This is probably most likely the last humanities blog post of the year, I’ve learned so much throughout this year and this has been one of the most interesting units yet!

We started off this unit with reading a very well known book ‘The Lord Of Flies’, I didn’t know what the book was exactly about but the name sounded familiar. Going into the book I thought it was going to be just the average teen novel. However this book is far more than just a easy teen book, The Lord Of Flies deals with heavy topics such as death, and the idea of civilzation. There is a group of kids stranded on a island, throughout the story each kid slowly goes more insane. This book reminded me of one of my favourite movies, “Apocalypse Now”. Each story involves the idea of insanity and that breaking point that every human has inside of them, also that each story includes two groups of people. 

Our first task of this unit was to make groups, yes the whole class decided on the groups. It was quite a struggle at first though, basically what happened is that our teacher Ms. Maxwell left the room and lead us all in charge. We had to organise ourselves in six equal groups, each groups team members had to vary in strenghts and weaknesses. It was very hard to do this as everyone in the class just wanted to be with their close friends so it was quite hectic. The group I was put in consisted of Robbie, Calum, Sofia, Willa and I. I’m pretty happy with my group as it has a wide variety of skills, Each one of us are very strong with several different skills. At the end of this class we had to write a reflection of what had just happened, in my reflection I explained the overall story of how we organised ourselves and the idea of the groups. We organised ourselves based on picking group leaders, those group leaders would then pick members to join their team and then we would adjust if needed. Overall I think all the groups were actually pretty fair based on what we had coming up.

We also had been told that there would be a points reward system for this unit. Teams could earn points by handing in their homework, on time and staying focused in class, etc. And loose points if you swore in class, or handed in homework late. I wasn’t sure what this points system would lead up to but I actually enjoyed it, it added a more competitive element to class time and also lead to some funny situations. 

This unit had three main parts to it, we had to read Lord Of The Flies, learn about politics and Canadian government, and have a unit ending debate. During the process of ready we would have a test every week, we would end up having a week to read about four to five chapters and then would have a group test on the book. If your group got 100% on your test you would win a large amount of points. When I read it usually goes in to my brain and then straight back out, it’s very hard for me to remember what goes on in books so these book tests helped me with this problem. To help me remember important sections of the book I would highlight key phrases or paragraphs and then write them down. This would help me out when answering the tests, the tests were never too hard but there were a handful of questions that needed a lot of knowledge of the book. Overall I’m very proud of how my team did with these tests, we never got 100% but we still did great.

During this unit we also had to learn a lot about human nature and several concepts about humanity, we would end up having to write two concept journals based on certain topics. These concepts can all be seen in the Lord Of The Flies, below you can read my two concept journals. Reading Lord Of The Flies was a great experience, this book is like no other book I’ve had to read in school. It focuses in on children but at the same time it focuses on big concepts about human nature, these concepts would also flow perfectly into debate topics.

To begin learning about governments we had to research about these six different form of government. Theocracy, Oligarchy, Anarchy, Democracy and Monarchy. We then started looking into the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we looked into some of the rules that Canada enforces to their residents. Such had the mobility right where all citizens of Canada are allowed to move through the country freely. This wasn’t my favourite part of this unit but it was still interesting to read about. 

Next up was the debate portion of this unit, we were to be given a topic and then be given a side to this topic. My group was given the main statement as “Let it be resolved that in order to survive you must be savage”. We were to argue against this statement, we were very happy with our side as we could agree with this side of the statement. We created a google doc and filled it with information, below are the points we where to mention in our debate. The tricky part about this debate is that we had no idea what the opposing team was going to say, it was quite exciting as during the debate we were all huddled around each other thinking of what we could say. As I’m generally a quiet person I didn’t speak much in the debate, I really regret this as I could’ve added so much to the conversation and it would’ve been great public speaking practice. I’ve been trying to up my public speaking skills this year as I believe it’s very important at to be able to get up and speak to a group of people. What I had to say in the debate was great I just wish I had taken the time to speak more.

