The Ones About School

It’s that time of year again. Student Led Conferences. And this means another post about it! Yay!

So I’d like to talk about a few pieces of work. First one would have to be my Fantasy Essay, which I’m really proud of. We had to write an essay using the driving question of ‘What Draws Us To Imaginary Worlds?’. So I haven’t done a lot of writing essays in the past, and certainly not one like this. But the topic was interesting, so I was happy to write about it. We had only just started learned about quote integration, but I learned how to do that, and I think it went over well. It also helped expand my writing skills, which is very useful, as I do enjoy writing short stories, and writing better in general is a good thing.

So another thing that I’d like to talk about is something that shows my growth as a learner. I think that I’ve really grown in the way I present information, and the way that it’s more clear. For this, I’d like to bring up two pieces of work. One being my Visual Essay on Railroads in the Industrial Revolution, and my Disney Video.

At the beginning of the year, we had to do a visual essay on Railroads. This means we made a video about how the railroads affected the industrial revolution

As you can see, it’s a good video, but I mess up a few words, and it’s very amateur. Now, I think I’ve done a better job of presenting information in a way that’s easier, and clearer. For this, I’d like to show my most recent video: My Disney Video

So this one I feel a lot better about. The information is clear, the shots are better, along with the audio. It’s easier to understand, and I’ve only chosen the important information.

The third, and final thing I’d like to talk about would be an example of my growth mindset, one of the core things of PLP. I think one thing that really shows this is Destination Imagination. I did have a few issues with this, as our group was a bit behind, and I was afraid we wouldn’t get it done. There was a lot to do, from our gadget, to our Team Choice Elements, to our script, the two codes, our disguised character. It was a lot, and I’ll admit, our group wasn’t always on task. But in the end, we pulled it together. We persevered and we did it, and got first place!

I think this shows my growth mindset as even though we all thought we were going to fail, we kept going and pulled it together. There were a few moments of panic, such as a week before when no one had their script memorized and we were just starting our background. But we did it, and that’s what matters.

MY first goal is to work on teamwork. I don’t do very well with teamwork, so I intend in working on it by contributing more ideas to group, taking in others ideas, and not snapping at my teammates.

My second goal is to work on organizing my work. I intend on creating folders in my iPad for different projects, and bringing a binder for important papers.

My final goal is to work on my procrastination. I intend on setting reminders in my iPad so I do homework the day that it’s assigned and not leave it.

That’s the end of this! Yay! So, that’s all for this post. And for SLCs….. until June.

Read ya later!

Ruby

Hello, I return! For another post (obviously).

No it’s not. I just like Hamilton. But this post is about Destination Imagination (again). But, this year, it was different. I went out of my comfort zone to do the Scientific Challenge. And…. how do I put this.

I don’t science.

Let me explain. I do fine in Science. It’s just the challenge itself is very difficult. Let me break it down for you.

We have to:

1) Have two different codes. One using steganography  and one using cryptography. One of them we design the code and the solution ourselves. But the other one we only get to make the code. The workers give us a sentence with three words, that we have to encrypt and decrypt on sight.

2) Have a disguised character. We need to have one of our characters in our presentation be disguised, whether that’s through acting, lines, costumes, or any other method

3) Have a gadget that looks like an everyday object, but preforms an unexpected task. This has to use technical methods, and can either actually work or use theatrical methods to ‘work’.

4) Have 2 Team Choice Elements. This means two parts of our presentation that use the Team’s interest to create it. I’ll go into more detail on this later.

So, that sounds simple, right? Right?

Yeah, it got quite difficult. So, we got to work. And by we, I mean Tyler, Quinn, Makyla, William, along with myself. It started with a team name. We went though many names, including ‘Double No Seven’, ‘00420’, until we decided on….. H2.0.

Something about water being scientific? Ask Quinn, I don’t know. Then it was on to research. We researched the two different codes, and what they meant. It eventually got down to deciding on a storyline.

We decided on a futuristic setting. Kind of like Terminator, evil Robots are taking over the world. It’s up to a secret spy base to shut off the robots. But, one of the spies is working against them to keep the robots up and alive, to destroy the world.

