This is another recap of a project called the medium is the message. This project was all about advertising. Our driving question was “how does what we read hear and see influence us”. This was the first big project for Humanities and we were all just getting into high school so most of our class was clueless and this brings us to our first Milestone.

Milestone one, this was the first milestone and to be honest I really did not know what to do. We watched an advertisement called “welcome home”. We then had to dissect this and show our understanding of the target audience and what message they used to reach their target audience. This was a fail (first attempt in learning), we say this because we just got into a new project and we were just getting to know the basics.

Milestone two, this milestone was surveying people that are not in your demographic. I chose to survey my mom. Like I thought we did not have the same perspective. We had different tastes in clothing and different perspectives in advertising. I learned that demographics can have impacts of what we think about advertising. I feel that most people have the same perspectives in advertising but different things could make the perspectives more broad.

Milestone three, this task was to make a chart and simply watch television. We were to record ads into this chart and show how they used either pathos which is a advertising strategy that uses emotional appeal, logos which uses logic, reason, statistics and facts and ethos which is when the advertiser makes you trust them. We also recorded some other strategies that the advertisers use. I saw that most of the time our classes advertisements we related to their particular channel. My channel was a sports channel so I got a lot of sponsors for the sports team advertising.

Milestone four, this milestone we wrote up an analysis for a book we read called “The Highest Tide”. We had to connect this to advertising like identifying literary techniques like pathos, logos and ethos. Another thing we had to find is some techniques that are different from pathos, logos and ethos.

Milestone five/six, these milestones were completed in Oregon. We made an ad for our local area business a couple weeks before this and this was for a business in Oregon. These milestones showed our shared understanding. We made many, many drafts and critiqued each other. We said things like you could add or have you tried doing this. Eventually we wrapped these up and that was the end of our first Humanities project of grade 8.

This was my first draft of my local business advertisement compared to the last.

This was my first draft of the Oregon advertisement compared to my final draft.

This post today is about a unit maker that we just finished in school. You may be thinking, what is maker?. Maker is a subject exclusive to our program called PLP. It consists of designing being a good digital citizen and of course making things. I would like to show you what we have made in our project called “The Power of A Pencil”. This project was about using our apple pencils.

The first milestone in this project was name art. This was pretty cool and I enjoyed it a lot. I started off with my name in big block letters and then I added some two point perspective and I filled the letters in with the fill tool in sketches pro. It was still a bit blank so I changed the colour of the background and added some texture.

Milestone two was about taking sketch notes. We watched a video called “The Power of Belief” and we took sketch note on it. The big things about this was the lettering, connectors and symbols.

The third milestone was making a self portrait of ourselves. We utilized the layers feature in sketches pro. I tried my best with the shading. This does not really look like me, it’s a little bit scary but it helped me learn more about shading.

The fourth milestone was drawing a fruit bowl. Like the self portrait we used layers to trace the real life version. In this project we used lots of colour this time and the blending of colours with shading.

In the fifth milestone we had to make a logo. This logo represents me because I like baseball. For this we used an apple app called “Keynote”. This was about using symbols, shapes, colours and text to represent your company.

The most important thing about this project was the competency being assessed and that was about being an empowered learner. I have felt empowered by the apps that I have been using. I am lucky that I get to use these because they are so powerful. In my name art for example, it would have taken so much longer to make that if I did it on a piece of paper. It is just so easy to switch tools and create layers so this also made me like drawing more. I have learned that you are not limited of capabilities when you are on a iPad. This unit was super fun and I would like to take the things I learned and put that into what I do normally.

Today I will be talking about the incredible past field trip I went on to Oregon. As you may know I live in Vancouver and Oregon is a decent length from home. We were to set off on October 19th and come back on October 25th. The furthest south we went was Newport Oregon, before we went here we took a stop at Astoria for a night. Overall I though this trip was very exciting and would definitely go back to Oregon if I had the chance. 

For this trip we had three driving questions, the first was how did you manage your impulsivity. The second was how did you persist and the third and final was how did you work interdependently.

For managing your impulsivity I think that this happened on the bus. At some points on the ride it got really loud, so loud that I just wanted to yell “shut-up!”. I managed my impulsivity and did not shout out, I just put my headphones on and pumped up the music. The second question was about persisting, when this really showed the most I think was when we were at Fort Stevens. Don’t get me wrong, this place was really cool and I got a good bit out of it but my legs were just aching, I was hungry and my feet were uncomfortable from wearing boots. The third question was about working interdependently, this happened in two groups of people. One was for an Oregon business interview and the other was a group for quests. The interview group was with Julien, Erin and Quinn. I think that this group was very good because we have been in that group since the start of the school year. In this group at our interview we worked very well, everyone had a job and we executed it well. For our quest group I think that we got better each quest we did. I think the reason that we got better is because everyone got a task and when everyone stuck to that task we did well.

