As usual we were told to do something new and exiting so we had to do reaserch da da da. We were given a website to search for people who died fighting in World War I. I then found a man named Matthew Humphrey Archer who had a ton of information on him.
The Manhattan Project was the first thing we learnt about this year and it got the full PLP treatment. We started this unit with watching small clips from various sources like a Disney movie explaining how uranium works and a modern video about the long term effects of radiation. And of course projects galore like this letter we had to write:
Dear Churchill
I have recently been sent to Los Alamos to complete my mission of finding out exactly what these Americans have been up to.
My journey started with a long bus ride to the remote town and research facility of Los Alamos there I was allowed to walk around freely with only a hand full of tasks to complete, for most I was only to report to certain building. My first stop was to the guest house and was rather uneventful as the only thing I did there was talk to a slim man smoking outside. He told me that Gen. Leslie Groves had stayed there when he visited lots Alamos.
Next I was to visit Ashley pond on my way I looked out over the Sangre de cristo mountains in the distance. Once I arrived at Ashley pond they upgraded my clearance! I couldn’t believe it, I was extremely pleased to receive such hospitality. Once making my way down to D building, this is where they did most of their metallurgy, as a result the building is dust prof and air conditioned. Once there my clearance was upgraded again. Once I looked through all the buildings I came across a bus headed to test ‘the gadget’. Once I got there I looked around and saw it suspended above the ground from a large tower. After I had inspected the sight I walked back onto the bus and we drove to a safe distance. It staggered me how far we drove before we stopped and I thought the Americans crazy. But when the bomb went off I could see why. It was a massive explosion like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The Americans truly have a devastating power in their hands.
Alexander Reginald
So I’ve mentioned the first 2 points of PLP so now it’s time for the third, field studies. This time Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes decided to go to one of the old reactors from World War II. The B reactor at Hanford was their first choice as it’s close and was a very big contributor to the project. Unfortunately I had a conflict so I couldn’t go on this trip but I was at school while they were gone. My job while they were gone was to research my topic but once they got back I changed my topic. Not to mention the substitute teacher didn’t even show up for 2 of the 3 days. However I am still very proud of the final product that I poured of a lot of time into after the rest of my group got back.
Embedded video here. (Need to speak to Teva)
You may be wondering what contribution to the project was. Well we decided each person should get a topic to cover and my topic was the one about Lula Little which meant I did all the research and writing for it.
Something I would do different next time would be better communication between people and a more clear vision from the start.
So this time we decided to do something different, a imovie. With a plot and everything. We have everything a normal World War I movie needs slight racism towards Germany, assassination of Franz Ferdinand and a classy narrator in front of a fireplace. But to make a movie we needed something juicy to base it upon so we wrote a thesis.
Our thesis: Germany’s drive for industrialization and desire to become a world empire caused World War One. Our points included the colonialism that Germany wanted in Africa and Asia and its interference in the Balkan trade.
I learnt a lot about the different oppinions and views of the different countries in the Balkans and how Germany influenced them. I also found some really good videos that I took inspiration from. You have to understand that Germany wanted to be more than just a country they wanted to be an empire. This was in large part due to the fact they weren’t really taken seriously by the other powers in Europe. Although this video is obviously not meant to be serious it does show the key points with Germany’s inner and outer struggle.
https://youtu.be/VZT5BasdrQo
The video
If you were wondering what we were saying during the rap here are the lyrics.
Austria: Oh yea?
I’m your ruler I run these streets
But that’s obvious when I spit on these beats
Having two kings is better than one
And when we kill you it will be so much fun
Serbia:
You ain’t gonna with those lame ass rhymes
They’re so bad they should be a crime
Trust me the Black Hand won’t be so kind
And your dumb ass kings can kiss my behind
Germany:
Guys stop fighting
This isn’t the right thing
This is getting to heated
I don’t wanna be defeated
Can’t we all just be friends
I want this to end
Recently I have been watching a lot of crash course on YouTube to study for a history test so when Ms. Willemse asked us to do a blog post on the Laurier era I decided to do it in that format. The topic I chose was how immigration to Canada contributed to regional disparity and was quite hard to research so I had to infer most of the information from charts of jobs and income per city.
Actually making the video was the easiest part and I was surprised by how professional it looked because I thought the lighting was going to make it look bad but I’m very impressed by what I did. If I was to do this again I would add an animation like the “thought bubble” segment in crash but as most of my time was research i didn’t have time.
