Tag: Reflection Post

MPOL 2023

quinnLeave a comment

Wow the school year is halfway done, I’m in disbelief. I feel like we just started the first semester. Since we are halfway done our semester we have a classic PLP event, the MPOL (Mid Year Presentation of Learning). Since this is my seventh or eighth POL (presentation of learning), Im not going to explain it, but you can go read one of my previous posts where I explain it in depth here.

Intro: Why are we so destructive. From the time we can walk, we our knocking toys down, and p over. Throughout history people have spent huge amounts of resources in order to destroy each other’s villages, towns, and cities. As our societies evolved so did our ability to destroy. Fire became gunpowder, then dynamite, then firebombs. Finally we came up with the ultimate destructive power, the atomic bomb. While it destroyed ended the lives of tens of thousands of people, and flattened cities, why should we care? Intro Alt: Destruction, it created the world we live in today. Rich forests, cut down to build our towns and cities. Lush meadows plowed to create farmland to feed us. Wild rivers, dammed to power and irrigate our cities. Every amenity we take for granted today required something to be destroyed to make it. But at what point does this destruction become to much. I think we can all agree we need to cut some forests down to build our houses, or convert some of our coast into ports and industrial zones. But how about when we have to destroy these same amenities of others, even cause them suffering. How about when it requires killing them. How about 150,000. This was the price we paid to end the Second World War. The destruction of two entire cities, full of innocent people. There were children Body: Evidence 1: The explosions of the atomic bomb were not the only important part. The invention and construction of these bombs were incredibly taxing economically, environmentally, and socially. The extraction of uranium is incredibly destructive both to our health and the environment. Uranium is both radioactive as well as chemically toxic. Mining it often leads to contaminated water sources which can ruin ecosystems as well as our health. So why do we use such a powerful resource, which can take such a toll on the environment to extract, just to destroy each other? Evidence 2: There is no better example of our destructive capabilities as humans then the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These bombings are incredibly significant in our history. They killed well over 100,000 people, Brought and end to WWII, and changed the future of warfare. These bombings were more complicated then being good or bad. Did the positives outweigh the Negatives? What even are the positives and negatives? These are all questions we must ask ourselves when were considering the implications of Nuclear Weapons in warfare. Evidence 3: Nuclear Weapons undoubtedly changed warfare forever. In the last 75 years there has not been a single large scale conflict between major powers. While this seems like a good thing, we need to consider why is this? Could the destruction of an eventual conflict between these two powers destroy our whole planet? Conclusion: So why is the manhattan project important. I think it is because it is the perfect representation of our destructive nature and capabilities. It was. a project with the sole intent of developing a bomb capable of killing millions. Is the potential destruction of us as a species worth the peace we’ve had in recent years? This is why we need to care, so we can answer questions like these, and hopefully use the positive technologies developed by the manhattan project, and leave the destructive ones in the past.

This has been a strange year, at least in terms of PLP. This is the least amount of PLP courses I have ever taken. When I look back at the year I feel like we haven’t done that much yet, even though we have done quite a bit. I think its because of PLP’s slower progression compared to my other academic courses. Even thought there is a logical reason as to why there has been slow progression in this course, I still feel like I FAILed. Also going through my assignments I don’t have very much media I can include in this post. Most of our projects were in person presentations, these styles of assignments don’t leave me much evidence of my work.

Now I didn’t truly fail at people however I don’t think I worked up to my full potential either. Ive missed a bunch of my last two projects to factors I have no control over. I dont think my Macbeth project was anywhere near as good as it should have been. I think I need to prove my strengths in our current Cold War project but at the moment I’m a bit behind in that project as well. Over the next 5 weeks of this term I need to pull together this Cold War Project into something I’m truly proud of, something which showcases my strengths and potential as a learner.

My greatest accomplishments since the last POL weren’t in PLP courses. Many of my other accomplishments, helped me develop skills which I can use in this course. 

My first accomplishment was my completion and high mark (at least for me) in chemistry and precalc.

I spent a lot of time working on these two courses in the last semester. They were two of the most challenging, and complicated courses I have ever taken. While they taught me how to calculate the zero of a parabola, or analyze the bond structure of an organic molecule, the most valuable thing they taught me were study habits. During the busiest weeks, I was spending around 4 hours a night on just those two courses. Spending all this time studying really helped me figure out some study routines, and methods which work for me. This semester I’m going to try to use them while working on PLP assignments. 

