Freaky Frankenstuffie

Sam

Hello,
In this post I’m going to be talking about one massive project, which has many different parts and aspects to it. The project is our Frankenstuffie videos and stories. This project ties into our math, geography, textiles and ecology units. It’s a big project. So here it all is, explained:

In math class we made the villains of our soon-coming videos, called Math Monsters. We made them in math because after we built them, we needed to find the volume and surface area of their bodies. Here is a picture of mine:

Next, we read the award winning book The Martian by Andy Weir in Humanities because we were looking at the question: “Who is in control, the environment or humans?” This is the main question of the unit. While reading the book, every quarter of the way through, we filled out a section response sheet with questions. Here is an example of one of mine:

In our other humanities class, we learned about geography. We learned about maps and the differences between different areas of the world, like climate, weather, and land shape. Then we all chose a section of Canada for our video setting. Mine was the north Innuition Mountains. It’s in Northern Canada, and is part of the arctic. After we knew our setting, we needed to pick an animal that lived there. I chose the arctic fox. Then after a bit of research we made a small storyboard for an epistolary story we would write on this. Then we started writing. An epistolary story is where the characters tell the story in a log book or diary type format. This is exactly like the way the Martian was written.
I’d better explain how our stories were supposed to be written:

Our Frankenstuffie, called that because it would be an animal that adapts to its surroundings in a crazy way, needs to be dropped into a new environment where it starts a new life. The environment needs to be explained, the life in it, the setting, and the way it works. Then our math monsters need to come into the story and cause a disturbance in the environment the Frankenstuffie is living in. The Frankenstuffie needs to adapt to the change or problem is some way that will boost its survival chances in the story. Then the Frankenstuffie needs to battle the monster, and after everything we needed to explain how the environment is restored, and or changed in a good or bad way.
The whole story needs to be 8 episodes long, and each episode 200-500 words.

So, without further ado here is my epistolary story:

I really enjoyed the writing of those stories, I didn’t realize how much I liked writing. I loved being able to make my own story, using my imagination and writing skills to create a fun, entertaining story.

After that, the textiles part comes into play. We all got a number of stuffed animals to create our Frankenstuffies with. I got myself a fox from home, and a seal from the dollar store. Here are the originals:

The next thing we needed to do was to make our animals with their adaptations by sewing pieces of one animal onto another. So, I cut off the tail and front fins of my seal, and sewed them onto the fox. This was so that the fox could swim and breathe under water just like in my epistolary story. Here’s a clip of me and my amazing sewing skills:

https://youtu.be/uT_-7PIty28

And here is a picture of the end product:

The seal flippers are attached to the front paws of the fox, and the seal tail right below the fox tail. Well, now that that is done, I needed to move onto the next part.

Now the next part to the story will be to make our videos. So, we drew out a storyboard before we started filming to get prepared and our ideas down. This is mine:

It’s a very rough sketch and our videos don’t have to follow it exactly. The main point to this was just to have a general idea in mind so we don’t waste time in the filming process. Now, the video didn’t have to be our whole epistolary story thankfully, we could choose any point of the story to use, as long as it makes sense to a new viewer that didn’t read the story. I chose to start after fox adapts into a fox/seal hybrid, and just before the robot comes. Then I continue to the end of the story, but not as much detail as the written story. So basically the last third of the story. I mainly used the app Explain Everything, because it was the easiest way to make the video, since I couldn’t go out to the arctic to film live, I had to animate my video. I used the app Photoshop Mix to edit my photos and take away the unnecessary backgrounds of my animal images. It’s a great photoshop app, very easy to use. Those were the two main apps I used, but I also used the Internet for copyright free images for backgrounds and other stuff. So after all the other projects vital to this video, here is my Frankenstuffie Video:

I spent a lot of time on this video, most to make it a good video, and some just because it actually does take a lot of time. After probably 4.5 hours of just the video making process, I have that video to show for it. And I am proud of it. It shows the story of my animal, explains its adaptations, introduces the monster, shows the battle, and how the environment is restored all in just under 4 minutes.

