our tradition. Hope you understood it.

Bye Bye now.

A Metaphorical Revolution!!!

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Hello. We have finished 1 more Humanities project. Methaphor machines. But let’s backtrack a bit to the start of the unit.

Our driving question:

Throughout this unit we have been working on the Industrial Revolution. This was a time where many ideas were flourishing and they were starting to change the way people farmed and lived. So what was our driving question? How do ideas drive change?

Leviathan:

One of our side things throughout the unit and project was the novel study. We read the book Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. Honestly, I recommend, it was a pretty good book and it’s part of a series.

We divided the book into three parts. Chapters 1-14, 15-28, and 29-end. After each week we would get together into groups with different role sheets for each part.

Connector: you make connections between the book and real life or other things.

Coder: you basically draw a scene of the book that you thought was important and wrote why.

Director: you formulate deep and thoughtful questions to discuss with the rest of your group.

The book was chosen because of it’s genre of steampunk. Part of the unit was the industrial and agricultural revolution. Especially in the industrial revolution, steam engines were crucial. That’s kind of why the genre of Leviathan is relevant to the Unit.

Check out my steampunk post at

Steampunk vs Reality: Transportation

Our main task (Metaphor Machines):

Our main project for the unit, was to make a Rube Goldberg Machine (like the one below) and make it a metaphor for a certain revolution. And did I mention that it was a group project, shoutout to my group members Aedan, Anika, Gabby. Now before the video of the Rube Goldberg machine, what is that? It’s machine that causes a chain reaction like dominoes falling and knocking a ball down a pipe and so on.

Scimathics aspect:

The scientific involvement in the project was with electric currents and circuits. Part of our machine had to have a circuit with lights or a small motor on it. We chose to have some lights that turn on when a golf ball knocks down a piece of cardboard separating the wires that when they touch close the circuit and the lights turn on.

While we were doing experiments with the lights,  I may or may not have stuck a tiny lightbulb in an electrical socket. The goal was to see who could light it the brightest and in that aspect I won by far. But it lasted less than a second because it kind of exploded. I quickly realized it was not a good idea.

Now the involvement of math were the scale diagrams we had to draw in order to make our machine. Math’s involvement in the project was very low key but it snuck in there.

Humanities aspect:

Throughout the unit we covered the Industrial Revolution/Agricultural Revolution. At the start we did some studies on what a revolution is. So we learned about Crane Brinton’s Revolution theory. Below is the cycle he describes in his theory. While we learning about it we were told to think of a revolution as a disease. It starts with the symptoms. Then you start feeling them harder and harder until you’re to just really sick. Next it starts going away until you feel better. And finally you’re back to square 1.

We also learned on how all the new inventions created a new incentive to make villages bigger. Factories could now be in cities. At the same time, new inventions in the farms were starting to make farming easier. Also farms were starting to be not huge fields but rectangles or squares fenced off . This started making it harder for poor farmers. Rich farmers would buy the poor farmers lands and get richer. The poor farmers had to then start to migrate to cities in look for jobs.

The final product:

Below is the video of our final product. Hope you enjoy it. By the way, Aedan did pretty much all the editing. That’s probably why he’s so featured in the video. That narcissistic kid. I’m just kidding.

http://youtu.be/xbcAVvM0TOg

You have reached the end of yet another post. See you soon.

Steampunk vs Reality: Transportation

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Steampunk vs Reality: Transportation

Hello I’m back again and it looks like I’m going to be here a lot for the following weeks. My teacher just enrolled us in a blogging challenge🎉. But not really, it’s not my favourite thing to do. Although it doesn’t seem too bad. Anyhow, the main topic for this post is, wait for it, read the title. Transportation in steampunk vs reality.

Well the first of three main different types of transportation is air.

The most iconic steampunk air traveller would be an airship or a kind of zeppelin. We as humans used these for awhile but the problem was we used hydrogen which is flammable. Any tiny spark could blow the ship up. However we think that in a steampunk world it would be the best way.

A U.S. Navy airship likely afloat with hydrogen

 

In modern day however we use airplanes which can come in many different shapes and sizes. Airplanes use fuel based off petroleum most of the time to keep the jet engines going. An advantage of the airplane is that it can be a lot faster than an airship as it relies on the speed to stay aloft.