I have begun to realize that many commonly suggested methods of study don’t work well for me. I’ve heard so many people suggest that you should take frequent breaks while studying. This doesn’t work for me. In order to effectively complete work I need to get on a roll, in general that means a 1-2 hour period with no breaks and then an extended break. This gets a lot easier If I’m interested in the subject. Sometimes I can work for 3-4 hours straight on subjects Im super interested in them. I also need to work while its quiet. I can’t effectively compete work while theres people coming and going from my house, or talking even in another room. My least efficient work times are at school though. I can’t focus on most assignments at school, particularly assignments which require a lot of thinking. One other little study method for me is to work in cold environments. Kind of random but it actually helps me a lot. 

In order to apply these methods to PLP, I am going to have to adapt them. The most important factors are focusing on making my topics interesting, making sure I can work in a flow state while doing my work, and starting my work after exercising and eating. Over the next semester I will be dedicating 1-2 hours later in the evening to just PLP work a few times a week. The best times to do this work will either be in the evenings when my brother is at volleyball, or later in the night (after 9pm). At both of these times the house is very quiet and I can easily get homework done without interruption.

Another one of my accomplishments was my drastic improvements and dedication to my wildlife photography. If you’ve been following this blog you know I’m super into wildlife photography, last spring I did a podcast on it for a project (go check out the post here). Since then I would say I have improved a ton. I’ve spent hours talking to pros, and other amateurs about all sorts of topics. I have learned so much, and have been able to utilize that learning to improve my work in so many ways. The dedication, learning, and perseverance I have learned in the last few months could really benefit me in PLP. 

  • A bald eagle looking for fish from its perch
  • A wood duck enjoying an evening nap

Above you can see my images from spring last year, and below our my images from this winter. You can see the technical and compositional improvement between the two sliders.

  •  

Now obviously I’m not going to be mentally capable of treating school the same way I treat wildlife photography. The only reason I can spend so long, in brutal weather conditions shooting animals (with my camera), is because I’m truly passionate about it. I wont be able to spark the same passion for PLP. I do think I can trick myself into being passionate about certain projects by incorporating these topics I am passionate about, such as conservation, ecology, and animal behaviour into my projects in some way or another. I am currently doing that in my coldest war project. It’s not sparking my passion the same way the podcast did though. My podcast was the work I was most proud of, and that’s because I actually cared about. Now obviously I care about all my schoolwork, but I don’t necessarily care about the content, I just care about completing it to a certain standard. With the podcast I actually wanted people to hear it, Ive even considered continuing it for a second season, or revamping it. I need to find that passion in more projects this year.

Another goal for the last half of the year is to improve my blog. I want to make this a place I can use as a portfolio when applying for university. In order to improve this I will need to work on the main format of my page, as well as going back and recategorizing old posts. I will try and record more media when

My main goal for the next semester is to be more invested in my work. I want to be creating assignments I am proud of, assignments I want to share with the world. This will require me to be more efficient with my time and find ways to keep myself involved in my work even when I’m not super interested.

SLOW DOWN!

quinnLeave a comment

Would you kill someone, if you knew it would save 10 people? How about if you had to press a button which would kill 100,000, but save a million? This was the key question I asked my classmates to convince them that the Manhattan Project is extremely historically significant. 

Hi everyone, and welcome back to my blog. we just completed our first project of grade 11. As you now know we studied the Manhattan Project (if you don’t know what that is refer to the link here). So for this project we had to write a speech. Now if you know me, you would know I’m not a quiet or shy person. I have no problem discussing topics in front of large groups of people, or presenting projects to my class. However I’ve never written or presented a true speech, and this meant I had a lot to learn. 

Writing a speech is not the same as writing a presentation or essay. It’s almost like a whole other form of writing. I’ve began to think of it as similar to poetry. You have to consider the weight of your language, how your speech will flow, and how your words will effect your tone. Considering all these elements really pushed me to become a better writer. The first big challenge I came across was my introduction. I needed a hook which could be tied into the conclusion, and invoked emotion in the audience. I would say I spent almost half the time on my speech just on my introduction. I knew it was the most important part. If I didn’t have a good introduction my whole speech was doomed for failure. 

