Getting Energy From Nature Using Plastic…

Sam

Welcome, to yet another blog post.

As we are nearing the end of the school year, we are wrapping up units, and prepping for the last units of the year. The unit we just finished combined both math and science to make one project. We merged the science of natural energy types with the math of linear equations and graphs.

We started off this project with our inquiry question, as always.

How can we capture and use renewable energy from nature?

But before we did anything, we took a one day field trip to Stave Falls, a power house in Mission, BC. We learned about how large bodies of water can make electricity using big generators. This type of energy source is really good because it is really clean and causes no pollution. We learned a lot on this field trip.

Next, when we got back to class the next day, we started working on the actual project. We were put into groups, and so me, Adam, Hannah and Robbie began brainstorming ideas.

The goal was to create a mini generator that would create electricity from nature.

Our first idea was a car, and when it rolled it would turn mini motors, generating electricity. So, we built a car using a small rectangular Tupperware container, four mini motors, four wheels, some wires and some tiny LED lights. The car would roll down on its wheels, pick up  speed, and generate lots of electricity.

Theoretically.

But first we needed a hill of some sort. So since we were limited to our science classroom we decided to build a track that the car could go down, Hot Wheels style.

This is me and Adam setting up the track.

But, this didn’t turn out well at all. The track didn’t really hold together well and our car fell off and broke. Also, we realized it wasn’t generating electricity because the wheels were turning in opposite ways, cancelling out all the current we made.

Onto the next idea. A water propeller.

We didnt spend too much time on this idea. Using the Tupperware container, the plan was to have a propeller stick out of the container, which was attached to a motor inside the container that would generate electricity.

But we couldn’t figure out how to seal the container since we had to have a hole in it.

So we moved onto our next idea. A water wheel.

We figured this would be more practical since we knew of a few creek/river options with different speeds.

We got to work on the construction of the water wheel, and we decided to use the sturdy materials of plastic utensils and hot glue. Robbie was our main glue guy and we helped him design the wheel. Our first design looked like this:

This water wheel was attached to a hand crank generator, so the goal was to just spin the crank, since it had a motor and wires built into it.

On this particular wheel we had four spoons, all meant for scooping water, and in turn, spinning the crank generator and then lighting up an LED lightbulb.

But once we tested it in a small creek near our school we realized we needed to attach more spoons since it was barely spinning fast enough to turn the LED light on.

The solution was to add 4 more spoons to our design, and it worked really well after that. We tested that, and it turned on our one light. But we thought it could light up more than one. So we converted our light into a parallel circuit with 5 lights. We tested it again and it worked, lighting up all the lights.

Testing Using Wind Power

But that’s not all, of course. We then had to make an advertisement showcasing our water wheel.

All the while making this project we had been working on linear equations and graphs. This is the math part, and we graphed how much energy over time our water wheel was producing, for our advertisement.

We filmed our advertisement pretty quickly even though we changed our storyline ideas twice.

Reflection

This project was fairly easy for me, and at the same time pretty fun. I say it was pretty easy because my group and I worked well together and we all pulled our weight in whatever we did. We had good ideas that we executed well. The only time we struggled was when deciding on what our advertisement would look like. We filmed our first idea, but then scrapped it when we realized it wasn’t very good. We quickly came up with a new idea and we all agreed it was pretty good. This project was also pretty fun to work on, and we had a lot of fun in our group, which is always good. We came up with a new idea quickly, and it turned into something we were proud to turn in. If I could change one thing about this project it would be to cut the time we had to work on this in half. We had three weeks but we only needed one and a half. With too long of a timeline, we end up with nothing to do during classtime sometimes. But, other than that I think this project was fun and a good learning experience.

 

Thats all for now,

See you

Book Reviews Will Break Me Someday…

Sam

Even though we’re in PLP, we still do somewhat normal units. And for this post, I’ll be talking about our most recent assignment in History.

Earlier on, we went through WWI and so, naturally, we moved on to WWII. We started learning about all the major battles and events, mostly chronologically. Then, at about halfway through our learning of the war, we were given the choice of three books to read regarding the war.

1. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

2. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

3. Code Name Varity by Elizabeth Wein

I chose Unbroken because I’ve heard of the story and it really sparked my interest. Then, we had spring break and a little bit after that to read the books, and then we began the work side of it. We needed to write a book review in our book. This didn’t sound too bad to me as I had read the book and am fairly good at writing.

But I’ll just let you read it instead of me talking about writing the book review.

Below is my book review on Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.

 

Book Review – Unbroken

Author: Laura Hillenbrand

A total of 16 million Americans served in WWII, and the veterans remaining are fading quickly. Every single WWII veteran, whether they’re American, German or French, have a story to tell. And every day, on average 372 die, and with them, their stories. War is not something that is easily talked about, and Louie Zamperini definitely didn’t have it easy. Laura Hillenbrand, author of two nonfiction books including Unbroken, and her books have sold over 13 million copies, and each were adapted into movies. With Unbroken, she takes us down the road of Louie Zamperini, a man with a story.

From the moment Louie could walk, he was a trouble maker. Restaurants, shops and bakeries in the population 1,800 town of Torrance all paid the price. He soon grew very confident in his bold and resourceful behaviour, and that would define him in has manhood, and prove very helpful in his future. Reading through this section of the book gives me the feeling that Louie is growing as a person, and it gives me great hopes for his future. This well written section of the book is easily a highlight because of the trouble making nature it is written in.
As Louie aged into his early teen years, he was still having trouble fitting in with other kids. Pete Zamperini, who was the successful and respected son of the Zamperinis, realized the potential in Louie as a track runner. After some practice, and time, Louie had a mania for running. This began a multitude of races, one after another, with Louie breaking one record after another. In one race, the 1933 UCLA Cross Country two-mile race where Louie ran effortlessly, breaking the course record and winning by more than a quarter of a mile, when finishing the race Louie described almost fainting, not from exertion, but “from the realization of what he was.” (Hillenbrand). He realizes who he is as a person, which he’d been searching for his whole childhood. He then goes on to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games where Louie would run against track legends, and meet Adolf Hitler himself. Louie’s Olympic exerience makes you feel proud of the small boy from Torrance that you have been reading about, and Laura Hillenbrand describes this section extremely well. The Olympics are a highlight of the book, and creates a growing tension inside of you for what is soon to come. Louie does well in his events and has extremely high hopes for the next Olympics. But things don’t always go as planned, and this is something Louie would soon know all too well.