This project was very different to what I am used to, I much prefer projects where we create a video or something else instead of getting up in front of the class and debating over a topic. It’s the first time I’ve done something like this but I can see doing a lot more of this in grade 11. I learned so much in this unit and reflecting back it was probably one of the most different units I’ve ever done in highschool. It really took me out of my comfort zone and I’m very glad with how my team did. Please take a listen to our debate below as it’s very interesting what both teams had to say.

It’s that time of the year again…TPOL time!

Grade 10 is coming to a close as there’s only one whole week left, I can’t even believe it. It feels like just yesterday I joined PLP and was learning how to use an iPad to its full potential. TPOL’s are basically a Presentation of learning, we are meant to showcase our learning over the year and how we’ve grown as a learner. In this post I will be showing some examples of my learning through the year, I’ll be showing you some work I’m proud of, some work that I’m not so proud of.

So to start us off on a good note I’ll show you some pieces of work I’m proud of. Ok so one of our last projects of the year was our year end exhibition. I’m going to use the exhibition as one of my projects I’m proud of because I feel that this was the exhibition where I truely shined.

Through out the whole creation progress of my groups project I was fully involved. I’ll link my blue sky blog post here to give a better description of what actually happened and how the exhibition went. I edited all of my groups podcasts towards the project and I also did a lot of the planning, as we were one bug group of guys who are all friends I also did a lot of the time managing and basically told everyone to stay on task as sometimes we would all talk together and get off task. At the exhibition I wasn’t nervous at all, I feel like through this year I’ve slowly been breaking out of my ‘shell’ and I was actually excited to be showing off the project I’m proud of. I also feel that my groups project was a lot different then all the other projects as ours showed off every single skill we’ve been working on this year. Our main project was a podcast playlist to help guide tourists around deep cove, we worked with our podcasting skills, scriptwriting and story telling skills, our recording skills, and showing empathy. I’m very proud of how I performed in class and at the exhibition with this project and I think it’s the best public speaking related experience I’ve ever done. One of my goals for this year was to break out of that shell and become more comfortable with public speaking, I haven’t completely broken out of that mood yet but I’m happy with how I’m improving.

Another piece of work that I’m happy with is my whole experience and performance at Destination imagination, again I’ll leave a link here to my blogpost I did on it. In my post I talked about how during the early stages of DI I got very sick and actually ended up missing two months of school. This was a massive set back for me as I missed so much of school. I just tried my best when I was sick to stay on top of my work to make sure it didn’t all pile up like at the begging of the year. When I got back to school I got straight to learning my new character in our DI play. From what the judges had to say and from what I heard from the audience I was the star of the show. I had learned all my lines but as soon as I had gotten on stage I realized that even with all my lines there were still long quiet breaks in the skit, so to fix this I improvised on spot and added lines. I believe this is what made the play so good as it added another level of humour to the script. I really do wish I wasn’t sick because I feel really bad that I was t there for my team but I’m very proud with how well I did when I was back.

Now I’ll talk about a few projects I’m not exactly proud of, my first one would probably be my Science astronomy project. The reason why I’m not proud of this project is because it was due just around the same time as blue sky was so I didn’t put much effort into it as I could of. I was so focused on blue sky and all my other projects that I kind of just pushed this one off to the side. I also was t that interested into this project as it was basically just researching that topic and then explains to the class what it is, I felt like it could’ve been just a small assignment in class and not a whole project. I didn’t really understand the project either as the instructions weren’t clear. Looking back I wish I just put more time into this project.

How are stars created ?-yyoy1l

Another project I’m a little disappointed in myself with would probably be the debate. It’s not that I did a bad job I just wish I did more. One of the rules was that each member in your team has to speak at least once, in my whole group we all did talk but I only talked once and at the very end. I’m disappointed in myself as I really wish I would’ve done more as I could’ve added so much to the debate. I’m happy with what I did say but  I could’ve been so much better if I had just spoken more. In my group we were each assigned one section to speak in but I should’ve also done one of the rebuttals as I believe that I just didn’t speak enough. It also would’ve been another great opportunity to increase my public speaking skills. I’m very happy with how my team turned out as we won I just wish I would’ve added more to the conversation.