I had to overcome another major obstacle during this project. I needed to slow down. Typically I speak very fast. Like a lot of people can’t keep up fast. Like a YouTube video played at 2x speed fast. This is terrible for a speech. If you speak this fast during a speech the audience wont be able to take anything in. Your words will hold no weight. While the recommended word count for our speech was 400 words for our 4 minute speech. I knew I would have to write more. Even if I slowed down my speaking as much as I could, I wouldn’t even come close to that time. So I decided I would speak as slow as I could and keep my speech to about 500 words. After refining my speech, I practiced, and practiced, and practiced. After an agonizing amount of slowing my speech down I got up to the 4 minute mark. It hurt my head to speak that slow, but I knew my speech was long enough. Until it was time to present. 

The final time for my speech was something like 3 minutes and 10 seconds. While its still not crazy far off the target time, it was way to fast. I failed on the time objective. But that’s fine. We all need a First Attempt In Learning. This was only my first real speech, and I know I can get better over time. In fact I want to get better. I know public speaking can be a huge asset in future careers and in general life. In our next project I will make sure to work even more on speaking at that mind numbingly slow rate. The most important thing I took away from this project wasn’t that the manhattan project is historically significant. But that I can and must continue to develop all my forms of communication. 

 

TPOL 2022

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

The year is almost over and summer is about to start. Before the year ends I have one key assignment. TPOL (Transitional Presentation Of Learning) this is similar to my MPOL (Mid year Presentation Of Learning) However TPOL’s are more focused on recapping the whole year and discussing how I can achieve growth in the next school year. 

This school year was are third year in a row of adjusting to a new schedule, rules, and challenges. We finally moved past COVID which is so exciting! We also were once again allowed to compete against other schools in sports. One of my favourite experiences this year was being apart of the Seycove Junior Boys Basketball Team. We had a tough season but there was a few great games in there and I got a lot better. Another great thing about COVID restrictions lifting was the reinstatement of field schools. We had the opportunity to go to Loon Lake Lodge. Even though we barely left Vancouver Loon Lake was an amazing experience. I cant wait for more field schools next year (New Mexico 2022)! 

Loon Lake was incredibly beautiful

One of my biggest goals this year was Consistency. I often get extremely focused and invested in certain assignments and completely neglect others. This became quite a problem early on in grade 10 and caused my average quality of work to go down. I have got better at this throughout the year however I still need to keep working on this into next year. One thing I need to focus on is making sure I deliver consistent high quality work throughout a project. This was evident in project Podcast. I would say episode 1 and 2 were my best episodes and episode 3 was my worst. I dont think the quality suffered to much but I definitely could have improved episode 3 and 4. Below you can check out episode 1 (top) and episode 4 (bottom) to see the difference. Next year I will focus on continually delivering consistent work throughout a project. 

One goal which I achieved in the last semester is growth. This is evident in both my school work and extra curricular. My best work from this semester, podcast, zine and Portrait, is much better then my best work from the last semester, political party project, Romeo and Juliet and our memorial proposal. One place I really saw growth was the difference between my work for the winter exhibition and the spring exhibition (will be linked once posted). My presentations were more clear, my product was better, and our area was decorated better. All in all, I am quite proud of the growth I have achieved this semester.  

My portrait from the spring exhibition

Along with growth balance was another one of my major goals. This meant giving myself an adequate amount of time to practice my other hobbies. I got better at that this semester and it really helped me focus on my photography. I got a lot better at shooting wildlife, and started learning about studio photography. This balance actually helped my school work. Notably being able to include my photos in my zine, as well as use my knowledge of photography for my podcast. Even though I got better at balancing my school and extra curricular this semester. I have a long way to go if I am to achieve the grades I want next year.

This school year has been a strange year and I feel like both everything has changed and nothing has changed. I did well this year but I want to do much better next year as grade 11 is very important for your future. See you in September!