Its an interesting plot, and a lot to make it into a reality. We started with the gadget. It was up to Tyler to make a remote spray water, that we can pretend was toxic gas to knock out myself and Makyla. But…. well, Tyler was a bit late with it. We asked him to have it done, and it was never done. But…. it turns out he didn’t even make it a remote. He used a chewbacca mug, and the inside of a water gun. It worked, which is what matters.

Then the Disguised Character. We decided that Tyler would be the Disguised Character. So, he was going to be the secret agent, who is trying to keep the robots alive. We used acting and dialogue to disguise Tyler.

Our first code, the Pre-Crypted one, used steganography. It was a skip code, which means that every second letter of each word makes up a word. For instance: this example from Sherlock. Ours was saying that Tyler was the enemy. It was:

Our second code, we didn’t get much control over. We used Cryptography to make our own code, but they gave us the sentence, which Tyler encrypted backstage, and we had to decrypt onstage, without knowing what the sentence was. Our key for this was:

It was complicated to decrypt on stage, but we did it.

Then came the Team Choice elements. One was the background, which could hold two iPads, and was completely black

 

We also had an animation. I am quite proud of this, as I did HAND DRAW IT FRAME BY FRAME. Well, I drew on an iPad, but hey. Still, it took three days. I do really enjoy animation, so it was fun.

 

Those were our Team Choice Elements.

We practiced, and practiced, and practiced, until it was the day before Regionals. And…. I got sick. And I’m not talking about a small cough. I was throwing up…. you don’t need to hear about that

So, I couldn’t go to our final practice. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make it to regionals, Makyla was memorizing my lines. But, luckily, I made it.

Now, let’s talk about Regionals. First of all, we orgot our Team Sign. Great start. Then, we couldn’t go to the opening ceremonies because we had our Instant Challenge. So we did that, it went well. Can’t say anything though.

And then it was time for our Team Challenge. I felt like I was going to be sick, but it certainly wasn’t nerves. We started…. and things started going wrong. Well, there was some awkward stalling as Quinn and Tyler dragged Bill behind stage after he ‘died’. Then, Tyler had to encrypt the code. And…. we hadn’t planned for him to take long. So we hadn’t to improv. And, let me tell you, I CANNOT IMPROV. It was awkward stalling, and lines about Bill being dead.

Then Tyler didn’t put the code back into the drop zone. The drop zone is where, once encrypted, the code should go. And Tyler didn’t put it there. We scrambled, finding it among the other props backstage.

We decrypted it, everything went good from there. And then I went home and was sick.

So that was DI! But….. it’s not over. No, after all of that…

Provincials.

But that’s a different blog post

Read ya Later

Ruby

I’m back for another post! No, nothing will be on fire. Unfortunately.

Okay, let me explain the post title. We were in Florida, it was hot. Cue Asia

But, I am writing about something very exciting! We went to Florida!

So, it all started at 2:00 am. Yeah, that was fun. “Hey, Ruby, you only got two hours of sleep! Get up, you’re getting on a plane!” That was great. Note: Sarcasm implied.

I picked up Willa and we got to the airport…. half an hour early. We waited, until Hughes and Willemes got there. And we were off!

You don’t wanna hear about the plane ride, it was a lot of sleeping, listening to music, being a general trash bag, and watching X-Men. So it was my weekends.

We got to Florida, and had dinner, and went to bed. First day was so exciting.

And then it started. The intensity of Florida. Nine hardcore days of Disney, NASA, looking at wildlife, and surfing.

……..

That sounded a lot more intense in my head. But still, the first day we woke up at 6:00am and went to bed at 12:30. Granted, the entire day was spent at Disney World, in the Magic Kingdom.

I got to do some videos for an upcoming project, TBA. Then we just had fun, going on rides, meeting Winnie the Pooh, and having the worlds most expensive macaroni and cheese (which didn’t even taste good)

Day two was all about Universal Studios. Needless to say, I died. If this is your first post you’re reading, first of all, go read my other posts. I suggest this one. And second of all, I LOVE MOVIES.

(Side note: Hamilton reference ;)]

So Universal Studios was great, from Harry Potter world (I had a small heart attack and got a wand), to the rides, to just general being happy about it. Well, we did get stuck on the wrong side of a parade and I had a mental breakdown, but hey. That’s not the point.