Louie Zamperini was ready for war in August, 1942. He joined his crew on the Hawaiian islands, where they were assigned a rickety B-24D bomber plane, which are known for dropping out of the sky. Louie and his crew flew a few missions together, which resulted in one very close call getting back to base. But it wasn’t until flying a search mission when every bomber crew’s nightmare became Louie’s reality. Their new plane, the Green Hornet, was barely deemed flight worthy when it dropped out of the sky into the Pacific. Him and two other of his fellow bombardiers then drift through the ocean for a total of 47 days, surviving on the fish, sharks or birds they catch, and the rainfall from rampant ocean storms. When they finally see land on the horizon, they are unsure whether or not to be thankful when they are scooped out of the ocean by the Japanese. Louie and Phil, the survivors of the raft They go from POW camp to POW camp, where they are malnourished and beaten daily. By sabotaging or stealing anything the Japanese put in their hands, “the men were no longer passive captives. They were soldiers again.” This is what got Louie and his fellow captives through two years of imprisonment. During Louie’s captivity, a Japanese corporal called “The Bird” was particularily harsh to Louie. This man was insane, and sadistic, beating the men for no reason, and resulting in many broken people. Louie is finally released when the war is over in 1945 and the Japanese leave the POW camp. Louie embarks on his long journey home and discovered his PTSD, before it was a condition. He eventually marries and becomes a Christian. After reading this exhilarating section where Louie goes through unthinkable pain and suffering, you realize how truly terrible the war really was. Filled with details, this section is extremely well written in that you follow Louie through the toughest few years of life, as if you were watching from right behind him. This is definitely one of my favourite parts, bevause of the reality of everything that happens to Louie. Louie Zamperini, a mischief maker, theif, Olympian, WWII bombardier, castaway, survivor, prisoner, and husband is finally home.

Laura Hillenbrand leads us through the life of Louie Zamperini, a man with an extraordinary story. She describes his life with great detail, and showing us the transformations in Louie as a person firsthand. While excelling at giving us a great story filled with gripping events, she sometimes lacks in the ability to get inside Louie’s head. Laura Hillenbrand explains what Louie is seeing, hearing, feeling, and saying, but not what he is thinking. Whether or not that’s the fact that the 83 year old Louie isn’t keen on speaking about his wartime experiences, we still don’t know the feelings that Louie had on his crazy adventure. The book is a sensational and emotional masterpiece, taking us on a roller coaster of feelings as we see just how unbroken Loui’s Zamperini really is.

 

Well, that’s it. Thanks.

 

See you.

One Last Time…

Sam

Finally.

We have finished.

DI is over. All the hard work and stress that went into that project has dissipated. Now that we’ve done that we can do pretty much anything.

I guess that now I’m writing in a blog post I’ll tell you what I think we’ve learned throughout our DI experiences:

Basically, every year we’ve been through a learning cycle that goes as follows:

Recognize

As every year in DI we are given challenges that typically in groups of 5 or six other PLP 10 students. This year, as I explained in my other DI post for regionals, I was with Spencer, Izzy, Kate, Calum, and Isobel in the Maze Craze Challenge.

My Old Friend DI, Back Again

Back to our first step, recognizing. I think that this is definitely an important step, and that’s because this is when you learn all about your challenge, the main idea, it’s do’s and don’ts, and all its variables. It’s an important step to take because it sets you up for the long road ahead. There are also a lot of details in this step that you have to make sure you know for the future.

Recognize

My opinion on this step is that in the three years we’ve done DI, we have grown a lot in this area.  We all take time to read over what our challenge is, and begin planning ot our ideas. After doing this since grade 8, it’s gotten a lot easier since we know the drill and everything is easier to understand. What I mean is, after doing these challenges for three years, we have experience that helps us with our current challenge. Even through we might get different challenges for different years, the base of how DI works is still the same, and so we can carry over our strategies and techniques from past years, which I think we did effectively.

Onto the next step.

Imagine

In this step we thought of what our performance would actually look like. We would brainstorm all the ways we can combine a challenge with multiple aspects with an entertaining story. This step was probably the most important because we had to make sure we hadn’t missed anything from the first step, and that it made sense with our story. All the little things like the object removal, team choice elements, and the maze traveler had to integrate seamlessly into our performance.

For this step, our team didn’t have too much trouble. I think that as a group we did really well thinking of ideas, as we came up with a few right off the bat. We quickly narrowed our ideas down by process of elimination to two main ideas, a space mission, where the maze traveler is a mars rover, or a police mission, where the maze traveler is a bomb defusing rover. I think this step is really important. It is when you combine the details of the challenge with what your team wants those details to look like in person. It takes a lot of thinking because pretty much everything in the story has to represents something from the challenge.

Initiate and Collaborate

In this step, over the three years we’ve done it, is when we get to the fun part. At this point, we have our script written, props we need are in a list, and we just have to get all the materials and put everything together. We then work as a team and prepare our props, costumes, backgrounds and more to be ready for performance day. This step is hands-on, its do whatever needs to be done so we can move onto the next problem. It is supposed to be done in advance to the performance day, so we have time to practice. But it doesnt always work out that way…

Initiate

In my DI career, I have to say that us PLP’ers are good at doing this step really quickly. That’s because we pretty much do all the work the week leading up to DI day, when we’ve had months to do this step. I don’t know what it is, but we always think we’ve got it under control, and then DI is in 6 days and we all scramble to get everything ready in time. Every year for the most part this happens, and only this year was I really aware of it. It is honestly just teenage procrastination, and its effects kick in right at around this time. We say, ah, just do it next week, and then when doomsday looms on the horizon, only then do we realize our lethal mistake, and it’s too late.

Thankfully though, we usually manage to complete all that needs to be done. But only on rare occasion we actually have time to practice with everything ready. This year, this was our case for both regionals and provincials. We had everything ready the day before and then our first full practice was the real live performance…

But, over time this has gotten better. Barely.

Assess

If we did this step correctly, we would be pretty much ready for our presentation. We would look back at what we have completed and make sure its what we need to complete our challenge. We would fill out our forms, which are vital, and conduct a dress rehearsal to get a feel for how everything works. Then we’d plan ahead for who will take what to the school where the event is hosted. And then we’d wait for the day to come

But, to be totally honest, I’ve never done this step this way at all.

Realistically, we had been so behind that we would/have to pretty much go from Initiate and Collaborate straight to Evalute and Celebrate. Our dress rehearsals in front of the class were always horrible, but they also doubled as a bucket of cold water in the face. It showed us we had to get our heads in the game. Our forms would be assigned to one unfortunate soul in our group, while the rest of us “worked on other stuff.” We’d be finishing all our props and backgrounds at this time, which were supposed to be done earlier, and not sleeping at night from stress. Then in the last 10 minutes of class on the Friday before the DI day, we’d assign the gear to different people and figure out how to get to this random school in Surrey.

And if you haven’t noticed already, I’ve been describing my teams adventures through this step. But SOMEHOW, we’d pull it together, and this time for Provincials, we actually were sort of ready.