This year for me has actually been quite challenging, from being sick for a lot of the year and at the beginning of the year I wasn’t really taking school seriously. I was handing in almost all of my work late and the work I was handing in was very poor quality. Now that were near the end of the year I do believe that my work has improved a lot and I actually hand rstuff in on time now and I’ll actually revise it but I still have room for improvement. I also made the goal of speaking more in class and I have improved that a little but but there’s still room for improvement. I’m just generally a quiet guy but over the years I do know that I’m going to get more comfortable with it. Being in PLP is a big privilege and most of this year I believe Ive I wasn’t taking it seriously, in grade 11 I’m looking to over all improve myself all around so that from the get go I am handing in all of my work on time and most importantly that it’s the best work I can possibly do. 

Overall as I learner this year I’ve grown tremendously, I can look back and see my mistakes and there’s no doubt I’m learning from ALL my mistakes. I’ve learned so many skills this year from all the new projects we’ve done with podcasting and public speaking. Most of the projects pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to adapt quickly, I’m so great full for this as I think that it’s impormantbto try new things. PLP has been such a great experience for me and I can’t wait to see what grade 11 has in store for me.

Another week another math project, we’ve recently just finished up our new math project and it was actually very fun. We got to choose our partners and then choose a topic. The overall main idea was to compare three cell phone companies and look at the data plans, then choose three similar plans within the companies. Michael and I chose not to do this as it didn’t really interest us and we knew that basically the whole class would be doing this topic, both of us are really interested in shoes and clothing so we combined our interests into this project. The idea for our project was to take four different models of shoes, see how much they are selling for and then estimate which shoe would be the Best Buy. Each of the shoes we chose have resell value, this means that they are above the retail price and have value. We used a website called StockX to look at the prices of the shoes over the past year. I use StockX a lot so personally I trust this website, I’ve even ordered shoes off of it. StockX is basically a market for shoes where you can buy and sell shoes, it also acts as a stock market for shoes and clothing.

We presented our project as a keynote, we used four shoes in our project and had multiple graphs showing our research and the prices of each shoes over the past year. In the end we found that the ‘Jordan 1 Royal’ is the best shoe to buy, right now the shoe is sitting at around $260-$300 but in the future that price could jump into the thousands. Michael and I worked great together, this project was a little more challenging than the data one as we had to take all four shoes and average them out so that we could predict how much they would be in the future, we also had to find the average monthly price for each shoe. This project was really great as we got to find a way to include our personal interests into a fun and interesting topic. I’m really glad that I chose a different as the data one didn’t sound to interesting to me. I learned a lot about graphing and linear graphs. This has been my favourite math project of the year.

The main assignment for the PLP 10 Planning unit was to do a job shadow assignment, we had to find a job that we could have an interest in and the reach out in the community and find a person working in this job that would be willing to set aside a day to let us do a job shadow. I have no idea what I want to do in the future, at first I had no idea to who I could shadow but I did know that my mom has lots of contacts. I reached out to a couple people that my mum knew through her job, she’s a mortgage specialist for RBC and has made several friends from her clients. One of the people I had contacted was Danny Clark, Danny is a plumber and the owner of DRC Mechanical. He’s a Plumber, Electrician, and he works on several construction sights. I arranged a job shadow with him scheduled or Monday, June fourth. I met him in the morning at around 8 AM, I introduced myself and told him a little bit About PLP and the project that had been given. 

