So for the past couple of weeks in scimathics we have been learning about the periodic table and different elements in it. Ms pye assigned Simon our class room “president” with the task of creating groups for the project that we will be doing. Our task was to create a superhero using one element from the periodic table, my group chose hydrogen as it could make him/her fly and make everyday tasks much easier, the next step was to create a periodic table, this part of the project took the longest as we had to add all the information on each part of the table like the atomic mass, atomic number, symbol, ion charge, and name. And the final part of the project that we have done was create a model of a hydrogen atom, this was easy to do as not much materials where needed to create this. This project was overall pretty fun so far but at the start we where a little off task, I’ve enjoyed this project and I am looking forward to see what the next part of the project is.

 

-This is our group name and badge

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here we are, end of the project and I can proudly say that me and my group have finished are metaphor machine. If you’ve read my other blog post you’ll know that in PLP 9 we have been working on a project for the past two months. Our task was to create a machine that would show the process of a chosen revolution that would have to include a circuit, the aesthetic of steampunk and we would also need to create a video of the process of building the machine, and how it works. First we had to learn about Crane Brinton and his theory of revolution, Crane brintons theory of revolution was book Crane brinton wrote talking about his theory. His theory was that a revolution would have four stages, in each stage the revolution would progressively get worse until the last stage, this is when the revolution would start getting better and go back to normal, Crane brinton described a revolution almost like a fever. Next we had to learn about steampunk and what it is. Steampunk is a sub genre of science fiction that typically features steam powered machinery rather then advanced technology, typically the people are dressed as if they where in the Victorian era. Machines in steampunk are usually made of copper or brass and havin all the “guts” showing, so if there was a steampunk watch it would have all the cogs and materials commonly seen on the inside showing on the outside. We also had to learn about a revolution of choice. We where put into groups and had a choice of what revolution are machine would be based on. My group consisted of Claire, Sofia, Simon, and I. The revolution we chose was the Haitian revolution. The Haitian revolution was when the people of colour revolted against the white colour due to disagreements over the freedom rights. So in our machine we included a piece of paper being ripped in half, this represents the people of colour disagreeing with the white colonists over freedom rights.
We had many other metaphors in our machine. We started off with making a timeline of our revolution, we did a lot of
Researching on our revolution so we would be able to explain each step of the revolution and each step of our machine. We then started planning out the metaphors and how we would put our machine together, we got all the metaphors and then decided how to use them and how we would build are machine. We got all the supplies we would need for our machine and started building. Building the machine took a lot of planning and time. We would always come up with cool ideas but it would be pretty hard to use on the machine. We spent a lot of time on building the start of our machine as we could never get it to work. We would have a piece of paper rip in half by a metal gear/cog pulling on one side of the paper, which would cause a metal ball fall out and roll down a track. This would represent the people of colour disagreeing with the white colonists over freedom rights, the ball represented Toussaint the main leader of the people of colour int the haitian revolution. This was hard to do on the machine because the ball was never able to stay in the paper and would always fall out on the floor. We solved this by using stronger paper and have the paper taped down for extra support. Me and Simon did a lot of building the machine and testing to make it work while Claire and Sofia made the video. For the video we took lots of time lapses of building, used lots of images of us building and filmed the machine working. In the our video that I have included below, it tells you about the Haitian revolution, how we built the machine, the overall project and how we planned it out, and What we learned. We planned the video out before using a video template that showed what would be included in the video and all the dialogue that would be spoken.

 

I’m really proud of my group because we all put lots of effort into this project and tried to do our best, this project was very interesting, fun, and it taught me a lot, I learned how to plan and use my time a lot better and because this is my first year in PLP it taught ,me what PLP group projects are like and what the expectations are for a great project. I liked how we got to choose the revolution we wanted to use because it made researching a lot more fun and interesting. Overall I really liked this project and a lot of fun building the machine.

So last Wednesday seycove had a day where all the grade 9’s had the choice to go to career day, which is basically where you go to one of your parents jobs for one whole day to see what it’s like to work in their environment, and maybe learn new skills and get an idea of a job you might like to do in the future. So in PLP 9 we would have to create a blogpost to go along with our experience, including – a description of the job you observed – what you liked best/least about the experience – what surprised you the most about you observed, heard, did, or learned – would you consider a career in this type of industry? Why or why not? – from your perspective, identify aspects of the job that were positive and negative. – did the job shadowing experience influence your career choice/goals? How? For my career day I didn’t have much choice as to where I could go as both of my parents work at RBC- Royal Bank of Canada, I decided to go with my mom because my dad sits in an office cubicle all day answering phone calls, my mom works from home most of the time but she said she would take me to the Lonsdale branch and introduce me to everyone who works there and, give me an idea to just how many jobs there are in a bank. My mom is a mobile mortgage specialist which is basically helping people purchase residential properties (buying homes). In the morning I really didn’t want to go because I thought got banking was all about math and staying in an office all day, when we got to the bank my mom was introducing me to everyone who worked there, we must’ve been doing that for like two and a half hours (lots of shaking hands), I met some really funny people, everyone was always joking around and having lots of fun, nobody who worked in that bank looked like they where bored. And to my surprise every one who my mom introduced me to didn’t like math, everyone said that math is the easiest thing about the job because you had a calculator in your office and a computer to help you whenever you needed it, they said the most important skills of the job where problem solving and people skills (resolving problems, and talking/helping people) which are two major skills in PLP. My favourite thing about this experience was meeting all these people and learning about their jobs and why they like what they do, I found it very interesting listening to them and asking them questions. My least favourite thing about this experience was watching my mom work, she basically was just typing on her keyboard for an hour and a half and I found it very boring sitting in an office typing away. Another one of the things I enjoyed about this experience was going into the money vault

and seeing all the money stored in the back of the bank, it reminded me of some of my favourite movies like Point break, and Heat where robbers would go into the banks and steal lots of money. An interesting thing that happened was when I was sitting with one of the tellers at the front of the bank named Guy, he’s a really funny “guy” and was really fun to talk to. He showed me a suspected phoney check, it hand to different peoples hand writing on it with two different colours of pen on it. He told me that a lot of his job is helping people with money and also looking for fake money/checks almost like a detective, I’ve always thought of being a police officer when I’m older because I like helping people and solving problems. I learned a lot about bank king and what different jobs there are inside a bank, would I consider a job in a bank?, probably not because I like moving around a bit more and not sitting in one spot all day but I can say that I respect the job a lot more now that I’ve seen what it’s like and know a lot more about it. I think some positive aspects of the job are helping people with any problems they have, meeting lots of new people, always a new thing/problem everyday. And some negative aspects of the job are that it’s very stressful, some clients will always complain and be rude, if you have an office job you will be sitting in that room for a lot of the day.
This job shadowing experience did influence my career goals, it thought me that something you would never even think of doing might actually be fun and interesting, I still really don’t want an office job as I’d like a job where you can move around more but I can respect this job a lot more now. Overall this might not of been my favourite or most fun thing I’ve done at school but, it’s thought me a lot and I meet some really cool people during this day, and I can now respect my moms job a lot more and understand why she’s stressed sometimes.