Loon Lake Advance 2022

quinn2 Comments

Hi everyone,

Two weeks ago we just returned from an iconic PLP experience which we lacked for the past 2 years. Can you guess what I’m talking about? Of course I’m talking about an overnight field study. These are a core part of the PLP experience. If you have been around my blog for awhile, and when I say awhile I mean since October 2019 when I was just 5 foot 4 and COVID didn’t repeatedly torture us all, you would know we went to Oregon on a 7 day field study. This was definitely the most fun I’ve ever had learning in “school”. Anyways we went to loon lake retreat. It is located near golden ears park and Mapleridge. 

Location of Loon Lake

So before I get onto the learning which unless you’re my teachers won’t be the most interesting part of this blog post. I want to give you a recap of the highlights of the trip. 

The view from 1 minute outside of our lodge

04/04/22 around 11am we loaded onto the bus and departed Seycove Secondary. However we weren’t heading straight to loon lake. We were going to Popeyes for lunch. The food was great but it still didn’t compare to what we did next. We stopped at Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey. This was the highlight of the day and possibly my favourite activity on the trip. I love raptors and spend a lot of time observing and photographing them, especially Bald Eagles and Barred Owls. At this stop we got to see many different Raptor Species including a white morph Gyrfalcon. An extremely rare bird from the icy north of Canada and Greenland. We also got to see a Harris Hawk, the wolf of the sky. We learned many interesting things about Raptor Conservation and why they keep these birds on there property. Overall extremely interesting 10/10 would recommend if you like birds and are in Vancouver. Then we arrived at the lake got settled in, ate and did some learning. I also watched the March Madness Finals, extremely exciting but how did UNC lose. I was so disappointed. Caleb Love was truly awful. Please leave a comment below about March Madness or NBA playoffs. I would love to discuss those. 

A Peregrine Falcon at Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey Centre

04/05/22 This was our first of two full days at the retreat (but in PLP we don’t retreat we advance.) This day included 6 hours of outdoor activities. After Breakfast we met up and got split up into our activity groups. My first activity was canoeing. It was my favourite activity of the day and was very peaceful. We learned strokes such as the Forward, Pry, Draw, and J strokes. These are all used to effectively steer a canoe. Something I didn’t realize was difficult or complicated until then. I really loved sitting out in the lake in the cool spring morning as the sun peaked through the clouds. After that we did Archery, it was cool but I already do it quite often while camping. Then after lunch we did high ropes. This was interesting and a great opportunity to push my comfort zone. Finally we wrapped up the day with climbing which was a great workout. Then we set our goals for the rest of the advance. Something I will touch on later. 

 

The Canoes on the dock

 

04/06/22 This was a day of learning and working towards our goals. My goal which by the way was not a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely), my goal lacked all but relevant. It’s hard to put into words but it was about reflecting on my growth as a learner in order to stay on track towards growing as well as holding myself accountable for other goals. I had some opportunities this day to work towards it. However it was hard to make serious progress to a goal this long term in a day. I think setting a more achievable and timely goal would definitely have made it easier to grow on this advance.

The reflective lake was very reflective

04/07/22 Our final day. We spent the morning learning and packing up. Then we had lunch and drove to the extreme airpark. It was super fun and a great workout. After that we returned home sleep deprived and hungry. 

A photo from a little photo walk we did. It was supposed to be a challenge but I would have won to easily so we didn’t vote.

So as previously hinted this trip was about advancing (cause in PLP we never retreat only advance) and you know what I advanced. Not in the way I originally planned to but it was remarkable progress. The two biggest ways I advanced was in my mindfulness and note taking. These might seem remarkably different but they both came as by products of my not so great goal. How you might be wondering? While I asked myself the same thing. But I’ve come to the conclusion it came from me starting to develop my goal while canoeing. Out on the water we practiced mindfulness and it really set the tone for the rest of the day. Then that night I began using our note taking app, craft to reflect on our experiences in the day. While doing this I came to the conclusion that being more mindful led to me having better reflections and notes. Those last two achievements lend to me feeling like I made a ton of progress growing as a learner that day. Now you might be able to see how my goal was linked to these two but I probably should have focused on taking better notes during lessons instead of other goal. 

Just enjoy my incredible photography

Loon Lake was definitely a great experience and acted a bit of a teaser for our bigger trip in grade 11 (New Mexico?) It also taught me so much more then I expected and truly helped me grow as a learner.