Now, prepare yourself, it’s time for:

Evaluate and Celebrate

In this final step, we’d complete our main challenge and instant challenge, and have burned all our props and costumes. Just kidding, we didn’t burn anything. Yet. But we would have received our scores, and probably disagreed with them.

But let me tell you about our experience and our results.

Raw scores for DI Provincials

 

Once we got to location, my team and I ran through our script a few times, and halfheartedly ran through an entire performance together. This time, we had a few things that  we re-thought. For example, we started our rover over from scratch, which me and Calum tag teamed to finish off over spring break.

The new and improved rover

 

The rover managed to work fine save for a increasingly wobbly wheel, but like every time, it has to break halfway through the performance.

Izzy and Spencer managed to completely recreate our failed prop transformation, and this time it worked really well. It was a small balloon with remote controlled lights inside of it, and that small balloon was inside an even larger balloon that would pop, signifying a bomb explosion. There also was an explosion sound effect. It worked really well, so props to you guys.

For our team choice element, we had our own music, and this time we decided to play it live. Isobel was the trumpeteer, and it sounded really good. She played some soft/sad music once Calum died and I was left alone

And of course, Kate worked on her French speaking. This was for her villian character, and her and Izzy go back and forth about not speaking french. We did this to add to our characters to make them more diverse and interesting.

Below is our presentation, filmed by the one and only, Simon Devisser.

Results

Well, we did ok. Not as good as I thought we would but we still got 1st place, which is sweet. The rover stopped working halfway through, but I think that other than that, everything went as planned. We also got first in our instant challenge, which is awesome. Information regarding the instant challenge is highly classified and cannot be discussed at this time. Overall I’m really happy with how we did, we left DI behind, and we had a lot of fun in the process.

Overall, would I say DI has helped me as a learner?

Reluctantly, yeah I think I would. DI has probably done more for me than I know it, and its taught me a lot about time management and teamwork. It also teaches us how to use our creativity and problem solving skills to work our way around crazy challenges, and to shine a little of our own interests into what we create. All of this I think is a major part of everyone’s lives for getting jobs and careers.

But no matter what I say, and if you agree or disagree with me, it’s been “scientifically proven” that DI helps kids of all ages learn in different ways. A man by the name of Dr. Mark Runco conducted a survey on students who participated in DI, and students who didn’t. This is what he found:

Destination Imagination students were found to be:

  • More engaged and imaginative when completing given tasks
  • More creative than non-DI participants
  • More self-confident and tenacious
  • Able to elaborate on and generate more ideas than non-DI participants
  • Great collaborators—86% of DI students agree that their teamwork skills improved within 1-2 years of participation
  • More inquisitive—92% of DI students agree that solutions to problems are often improved by considering a variety of perspectives

Whether or not this is true is up for debate, but I would definitely say that it did help us a little. I’m just hoping there’s not some form of DI-PTSD that we will all develop where we picture crazy cow hats and large groups of crazy little children running through a school every time we sleep…

To conclude this long post, I’d like to say that DI has been an interesting experience. Ive worked with a bunch of different people, and every year has been completely different. I think that if I were to take away one thing from DI, it would be that there are thousands of ways to solve a problem, and that I should go with what i think is best and complete that challenge the best I can. I should work hard and get everything ready for my big day, and then when that day comes, show everyone all the hard work I’ve done and blow them all away. I think that most of DI’s principles carry over to life in general. There are always going to be problems, some are easy, some are hard, but I have to just keep going and do one thing at a time.

Wow, that was deep. I think now is the time where I sign off.

 

See you

My Old Friend DI, Back Again

Sam

Well, we since we’ve done it for the past two years, we might as well do it again and make it three in a row.

Yes, I’m talking about DI. Or Destination Imagination, if you must. If you want to you can click here to read my other DI posts. But read this one since I spent a lot of time writing it…

This year, for the first time we were actually competing against other teams from Seycove, the grade 9 PLP class, since we are both in the senior level. As usual in DI, there are the same challenge topics, but not the same actual challenges. This year, I was put into the Technical Challenge: Maze Craze.  Click here to see what all the other challenges were.

This short video explains how our challenge works:

 

So, yeah. We had a lot to do.

We were given our challenge and groups back in the late fall, sometime before christmas. My group consisted of me, Spencer, Izzy, Kate, Isobel and Calum. I was quite happy with our group.

First off, we started brainstorming ideas. This was in the form of writing them down on small idea tiles, and then arranging them as a group based on their topic. Those topics could be things that were ideas for the story, the Maze Traveler, or our Team Choice Elements. We worked out a lot of different ideas, and arranged them all to look like below:

Oh yeah, I mentioned Team Choice elements earlier, and they are something extra that we add to our performance to make it more personalized. Here is more information about them:

These team choice elements would be 15% of our overall score, and so we needed them to be good quality. But for some reason, every year in our groups, we never really go above and beyond with these TCE. I dont know why. Anyways, back to the creative process.

The next step was deciding on a story, and then writing the script. We looked over our idea squares, and decided on a police type story. Then we needed to decide on what parts of the challenge needed to be in our story, and how we would incorporate them in to make it interesting. Here is an example of a chart we made about the maze traveler, in our planning stage:

We had one of these charts for every deliverable of our challenge. The maze traveler would be a bomb-seeking/defusing rover, and would be coded to each of the 8 random mazes we were given, so we would follow it through the maze. The aim was that we would get a lot of points for coding and building our own traveler, and not just buy an RC car from Wal-mart.

We then began working out the more visual parts of the presentation, like who is going to be who. We decided on the following characters:

  • Spencer: An old man named Rob who is telling the story
  • Sam: The young version of Rob when he was actually experiencing the story
  • Calum: Rob’s police partner and childhood best friend, named Thomas
  • Izzy: An Evil Villian
  • Kate: A French Evil Villian
  • Isobel: Police Captain

The Story:

The context for our story was a flashback. Spencer was the older version but also present day version of me, and he is at a family reunion 50 years after the story happened. In the story, he was a police officer on the bomb squad, and him and his partner Thomas were dispatch on  their first mission on their first day of the force, straight out of the academy. They were given their gear by the Police Captain, Isobel, and were sent off to an old apartment building. Rob and thomas then entered the building, which was the maze, and sent in the bomb rover. Rob and thomas followed it through the maze and past the two event squares.

Event Squares:

In the 16×16 foot maze, two of the 16 4×4 squares were set apart as event squares. The maze and the location of the event squares would differ based on the random maze we pick two minutes before the performance starts. This makes things a little difficult. But not to worry, it’s not too bad.

But on the event squares, two things had to happen.

On one event square, a object removal had to happen. The maze traveler had to remove some object from the maze, in any way shape or form.

And on the other event square, a prop transformation and to occur. This could be anything that could be seen from 25 feet away, and had to be an obvious change.