Day one started off with an early wake and early departure as we left school on a Saturday at 6:15 in the morning. We set off all half asleep but excited for the journey ahead. Our first stop was the USA and Canada border. This took longer than expected and actually made us miss a stop in Washington. We drove for a few hours and stopped at the Columbia river and the Astoria-Megler Bridge. This bridge is the longest truss bridge in North America and goes from Washington to Oregon. We made it to Astoria and checked out the Astoria column and went inside. At the end of that day we went to have pizza on the beach and that was the day. We slept at Fort Stevens State Park in yurts and that was day one. As this was our first day we had to learn to work together with the five people in our yurt. I think that we all had to manage our impulsivity because there were people in the state park that might have actually wanted to sleep so we had to keep the noise level down. I think that this day was the loudest out of any of the yurts but I think we were still relatively quiet.

Day two started off with breakfast of course and then we went to the mouth of the Columbia river (the south jetty to be exact) and we took some photos. Next we headed to Fort Stevens historic area and we got a tour of the fort and this was a pretty cool opportunity. After taking the tour we headed to what I think the highlight of the trip was and that was Highlife Adventures Zip-lines. This place was awesome and like nothing I have been to before. This place had a Zip-line spanning 1000 feet and some through the trees and one even into a lake. We were all pretty worn out after this and so we ended the day off with some Thai food at Nisa’s Thai Kitchen. This food was amazing and also it was cool when Nisa come out with flaming beef, yes beef that is literally on fire. We spent our last night in Astoria at the same state park. This day for managing your impulsivity was better, we learned to work together and kept the yurt at a low noise level. 

Day three was jam packed, it started off with a stop at the Columbia river maritime museum and this place was really cool. We got to try on suits that the Coast Guard uses to keep warm while swimming in the freezing cold water. Next up was a long drive to canon beach. When we arrived it was super windy and rainy. We decided to still go even though it was terrible weather. When we got on the beach it was even more windy, so windy in fact the wind held me up when I fell back into it. I thought that was pretty fun but I don’t know about others. Next was a drive from Canon Beach to Tillamook. We made it to Tillamook and we went to the Tillamook creamery. This is the main Tillamook cheese factory and you could see the steps in making cheese and people actually working through glass. We then drove from Tillamook to Newport and stayed at South Beach State Park in yurts again. This day for me was a lot of persistence, the bus was loud and I could feel the sound but I just tried to let it go and focus on something else.

Day four we did some looking around at the state park and the beach. For lunch this day we had really good fish and chips. These were one of the best fish and chips I have ever had if not the best. Our afternoon was taken up by a visit to the Hatfield Marine Science Center. We had three classes, Animal Adaptations, Speedy Science and Assemble A Whale. These were all very fun but my favourite was the Speedy Science because you got to race crabs and what’s more fun than racing crabs. This day ended at the same state park as before. This day had lots of working interdependently, I think that I could have been more into the working and gave in some more ideas.

Day five was another visit to the Hatfield Marine Science Center and this was awesome. We made R.O.V machines (remotely operated vehicles) and and drove them around in some water tanks. After this we checked out the visitors centre and this place had some cool stuff like a tsunami machine, an octopus and a pool with sea stars, sea anemones and sea urchins. Our next stop was the Yaquina Head. This place was unbelievable, the views were breathtaking. Words couldn’t describe how amazing this place was. There was a cobble beach and it was super natural, there were seals and urchins and we even saw a dead bird. This place was probably my favourite destination. We headed to a place called Beverly Beach so see the sunset and wrap up an incredible day. This day I think my working interdependently got better, our group didn’t argue and we finished a our R.O.V before everyone else.

Day six was a lot of driving, we stopped at Depoe Bay where the worlds smallest harbour is and we went to some shops to check them out. What I noticed about this place is that the community has quite a strong bond. There were lots of nice people and that’s what really stood out to me. After taking a stop here we drove up to Washington where our next stop would be John’s Incredible Pizza Company. I don’t know who John is but I sure know that he has an incredible pizza company. This place was a buffet but it had and arcade and even rides inside. Next we had another long drive to Ike Kinswa State Park this time we stayed in cabins and they had lots more room than yurts. This day was more of a just chill day so I didn’t have any situations that were part of the driving questions.

Our on our last day we went to northwest trek and this place had some cool animals like bisons, moose, elk and deer. This place is not like a zoo though, they have animals in here that can just roam free in the forest and that is why this place is so amazing. We were on the final stretch and had about a four hour drive but it didn’t feel that long to me, probably because we had so many long drives that I just got used to it. We made it back home all in one piece and we were all exhausted after that amazing journey.