-Loon Lake was a blast 

Canada’s Dark Past Out West

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a fantastic time over the holidays and stayed safe. It has been strange getting an extra week off. But hopefully going back to school goes well and we all stay healthy. If you’re reading this post you probably heard about the PLP winter exhibition. Maybe you even went and checked out. Anyways it went quite well and I feel like I learned a lot. 

So over the last two months we finally got to go back out on field studies. Even though they were not over night and we just remained in Vancouver it was nice to go back out of the classroom. We got to go to six super interesting places all around Vancouver. We learned quite a lot about three cultures. As well as the hardships and injustices they faced in Canadas past. As the people of China, India, and Japan arrived in Canada they were met with hostility. I was shocked to learn just how many terrible injustices these groups of people faced in the past. One injustice which truly stood out to me was the horrifying conditions Chinese Canadians were subjected to in the late 19th and early 20th century. It began with Chinese Canadians being  forced to pay a large tax in order to immigrate to Canada. Then they were forced to live in the worst areas of towns (typically swampy, industrial areas) and faced anti-asian racism. Many of them also were tricked into working on the Canadian Pacific Railway. They were promised good fortune and high wages but ended up being paid extremely low wages and were forced to do the most dangerous jobs.

This brings us to the exhibition. My group which included, Dries, Julien, and Erin was tasked with creating a memorial for the Chinese Canadians. We decided on creating a giant railroad spike. You can see a photo of the model below. 

This spike would be placed in across from the Canadian Pacific Railway station in downtown Vancouver. It would be in a park surrounded my vegetation in order to increase public traffic around the spike. At the spike there would be plaques with information about the racism Chinese Canadians faced in the past. There would also be information about how that racism continues to this day. See location below. 

If I was to pitch this idea to city council I would probably make some minor safety edits to the spike. As well as change the location because apparently that park will be the site of a hospital in the future. I would likely need to hire an engineer and a city planner to help find a suitable safe location for the spike. The location would also need to hold significance just as the train station did. 

We chose a spike for our memorial as we wanted to create a powerful and simple visual piece which memorializes the hardships Chinese Canadians faced in the past. We wanted to show the ugly history of one of our nations greatest triumphs and most important pieces of infrastructures. Even though the railway connected our nations coasts, it drove apart our people. 

The struggle in Vancouver Waters

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

We just started a new project called the Ology of Apology. With this project we are lucky enough to go on six day trips around Vancouver. You can follow these trips along in real if you go follow the @plpseycove instagram account. For our first trip we went to a Sikh temple and the Punjabi Market. At the Sikh temple we visited an exhibit dedicated to the Komagata Maru. 

If you don’t know what the Komagata Maru is I would suggest watching the video below. So at the exhibit we learned about the the history of South Asians and particularly Sikhs in Canada. After this we got to experience a sliver of South Asian culture at the Punjabi market. It was really incredible to see all these stores selling traditional Indian food and goods. One thing which really stuck out to me after learning about the Komagata Maru was that the Canadian and BC governments did not offer good apologies for these events even after 100 plus years. 

Apologies are really important. Especially to a community like the South Asians and particularly Indians. They weren’t allowed entry into Canada even though they were apart of the British Empire. A good apology could help spark a change and prevent anything like this from happening again. Then discovered the terrible apology the Canadian Government offered the Sikhs. Even though eventually the Canadian Government offered a better apology its still is terrible that it took them so long to do so.

Originally I had troubles relating the Komagata Maru incident to my life. I mean it was 107 years ago and didn’t affect any one of my relatives or family members. But then after the trip to the Punjabi Market I realized how it was relevant today. We need to interact with many different communities to build a complete worldview. We should never exclude a group of people due to where they came from or the colour of there skin. The Komagata Maru incident really serves as a reminder of the danger of only interacting with people who look and think the same as you. I also began to think of how my ancestors would have been some of the people in Vancouver. Hearing the White Canadian perspective about this ship and while I have no clue about what their opinions on the ship would have been. I know that if they interacted with the Indian community they would see the problem with this incident. 

