Hello again. We’re so close to Christmas now, it going to be great. However school is still in so here’s my coding experience. Week 9 was all about coding.
What is coding. It’s everything that’s happening behind the scenes in your computer, it’s how developers create games, or write text. Below is a video about coding if you want to learn a bit more.
This week’s task was to try an hour of code activity. Hour of code is also a website with a bunch of different activities for children to help them learn how to code. It’s a pretty cool website, if you want to visit it, hit the link. Hour of code
I did a mine craft activity. It consisted of putting commands in the right order so you could the less possible commands. The commands would make Steve or Alex walk, swim, paddle, or turn. Some commands let you repeat as you wanted which helped quite a bit. Hit the link below for a video of my coding experience.
The activity had 12 levels, each level introduced new more complicated commands but they made the activity simpler. At the end of the 12 levels you receive a certificate.
I’m not sure of knowing and using all the command shortcuts counts as coding but I’m going to say that it does. With older computers a few years ago, I learned to use quite a few command shortcuts instead of having to go to the top of a document and change the format or selecting everything, Because of this I also learned a bit of ASCII code to write some letters that weren’t on a normal keyboard. It’s useful knowing this because it takes less time to type things with the shortcuts. ON my keyboard, if I press and hold command alone, a guide on what to press shows up.
Well that’s the end of this post. See you soon with Week 10.
Hello. Again. This is my week 7 Student Blogging challenge. This week we were just supposed to make a post about something we liked so this is it.
Hockey has always been my favourite sport. I started playing when I was five. I would have one hour sessions every Wednesday at the rink closest to my house. That rink ended up being almost a second home for me, it was my home rink for 8 years. I actually played through some changes at the rink. They added a new arena to the two that were already there and they changed the name of it.
Picture of the rink
The speed of the sport is one of my favourite things about it. It’s unpredictable and momentum changes really fast. Sometimes it can be frustrating that you’re losing but that also means it’s great when you’re winning. When I’m on the ice, I get an adrenaline rush that I don’t get doing anything else.
Hockey frees my mind from homework, school or any other problems. The only problem while I’m playing is losing the game. But I manage to still have fun even when I lose. Obviously it’s better to win but you can’t win everything.
My little brother has also been playing hockey since he was 5. He’s a goalie but we’ve always enjoyed the sport. At home we’ve had a mini hockey area set up for years in our basement. We used to play all the time whenever we were in the house. My dad, my brother and me also have tournaments whenever we can.
That’s why I like the sport. And hopefully I can keep playing for years to come.
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.
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.
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.
Scimathicsaspect:
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.
Humanitiesaspect:
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.
Thefinalproduct:
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.
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.
Airship
Modern-day airplane
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.
Thesecond, island
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.
Modern-day car
Steam locomotive
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Hello I’m back with another post. It’s late by a few months and I just kind let it slip away and here we are now. This post will be about our one week trip to Calgary.
Main reasons for the trip:
1. Learning more about the CPR
Since we drove to Calgary from Vancouver, we passed many important parts of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Since this year’s focus in Humanities was Canada, we have to know about the CPR. The drive gave us many opportunities to see tunnels and the site of the Last Spike and other things. The part of the railway we passed on the drive was the most treacherous stretch of Canadian Railway made. Going through the Rockies, with lots of snow in the winter and wildfires, and mosquitoes in the summer, many died in the construction of the railway. Below are a few pictures.
2. Beakerhead
Beakerhead is an innovation, engineering, arts, and other creative things festival in Calgary. Although I lived 13 years in Calgary I don’t think I ever heard about this festival. It was actually pretty cool and there were a bunch of interesting stations. Below are a few pictures.
Videos we made while we were there:
We were tasked to make like 5 videos throughout the trip. A ghost town video, an enchanted forest video, an identity video and a fossil video. Two of them were in a group and the other two were individual.
In my ghost town video, I was with Kiera, Amelia R., and Gabby. In my enchanted forest video, I was with Kyle, Taylor, Lucy, and Caleb. Check the videos out below.
https://youtu.be/MPxmLIhNsAI
https://youtu.be/jLR4cqKVN0A
https://youtu.be/k38_9mXWsyA
Highlights of the trip:
Probably my favourite part of the entire trip was when Caleb and I ran up a mountain with over a foot of snow near the highest point we got to. Wasn’t very smart of us though since we were two boys running into Grizzly bear territory. However we came out safe. Here are a few pictures of that small adventure.
My next favourite part was probably the one week trip with my best friends. That’s always fun. Although school based something seriously bad had to happen to not enjoy a trip like this one. We got to stay in hotels and the first night with the pool was legendary. I brought along my mini frisbee that last year was thrown off of the Astoria Tower in Oregon (great memories) and this year we also had a mini football. On our stop in the Banff Village, Kyle Jackson and I played football on the field in the middle of Banff with a beautiful view of the mountains. Here are a few pictures.
Most things in Calgary we saw were still the same from when I lived there. I would’ve loved to meet up with a friend while I was there but unfortunately I wasn’t able to. I barely got to say hello to one friend.
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