In the overview there will be links to what I talked about.
The reason I’m holding up the iPad is just a style choose to contrast what most people do.
https://youtu.be/luTQkUrchec
Here is an overview of what I said in the video.
How did immigration to Canada help spread out the wealth to certain provinces but not others?
Canada has an unbelievable amount of natural resources like oil, metals and of course lumber all untouched when it first became a country. During this time the Canadians decided they wanted to super boost their economy. Their solution to this? An open door immigration policy and advertising campaign across Europe encouraging people to move to “the last best west” which referred to the prairies and some of the north west territories. They wanted to encourage farming and agriculture there because of all the empty farm land.
Soon the population skyrocketed and thus began the golden years of Canadian history known as the Laurier era. To illustrate how effective this policy and advertising was the population of non aboriginals in the last best west went from 1000 in the 1870s to over 56,000 in 1881. And this nearly doubled by 1891.
And that’s just one example if you look at British Columbia at this time period they were taking a massive amount of Chinese immigrants to work on the pacific railway and today in Alberta with the need of workers for the oil sands.
Now those natural resources were being used and labour was no longer hard to come by. However immigration lead to a problem: regional disparity.
Regional disparity can best be described by this graph of different industries in the prairies and maritimes.
This demonstrates the effects people can have on a country when they move there and how an increase of people in one place can mean a drop in business for another.
This summer I went on a amazing holiday with my family as well as seeing my friends and working. On holiday I went sailing to the gulf islands and Howe sound. We had great fun sailing between the islands where we went to new and exiting places to meet new and exciting people, like this crazy guy on saltspring island offering me the ability to time travel.
For work I got hired by my dad to help him build computer systems using salesforce. This proved to by quite a rewarding experience and I really enjoyed my time doing it. It was also fun responding to my dads employees troubleshooting.
If you are reading this something went terribly wrong, I lost the printed version.
Hello parents, teacher welcome. This is now my fourth student led conference and this time around ms Willemse asked us to do something rather different than previous slcs. Today I am going to be focusing on two projects instead of three. One I am extremely proud of and one where I could have improved on.
An honourable mention for work I’m proud of is my experience without Hughes and Willemse blog post. I am proud of this and I think it’s pretty funny but I didn’t want to do half my SLC on it. If you haven’t read it yet I think you should.
First up is my blue sky project. I am extremely proud of this project and the final product that came with it. It’s great to be able to work so hard on something that I am passionate about and be able to share it with lots of people. To me this is what flight is all about. This project obviously conveys a lot of effort but to hammer the nail home. The blog post I made is all about how you would make a sword. Even this is an understatement of the amount of work that went into it just ask my parents. Because I also had to make the forge to heat it up in. The growth shown by this project is not only a growth of character and skill but it opened my eyes to a key aspect in learning. That is making do with what you have no matter what. Even though my parents were very kind in spending the time and money they did there was still limitations and obstacles to overcome. This means I wasn’t only dealing with trail and error but also discovering new ways round a problem that I was having. For example to polish the blade I was using a file for most of it which took a lot of time so I tried using a sander and it worked although I did go through about have a roll of sand paper.
Next up I just wanted to quickly mention podcast. I will be handing a final final final draft in on Thursday on top of the one I have in now just to add in some things I feel are missing and fixing my voiceover.
So next up is great big, *cough*cough* I mean little big story. In particular number one while I could have improved on two I think over all it is pretty solid which is mainly due to my mum giving me the chance to interview Jane which was a great opportunity and the project would not have been the same without her. But my main focus is number one. I am not particularly proud of this one because I feel I didn’t dedicate enough time on it because I spent most of my after school time doing blue sky and what time I did give to LBS I gave to number two. I think this is a perfect example of not enough effort on my part and honestly it looks like something a none PLP student would do and hand in. If I had a time machine and went back to do it again I think I would have done a better job of hunting down someone to interview and put in more visual aids like I did in two. I would have also added another minute to it. The only thing I feel is good about it is all the cinematic shots of the trail and the time lapses.
My goals since last SLC were to get my mark up which I have done and to become a better listener in classes like math and Spanish and I feel Spanish especially I have been handing in more projects and getting better on tests. I’m not sure how this will reflect on my report card but hopefully it shows.
Any questions?