This whole entire “unit” I should call it since it’s so big, has taught me lots, directly, like studying for ecology tests for science, and indirectly, like having to incorporate ecological and environmental information into my epistolary story and video. Overall, I enjoyed the build up to one big finale where all we have learned is showcased in a video we created ourselves.

Florida Films From February

Sam

Hello,

In this post I will be talking about a big project we have been working on. This assignment was given to us in February when our PLP 9 class went to Florida for 10 days. This is the Making Fantasy Real Video. How it all started was we first got to choose a ride in Disney world that we would research and in a 5 minute video explain how this ride draws us in to the the imaginary world of that ride. The ride that was chosen by each person, had to be ridden by that person because the class would be going to Disney world. My ride choice was the Indiana Jones Adventure ride in Disneyland California.

Me and four other students wouldn’t be making the trip to Florida because of various reasons, so we got to choose rides anywhere, since we didn’t have to ride them. So when the majority of the class went to Florida, we stayed at school and worked on this project and our Destination Imagination projects. Away they went, and here we stayed.

So, the only thing to do to start, I started researching my ride. Once I had a good amount of research I put together a storyboard for my video. Here it is below:
It wasn’t set in stone, we could change if we needed, and I did stick to most of that plan. The next thing I did was to start filming and putting my clips together. Since I couldn’t ride my ride I needed to borrow some clips, but I worked with what I had. Once I got it all together I had my first draft, which is below:

In this video I had a lot of long clips where it was just me talking, so I saw how it got boring fast. I needed to change that, and make it more exciting. At this stage we did some peer critique, which is where another classmate gives feedback on our work. Here is what Claire said about my video in a critique sheet:

So after this feedback, I realized I needed to talk about the history of my ride, and why it was so popular. I got to work shortening the boring clips and filming about the history. After that it produced a second draft:

In this video I still needed to shorten the shots of me, and the shots of the ride because I needed to keep it tight to the points in order to keep the viewers interest. So after all of this it was time to do my third draft which looks like this:

This video has all the edits I’ve been asked to change, and so I was happy with this one, but of course we needed to do one last one for it to be ready to show the world, as our teacher says. The one last thing I was asked to do is to balance the audio, because at some points it’s quiet and at some points it’s louder. So I did that and here is my last draft (it’s the exact same video as the last one but with balanced audio):

And after all that I was finally approved to be ready. And here I am now, showing it to the world. This project was very fun to do, since we get to make a video, but I do wish I was able to go to Florida and film for my video myself.

You Are What You Eat

Sam

Have you ever heard the saying: “You are what you eat?” Well it basically means what you eat will reflect on who you are, whether it’s your personality or more physically. Recently in PLP we started a small HCE unit, and we are learning about healthy eating.

We were assigned a mini project on this, but first we needed to watch two different Ted Talks. The first one we watched really interested me, because it was about this guy who tried to be extremely healthy, and went to some extreme measures to do so. He washed his hands all the time, cleaned the remotes and cell phones in his house a lot, ate only healthy food, applied a layer of sunscreen every two hours, and wore a helmet when he was walking around. He concluded that after his year long experiment that him being so healthy was unhealthy. He was neglecting his family and friends, and being too obsessive over small things. That really interested me because some people think that you have to try to be really healthy, or extremely fit, but you don’t, you can just be who you are and still be healthy, in a healthy way.

Anyways, the mini project. We then needed to think about the foods that we eat on a daily basis, and then like Giuseppe Archimboldo, make a portrait of ourselves – but made completely out of the food we eat. This ties into the “You are what you eat” aspect of this project. I started designing my project in a great photoshop app called Photoshop Mix, but it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to, so I moved onto another app called Comic Life. Then I layered on all the food items I wanted. And so, this is my portrait:

The food I used is just some of the food I eat, and it’s mostly healthy I realize now. I don’t eat that much junk food at all, the only junk food I eat are potato chips and ice cream. I eat a lot of fruit and veggies, and a decent amount of meat. All of this contributes into the portrait I made.