Memorializing people and events of the past is a great way to help those affected as well as remind the public of the importance of not repeating our past wrongs. We need memorialize the courage and bravery of these men onboard the Komagata Maru as well as the Sikh community in Vancouver. We need to document the struggle of both the individuals and the community as a whole as a reminder of our past wrongs. 

How can we do better?

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

We just finished our first project this year. If you’ve kept up with my blog you will already know what this project is, in short. We had to create political parties with classmates to fix an issue we had with our current system of government. I created the traditionalist party of Canada with a few classmates, go read about it here. It was interesting to go into detail about how our government works. I gained a perspective on why it was so much more complicated to fix current issues through doing so. 

Above is our party video, you can watch it for a brief summary on our party. But I would strongly recommend reading my in depth post about the Traditionalist party of Canada as it will make this post much easier to understand.

Working with a group who has all kinds of opinions is challenging to say the least. But it really gave me a perspective on why it so difficult to make major changes in society. I was only working with 4 other students and we often had troubles agreeing on what issues were important and how we should solve them. I really had to do my research to avoid digging myself into holes when pitching my ideas to my group and teachers. I found some really good sources about housing affordability and wealth inequality. You can check them out below. 

As this is a PLP project we had a driving question it was “How Should We Govern Ourselves.” Actually through reading some articles about photography I managed to connect it with the driving question and I came up with this answer “We should govern ourselves in away which connects us together and aids everyone. Instead of trying to change the past we should embrace it and learn from our mistakes. We should find out what is important to us and use that to connect us all and make a better Canada for everyone.” You can check out my notes on the importance of photography which lead me to this answer here.

I found it very interesting researching housing affordability and the wealth gap. It was also fascinating to learn about other democratic systems of voting such as proportional representation. In my first post for this project I reflected on the election and related it to a research topic of choice. I chose to research how are election could of been changed and bettered by the use of proportional representative voting. This post really taught me how many different ways one can run there government. It also made me aware how our current system of government often favours the rich and majorities. I never quite realized how minorities have such a hard time getting a say in government. 

I think we can do better and that it will be my generation who will have to start a change in government to benefit Canada as a whole. Thanks for reading and have a good day!

Why We Need To Change Canadian Elections, Now!

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

With the Canadian Election Coming to a close I have been reflecting on the results. After two weeks of learning about how the Canadian government is structured and how the election process works I have some interesting ideas. These ideas have helped me better understand the democratic process in Canada. The sources I used to research statistics about proportional representation voting were fairvote and Ace Project.

My main idea is why Canada should abolish the current first past the post voting system. In order to understand why we need to change the Canadian Election System we first to understand how it works. Canada is both a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. This means that Canada elects our leaders but the Queen is our head of state. Instead of the leader who got the most votes winning the election. The leader who’s party wins the most ridings gets to lead Canada. Ridings are smaller sections of Canada. In each of these ridings we elect one MP (Member of Parliament) to the house of commons.

The 2019 election map

I believe Canada should abolish this system as it doesn’t always represent what the majority of the country wants. Canadas current system simply doesn’t respect the popular vote. I never quite realized how significant this was until I looked at this years election results. The Conservative Party won the popular vote but the liberals won 32 more seats. This seems insane to me. The Conservatives got over 200,000 more votes then the Liberals. That’s a similar population to the Kelowna metro area! This clearly shows that Canadians as a whole favoured the conservatives while certain areas, where their votes have more influence preferred the liberals. I don’t think this represents Canadas fundamental freedoms. Particularly free and fair elections and equality rights. No one person’s vote should carry more power then another’s vote. Our current elections are not completely fair. The other way this system is exploited is how parties focus on swing ridings. Swing ridings are ridings where the vote is very close between parties. Therefore parties focus more energy campaigning there in order to gain more support. Riding which are safe seats, this means that they typically elect the same party, get less focus during campaigns. This leads to these areas being under represented. Check out more information on swing ridings in Canada here.

Although it says BC on this chart Canada’s federal election tell a similar story.

This Graph came from fairvote

If you’re wondering whether ditching this system works, it does! Many developed nations have moved onto this system and experienced many benefits. Countries which no longer use the first past the post system have 7% higher voter turnout. It also much more likely that an individual helps elect a representative. In Sweden 95% of voters help elect a representative, while in Canada just over 50% get this privilege. Abandoning this system will also force parties to collaborate with each other and pool there resources. This leads to more decisions reflecting the overall opinions of the country. 

