Now that we have past the first week of this project its time to reflect on what we have done so far. We have made it halfway through a project called “Storm the Barricades” you might be thinking, what is that? Well, this project is all about revolutions specifically the American and French Revolution. The driving question is “How do revolutions transform societies?” So let me talk about how we have shown the answer to that so far.

This project started off by building knowledge about Crane Brintons Theory of Revolution. Essentially this theory is broken down into four stages, he first stage being the “Incubation” stage or “The Old Order”. Here is where the economic crisis happens and the government increases taxes. Next is the “First Stage” or “Moderate Regime”. Here is where there is a financial breakdown and a symbolic action or dramatic event. The government responds in force and then that leads to the “Crisis Stage” or “Radical Regime”. Here is where the civil war starts and everything falls apart. It then comes to a centralization of power and then leads to the “Recovery Stage” or “Thermidorian Reaction”. Here is where the government is formed by moderates and it resembles the old regime but is a bit different. Everything returns to quieter times and it possibly could happen again. 

Knowing this we then moved into building a Rube Goldberg machine if you dont know what that is then click the link on that text. My group is with Annie, Liam and Ethan. For this Rube Goldberg we were supposed to represent Crane Brinton’s theory through a Rube Goldberg machine. So with a little bit of elbow grease we created our first Rube Goldberg machine.

After our first Rube Goldberg machine we learned all about the American revolution and then we were asked to modify our first machine to fit the American revolution. After a day of hard work we were done modifying what was now the American revolution in Rube Goldberg form. The first part represented society falling down in a economic crisis. The second part was the pulley that pulls the tax collector up who is covered in tar and feathers. On the other side of the pulley it represents the Americans beating the British in the revolutionary war. Next it knocks down dominos to trigger a ball rolling down into a house representing George Washington in power and it also brings down and American flag representing the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

So far this project has been very interesting and I’ve learned many things that I never thought happened. The second half should match this to some extent so that means I will learn even more, but that also means the project end blog post so be on the look out for that next week.

Following the onset if the pandemic it forced schools to shut down, but now that we have gotten it mostly under control schools are back in business and that means its time to dust off my blog. Now on to the topic of this post. We just finished a project called “Running A Remake”. I will also like to add that this project was completed in a span of 3 DAYS. So what was this project about?, well this project was all about film and we asked to make an exact replica of a short horror film called “Run!”. The driving question was “How might we learn video skills by recreating a short film”.

You can watch the original film below:

The project started off by creating a video to introduce ourselves. This was done on an Apple app called “Clips” we used this to create a short video about who we are. This teaches you that story is always the most important thing because nobody wants to watch a video that has no meaning or point. The challenge with this was probably the timeframe but since it was not particularly hard it was not hard to get it done on time.

Now onto the thing that this project was all about. I was put in a group with Nya, Dries and Keenan. We firstly had to create a plan for how we were going to create the film. This plan included writing down the shots we needed and how long they lasted for. We then planned out what costumes we needed for each character. The next day we then set out first thing in the morning to film. In my mind I was thinking that we couldn’t waste time because in my experience it takes way longer than you think to get enough shots to make a film. What was good is that all of our group was on the same page and we ended up finishing with a bit of time to spare before break. That first film day we learned that the angles of the shots were very important to recreating the film. The next part in the recreation of “Run!” was to edit it and we used the Apple app “iMovie”. The biggest challenge we came across in this part was lining it up with the original video. This part was really tedious but I thought in the end it was pretty accurate.

The next day was the day to re-shoot and re-edit. This day was much easier than the day before since we knew the original video very well and had already made a draft. This day we got shots that made much more sense than the last ones. We had the main subject running in the same direction the whole time and we got more accurate angles and thats because we focused on this a lot more the second time. Once we got to editing its was much more easier than the day before because our other video had accurate length scenes so we could just match the new ones to the length of the new ones. This time the video came out much better than the last and we were all well satisfied.