Third day we looked at alligators, then ate them. Not the ones we looked at, but I tried alligator. It was good, tasted like chicken nuggets.

Fourth day was Surf and Space. People went surfing in the morning (I didn’t. I don’t like salt water, so sue me). Then we went to a behind the scenes NASA place. It was really cool, we learned about space (duh), we got to do a flight simulator, and roleplayed a take off and landing. I had to refrain from making all the Star Trek jokes.

Fifth day was NASA. Again. We spent the entire day in the visitors centre, learning about space (again) and having lunch wi an astronaught! That was cool

Next day, day six, we went to EPCOT. We did a workshop on being a good global citizen, and got to explore. It was cool, the front part is all about the future, with rides such as Soarin’. The back was the world showcase, with representations of some different countries.

We had fun there, though CANADA DIDNT HAVE POUTINE. Yeah, I was mad.

Seventh day was all about Animal Kingdom. It was actually kind of boring. You can only go on the Everest roller coaster so many times before you get bored. We spent most of the day just sitting down,or walking around finding food. To be fair, the fries were good.

Eight and last day of full Florida. We went to Hollywood Studios. Needless to say, I was happy. We watched an Indiana Jones stunt show, about making a movie, which was cool. We saw a group of stormtroopers walk down the main road of it, which I enjoyed.

(Not my photo. The video I took wouldn’t load)

Then we flew back.

So that was Florida! It was fun, we got to spent nine days in the heat, but it was fun!

Well, as always

Read ya later

Rubes

Back for another blog post! This one is about science. Specifically, elements and compounds.

On tuesday we did a lab

(I had to)

Anyways, on Tuesday we did a lab, on chemical compounds. We put aluminum into copper chloride (CuAl2) and transformed aluminum into copper. It turned into these small brown chunks (it looked like algae. Yuck)

We put the small brown chunks of now pure copper into water, and cleansed it until the water was (pretty much) clear.

Then came the fun part. Of lighting things on fire

So we were supposed to find out what colour copper burns. Spoilers: it burns green. It’s really cool, actually. Willa and I didn’t get around to burning it, as we are living flops and didn’t finish the lab, but other people got to burning it. Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

(Not our photo)

So that’s all for this post!

Read ya later

Ruby

Okay, I had to. But, anyways, if you can’t tell, this post is about wonder. In Mr. Featherstone’s we started off the day with a mind map. He put us in groups, and we had to write out any words that came to mind when we thought about wonder. So, we thought of…

Looking
curiosity
Seeing
Eyes
Children
Imagining
Thinking
Ideas
weird
new
crazy
unknown
different
Dream
colorful
blind
Wonderful
World
Universe
Existing
UNDISCOVERED
DISCOVER
THINKING
What if….

Blame Kyle for the random capital letters. Anyways, we had to do more work. We read this article on wonder in class.

Then the work started

It’s school, I was surprised we actually had to work. Anyways, we had to answer these questions: 

1) How was Prinz’s experience with the “Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus” different from his parents?

His parents found it kind of dull and odd, finding it all a bit much and weird. But he found it really cool and interesting. He experienced Wonder.

2) What are the bodily symptoms Prinza postulates as components of wonder

Sensory, in the widening of the eyes and jaw slacking, cognitive, that we can’t call on past memories to help understand it, spiritual, swelling of the heart (metaphorically)

3) How does Francis Bacon consider wonder

“Wonder was something at science couldn’t cure”. He thinks that science can’t prove if it really exists or not. It’s because we can’t understand what’s in front of us.

4) Describe one moment in your life where you have experiences wonder. Use imagery and figurative language “show, don’t tell”

When I was 8 years old, my family went to Paris. I remember the first day we were there, the air was hot as a sauna. We were walking on the rough sidewalk, flip flops clacking against the ground. That’s when we walked into a large square, and I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. It was tall, one of the tallest things I’ve ever seen. People were talking loudly, camera shutters were flashing, bikes whizzing by without a care in the world. The air smelled fresh, people were speaking in all sorts of different languages. The tower itself was wonderful, metal reaching up until I couldn’t see the top. As we started to go up the elevator, the view of Paris got larger, the people and buildings getting smaller. My heart was beating as I saw the ground get farther and farther away, the view just getting wider. We only managed to get to the first floor, but even then the view was wonderful. The cars were like ants, the people even smaller. I was so far away from the ground, the view was breathtaking. Buildings and cars and people as far as the eye could see.