Our group could choose the order of the event squares for the performance. But, enough talk, back to…

The Story

The first Event Square was object removal, and Rob and Thomas got the rover to push a paper-mâché bomb out of the maze. Then they advanced through the maze until they came across the second event square. And then things happened. The prop transformation was on another paper mâché bomb, with a strip of LED lights taped all around it. The LED lights go off, and BOOOM goes a bomb.

But, instead of me telling you what happened next, watch the video of our actual performance here.

Results

Well, if I can say one thing, our performance didnt go as planned. I mean, for the most part it did but the maze traveler didnt even move. Unless we kicked it. Which is what we ended up having to do. This was our scoresheet. It tells you the maximum points for each topic of our performance, and then the amount of points we were actually given.

An aspect that the judges really liked was our backdrop. This wasn’t for points, but they said they really like how it was built. That’s because we built it to look like a large storybook. Me and spencer took a trip to Rona and bought two sheets of thin ish plywood, cut them in half, and then screwed them together with hinges to make an eight page book. This was because Spencer was telling a story, and it matched that theme perfectly.

An aspect of our performance that didn’t go so well were our team choice elements. We didn’t receive mush points for the music one because it was played extremely quietly, and our lets just say our french speaking character wasn’t exactly a big hit. We need to rethink those.

And also, our object transformation wasn’t executed properly and so we were scored pretty low on that as well. The lights were supposed to become red via a remote that changes the colours of the LED strip, but the remote broke before the performance…

Lets move on…

 

Reflection Time!

I think that even though our rover failed completely, and we didnt get that much points for… anything else… we did really well. We had to do some quick thinking while presenting since  our script required an actual working rover. We worked well as a team and go through our performance with our dignity still intact, for the most part. The actual time we spent working on the project was pretty smooth, and it was fun. Just like every year, we pretty much leave everything until the last week before the tournament, and end up getting really rushed. But I feel we really worked hard and it paid off. I really do think we have a great start to a really good performance, which we INTENTIONALLY didn’t do for regionals and saved for provincials…

I think that we need to definitely work on the rover, thats just a given. But I also think that we can think up some pretty awesome team choice elements if we put our minds to it, since we are a pretty talented group of people. We definitely have a lot more to work on. Overall, I think we did quite well and Im sort of looking forward to provincials since i think we can do extremely well with a bit more practice.

And if the rover works.

*cough, cough, CALUM, cough…*

That’s all folks,

See you

Science is Fun.

Sam

Science is fun.

This term in science we’ve done a lot of interesting stuff, but only one project. We have been doing a lot of labs, experiments, and working with chemical equations. We learned about Lewis diagrams, Bohr models, exothermic and endothermic reactions,  balancing equations, and much more.

We have been working on all kinds of science terms and reactions. Before we really go into the unit, we made a unit Mind Map, to diagram what we already knew about this subject. Here is the one I did at the beginning:

At this time, I didn’t know much about our subject, just what I’ve learned in the past years of chemistry. But we did learn a lot over the course of the next few weeks.

The main part of our classes were directed to our projects. We had the choice of two different projects, a video, or an experiment. Both types would be partner projects and they are both about one specific chemical reaction. The video would be an animation where the characters are reactants in the reaction. The experiment project would look at how chemical reactions are used to identify the composition of a substance.

I ended up choosing the video project. I really couldn’t tell you why, maybe it’s just because I thought it would be easier since I’ve done a lot of videos in my past, I’m not sure. The project brief we received is below:

Oh, and I was partnered with Calum. We started planning, and we started looking for a reaction to use in our video. We looked at a few options, but settled on elephants toothpaste.  We chose this because it’s a basic experiment and would be easy to explain how everything worked as characters. The main idea of this reaction was as follows:

This experiment contains these main “ingredients:”

– Hydrogen peroxide

– Water

– Dish Soap

– Potassium iodide (catalyst)

A catalyst is something we didn’t learn in class, but me and Calum had to research more to find out what it really was. It’s basically just another element you add to an already working chemical reaction to speed up the process dramatically. This reaction would work on its own, but would take hours and would not be nearly as spectacular. The catalyst is added in, and boosts the reaction speed by a lot. We learned that a catalyst doesn’t get chemically altered in any way during the experiment. We also learned more ways to speed up chemical reactions:

– Increase the concentration of the chemicals

– Add heat to the reaction

– Add some sort of catalyst

This was pretty interesting to me. But, enough about catalysts, let’s get into the fun stuff: the “toothpaste.”

Our reaction was fairly simple. We have two compounds, hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide. Hydrogen peroxide decomposes into water and oxygen gas, which is in the form of foam, and without the iodide ion of potassium iodide, the reaction would be too slow to be worth it. The reaction between the hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide removes the oxygen from the hydrogen peroxide, and the dish soap catches that released oxygen gas. That is where the foam comes from.

For our project, we made a video. Me and Calum quickly came up with an idea once we had our reaction. We thought that a football play was similar to our reaction in a way, and so we wrote a script for our story. We were having trouble thinking of an app to use for the animation, we tried Explain Everything and an app called Animation HD, but both would’ve taken a lot of needless work. We then had an idea. But watch the video to find out how we did it:

To make this video, me and Calum used the PLP iPad tripod, and angled it so it was looking directly down at a big whiteboard Calum had. Then we timelapsed us drawing the different scenes, and used a stop motion app for the animated parts. Then we put it together using iMovie, and added music.

Our video shows us actually doing our experiment at the end, even though we didn’t need to. Another group, Sofia and Ryan, were doing Elephant toothpaste as their experiment project and so we decided that we should help them a little, and then both film the experiment for project uses. And that’s what we did, and it was pretty fun.

Just recently, since it’s the end of the unit, we made an end-of-unit mind map of all the new knowledge we acquired throughout this unit:

To conclude, I’m very satisfied with this project. I feel me and Calum successfully completed our project, and in a really creative way. I think that the analogy we used, and the way we made the video, on the whiteboard, was a really unique way of showing our learning. I had a lot of fun drawing on the whiteboard, and I’m proud of the video we created.

Thanks,

See you

 

 

A Game For Math Nerds

Sam

Well hello again.

I’ve been posting a lot lately haven’t I?

Well that’s because we just got back from a big trip, the term is ending, and we are finishing a massive unit. But this post isn’t about the trip, or disruption or anything of that sort.

Today, I will talk about math.

This past term in math we’ve done two projects. One about golden ratios, and now the one this post is about, algebra.

Oh, algebra. Why does math have to involve letters all of a sudden? What’s wrong with using numbers to do math?

Well this unit was more about algebraic expressions and algebra tiles. We did a lot of practice working with algebra tiles in different types of equations. We learned about three main types:

1. Factoring expressions

2. Expanding expressions

3. And perfect squares

We then spent the better parts of our classes working on worksheets, and smaller assignments, so we’d know the math we needed for a project.