First we went to one of his clients homes, he needed to plan out where the pipes for the toilet and shower would go in a upstairs washroom of a house that was being built. It was really interesting because I actually now understand just how much work it takes to make a house. It involves so many people and so much time. As we were driving to the clients house I asked him several questions such as why and how he came into the trades business and what he finds most enjoyable about his job. He said he loves his job because he doesn’t have to sit in an office all day, he gets to meet new people everyday. His job involves a lot of problem solving and pressure, weirdly enough the said he enjoys being pressured as it forces him to evolve his ideas. After finishing up at his clients house we got back in his car and headed to the district library on Lonsdale. The main water pipes were corroding so he hade to change the valve. It was really interesting as I had got two different sides to his job, I got the standard housing fixtures, but also where he goes out into public buildings. I really liked the aspect of meeting new people through this job, I also loved that every day is different so it never gets repetitive. I wasn’t quite interested in the planning out where the fixtures would go as it was very time consuming and could get very frustrating. I asked Danny a lot of questions about his job as I was actually generally interested in what he had to say, below is a list of the questions I asked and his responses.

I was quite suprised that plumbers earn so much a year, I’d never of known that a plumber could even earn that much in just one year. I agree with Danny that cleaning toilets does not seem fun at all. I’m kinda a germaphobe so I dont think I’d ever want to clean someone else’s toilet but hey, you get paid a lot. This was a great experience, I learned so much about something I never knew could be so interesting. I’m still not sure that I’d want to be a plumber or electrician but it’s definitely a idea. Danny’s a really cool guy and I couldn’t be more thankful for this learning opportunity. There was also another final part to this assignment, we had to write a thank you letter to our person who had taken us alongside them for the day. I spent quite a lot of time on my thank you letter as I was genuinely thankful for what Danny had shown and taught me. My thank you letter is down below and again Danny I cannot thank you enough.

So another science blog post…

In science class we have been learning about the different types of energy especially renewable energy. Obviously we would be given a project for this overall idea, the project was to build a device that could capture energy from nature and use that energy for and everyday use. We would be grouped off into equal groups of four so my group consisted of Sofia, Ethan, Sydney and I. We decided that for the device we would create a water wheel, we would make this water wheel using every day materials like plastic, wood, etc…

This water wheel would be connected to a electrical hand crank that would also be connected to a set of LED lights. We first started off with a draft that would act more like a pulley system, the pulley would turn the hand crank and set off the lights but it never ended up working so that when we went with the water wheel idea.

We first thought of making a bigger water wheel that would fit into a river but instead we focused on making it hand held as it would just be a lot better. We constructed the water wheel out of four solo cups, a container, pvc pipe, and a hand crank. It was generally a pretty easy build, it was just the designing portion that took a while. 

The last part of this project was to make a video advertisement parody, we were to create an advertisement for our product and make it feel like an actual advertisement you’d see on TV. I edited the whole video, it was very easy to edit as advertisements are simple short videos. I just put all the clips together added effects and our graphs and added some background music. This project was very fun as it was so open and I love projects that involve a video aspect to them, I had a lot of fun and I’m proud of what my group came up with.

So last week PLP 10 went on a field trip to the BC Tech Summit, it was held downtown in the convention centre and was there for two days. We went for the second day which was more for the “kids”. We mainly walked around the convention centre talking to young entrepreneurs about their start up company’s or how they are involved in the community. Walking into this experience I didn’t really know why we were going but I’m really glad we got the chance to go. I had a great time walking around the building either playing the games the entrepreneurs had set up or just talking to them about their company, my favourite company that I had found was called frontrvnners. They are a start up clothing company in vancouver, they make and design all their clothes in Vancouver. This really interested me as they had actually got famous rappers like Nav to wear their clothing and advertise them. I’m really into clothing and I had a great talk with their workers. They weren’t just focused on making clothing they also landed deals with artists and photographers that are well known to help build their company. 

We we then went into a main hall and sat down to listen to the main entrepreneurs talk, there were lost of motivational speakers talking about their life stories. My favourite guy who came on stage was probably Brent Bushnell, he introduced his company the Two Bit Circus. Two Bit Circus focuses on virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. What really interested me was that his company has already been making really cool music videos online, the video they made is very impressive and overall he seemed like a really nice genuine guy. After watching a couple more presentations. Another presentation that stood out to me was David Katz, he’s the CEO of Plastic Bank. He started off his presentation with very deep and thoughtful ideas “the last thing the world needs to do is clean the ocean, because we need to first turn off the tap”. I wasn’t exactly sure if I liked his company and the idea of it as he takes ocean plastic and sells it but he poctects a lot of money off of it instead of it being non profit.  He seemed nice and live sin our community of deep cove but I just wasn’t sure on his company.