The second, is land

Cars are part of society nowadays. It’s a necessity for many people. They get better every year, technology and safetty wise. Cars can take us new places quicker than running.

Trains are different than cars though. They as the tankers (below in the water transportation) are made for heavy loads to cross continents.

Steampunk machines for land transport can be very unique. Some are a bit more similar and likely to have happened like the one below though. Gasoline however is more efficient currently than steam for cars otherwise we might have steam engines.

Possible car except with steam engine

 

Some funky looking land vehicles like the one below are very unrealistic. There’s nothing very similar to this that’s real that I know of.

Dead

Mechanical Spider-ish land vehicle]

 

The third and last main transportation method is water:

The thing is in many steampunk worlds you won’t hear much mention of water craft. Earth is mostly covered by water so it was kind of a surprise for me. However you will hear about submarines in some steampunk worlds. In a few of the books I’ve read that were kind of steampunk the submarines were mostly for research purposes. At this point all of them are manned pretty much contrary to modern research ones that can be unmanned and controlled with a computer.

Steampunk submarines, many times are for research.

 

Modern submarines are mostly used for military purposes

 

Water vessels in reality though, are very important. There’s many things humans have created but are impossible to carry through the air and you can’t travel by land if there is no land. The ships like the one right below are used for heavy transport that can carry huge amounts. Lots of people are very against these enormous ships but they carry many things we use in our daily lives.

Tanker ships carry huge containers in big masses, carry oil and gas, and many other things.

 

Another main use for boats today is the fishing industries. Although many fish supplies are becoming scarcer, fishing is still a big industry in many places, like the Pacific North West or the East Coast of Canada.

A commercial fishing boat

 

Well, that’s it for this post, see you soon.

Picture Sources:

Airplane

Airship

Second airship

Modern-day car

Steam locomotive

Steampunk coach

Tanker ship

Fishing boat

Modern submarine

Steampunk submarine

Take Your Kid to Work Day 2018

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Take Your Kid to Work Day 2018

Guess who’s back? It’s me, I haven’t changed. Anyways this blog post is about Take Your Kid to Work Day. It happened a few weeks ago. Apparently it’s a national thing where grade 9s in Canada can go to there parent’s office or like a friend’s parent’s work for a day.

Click the link for a blog I found with some stuff about Take your kid to work day. http://www.thelearningpartnership.ca/about/blog/thank-you-take-our-kids-to-work-day

Take your kid to work day this year was on Wednesday, November 14th. I ended up going to my mom’s office. She works at the City of North Vancouver. They had a morning tour planned for the people that showed up.

First we walked to the fire department that’s only two blocks away, fortunately it wasn’t raining. We stayed there for about 45 minutes and they explained to us there two divisions, a prevention unit and a rescue unit. They showed us a few of the younger firefighters go down the emergency poles. Turns out they actually use these. It was pretty cool watching them just grab on and slide down. They also explained to us the different functions of the different trucks they have. They ended with a video they made of a bunch of archived videos of firefighters in the 50’s in North Vancouver which was pretty cool.

Shoutout to Google Earth
This picture is a screenshot.

 

Next, we went to the North Vancouver Emergency Center for like an hour. They have like the headquarters of the RCMP in North Vancouver. They are one of the three center in the Lower Mainland that receive the 911 class and dispatch them or transfer the caller to another line. Our “tour guide” at the center was in charge of all the Police cars and making sure they’re in working order. We met the highest ranked officer in the station. He’s been working with the RCMP for over 30 years, which is a lot of time. The high ranked officers are called “white shirts” because they’re shirts are white while lower ranked officers have the darker shirts we usually see out on the streets. Our guide took us to several places including the dispatch center. It’s a room full of computers and phones and they answer them and will dispatch officers from that station or can transfer the call to another polic station.

Shoutout to Google Earth
This picture is a screenshot.

 

After the Emergency center we went back to the City Hall.

Shoutout to Google Earth This picture is a screenshot.

 

Our next activity was meeting one of the city’s councillors, Holly Back. Apparently her son is of the district’s councillors. We went to the council room and we made a mock council. We got to sit in some of the councillor’s chairs (they’re very comfortable, but they sometimes have to sit there for hours on end).