Changing the system would have so many benefits. Not only would elections be more fair, voters would be more encouraged to go out and vote. Particularly in ridings which normally vote the same party in to office. If a party gets 30% of the votes, they get to make 30% of the decisions in government. This would force parties to work together and it would help lead to better representations for all Canadians of different socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds.

I first started questioning this systems when I was looking at the student vote results. I thought the NDP had won as they had the most votes. Then one of my classmates pointed out to me that the liberals won. This shocked me as both the conservatives and NDP had more votes then them. It wasn’t a small difference, the Conservatives had 10,000 more votes then the liberals and the NDP had 35000 more votes. That is a significant difference. The student vote only involved around 800,000 students.

Student Vote Results

One of my biggest issues with our current system is how we use the first past the post vote. This simply means that only one candidate can win in each riding. It doesn’t matter how many votes the other candidates have. This leads to voter inequality. Ridings are not organized based on collective interest. In many ridings, such as my own (Burnaby-North Seymour) there is very different interests among separate areas of the riding. Burnaby and Seymour’s respective populations are quite different socio-economically. If two candidates both get a large number of votes they should be able to represent us together. I think that this would lead to more even representation.

A good example of a riding where two candidates were both popular is in the West Vancouver, Sunshine Coast and Sea to Sky Country Riding. Liberal Candidate Patrick Weiler had 19,424 votes or 33.6% of the vote. While Conservative Candidate John Weston had 17,247 votes or 30.2% of the vote. That’s a tiny difference and it is clear they are both fit to represent their people. Check out the results across different ridings in canada here.

Of course switching electoral systems would require a lot of work but I think it would make Canada a better place. Certain peoples votes shouldn’t carry more weight then others just because they live in different places. Canada needs to change electoral systems now to better represent the people living here.

The Moments and People of the War

quinnLeave a comment

Hello everyone,

It’s been awhile since my last post. No I’m not done with the blog, I have just been taking other classes. The last month has been filled with lots of learning and work. We have been studying WWI and an artifact and telling the story of these with the personal story of a soldier. 

Making the final video involved a lot of time, hard work and revisions. We began with being introduced to the project and our artifacts. My artifact was the Canadian War Photos. The creation of any video has to begin with information and ideas. How do you obtain these? Through research, we used the Canadian war archives to find soldiers to add to our videos. We also took deeper dives into are artifacts. One particular activity which helped me was a video call with a curator from the Canadian War Museum named Jocelyn. After researching you must gather media such as photos, videos and audio. All photos and videos of WWI are copyright free so that was very helpful. After this we have to began creating our first draft. For me this was inputting some general photo and video clips over my first draft of my script. Finally we move into revisions. I found these very helpful as it gave me time to see what I could improve in my videos. Through both peer and teacher feedback. 

My Artifact a Canadian War Photo

If you’ve watched my videos you already know about my artifact. Some key facts are that it was sent to seycove by the Canadian War Museum. It was one of 8,000 taken by professional photographers during the War. The most useful resource for learning about these was our call with Jocelyn the War Museum curator. I learned more about how the photos were acquired, as well as how they were used during the war.

If you haven’t watched my video by this point in the post I would strongly recommend it. The video provides a lot of key information needed to understand this post. 

After watching my video you may be wondering why I chose my soldier. Frank Oxley Button happens to be my great-great-grandfather. All the information about him after the war came from my Grandmother and my Great aunt. They were both extremely helpful in the creation of this video and I would like to thank them. If you would like to check out Frank’s war file you can find it here.

Frank Oxley Button receiving a Certificate

Below here lies the competencies we were assessed on for this project.

This competency is all about communication. I think my best example of this competency was my final video. I feel like it used technology to communicate in a creative and meaningful way. I do feel that all video drafts helped me perfect this competency. 

This competency was all about us exploring the historical significance of our artifacts and soldiers. These are the parts of this project I feel I demonstrated this competency the best. When I first researched our artifacts and soldiers. In addition to my screenplay. 