This is whole experience was very interesting and fun, I hope in the future years of PLP we go to more events like this because I actually learned more about my city and the whole industry of companies and how they work. I also got a lot of free cool merchandise and met really cool people. I had a great time at the BC Tech Summit and would actually like to go again, I learned a lot from listen g to all the motivational speakers. Looking back I can just remember all the great experiences I had at the Tech Summit.

Since we finished our unit on WWl we had been discussing the idea of doing a WWll unit, this blog post will go over the whole experience of creating the final project of this unit.

This unit was very different than all the others this year, there were so many different components. Usually we’ll have a book review and then a podcast or video at the end of the unit showing off what we learned. This unit we both of those and even more, we started off this unit were we left off in the WWl unit. We learned about the after effects of WWl and how it impacted the world leading into WWll. We did lots of research at the begging of the unit so we knew just what WWll was all about. At the same time we had to read a book revolving around different perspectives in WWll, I was in the group for Code Name Verity, after finishing the book we had to create book reviews. You can read mine here.

The main assignment for this project was to make a website, within this website there would be  different pages holding the different countries that were involved in WWll. Each country would be a group of students, the pages within each country would show that countries perspective of the war and other facts about the country. I was in the German group with Sam, Sofia, and Adam.

Unfortunately I was very sick at the beginning of this project before spring break, so when I got back to school I had just been introduced to the project while everyone else had already been working on it. While we researched about are countries we had to take note of which exact websites we were using as we would be citing our sources later in the website.

In class we had to learn exactly how to cite websites, videos, and books properly so that we could use the information we learned from them in our website. Learning how to cite wasn’t fun or interesting to me at all but it’s very very important to know. Later on in this project we would be presenting our website to a World War enthusiast who knows lots about WWll, so while making this website we were very careful and always double checked our notes. We still had a couple more variables to do within this project, One of those variables would be a podcast. The podcast would revolve around a WWll veteran Helmut Lemke coming into our class and telling us his story. We had written some questions that we had given him and he answered them to the best of his ability. After the interview we had to choose a section of the audio recording and turn it into a podcast, you can listen to mine below. This experience really helped me with the Germany page as he gave us his perspective of the war, it really helped me write and put myself in the perspective of a World War Two German. 

We edited our website through a application called weebly, it didn’t work very well on the iPads as it would glitch out and delete our progress. When we tried using it on the computers it worked very nicely and it was very easy to make our website. The app is very smooth and easy to follow for any type of person. We then had to format our page so that it looked the same as everyone’s page. We broke up our text with a good amount with images, and created sections and heading under each section. We revised out page several times so that it looked as good as possible, and so it was also easy to follow.

You can view our website here

We then had to present our website as a class to Ms Kathleen Barter, our teacher Ms Maxwells old English teacher. We all introduced ourself and then went to the front of the class in our groups. My group did well but as we were first up we didn’t really know how it was going to work. It was a great experience as we worked on our presentation skills. This unit was probably in my eyes one of the biggest units we’ve ever had, within this one project we had so many mini assignments. I gained so much knowledge throughout this whole unit and gained upon so many skills. This project was very fun and I can’t wait to see what the last unit of the year will be about.

In class we have been researching and looking into different perspectives of World War ll. We started of this new unit with watching videos and reading articles about WWll, unfortunately I was sick during the beginning of this unit so I had no idea what was happening. Luckily I had plenty of time do do one aspect of what was needed for this new unit. We needed to read a book  that involved perspectives in WWll. Out of the choices we had I chose Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein after reading our book we had to write a review and base the review to look like a review from “New York Times”. We had several examples of different book review from New York Times,  down below is the review I wrote.