Once we’d done a lot of practice and worksheets, we were briefed on our project.

We were to create and design our own board game that was fun and showed all the math skills we were learning. It was a partner project, and I ended up with my main man, Simon Devisser.

Our first idea for the board game was a fast paced card game. The idea was that you’d have a pile of cards with algebraic expressions on them in the centre. The card would either have a diagram of some algebra tiles, and if you flipped over that card you’d write out the equation, and if the card had an equation on it, you would have to arrange the algebra tiles. Whoever completes the equation on the card first would win.  So, the first player would flip over a card and both players would race to complete the expression, and whoever completed it first would earn a point.

But this idea didn’t showcase all the math functions and skills that it needed to, and was a little too repetitive. So we began working on another new idea.

And we came up with a good one, in my opinion. We thought that we’d make a board game with a little bit of a twist. Instead of having a board with a start and a finish, we’d make one without an end.

The way you would finish was by collecting all the algebra tiles you needed to complete the algebraic expression you were given at the beginning. You earned points by answering more algebraic expressions correctly along the way. Whoever collected all their tiles first wins.

We even made a video of us explaining how to play the game, and us actually playing it:

Me and Simon got together and made our board game. We set out all the pieces and got ready to play. We filmed us briefly explaining how everything worked, and then showed a short version of us playing the game.

When we actually started playing, it went a lot smoother than I thought. I didn’t really know if everything would work right, or the expressions would be too hard or something, but it all went really well. Me and Simon played by the rules, and some we had to make up as we went along and figured out how it worked. But I’d say that we were really prepared and we both had a strong idea of what the game would look like and be like to play, and we pulled it off with flying colours.

The game itself was actually kind of fun to play, surprisingly. We should sell it to… some company…

Overall I was really happy with how everything went. The one thing I would improve on is our procrastination and time management in class. Sometimes in class we’d get distracted or carried away with something else, and would lose valuable classtime. I think that we should’ve focused more in class, and that would have made it a lot easier on us in the long run. I say that because we left the whole project other than the planning stage until the very last minute, which made us hand in our project video a little late. But other than that, I am quite proud of this project.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

See you

 

Technology is Causing a Rukus

Sam

What if I took away ALL your technology, from your dishwashers to cell phones to electric locks on your doors, and you had to live for a week without it.

Would you be able to do it?

Well, if you think you could then good for you.

But it wouldn’t be easy for everyone. Our 21st century lives rely on our technology for almost everything we do. Education, transportation, communication, and many more areas of our lives are full of technology, even if we don’t know it.

And that’s what our past unit has been all about.

Disruption

This unit was one that we have been looking st for a long time, and finished off with our amazing trip to California. Read this post to hear lots more about our trip. We went to three different cities in California and visited lots of major tech businesses such as Twitter,

Google,

Apple,

and Intel.

These big corporations are more present in our lives than ever in our day and age.

After returning from the trip we had a few projects to work on. One of them was a scrapbook type of digital book describing our trip and how it all relates to the theme of disruption, which you can read at the end of this post. Another was all about our time at High Tech High, which was in the form of an interview podcast, and I have a post on it here. And the next project was a partner project, and I worked with Isobel, and the project was a choice of a few formats, and a choice of a location.

Heres what our options were for formats:

And here’s what we could have done for location:

Me and Isobel decided to a video about High Tech High, because we instantly thought of a good thesis, and thought a video would be a great way to showcase how different High Tech High is. We filmed a lot when we were in California, more specifically High Tech High, and had lots of clips to work with for our video. But without any other talk about it, here is is below so you can watch it:

We created this video to show the main differences to our school Seycove and the PLP program we are in, to HTH and their crazy school.

The video production went smoothly other than a few technical difficulties with photo storage and iCloud, and we both did our parts well. Sometimes there was confusion as to who was doing what or how things should be done, and that is just bad communication on our parts, which can easily be improved for next time. Other than that, I’d say this video was a success and I’m happy with what we created.

But of course, as always in PLP, we aren’t done yet! We still needed to do one last thing on disruption… other than this post. We had to write

an essay.

Yeah, I know, it’s crazy. As if we didn’t already have like four projects. And at this time as well, Destination Imagination regionals are looming in the back of our minds, making us cry ourselves to sleep with stress, or in Ethan’s case, get a lisp from a swollen tongue.

(Which was caused by stress. It’s a real thing, look it up.)

But, anyways, back to the essay. The theme was about technological disruption, and the driving question being as follows:

How has technology acted as a disruption throughout history?

For our essay, since it’s a synthesis essay, we needed to use information from three different sources. One of them had to be from the book we read in class, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. The other two were up to us. But anyways, I’ll show you the essay and then do the rest of my talking:

Cameras Are A Disruption
By Samuel Scheewe

 

Every single person in our world has encountered some type of technology in their life. Technology has grown so big and so diverse in our world, and it has completely re-shaped it. Technology is a disruption, and it is evident in the invention and modern development of the camera. It has changed our entertainment, personal lives, and privacy, all by one device.


Movies and TV shows are some of the most popular forms of entertainment. Almost every single person has been to a movie theatre at least once in their life, and these movies are there because of one thing. Cameras. Cameras are mounted on cars, planes, and drones for these professional films, and are the reason for the millions of dollars the industry makes every movie. An entertainment study by ISBSWorld in 2012 claimed that the movie and film entertainment industry reached $126.8 Billion, ranking it among the top 5 forms of entertainment our world has ever seen. The industry has only gotten bigger since then. People watch movies every day, and every year hundreds of new movies are made. And it all wouldn’t be possible without cameras. Before cameras and movies, people found other ways of entertainment. But since the recent development of the professional filming cameras, it has brought the film industry to the top, to the point where almost every household has one working television, and is used daily. Movies and TV shows are a very popular form of entertainment, as they are extremely addicting. It’s very easy to say, “Just one more show,” and keep watching. Filmmaking is all about keeping the attention of the audience, and that is all in captivating camera angles and gripping script writing. This has changed our entertainment from books to television because of the way that movies let us hear the story, see it, and follow our characters through an exciting adventure. The movie immerses us and lets us escape our world and join another for a short time. Cameras are the reason for this change from books to movies, and it’s because of this change people can watch and keep stories with them whether it’s an action movie, horror film, or nature documentary. 21st century entertainment is getting better and better, and the cameras behind those screens get better and better. These stories will be kept with our generation forever.