There was my awfully cheesy description of Paris.

 

Anywaysm thats all for this post!

read ya later

Ruby

Guess who’s back? Well, I hope you don’t have to guess, as you’re on my blog…. unless you’re lost. I’m so sorry if you are, go back to YouTube or wherever you were.

SIDE NOTE:  WELCOME TO THE FUTURE OF 2017

So, what’s this post about? Well, two things. One, making as many Harry Potter puns as possible. And two, our blue sky project!

This was probably my favourite project, as it was all around Harry Potter. And trust me, I love Harry Potter.

Like, love it to death(ly hallows)

So of course I was screaming internally when I found out we were doing a project on it!

So I got to work. I decided to do a project on one of my favourite subjects in Harry Potter. Potions. It’s a Very Sirius Project. Okay I’ll stop.

I’ve just always found potions so exciting. The idea that you get to put a bunch of ingredients in and it gives you abilities? Like, how awesome is that?

I was excited. My project was to make a potion, and then teach people how to make it.

I started with researching the ingredients. So there’s a list of potion ingredients that I looked at, and found out what they all were.

And then I had to figure out which ones I wanted to use. I decided on:

Leech juice, slug remains, flobberworm mucus, and centaur blood. Appetizing, I know. I’d like to see that in Mary Berry’s next cooking show.

And then it was time to actually find the ingredients. And no, I didn’t actually juice a leech and make a centaur bleed. Don’t worry, no animals were harmed in the making of this. Except that one snail I stepped on outside. RIP snail.

I had to make a recipe that was actually edible. No leeches or slugs or flobberworms. Instead, I used the magical ingredients of Sprite, ice cream, lemon juice and black food colouring. Such magic, very wow

It did wind up looking quite cool. Very potion-y, as you can see:

So we had to set up our exhibit. I was grouped with Simon, Calum, Aiden and Sofia. It was a good group, and we were spells and potions.

Our class was given the task of turning the school library into Hogwarts school. If you don’t know what that is…. why. Just why.

Anyways, my group got to turn the front of the library into the dungeons. It was a lot of preparation and failures, but it wound up looking like this. My personal station was the wonderful potions bar:

Fun story! This girl was looking at my Potion a bit skeptically. Understandable, it looked like the venom of the super that bit Peter Parker. She was maybe seven or eight. “It’ll make you waterproof” I explained, though she still didn’t trust it. I was really wanting to roll my eyes, but I restrained myself. “Don’t worry, its Sprite and ice cream” I told her, hoping to make her drink it. And her face totally changed. She looked almost offended, and in the sassiest voice I have ever heard from a seven year old, she just goes “So its fake?”. And walks off. Did she expect it to be real? I have no clue.

Fun story 2.0! When I was pouring my shots of potion (yes I used shot glasses. Leave me alone) I started to notice something. My potion was separating. Don’t worry, that sounds bad. It wasn’t, it wound up looking cool

Even more potion-y than I’d hoped for! It was great!

The night of the exhibit was fun! It was a lot of showing people my video and convincing them my Potion was safe to drink and I wasn’t poisoning them.

Oh yeah, my video! I made a tutorial video, as part of my project was teaching people

I drew the little thumbnail myself, I’m quite proud of that. So, the exhibit happened, and it was fun!

The set up was good, because we had a lot of time to do so. We had to put up the walls, claim tables (*cough* steal them from another group *cough*), and we pulled it off!

Of you’d like to see my group’s projects, feel free!

Sofia | Simon | Calum | Aiden

So, as always I hope you enjoyed delving into the world of potions with me!

Read Ya Later,

Ruby

To follow up to my last post, where I showed off my progress so far on our Metaphor Machines.

So, to recap…..

What is a Metaphor Machine?

So, a Metaphor Machine is a Rube Goldberg Machine, compressed into a small machine. Each aspect of said Machine is a metaphor for something.

What Revolution Did You Study?