Code Name Verity
By: Reid Witham

Code Name Verity is written by is written by Elizabeth Wein, who has also written Rose Under Fire, The Pearl Theif, and Black Dove White Raven. Wein is an American-born writer best known for her young adult historical fiction, her main inspiration for writing is JRR Tolkien who has written some of my favourite books.

In a Code Name Verity, we learn the importance of friendship and just how dark and gloomy War War Two actually was. It tells the story of a female pilot who crash landed in the Nazi occupied France as well as the story of a female spy who has been captured by the Gestapo. These two story lines intertwine and create the grand story that is a Code Name Verity.

This book deals with the topics of the horror of torture, it goes in depth with the sources of torture that the Nazis would use on their enemy’s. It shows the bravery of the French resistance and the joy of high speed flying, the book isn’t all depressing. It had real moments, with characters stories and the true friendship between the two main characters Queenie and Maddie. This book is graphic at times and shows the true horror of story, the imagery is powerful and creates these vivid experiences that stick in your mind “tortured and sent off to be used as a lab specimen”.

The story starts off from the perspective of Queenie, she’s captive and and we figure out that shes a spy. One small problem, she’s been held captured in the Château de Bordeaux hotel. We then strangely figure out that she has no identification papers. Through the excellent writing we know that she’s charming and a funny character. Her captors tell her to write her confession so she writes her story of the pilots who’s plane she was in that crashed. During this section torture is frequently used and like I’ve said it’s brutal. Through Queenie’s writing we discover more about her story and why she’s there, her captor commander Vin Linden gets captured into her story. Within her story we learn that Queenie is an excellent pilot and a loyal companion. Her friendship with Maddie is very strong and they are un seperable“We’re still alive and we make a sensational team,”.

Code Name Verity is a interesting read, at times it was a little confusing as there is lots of dialogue about different engine parts. This can get a little boring at times but I would never generally read a book like this. I found it to be a nice change to read a more “adult book”, I would generally think that this book would appeal to adults more but I definitely do recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topic of War. As I’m a young adult I would more recommend this book to adults and the elderly as it gets quite slow at times. The friendship between Maddie and Queenie is genuine and I could compare it to the relationship of different soldiers in Hollywood war films. My only gripes with the book would be again the excessive use of talk about the equipment they use but I understand why it’s there, and the random sections where the characters will talk about “cute boys” it felt out of place in the book and I feel it was unneeded. Overall I think Code Name Verity is a good read and I don’t think it overstayed it’s welcome, I was mostly engaged the whole read and I’m glad I’ve read it as I do love a good war story. It doesn’t quite meet the “action packed” war story I am used to seeing in movies, but it’s a nice change and in the end looking back on it I’m glad I read it.

DI is back and I’m as stressed as ever, if you didn’t know we already past Regionals for DI and I wasn’t able to join my team in competing as I was very sick. I’ll link back to my team members Aiden, Will, Simon and Alex so that you can read a bit more about our actual project and how they did at regionals. I wasn’t happy at all about not being able to compete in regionals as I felt that we actually had a really good story and overall we were working really well as a team. I have seen videos of how they did in regionals and I am very proud of how well they placed, they got first place in our challenge category. While I was sick I didn’t have much contact with anyone and kept practising my lines for my character and when I got back to school to my surprise Alex was not going to be at provincials. My groups plan was for me to do Alex’s part, I had no problem with that as I still had a week to learn Alex’s lines. During this week before provincials we made several changes to our “atttraction” and some props, as I am much taller than Alex I had to test if I would fit in the boat and surprisingly I did. Simon did make some extra supports to the bottom of the boat as it had broken form previous use, we also re made some of our group signs and some of our lava fish.

If none of this is making sense to you I’ll give you a brief description of what our story is about. The story for our challenge is that somewhere in Hawaii there is a volcano, in this volcano there is a special type of fish that is eating away at the volcano walls. If these lava fish eat any more of the volcano the lava will flow into the local town located under the volcano. Aiden s charceter Dr. With Ham gets a mechanic to build him a carnival ride so that the villagers can fish the lava fish out of the volcano.