Cameras have become so small, that they have found a way into our own personal lives. They can go with us wherever we go, in our pocket. The camera was integrated into the smartphone, and this was revolutionary in that people didn’t need a separate camera if they wanted to take pictures anymore. Now, everyone had the power of photography at their fingertips, which was huge. A study on Altitudeinc about the iPhone camera as a disruption to digital cameras says: “It is a photographic experience designed for the masses and one that will quickly obsolete the need for a separate camera for most people.” And Altitudeinc is correct. Having HD photo and video capabilities already in your smartphone is a very quick design that is more appealing to the masses than having to lug around a different camera. And the cameras in our smartphones are dummy-proof. It’s a point and shoot type of idea, where the exposure and focus adjusts automatically, making it super easy for everyone to use. This has changed our world, and has let every single person with a smartphone be a photographer of their own lives, and can keep their memories as long as they want. Having a camera on our smartphones is something we take for granted. They effect social media, which is an extremely popular industry, and communication in general. Taking photos and sharing them with other people is what a smartphone does, and we wouldn’t be able to do that if none of the smartphones didn’t have cameras. The camera is one of the biggest functions of a modern day smartphone, and without it our personal social media and communication would be drastically different. Cameras have changed our personal lives for the better, making us all capable of keeping our own stories in our pockets.


Would you want someone watching you at all times? No, you probably wouldn’t. People want their privacy, and that’s your right. Security cameras have changed that. They aren’t able, or allowed, to watch you at all times, but they protect you in all the public places you go. Whenever you go out to the mall, or just walk around downtown, there are cameras on the outside of buildings. And they are there for one reason. To help prevent or discourage crime. This is another form of camera we take for granted. They have been a positive disruption to our daily life, as Reolink survey on the effectiveness of home security cameras informs us that 83% of burglars will not rob their target house or building if they can see security cameras. This is a big number. Having cameras constantly surveying the activity in public places is a vital help to police. But there also is a fine line between security purposes and controlling the freedom of people. This is clearly demonstrated in the book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, where the main character Marcus is being watched and controlled, but manages to fight back. This problem of too much control is always up for debate, but having security cameras still greatly decreases crime rates. And it wouldn’t be possible if not for the camera. It has truly changed our world as we now it.


The camera was once used only for professional filmmakers, and was big, heavy and only shot in black and white. But with the modern developments, it has changed the way we live in multiple areas of our life. Cameras brought a $126.8 billion entertainment industry to life, impacted the way we share and document our personal lives, and have prevented and protected us from crime. All of these areas of our lives are ones we see every single day. Without the new technology of cameras disrupting our world for the better, we would live extremely different lives.

 

I found that for most of the essays I’ve written, I’m pretty confident going into them as I’m good at writing. But for this essay, with all our other work going on, I felt I was less prepared. It took me a while to come up with my thesis, and I didn’t finish my actual outline until after I wrote the essay. Which isn’t good, in case you’re wondering.

But, I think that for all my unpreparedness, I did pretty well. I found my two other sources, and I think they supported my points really well. My main idea was that cameras are changing our lives worldwide for the better. They are going from big machines, to something that can fit in your pocket, or fly hundreds of feet in the air on a drone. I think that this essay explains and supports what I’m saying. The day or two before the essay I was preparing as much as I could, brainstorming ideas and such. But I feel that I don’t really need to do that much preparing other than an outline to get my ideas down. I felt fairly confident beforehand, and I feel confident in my product.

Overall, this has been my favourite unit in a long time. I really enjoyed hearing about how all the businesses we know today started out as small as three guys in a garage. It really interested me how they though of something totally crazy and different and kept going with it until they changed the world. That was quite inspiring.

And then we went on and actually experienced all these businesses and organizations in real life, while being on an incredibly fun trip with my good friends, and it was absolutely incredible. I will remember this trip for the rest of my life, and all the things I’ve learned as well. I’m very glad I took this opportunity and went with my classmates this year, because it was something to remember.

This unit has been amazing, fun and tough at the same time, and I’m actually sad to see it go. But I can only imagine how the next projects and assignments will be after this great one.

Thanks for reading,

See you.

 

Going to School… On Vacation

Sam

On our week long trip to the sunny state of California, we had the chance to do something you won’t believe…

We went to school. For two days.

But this school isn’t a normal one. It’s located in downtown San Diego, California. It’s called High Tech High, a pretty well known and controversial school in that area.

We visited this school, and got to shadow a grade 9 class for the entirety of two of their school days. We met with a teacher, Mrs. Anna, who Ms. Willemse and Mr. Hughes have known and met with for a few years, and she and her students explained how their school works. We were taken on a tour of the school by some of the students there. Here are some photos of the schools:

I was really impressed with how different this school was. From the architecture to the curriculum, High Tech High is unique. When we first arrived there, we didn’t really know how the school worked, but after we got the tour of the campus, we started to learn a bit more. Once we had our tour, we met with our partners.

But before this, before we left on the trip we had to make videos describing ourselves and our interests. I went through three drafts, and I was extremely happy with my final draft:

This was so that we could be partnered up with HTH students that are similar in personality with us. So, when we entered HTH we began meeting our partners.

But, I was a little disappointed.

As sad as it was, it seemed like everyone got their own partner except for me, Calum and Alex. We had to join with any of our friends, and so I joined forces with Robbie, and his two HTH partners Max and Daniel. They were pretty cool guys, they were mostly quiet and reserv3d but they knew a lot about their school and were very smart. Me and Robbie followed them to all their classes for the two days, and their classes were very different.

From my understanding, the students had four periods in the day. And it’s the same thing for a whole term, everyday. They had a humanities classroom, math, media arts, and the outdoor basketball court. Their schools didn’t have a cafeteria, library, gym, computer room, or even lockers.

The reason the school is like this is because the type of learning is PBL, or project based learning, just like in our program PLP. Except their whole school is PBL. The aim of this school is to prepare the students for the real world after high school by working on projects that are less like traditional schools where you memorize facts from textbooks. The students use a variety of materials to create those amazing projects, like paper, wood, metal, or digitally, and they are all very well done. The materials the students need are made ready for them when they need them because the staff really wants the students to let their creativity and ingenuity thrive in what they are creating. This is the goal of High Tech High and project based learning.

One of the things I noticed that I thought was pretty cool was that the walls weren’t covered with lockers, but covered in the projects of all the students. From the elementary school to the grade 12’s, their projects were being showcased for anyone to see. This made each and every area of the school different, and very interesting to walk through.

This was the High Tech High Media Arts building, the one where we tagged along in a class. The entrance is on the right side of the long T-shape, and the clsssrooms are all over. There are three floors, the bottom for the elementary, middle for middle school, and top for the high school.

At one point in the day, I got the chance to interview two of the students in the HTH class about their experiences and daily lives at their unique school. I asked them about what they like and don’t like, and how their school works. Here it is below:

Overall, my HTH experience was pretty cool. I got to see firsthand how an entire school is making an effort to make change in the education systems in their community, and eventually, hopefully, worldwide. I liked seeing all the projects the students have done, and how the school functions in general. The students all were really nice and welcoming, and they were laid back but worked very hard. I was interested in seeing all the differences and also similarities between PLP and HTH. This whole experience was really educational and it showed me that there are more ways than just one to learn.