DNA Lab / Build

Sam

Hello,
In this post I will be talking about two small projects we did this week in science class about DNA! The first one, a lab. We did a lab where we looked at the DNA of a strawberry through a microscope. The procedure went something like this:

– Put half a strawberry into a plastic bag
– Add a little bit of water, dish soap and salt
– Seal the bag and squish it all together
– Pour the mixture into a test tube until half full
– Add 10ml of cold ethanol
– Watch
– Remove top chunks from test tube and put under microscope
– Observe

Here are some pictures of the lab:

Ready to start

The mixture all together

 

This is what we saw through the microscope:

The close up

 

The other project we did was a mini DNA model that we built out of pipe cleaners and straws. It needed to show DNA in a double helix form, and also the 4 different base pairs. The straws are split in the middle to show the two different bases together, and the part sticking out of the side is sugar and phosphate. Here is a picture of it with a diagram of one beside it:

Both projects were quick, but also fun to do, and I learned what I needed to learn easily.

Our Destination Was First Place…

Sam

Hello,

Welcome back to another post on the educational competition we participated in called Destination Imagination. We participated in the first rounds on February 27th called Regionals. My post on regionals is here. After that, we had a few weeks to revise our whole projects to get ready for the Provincial tournament which happened on April 8th.  To make our project better we needed to do a few things. First, we needed to reconstruct our balsa wood structures since they broke in the regional tournament. We redid our designs so they would be a little stronger, and then weighed them correctly. We also needed on more Team Choice Element, other than the animation I made. Our element was whenever Michael spoke as the narrator, he spoke in rhyme. Those were the two major improvements on our presentation.

Now onto our actual performance. We did pretty good overall, a lot better than our first try in regionals. Our structures held a total of 90 pounds and probably more, but we were worried about not having enough time to finish our performance since we only had 8 minutes. Putting the weights on took a long time. Here’s a short clip of us putting on the weights:

Testing the structures.

We did finish in time, which was good since in regionals we didn’t. I liked our story and I feel like we weren’t given enough points for it.

Overall the day at Destination Imagination was fun, I liked performing and redeeming ourselves even if we got fourth. Out of four. Anyways it was fun. The one thing I didn’t like that much was the waiting. Lots of it we were just sitting and talking since it was raining outside. As you can see in this picture:

We were waiting for our turn to present. The whole day was fun, and I enjoyed presenting all the hard work we put into this project.

The Ones At My Table

Sam

Hello, today I’m going to tell you about a leadership assignment we started a while back in PLP. We were talking about what it actually means to be a leader and what important qualities they have. Then we started an assignment called “Who’s at My Table.” We needed to think of 5 people that were leaders to us individually and write a paragraph about each person and why they are a leader to us. Then we needed to design a diagram that had all of them in it showing them all together with us. My people are: My Parents, my Grandad, Jackie Robinson, Brandon Semenuk, and Connor McDavid.

My first draft of my diagram looked like this:

I definitely needed to change this, I didn’t love the colours and it wasn’t very appealing to look at. So, I started working on my paragraphs and my second draft of my diagram.

Below are my paragraphs explaining why they are leaders to me:

My Parents: 

My parents are my mentors because they live with me everyday and are like my life trainers. They both set examples for me to follow, whether it’s intentional or not. They are important to me because they guide me, they show me what’s right and what’s wrong, and they set good examples for me and my sisters. They are my map for life. I learn so much from them, they help me through school and all my life problems. I wouldn’t be successful if they haven’t been there to guide me. If I get into trouble, they don’t get me out of it, they show me how to deal with it on my own respectfully. I learn what’s good and what’s not, and how to act the best in every situation. They are some of the best people I know, and that’s very inspiring to me. I aim to go higher than the bar they’ve set, and the only way I’ll be able to do that is with them as my parents.