So morning of provincials, I was very nervous but excited. I hadn’t experienced DI since the previous year, DI isn’t the greatest thing in the world but it’s not the worst. We practised over our lines and script, our main challenge was at 10 in the morning so we didn’t have much time to practice. We did really well in our presentation with no mess ups, the audience really seemed to like my “dancing” and comedic affects. Down below I’ll, show you our feedback we got. We also did pretty well in our instant challenge. I’m very proud of how we did, we worked really well as a team and this has definitely been my favourite year of DI.

This is a study that DI advertises, its basically about all the benefits that kids get from doing DI, do I agree with it? Yes and No. I do believe that there are benefits from doing DI but it does t show any of the negative sides, this is my last year of DI and I’m not sure what I think of that. I’m glad that I won’t have the stress of DI but I do really like working in this larger group. I’m glad I’ve had these experiences but also excited for future group collaboration projects. I’ve learned a lot about myself for doing group work, I’ve become more social and outgoing as I’m quiet a shy person and I’ve learned to generally be more thoughtful for others thoughts.

Since around the beginning of January we had started a new unit in PLP, this unit was focused around the concept of “Disruption”. Every year in PLP there’s usually a unit that will also involve a big field study where we will travel to another country or part of the country, and get a hands on perspective with the learning. We will actually go into building or meet people that or involved in some way of what we are learning. The main focus of this disruption unit was the disruption that technology is having or had on the world and what disruption really is. The main trip for this unit was to go to Silicon Valley and San Diego and visit many different company’s and properties that have a theme of disruption. I ended up staying behind and didn’t go on the trip as I have a big family trip planned in the summer and wanted to be more wise with my money choices. There were three main assignments within this unit, we had to create a podcast with the theme of disruption within our school Seycove, we had to create a digital book showing our learnings about disruption and what we did while the class was away, and we had to write an essay about disruption within a book we read and how it compares to real life.

In this learning portfolio post I’ll be talking about the podcast I made and the digital book that I created, everyone that went on the trip had to create a book based around the trip and what they did day to day. We had the same general idea for our book but with a slight twist, our book was based around disruption at Seycove. We were given several different ideas of what some disruptions at Seycove could look like, a couple of the main ones could be the PLP program and Flex Time. For my main podcast I chose the topic of Flex Time as it really interested me, I wanted to learn more about why flex time had been implemented into our time schedules and how the idea of flex time came up. I started working on my book first as there was so much time and work involved with making the book and I wanted to get a head start on the book. The book was actually pretty fun to make as we could make the  of the book ourselves and this assignment just gave us a lot of freedom. I’m really happy with the outcome of my book and how I put it together. You can read through my book below

Disruption! At Seycove-1cj8kzd

The next assignment I got to work on was my podcast, I first started planning out the overall story I wanted to tell and then started thinking of possible interviewees I could use. For my interview I wanted to get someone who could speak upon the creation of flex time and why it was put into our schedules, so who better to interview than our principal  Ms Craven. I interviewed her for a good four to five minutes and I learned a lot more about the planning of our schedules and just how long it takes to add something to the schedules such as flex time. I then wrote my script to revolve it around the interview and included a little bit of background music. I found it hard to stay focused each day for four to five hours a day on the two projects so I did take breaks at time and talked to my friends that stayed behind. We mainly critiqued each other’s work and gave each other ideas on how we could improve upon our work. I’m sure going to San Francisco was incredible and really fun (I definitely want to go there one day) but staying behind back at school was pretty fun to, I got to see my friend do outside of PLP a lot more and I did have my fare share of fun at school to. I also ended up going downtown a lot this week to take pictures as I had some free time. It was great to see all my friends return from the trip and hearing all the funny stories they had. It felt really weird going to school each day to a basically empty classroom with no supervision but we all handled it very well. I liked these two projects quite a bit and the experience of making them was pretty fun, I liked how much freedom we had with each assignment. I did miss my friends while they were away but I’m happy with the decision I made.