Now for one of the best parts of the day we had a pizza lunch 🍕🍕🍕🍕. JK, the tour was quite interesting but after walking the whole morning, sitting down was nice. We had the pizza in one of the conference rooms and the chairs were also really comfortable. They  had a bunch of different features as well. That was the end of the planned day.

After that I stayed there for a few more hours with my mom to make my project which I’m going to explain to you now.

We were tasked with making a sort of live event video except for our parent’s jobs. This part I wasn’t to excited for. As I may have mentioned in the past, making videos isn’t really my thing. Especially when it’s schoolwork. Doing it on your own time and no requirements is more fun and less pressure. However we have to do it.

Anyways that afternoon, my mom had a meeting that was supposed to be like 45 minutes but that ended up almost tripling and ended because somebody else had the conference room booked. Because of this I got to learn quite a bit about of my mom’s projects and I also got some pretty good footage (at least I though it was pretty great). The problem was I need a bit more variety and time to get some pictures or videos but I had to leave for a hockey game. So I had to go the next week on Wednesday to try and finish it.

Here´s my finished video.

https://youtu.be/FVJiWuMZKg8

Well that’s the end of my experience at take your kid to work day. BYE BYE now.

 

Non-copyright images (Week 3 of S.B.C.)

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Non-copyright images (Week 3 of S.B.C.)

Hello I’m back with my third post today. I’m catching up. On a few things and that’s why it’s my third post today. Anyways let’s jump into this week’s task.

Week 3 was all about copyright free images. I chose to write a poem about the image below but also about a previous experience I had playing hockey. I went on Creative Commons and searched “penalty box hockey” and got the picture below on Wikimedia commons. I then saved the image to my camera roll and inserted it into my post. And now it’s right below.

Below is my poem. It’s about a time in a game several years ago where I got really angry at the ref’s call and had a bit of a rage for a few minutes. I got the picture of the hockey player in the box not to happy about his being there.

The ref put his hand up,

and next I knew
He blew his whistle,

pointed at me
And went to the box,

to say it was roughing
The lights were bright,

but the rink was cold
I was a little kid then,

but I was frustrated
because my team was losing,

I headed to my bench
But the ref stopped me,

and changed my direction
My head was heating up,

from my anguish at the ref
I stepped in the box and,

threw my stick and gloves
Took my helmet off,

and tried to storm off.

Hope you enjoyed the poem. See you next post. (Should be coming shortly).

Guess the team with emojis (Week 4 of S.B.C.)

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Guess the team with emojis (Week 4 of S.B.C.)

Hello and welcome back to my blog. A few of the next posts might be in the wrong order as I fell behind a bit. Anyways, let’s get back in to it.

 

 

This week’s task was themed around emojis and their usage. I chose to make a quiz with emojis. My quiz is guess the NHL team with emojis. It was pretty simple but sometimes I needed to put an emoji that doesn’t exactly correspond to what I was trying to get at. Well below is my quiz and answer key will be at the end of the post, don’t cheat.

Quick tip: If you’re stuck, think of what the emojis featured have in common or what they do and your mind will link them up.

How’d you do in the quiz? If you want check out the answer key at the bottom and comment how many you got right.

I personally don’t use many emojis and I’d rather type the words. However lots of people I know constantly use them. They are many times more efficient and quicker to type than words but in my opinion are causing a slight degradation of our languages.

Well I hope you enjoyed my quiz. See you on my next post.

We’re all different on the outside (Week 5 of S.B.C.)

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We’re all different on the outside (Week 5 of S.B.C.)

Hello, this is week 5 of the Student blogging challenge.

This week’s theme was our differences and similarities. Turns out blogging is actually a decent way to realize this. We’re all humans but we like different things. We actually just worked on a unit in Humanities on how the land where we live impacts what we do. Click the box below.

The land is part of our identity (Unit end)

 

I chose to make a video with a few questions to learn a few things about my readers, (I’m not sure I have many).

I was originally going to make a slideshow but that didn’t work. I had gone on keynote and put a few pictures on each slide with arrows pointing at them. You have to choose one of the pictures of what would you rather. I ended up taking screenshots of each slide and making a video out of those.

Well below is my video, I hope you enjoy it.

https://youtu.be/HcEvtjCqjQ0

Comment your answers below.

See you next week,

Luciano