You can watch our film below:

In the end I thought this project was a good introduction into film and film theory. Our group worked well and efficiently together to put together a video that we are all proud of. This marks the end of this three day project but be sure to look back next week for the next project. See you next time!

Halfway through the year we have done so much in school, this is the time where we have our mid year presentation of learning. The driving question for this project is “What is your learning goal that you want to reach by the end of this school year, and how will you meet it?”. My learning goal is to not be stressed with work. I will meet this goal by doing my work spread out instead of all at once at the last minute and to be able to do this consistently. With the first projects in PLP I quickly learned that I wasn’t going to have as much free time as before. Our Humanities Project, Maker Project and Scimatics Project were more than I have done in school at one time ever up to this point.

In Humanities we so far have completed two projects the first being The Medium is the Message project and our Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door project. Starting with the Medium is the Message project where it was all about advertising. In this project I failed multiple times. On my ads that I made for my businesses I revised many times but this lead to a very well made and refined advertisement. I found out early on that PLP work is very sophisticated and I realized that it would take a lot longer for me to develop skills to meet the expectations for all projects. As for the Knockin’ on Heavens Door project I found this quite boring because it was very repetitive in my opinion. A thing that I did like about this was the physical aspect of actually going to temples and getting to see in person what a religion is like. In this class I am striving to improve my create competency.

The class i’ll talk about is Maker, so far we have done the Big Life Journal Project, the Power of A Pencil project and our Star Wars Mini Blue Sky project. In the Big Life journal project I think that it has helped me with my mindset and goals and also giving me more confidence by opening up my creativity and generating ideas so this project taught me some valuable life lessons and I think that this project was appropriate at the start of the year. The Power of A Pencil project was quite fun and some of the artwork that I saw from my classmates blew me away. I think I could have done better at this in terms of the quality of my work. People were very into this project and so I saw that those people were the ones that succeeded and so that is what I want to incorporate into my learning. The latest project the we finished was the Star Wars Mini Blue Sky Project and this project was stressful. I found that it was a lot harder to work on than other projects because we were basically making our own project inside of another project. In this class I am striving to improve my empowered learner competency.

The next course is Scimatics, in this class we have done our fractions of your time project, tectonics book project and our mazer tag project. In the fractions of your time project I could say that I struggled a bit but I was still grasping the concept of PLP and doing math on an iPad. The second project is something that I really think I could have done better and that is the tectonics book. This also is connects to the evaluating competency which is to demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence. The mazer tag project was the latest Scimatics project we completed and I enjoyed this project. I think I had a good understanding of the concept of lasers and enjoyed the project.

The final course is PGP (Personal Growth Plan), this is the course I am going to be particularly striving to better myself at. A huge part of this course was our oregon trip which we were assessed on by four competencies persisting which was persevering in task through to completion, remaining focused. Looking for ways to reach your goal when stuck. Not giving up. The next was Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful and deliberative. Thinking about Thinking (Metacognition), Being aware of your own thoughts, strategies, feelings and actions and their effects on others. The third was Questioning and Posing Problems which is having a questioning attitude, knowing what data are needed and developing questioning strategies to produce those data. Finding problems to solve. The final one was Thinking Interdependently which is being able to work in and learn from others in reciprocal situations. Team work. The big ones that I think I need to work on is Thinking interdependently and Questioning and posing problems.

This week is all about celebrations and festivities and the first thing I will be sharing is a photo of my favourite celebration.

PublicDomainPictures / Pixabay

My favourite celebration is Christmas. This photo first of all is pretty high quality like most pictures on pixabay. This is a picture of some ornaments in white Christmas tree background. This photo really reminds me of snow and I’m starting to get hyped up for Christmas.

The next part is a poem that I made.

This weeks blogging challenge is about emojis. The first thing on my post is emoji art and I made an emoji in sketches pro.

The second thing is a emoji math puzzle, test you math skills and try to solve this puzzle!

The next and final thing is a emoji meaning guessing game.

The answer key can be found below.

Thanks for going through my student blogging challenge post. See you in week 7!