So, as you probably know, we use our iPads in our class at school. At the beginning of the year, we installed some photo editing apps. There’s Snapseed and another called Repix. Both are great apps and I’ve used them a lot for projects. Just a few days ago, I used those apps to create some images I already had into better ones.

Here are a few of my favourites:

This is a photo of the water and a grassy field that I took in Oregon.

We went to a great lookout point in Oregon on our field trip, and I took this picture there.

This is my favourite one. I was standing on a dock and I took a photo of my shoes, the dock, and the water.

I was mainly using different filters, but there were other cool tools that helped me create these images. I used a lense blur on some, which blurs out the edges of the photo to focus on the middle of the photo. The apps I used are great, and I will definitely use them again in future projects.

 

Hello!

So, in class we were given the task to create a paper version of an important character in a Shakespeare play. My group was given Mark Antony, or Marcus Antonius. We also needed to write some of the important personality traits or events on the body, in specific places to have a better representation. Here’s ours:

His birthday, death date, place of birth, place of death were all put in his head because when you are a baby, the last part of you created is the top of your head. In his hand, we put that he was a dangerous gambler, and he was a general. His personality traits were put in his legs because that’s what carry you as a person. Those being overbearing, brutish, reckless, passionate, powerful. His spouse and children names were put in his heart, because a heart represents love. In his foot, it says that he was a commander in Greece. We put that there because when you are a commander, in battle, you “stomp” on your enemies. The photos in his arm were some of the places he’s been. He was born in Rome, and he died in Alexandria, Egypt. The placement of the words all mean something to Mark Antony’s personality or events in his life.

So, that was our body biography of Mark Antony!

 

Hello again!

So, as you probably know, in my PLP class at school, I was given the task to present a project of our choice, and the fun part: It needed to relate to Star Wars!! One of the first things we needed to do was create our driving question. Mine was “What can I create that will be a good example of a vehicle that can hover, like the 74-Z speeder bike?”. I filled out a sheet of information about my project. I was debating whether or not to use a small fan, but I thought it would be hard to control that.

After that, I started planning what my model would look like.

At first, I wasn’t really getting anywhere. I didn’t know what to do next, and I didn’t know what I just did to help the project. I only had some cardboard, tape, magnets, and the Lego version of a speeder bike, as you see below.

I tried a few times, but I didn’t have any success. The magnets were way too spaced out and they were VERY finicky and hard to control. Also showing with my project was a keynote that I made on my iPad, and it had slides of my progress. At this point, this is a slide that showed what I was thinking.

Now, I went to a smaller base so it would become more controlled, and it was better. I put magnets in the bottom of the box and small rectangular ones on the bottom of the speeder bike positioned so they would repel. It did repel, but I couldn’t let go of it otherwise it would twist around and fall into the box. Then I had an idea to put some fishing line that would go from the corners of the box to the speeder bike. I put them there not to hold the bike up, but to keep it from tipping.

It worked! The bike was hovering above the box! It wasn’t hovering very high, so I put two more big magnets in the bottom, and it shot up even more, and looked way better. I was happy with it! To make it look even better, I glued grass paper to the sides, and put another piece on top to show the terrain around it. It looked great. Here is my final product:

So, after all that, I answered my beginning question. I have created a model that shows a vehicle, like the speeder bike, hovering above ground without any assistance but magnets! I’m glad I did this project. I have learned about making a driving question, trial and error, answering my question, and now reflecting on it. The project was not only filled with learning and hard work, but it was also really fun to do!

Hello!

So in class, we’ve been working on our quilts, and I’d like to tell you about the creation process of my square.
We first created an idea of our civilization, and we created a hero with it. Ours was named Bellator, and in this story he goes on a quest.

My part of the story was Bellator approaching the castle of the Evil King. The sword represents Bellator, the hero, the path represents the long twisting path Bellator has to follow to get to the castle. The red and black at the end of the path represents the Evil King’s castle. I made it look dark and uninviting to show the evil of it.

I started out with a really complicated, detailed picture of the part of the story I was going to draw.

I asked my group if my picture was good, and we decided that I needed to make it less literal and more abstract. I then made it so the mountain and ocean wasn’t there to have more meaningful objects in the picture. My next draft looked like this:

There, I had a different sword than my other group members, but we were showing the same character, which was a problem. Another problem with this draft was the castle was up to far so it was going out of the picture. So, we needed to have the same sword in all our pictures, and I needed to move my castle down.

Here, I have put in the sword we are going to use to represent our hero, but I haven’t moved the castle down, which I need to do.

This is my final draft, ready to print onto fabric! I moved the castle down, and I’ve moved the moon in a little to make sure that it’s away from the edge. Then it was printed out onto a fabric that I can do my quilting with. I sewed the outside edges of the square a dark blue, around the moon with white, the path with brown, the castle with black, the hilt of the sword in light blue and the blade with yellow. The final looked like this:

Next, I’ll show you the full and complete story of Bellator!