 

See you

Californiaaa Knows How to Party

Sam

Wow.

 

That was an awesome trip. From February 2-11, my grade 10 PLP class was in the beautiful state of California!

We went to San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco, and in that order. This post isn’t going to be filled with school-talk, I’m going to tell you all about the best parts of our trip.

But first, let me tell you why we went on this trip. Our whole theme this year has been around the word Disruption. How are things in our daily lives a disruption, or were a disruption. We have been looking at how technology is a disruption, and what better place to go see it in real life than Silicon Valley, a land of technological innovation! But we wouldn’t just go there. We went to two other cities, and many more amazing locations.

So, let’s get right into it.

First, we flew from Vancouver to Seattle, and then all the way down to San Diego. Once we landed there we went right to Torrey Pines Natural Reserve. It was a beautiful park on a peninsula dedicated to preserving the last known Torrey pine trees in North America.

Next we went to La Jolla cove, an amazing beach with lots of seals and sea lions. We played frisbee in the warm air while the sun set over the horizon.

The next day we went to the San Diego Safari Park. I was amazed at just how big it is, and the variety of animals they are able to keep there because of the climate. We got to see all kinds of animals ranging from birds to rhinos. We spent the majority of the day there, and I’m glad we did.

One of the highlights I have of the Safari Park is getting to see the Cheetah Run. They had a grass track, and got the cheetah to chase a stuffed animal on a tow rope down it at top speed! Here’s the video:

That was the end of day 2. On day three, we got to board a massive decommissioned turned museum aircraft carrier, called the USS Midway. Again, we spent most of the day here, and again, I’m happy we did. There was a lot to see, and you could pretty much go anywhere on the ship. My favourite part was the flight deck, and learning about how they launch the fighter jets.

For the next two days, we were shadowing another class in their school. Their school is an American charter school called High Tech High (HTH). I talk all about this part of the trip here (coming soon).

 

Right after our second day at HTH, we caught a plane to San Jose. We then visited the Intel museum, and we learned about how the company came to be, and what it does. I learned a lot more about how complicated computer chips can be! That evening, we got to talk with Scott, a man who was on the original iPhone creation team, and Brendan, a software designer that has worked for IBM, and now is working for Amazon. They gave us a lot of great information that ties directly into our unit of Disruption. They talked to us about how Silicon Valley is the heart of innovation, and that it’s not all big ideas working all the time. They said that some make it, and some do, and that’s the way it is, and the mindset is to just keep trying. This is similar to our Blue Sky projects, in how we design a product that solves a problem. Except we aren’t trying to get thousand dollar investments. But overall, they were very interesting and I will take away a lot from that one hour and a half session.

Day six. In the morning, we visited Googleplex. The official HQ of Google, something we all know and love. I was a little dissapointed that we didn’t get to go in any of the buildings, but it still was cool to see the campus and the people.

Next we went to the Apple Visitor centre, across the street from the Apple Infinite Loop building. This visitor centre had some crazy architecture. From curved panes of glass to freestanding marble staircases, this place had it all. And it had a bunch of Apple products you can’t buy anywhere else in the world. Pretty cool place.

And to finish off our day in Silicon Valley, we gave a quick visit to the Intel Museum. This place was pretty small, but had a lot of computer chip information. To me it wasn’t incredibly interesting since I didn’t know what a wafer was…

The next morning we spent at the Computer History Museum. This was really cool because the way it was laid out was you would walk through the museum and the computers slowly got newer and newer. The museum took you through the entire history of computers, from the ones the size of a room, to the Apple 2. I’m not super interested in computers or programming, but I actually found this museum interesting. I liked seeing how each computer got better and better, building off the old model, and other people’s ideas to stay at the top of the market. It’s crazy to me to think of how an ipad will be outdated in 15 years, and I use mine every day.

Next we stopped at the famous HP garage, where the computer company HP all began. There’s not really much to see, it’s just a shed with a green door…

And next, we visited Stanford. This is what I was picturing: a very professional, strict looking school where only geniuses get accepted. What I saw: normal looking students wearing casual clothes ripping around campus on longboards and bicycles. I was surprised, in a good way. The students were all very smart, and I learned that the acceptance policy is to look at who you are as a person and what you’ve done in your community, not just your grades. This changed my whole view on the school and I definitely consider it a possibility in my future.

Now, we didn’t take a plane, or a car, or a bus. We took a train to San Francisco! I thought this was pretty cool. On the trip we took pretty much all the major forms of transportation. We found ourselves on foot, in cars, buses, cable cars, trains, boats, and planes!

But, anyways. In San Francisco we visited Twitter headquarters, which was pretty amazing to see. We saw  how Twitter works, all the crazy cool rooms, and the daily life of an employee.

Then we went to the Golden Gate Bridge. This experience was pretty surreal. When we walked around and took pictures, the bridge seemed fake. It literally looked like it was a backdrop for a movie. It was pretty amazing with the sun setting behind it.

And now. The best part of the whole trip, in my opinion. On the very last full day, we got to see Alcatraz. But before that we went on a pretty cool walking  tour of San Francisco. Wild Wes (that’s his name) took us to all the historical places in SF, and he had a pretty great route since everywhere we went had some historic traits. I learned a lot about how cities have more history other than just who founded it and built it up.

And now, yes, it’s time for Alcatraz. I was quite excited to be able to actually go in a famous prison. On an island.

First, we took a 20 minute ferry out to the island.

Then we walked up the hill together to get to the main cellhouse, and turned on our audio tour skills (there’s not that many). I though the audio tour was awesome. It was perfectly timed with how fast you move through the cell house, and gave some pretty cool information all the while. The coolest story to me was the escape. Three men dug a hole in the wall, climbed onto the roof, slid down, jumped into the ocean, and were never seen again, to this day!

I really enjoyed the entire trip, even with a little sleep deprivation. I would say that my second favourite part of the trip was just having fun with everyone else. Everyone was having a great time, and I got to know a lot of people better. This type of trip I will remember for the rest of my life, and I would never be able to have these experiences if it wasn’t for PLP. I learned so much in just over a week, and I’ll be able to use that knowledge in everything I do. That’s why I see these trips as so valuable. You get to goof around with your friends, while having once in a lifetime experiences. It really was a great time, and I am glad I went.

Heres a book I made about our trip, and how everywhere we went related to our theme of Disruption. Check it out for more photos and other content from the trip:

 

My SLC…No, My tPOL… No, My mPOL!

Sam

Well, we are in 2018 now. And, we are also pretty close to halfway through the school year. And guess what that means…

REFLECTION TIME!