We studied the Meiji Restoration, which will be explained in the video we made later on.

Making the machine was quite an adventure. It all started with getting sorted into groups, and studying our revolution. That went well, and we started to do a time line

The top line shows the cause and consequences of each key event in the revolution. The second line would show the steampunk aesthetic to it. The third shows how it relates in Crane Brinton’s Theory. We were doing well…….

Until the news hit that we had all of our information wrong, that is.

Yeah, not happy about that. We had to redo our entire timeline. But it turned out for the better, as the revolution made a lot more sense now.

Then it got to building it. It took three weeks to work on, starting with the base, to the floors, to the little details. But, in all, it turned out great

So….. what now? Explain in detail how the building went, show off each little bit and how it’s a metaphor?

Hah, I’m too lazy to do that. Let’s watch a video instead

That was the emotional roller coaster of our Metaphor Machine!

I hoped you enjoyed this post, the video, blah blah blah

Read ya later!

Ruby

My titles these days are slacking. I was gonna write a pun about bread but I though you’d find it stale…. Okay sorry about my pun-pernickles. I need to stop

Anyways, this blog post is about grade 9 bring your kid to work day. Now Ruby, you might be asking. What does that have to do with bread? Well, my dad works for Cobs Bread

The main Cobs Bread office for North America that is. I was pretty excited to go there, to say the least. I mean…. it’s bread. Food, I am happy around food.

So the day started at 7:45, when we left the house. The traffic was terrible, it was dark and rainy. The start of a bad horror movie type of weather

So we got to work around 8:00. My dad showed me around, introduced me to everyone. He works with nice people. We sat down in his office, blah blah blah emails

Above, my dad (the world’s largest ham)

That’s when he started to explain what he does. He showed me the sales for this week, how they’re doing (I feel like releasing them isn’t a good idea). They have their own website, only accessible to anyone who works at Cobs. It shows their sales, bakeries, franchisees, etc. The sales are quite complicated. They start with their annual budget, then it sort of goes through a metaphorical funnel. Parts of sales go into different things. Repairs, ingredients, maintenance, so on and so forth.

Cobs is actually doing a promotion for maple scrolls vs cinnamon buns. It looks like this:

It looks like the US presidential race. With pasteries! The marketing team actually didn’t mean for that to happen. But I suppose it’s fitting for the time. By the way, if you’re interested in voting, vote here

He then started talking about the bakeries. They’re trying to open one up in Fort McMurray, so he took me through the process. It’s like buying a house, really. He checks the price of how much it costs to put in everything, how much allowance the landlord has given. He subtracts that from to total price, which reduces the cost. Then he checks the agreements, and if he’s happy he sends it off the the landlord. About 8-9 months afterwards, they open up a new bakery.

I looked around his office, and noticed the Corporate Citizens Award on his desk. Apparentally they won that three years ago. My dad ‘forgot’ to put it in the trophy case out front

The trophy my dad possibly stole

He also talked to me about franchising. Apparentally thousands of people want to franchise for Cobs, hundreds get interviewed, but in the end only a few start to go into training and franchise.

Franchising, pretty much, is when you get someone else to run a bakery. 7% of the sales that the franchisees make for the bakeries goes to the office. They have to do serious background checks, such as if the franchisees have recently sued someone, they need to make sure they don’t do that often so that Cobs doesn’t get sued.

Fun Fact: Cobs originally started in Australia and was called Bakers Delight

It still goes on today, hence why my dad sometimes has to go to Australia for business.

My dad also does a lot of communication. He links in with everyone and gets every that they’re doing to connect to help the business running.

Now, his job sounds very fun, right?

Wrong

In his words; “75% of my day is spent on the phone, 25% is spent doing emails”. Fun, yeah… Though he does have a nice view of the skytrain, and Columbia College.

So the day went on. Somewhere around 11:00, one of the marketing ladies asked me to do a job. I had to fill out a survey, to see if it was user friendly. That took about ten minutes, and I got to see what goes into being a franchisee, like money, time, dedication. It takes a lot, trust me.

I also got to help with a brochure to get people interested in franchising a bakery in Tsawwassen. I was given a draft, that I was aloud to write on to see what could be changed. Very work.