Throughout the duration of this project I learned so much! This learning includes both skills and knowledge. Some of the areas I feel I improved the most were video skills, and an understanding of how the war shaped Canada. One area I could still work on would be my time management skill as I often find myself finishing work the night before. After taking all this into consideration I now feel prepared to answer the driving question. “How might we use artifacts and film to show the significance of WWI?” This Project taught me that by exploring past footage and photos we can discover the significance of an event. Additionally we can connect the past to the present and hopefully have a better idea of why the world is what it is today.

TPOL 2020

quinnLeave a comment

Hi everyone,

We are now wrapping up the 2019-2020 school year. This was grade 8 for me. Terms 1 & 2 were fairly normal terms but term 3 was the odd one. As you all know the coronavirus pandemic has forced most cities to go into lockdown. This has made term 3 very different and challenging. But as we did in the middle of this school year, we are doing another presentation of learning. 

We’ve completed many projects since our mpols. I think I have completed all that work to the standard set by our teachers. I’ve found it more difficult during online schooling though. It’s tougher to be motivated to do your absolute best on assignment when your trapped and bored. Although, the biggest challenge I’ve faced is organization. I often turn in assignments late because I haven’t organized myself well enough. The other reason for this is I’ve found it hard to prioritize during this period. I often don’t know what I should do next and I spend to long on one thing which isn’t due for a couple of days and then I don’t have enough time to do the assignments which is due sooner and I just get really stressed and everything ends up being late. What I believe I need to do fix this is time block my calendar and list assignments based on priority in the app things. 

This is the app things

One of my biggest accomplishments this year was my improvement in blog posts. If you check one of my blog posts from the student blogging challenge, or my Oregon post you can see they aren’t nearly as good as recent blog posts, such as my argh matey, or DI blog posts. 

Overall I have achieved my academic goal for this year, straight A’s (except for art, but that doesn’t count). I made that a goal as that was what I got in grade 7 so I wanted to keep that up. I also think getting straight A’s shows commitment to academics. In order to achieve this I had to complete all my assignments close to the best of my ability. I also needed to show a growth mindset. One great example of this was in my it’s the end of the world project where we needed to sing a song. That was not something I wanted to do. I was very nervous but I kept an open mind and I think I did a good job. 

If you read my mpol post you will remember that I had to come up with a learning goal for the end of the year that goal was “how can I use the resources I have to improve my productivity and keep a good school/life balance?” I have made a few steps towards that goal but I still think it’s my learning goal for next year. During the second term I got better at maintaining a good school/life balance. But during quarantine it all kind of blurred together. One the things I got quite good at using by the end of the second term was the app things. I would organize all my work and know when it was due so I would have less stressful nights working on an assignment due the next day. I did not use things very effectively over the last few months which is one of the main factors to my lack of organization. 

This year we learned about advertising and religion at the start of the year. Then we moved onto some eras in history. The Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration, and the colonial times in New France. We used so many methods of presentation throughout those projects. From songs, to stories, to keynote, we learned how to use text and speech to communicate. I feel I have done a good job in Humanities this year. I believe my best project was my Middle Ages project. 

Throughout Scimatics we have learned tons of interesting things. Such as, graphs, surface area and volume, cells and diseases, and molecules. My best work in scimatics this year was either in our molecules unit, or in our Ultimate design challenge. 

This is my model of a surfboard for the ultimate design challenge

Maker has consisted of many different types of projects. We went from learning about growth mindset, and how to use our iPads basic features, to blue sky’s, and then the most challenging of all, DI. I learned many valuable skills in Maker but I think my best work was in our Blue Sky projects. I studied my topic intensely and learned many skills, and my design skills improved a lot. Another thing maker especially has taught me about is how to handle lots of pressure and stress. Thank you exhibitions and DI for teaching me this.  

PGP is one of those subjects you don’t really notice your doing a lot. I think we haven’t learned much about PGP since the mpols though.

To summarize this blog post, I still need to work on my time management and organization. I have learned a lot this year and have a lot to be proud of. I will look back at this year and be like wow, I learned so much in grade 8. That wraps up this year of learning. I will still have a couple of blog posts coming in the next week or so.

 

My learning goal is the same for next year as it was for the end of this year: “how can I use the resources I have to improve my productivity and keep a good school/life balance?”