Using the storyboard above, we created a story of the founding of our civilization. Below is the complete version of the story.
There are two different ancient civilizations, the Alexonians and the Shoewees, and they are on the brink of war. That war could result in the death of many, many people. Both their civilizations are way ahead of our time in technology. A farmer from the Alexonians, named Bellator, decides to go with the finest sword ever made to attack the Evil King of the Shoewees. The evil King has a plan to rule both civilization’s, so Bellator decides to sneak in and kill the evil king. Bellator sets out for the enemy civilization. He has a little trouble getting in, but manages to get through undetected. He makes it to the Evil King’s castle, defeats the King’s guards and then confronts the King. The Evil King doesn’t think that a small farmer boy could kill him, so he faces Bellator without his sword. That foolishness results in the Evil Kings’ death. Bellator returns home, and now a hero. The leaders of the Alexonians are a little angry with Bellator for going without permission, but they’re happy as well because of what he did. Bellator thinks that there shouldn’t be a chance of another war like that happening, so he starts a civilization called Auxillium. Auxillium means Help in Latin, which was chosen because that’s what Auxillium would like to do. Over time they have helped humans with great monuments and helping the human race survive. That’s the story of how the civilization Auxillium was founded.

Here’s a photo of all four of the quilt squares that me and my group did:

I liked doing this project because of how unique it was. I’ve never done anything like it before, so it was a good experience for me. It took hard work and a lot of thought but overall it was good.

Hello again!

So before Christmas break we had to events related to Star Wars.  One of them was our Star Wars Blue Sky project, and the other was going to see the movie. The Star Wars projects were all really good and everyone came prepared to show off their projects. We all were put into groups based on our projects. Then we were assigned planets from Star Wars.  There was Hoth, Endor, Tatooine, Naboo and Dagobah. I was in the group endor. We all had a place to set up and decorate to make it look like our planet.

The Star Wars movie in my opinion was really good. The character were funny and the villian was really cool. It was awesome to see it on the opening day, and miss school the day before Christmas break. I would definitely see it again sometime.

So those were the two awesome Star Wars events that I was involved in before Christmas break.

The pictures at the top are my finished project and part of the Endor planet we created.

 

 

 

Hello!

The process of our quilt went something like this:

We started with nothing but a few ideas. Well, we started with those ideas and a basic organizer, to help us get started with the story we were forming. The organizer had places to write the who, what, where, when and why’s of our made up civilization. The name of our civilization is Auxillium, which is Latin for help. We chose that name because the civilization has done a lot of helping to the outside world.

Our civilization’s setting was on a remote island that hasn’t been found. It’s technology is way ahead of the outside world’s, and so it secretly assists them with the tools and ideas they have. For example, they helped with the construction of the pyramids and Rome as well.

The people who live there value family, equality with others and putting themselves before others. They also are more respected if they have served at least one year in the military.

We also had to create a hero and how they became a hero. Our heroes name was Bellator, and he founded the greater Auxillium. My group was good at working together because we all agreed to other ideas, so it made the process quick and strong. Our hero story came together quickly because we were all thinking around the same lines. Our storyboard was described well and we all built up on our ideas to make them better.

Even with our quilt squares we were open to how we needed to improve and giving feedback. All our squares needed only little improvement. We need to communicate a little better to each other because we spent some last minute time matching up our squares when we could have done it earlier. My role in the making of this quilt was to give my ideas, and draw the important second scene of our story.

Overall, I think our group worked well together.

 

These are photos of my progress so far. I’ve been working on my Star Wars project pretty hard, and I’ve encountered many problems. For my project I’m making a model of the speeder bikes in the movies. So I’m making a Lego version of the speeder bike hover using magnets. It’s actually been pretty hard, harder than I thought it would be. The magnets repel from each other, but they also want to connect on the sides, so the bike keeps going off to one side or just flipping over. I’ve now put the magnets into a smaller base to it more controlled. I even need to use super glue to hold some of the magnets down because of how strong they are. I’m also working on a costume, which is Luke Skywalker in his endor costume. I have a really big white t-shirt, and I’m going to spray paint it green and brown. I’m also making a food item: lots of marshmallows coloured to look like mini storm troopers. They look really cool.

Overall, I’m excited to present my project and finish working on it.

 

There is a lot of things I’m looking forward to. I am definitely looking forward to Christmas. It’s going to be great, even though I don’t have a Christmas list. I’m excited to see family, and get gifts of course. Going to the Force Awakens movie is going to be amazing! It’s going to be great, and I can’t wait. The Star Wars exhibition night at my school is coming up as well. I’m half excited and half nervous. The project is fun and lots of hard work. It’s going to be okay though. In school, we are doing quilting. I don’t know what to think about quilting. It’s not that I hate it, but I don’t love it. I like it better than some work though because it’s hands on and you need to be concentrated. So far my future is looking good.

Hello! In school, I worked hard putting together three different ads that related to our trip to Oregon. One ad was for a business, another for a natural environment, and one was for an advocacy topic. In the making of these ads, I used an app called Canva, for the actual poster, and an app called Snapseed and another called Repix for photo editing. I did a lot of editing on my ads during the time. I would look at it and try new ideas, and see how it could become better. Critique helped me because it made me look at the ad from different perspectives and not go with what I only liked because sometimes it’s not the best. Next time, I would work on making my ads tell a story more. Overall, I really enjoyed making these ads; it was a great project to do.