Of all the apps and websites our teacher has sent us over the past two years my favourite and possibly most useful one has been great big story. This is a news app that’s very different from anything that I’ve seen before. They tells stories from all around the globe in short videos that are usually around 3 minutes long. It is a great app and I recommend you check it out, here is the link.
After showing the app to the class she asked us to make our own great big story as our next project. But instead of doing just one, we were tasked with making two. This I feel was the one downfall of this project. I feel that if we didn’t have to split our time doing two we could have perfected one.
Out of the two I did I think my second one is the better one as I had the pleasure to interview Jane an amazing women with a brain tumour. She had a great story to tell but unfortunately she did not want her interview posted on the internet. But I can show the first one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-jzQgR8kc&feature=youtu.be
link
It’s a Friday morning everything is cold, my heart is racing. My head was filled with nothing but thoughts of where I was heading. As I approached the school I saw an empty flight room, chairs stacked, lights out and doors locked. I turn away from the cold classroom pushing memories once joyful out of my head, they contained nothing more than sour thoughts now. I couldn’t remember a time I was this depressed on a Friday. It was less than twenty four hours since ms Willemse and mr Hughes had abandoned us for the warm embrace of the south but we felt the emptiness already. It started with me, Harry, Tylo, Nolan, Elena, Mike and Griffin. As we were crowded into the back of the chill library by an unfamiliar voice belonging to an unfamiliar face it dawned on me that this was the beginning of the end. Despite all these signs the nail in the coffin was ms Willemse’s handwriting on the whiteboard it seemed rushed and it was smudged in places. Just as all hope seems lost and I begin to except the abyss, I hear: “Wanna freestyle guys?”
This beginning was a foreboding one, the beginning of a week that would leave a taste of bitterness and regret in the mouths of those who stayed.
The rapture of flight now seemed like a distant memory of a former life, what memories why did have were of an eternity of nothingness occupied occasionally with a freestyle verse. These were our only light in the dark, we clung to them like they were the only thing we had.
On the third day of our new life word came from the other side. The words spoken from beyond the vale rang out like bell tolls over a lonely castle. At first it was hard to understand what the voice was saying for they used a word someone like me, an unchosen, would not know. I still hear the voice in my head, I try to curse it out but it remains haunting the halls and rooms of my mind.
“Mr Hughes fell from a Segway and broke his leg. How will stay in the profaned city of Atlanta for some time to come.”
This news pierced my heart and sent me into a momentary trance broken only by a sarcastic remark and stifled laughs that in the silence seemed as loud as gunshots. I was left taken aback, shocked. Once the shock went away I was left with nothing except questions.
I got a lot of questions about how I made my sword and what kind of tools I used. So without further ado here is a recipe for a basic sword.
How to make a basic sword.
Materials:
Metal
Wood
Forge of some kind
Pommel
Hammer
Anvil
File/grinder/sander
Step 1
First you need to get the metal to the shape you want. You can do this by cutting or forging the metal. This will depend on what kind of metal you use. If you are using a ingot then you will have to forge it but if you started with a piece of metal that is roughly the right shape already then you can just cut it.
Step 2
Now you want to bevel the blade. This can be done by hand by heating up the middle piece by piece and hammering the edges. However this method takes a lot of skill and time. Another option is grind of file it down with your choose of tool. For this you can use an angle grinder, file, sander or belt grinder.
Step 3
Now it’s time to polish the blade. If you used the second method in the last all that you have to do is polish the middle. But if you used the first you will have to polish the whole blade with one of the tools mentioned in step 2.
Step 4
Forging the cross guard is a step with a lot of freedom but what I recommend is making it out of a cut piece of metal with holes drilled in it.
Step 5
Making the handle has a lot of variation in different techniques and styles. This step is purely your choice on how you go about it. This is the way I did it: I chiseled two pieces of wood so they would fit on the tang then I shaped it to a handle shape.
Step 6
Once you are pleased with your sword it is time to heat treat. You do this by heating up the whole blade until it is hot enough that a magnet no longer sticks to it. Once it is hot you plunge it into oil. Motor oil or peanut oil is best.
Step 7
Heat treating is fairly simple just heat the blade at about 425 degrees F until it’s golden brown. You can even do this In the oven if you wish.
Step 8
The pommel can be made of anything but metal is best suited as it is heavier. Forge or carve it to the shape you desire.
Step 9
Assemble the sword by slipping the cross guard and handle over the tang and screw or glue on the pommel to seal it all in.
here is a video of me doing it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVEz-oFoH64