I really enjoyed this. It was fun to help with marketing, and to find out what my dad really does. It was kinda boring to sit through phone calls and meetings, but my dad thinks so too (even if he’s not supposed to).

It really surprised me how much my dad actually does. He communicates, he helps with finances, real estate, and franchisees. I didn’t think he did that much.

I don’t think I’d consider my dad’s job as something that I would enjoy doing, as it’s a lot of sitting at a desk with numbers and emails, which I don’t really enjoy. Not that it’s dull…. but it’s kinda dull. Sorry pops.

Well, that was my day at my dad’s work. It wasn’t too

crummy

Okay I’ll stop now.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed reading

Read ya later,

Ruby

We’re halfway there! By there I mean done the metaphor machine.

Hold up. You’re probably wondering what a ‘metaphor machine’ is. Unless you’re one of my classmates, or Hughes or Willemes. In that case, hello. Glad you’re wasting your life reading my blog instead of doing work

Anyways! Metaphor Machines, I’m getting off track. Again….

Metaphor Machines are pretty much a giant machine, each part is a metaphor. Sort of like a mini metaphorical Rube Goldberg machine. Though it’s not metaphorical, just parts of it are literal metaphors…. I hope you get the point. If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine because you are Patrick Star and you live under a rock, here’s a link.

So, why are we making a machine? What’s the purpose, how is this school related? So many questions. Please, sit down. Well, I assume you’re sitting/laying down to read this. Unless you’re in the streets. Pay attention to where you’re going, you’ll run into a child. Or a car. Or a bus.

Well, we have to make a machine about a revolution. As you know, we’ve been studying revolutions. Our class was divided into different groups, and we got to pick a revolution to study. Our group chose the Meiji Restoration. Pretty much it’s about emperor Meiji bringing imperial rule back to Japan

I had to. It had to happen

So, the Metaphor Machine. Let’s explain this better. So, we chose the Meiji Restoration. This means we have to create a large machine with each aspect being a metaphor.

Example: Japan formed an alliance with Britain. Our metaphor for that is a sushi roll dropping into a tea cup.

Yeah. To add onto it, it has to have a steampunk aethstetic, and one working circuit.

So, we are halfway done the project! It’s been really fun so far. I’ve helped created the timeline for it, which pretty much shows what happened when in the revolution, also what the steampunk part is going to look like and how each part of the machine works.

I steampunked a mug, which I am really proud of

Thats all spraypaint. Quite proud of that, if I do say so myself.

I will keep you all updated on the machine in the next post. Until then…

Read ya later

Ruby

Woah, first maths post of the year!

So, if you can’t tell by the title, this one is about a dream house! Pretty much, we’re learning about scale diagrams. So, what involves scale diagrams? Blue prints!

Pretty much, we got to design a dream house. Everything we wanted, and more. It had to include a master bedroom, a bathroom, a laundry room, and a closet.

‘We’ wound up being Willa, Lucas and I. We designed a pretty cool house. And it looks like….

THIS

Sorry about the text all over it. I promise it’s my house, just the app doesn’t want you saying that you didn’t make it on that app or something like that. But you get the idea. Let’s do a quick run through of the house.

The hall has some nice chairs in it, along with a hat rack and some house plants. I like plants, don’t judge me

There’s the garage, which has a convertible, a normal car, a motorbike, a normal bike and my bus. My bus, I like it. It stays.

The master bedroom is nice, it has a king sized bed, along with a comfy charm two book cases and a lamp

An ensuite bathroom attaches to the bedroom, along with a closet. The bathroom has the essentials. A toilet, a bidet (essential), a sink and a shower.

There’s the games room, with a hammock, a lap top, three couches, a tv and more house plants.

The kitchen is quite large, with a refrigerator, an island with two stools, counters, a microwave and a wine cellar. I need wine, defiantly….

The dining room has simple stuff, a table with chars and more wine. Naturally.

Then there’s the best room in the house, the music room. That has one piano, a fooseball table, a pool table, a tv and a couch.

Thats the house! I really enjoyed this project, it made scale factors a lot easier. The house in total costs about $123, 000, and has 2, 068.09 ft.

Unfortunately, it’s not a real. So all of my dreams are dead

Read ya later!

Ruby