And typically, in PLP we do that in the form of a special version of a parent-teacher-interview. Now, these meeting have gone by many names, always changing their identities… it’s so us students don’t realize what they really are…

But every year, in January and in June, we do a SLC, or tPol, and now we are doing mPols, Mid-year Presentations of Learning. And every year, we realize that these meetings are the same dreaded 15 minutes of our lives, just with a different face.

But, on with it.

In this presentation, I’m going to tell you about four topics.

1. The piece of work that I am most proud of so far

2. The new skills I’ve developed this year in PLP

3. What I have been struggling with

4. My top areas of improvement I need to work on

First off, I’ll tell you about the work that I’m most proud of so far, and that showed a lot of hard work. And that would be my Who am I Video. We made these videos about ourselves because we are going to be working one on one with another class in High Tech High, in Our California trip. We will send these videos out to their class, and so they can pick who they want to work with based on our personalities and interests.

We started out with broad instructions. A short, around 2 minute video that showcases ourselves and what we like to do, our families, etc.

When we first were introduced to  this project, I was very interested, and excited, as I always like making videos. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, as I have lots of video of me and my friends doing all sorts of outdoor activity.

And this was my first draft:

I was not very happy with this one, mainly because it wasn’t too exciting. And so we moved on to our second draft. I changed the style a little, but still wasn’t happy with the overall feel. And then when editing my final draft, I felt I knew exactly what I wanted. And so here is my final draft:

This one I LOVED. For this one, I made my script a lot shorter, so there was room for the videos to play, and you won’t hear me talking the entire time. I also found some way better music, and made it come in at an amazing time. I felt that everything worked exactly as I wanted for this draft. This draft had the feel and mood I wanted it to but couldn’t capture in my first two drafts. As you can see as well, my first draft is a lot less exciting than my final draft.

But the main reason I was most proud of this project was because of all the hard work I put into each draft, and I built up from each step, ultimately reaching my goal. This to me is a big accomplishment, and I’m very happy with the end product. I went from a boring version of me, to showcasing myself in a fun and exciting way that people will want to watch, and I would want them to watch. I spent probably 10 hours total, and showed lots of revision skills through these 3 drafts. And that’s why it’s the project I’m proudest of.

 

Next up are my New Skills that I think I’ve developed this year in PLP 10. The biggest one so far is:

Podcasting.

And this breaks down to multiple different skills.  In PLP we have done multiple projects that involved podcasts, and it started all the way back in Camp Capilano, where we created our first podcasts ever. The skills I think I gained from this are:

– The ability to write scripts that are very informative, yet entertaining.

– Research facts and interesting information to use rather than photos and visuals, like I usually would when making a video.

– The ability to create in-depth questions that I can ask my interviewee that will make them give a detailed answer

– Learn how to conduct an interview that will give me the answers and stories I was looking for

Overall in the year so far, we have done a lot of podcasts. Our first major one was the WWI Soldier Podcasts.

World War One In A Podcast

I think that in this project, I was just starting to realize how podcasts work, and what I needed to do to make mine a lot better. But, I think that I applied these new skills the most in the Winter Exhibition podcasts.

Tell Me A Story

This is mostly because that’s when we were introduced to these new skills. But I feel that I took a lot of time to really think about the questions I was asking, to give myself a good outcome. I also feel that my podcast editing of the interview was really strong from the beginning, as I made each one engaging and interesting. A technique I used was to edit out the question I was asking if the answer explained enough so that the listener could follow along. This really helps the flow of the podcast, as my voice would interrupt the story flow that the interviewee was sharing. It made the interview go from a choppy question-then-answer recording to a smooth story podcast, which was the goal.

So, that was the project that I felt demonstrated the new skills I’ve developed so far in PLP 10.

 

And that brings me to my next topic.

My Struggles… (deep sigh.)

My biggest struggle this year has been lack of interest in some of my projects. That has mostly effected my math and science class, as I am often uninterested, and I end up falling behind in the smaller assignments in class. But, luckily, I do find that by the time that the project comes around for the unit, I have learned enough of the material that I know how to create my project. I was quite happy with my trigonometry and ideal angles project, for how much I didn’t understand.

Trigonometry Sounds Scary… It Is…

But, even though I managed to pull off the project at the last minute, I still need to work on keeping focused in class better so I can keep up in class. I will begin to focus more in class and ask questions when I need go, to help me get the right answers.

But the project that demonstrates my lack of time management and enthusiasm was the Vancouver Sins of the City project.

The Good and the Bad of Vancouver

I was put into a group that I hadn’t really worked with before, and a topic I didn’t really enjoy learning about. For some reason labour rights in Vancouver just doesnt intrigue me at all. And so that how I felt for the whole project: unenthusiastic. Thankfully I had the sense to work hard when we needed it though, and so I did get a lot of work done, but it was always the day before something was due. I’m pretty certain that the only reason we actually had on interview in our podcast before the final draft was because our interviewee waltzed into our class the day before and spoke to our class about Workplace Safety as Youth…

None of us had taken the initiative on finding someone to interview, and to just our luck, we managed to find one, at the last minute.  Anyways, my group and I didn’t spend too much time on each step of the project, but I am happy with what we produced, it’s better than I thought it would be at least.

I think the reason that I didn’t focus and work hard on this project was because I didnt have any motivation to work hard. I wasn’t interested in the topic, and that really made working on this project a drag for me, which slowed down our progress and creativity.

I think that I need to work on finding 1 thing per project that intrigues me so that I can enjoy a little bit of each project while working on it. This is because right now, the project is either boring, or not boring. I need to work on finding a middle ground.

And that leads right into my next topic, my goals for the rest of this year.

MY GOALS FOR THE REST OF PLP 10

For the second half of the year I hope to improve my skills as a PLP learner, and these are the ways I’m planning on doing so:

 

1. Work on time management by beginning assignments and projects when I have extra time, instead of other things. Write down all my assignments is order of priority so I have a visual image of what i need to do.

2. Find and integrate something that I like into each project so I have a stronger motivation to work on it, and do it well.

3. Find some way to go above and beyond in each project. Right now I feel that my work quality has plateaued, and I want to drive the quality back up to where it should be.

 

These goals will help me improve my work, and I hope to use them as much as I can.

To sum everything up, I feel that my proudest project this year was my Who Am I video, as it was fun and exciting for me to create. I would say that I have grown as a learner in my podcasting skills, developing many other skills that help in podcasting. I think my biggest struggle is keeping up in math and science, and also my Sins of the City project because of our bad time management. And I plan to work on focusing more in class, keeping track of my assignments more effectively, and adding in something of my own to each project I do, for the rest of my PLP years.

 

And now,

Finally, I will ask a question to you, my audience, to conclude my Mid-year Presentation of Learning…

 

“What is one thing I can do to become a better leader in my classroom?”

 

And as I let that sink in, that is all for today, and thank you for coming to my 2018 mPol.

 

See you,