My Grandad:

My Grandad would definitely be at my table, because he is so kind, caring and wise. I don’t get to see him much, but when I do, I love being with him. To me, he is full of life advice, and some of it I don’t even understand yet. He’s been preparing me for the real world and how to be the best person I can be. He is inspiring because he is so hard working, he is so smart, and he is the best people person I know. He inspires me because he works at the local Superstore, and sometimes for some long shifts. On his phone he has a step tracker that has a goal of 10,000 steps per day. And he hasn’t missed 10,000 steps a day since July 2015! My Grandad always knows what to do, and he is so caring for his 11 grandkids, me being one. He will talk to anyone, and is very good at asking people about themselves, to make them feel special. I want to follow in his footsteps and be just like him.

Jackie Robinson:

Jackie Robinson is on my table because of his story and what he accomplished. He inspires me to keep doing what I believe in, no matter what others think. In this day and age, we are obsessed at what others think of us. But Jackie Robinson wanted to play baseball, and even the whole world thought he was useless or bad, he kept going and won so many awards and there is a day named after him.  He also inspires me because of his sports career. He makes me want to strive for the better in my sports, and do what it takes to become better as an individual, and make my team better. His determination also inspires me, because he had to be determined to play in the MLB, and he wouldn’t have made it if he just gave up, which he easily could have multiple times. Overall, he pushes me to not only be a better athlete, but also a more determined one.

Brandon Semenuk:

Brandon Semenuk is a professional mountain biker for Trek. He is on my table because of his incredible career as a biker, and how he became so good at biking. He inspires me because he can take his skills from downhill biking, and transfer them to BMX right away and still shine. He has won many championships in downhill biking, like Red Bull Rampage  and also in slope style biking. This inspires me to become better as a biker, even if it’s only in one type of biking. The way he believes he still can improve even at a professional level is amazing to me. He is always doing crazy out of this world tricks and those seem impossible to me. Yet, he does them all with ease. His determination and skill are the biggest reasons why he’s on my table of leaders.

Connor McDavid:

Connor McDavid is my favourite hockey player. Not only because he’s on my favourite team, the Edmonton Oilers, but because of how hard he works. First off, every game he works super hard, but he would have had to work ten times that hard to make it to where he is today. Before he was picked to play for the Oilers, the Oilers were really bad. But now, for the first time in a while, the Oilers have a very good chance of getting into the playoffs. He is inspirational to me because of the difference he’s made in the NHL and on Edmonton’s team. It makes me want to make a bigger impact on my team I play on. He also has so much skill and speed in his game, and that’s very fun to watch. That pushes me to be better and faster. Overall, how much he has made an impact on those around him, and his incredible skill is what make him a leader at my table.

This is the final copy of my diagram showcasing my Leaders:

All of these people I look up to, whether it’s about sports or life. They all help shape who I am today.

This Is MY Canada

Sam

Before spring break some people from an organization called Here’s My Canada came into our class and told us about a contest they are having. If you want to compete, you need to create a 30 second video on what Canada means to you, and it can be anything you want. While the people from Heres my Canada were here, we needed to go in front of a camera they set up and say a first draft of what our video would look like. So, I told a story of the 2010 Olympics when Canada was playing USA in the Men’s hockey finals and Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal in overtime. I told them I remember going crazy in happiness that my team had won a big game.

After this, we needed to create our own videos with our own clips as long as we took our own videos or photos. I used the idea I had in the first video we submitted to the Here’s My Canada people, the hockey finals. This draft was hard to put together that looks good because I had to use photos from a copyright free site, or me playing hockey and I didn’t have any actual video. My first draft of this looked something like this:

I didn’t love this draft, since I didn’t have any actually video of the hockey game so I didn’t feel it was very strong. I decided to change ideas because of the lack in videos I had for the hockey idea. Then, I switched to an idea I had lots of video on: GoPro video of me adventuring around Vancouver. I planned to tell about what I love to do around Vancouver. I wanted to show me skiing, playing hockey and mountain biking. I chose this because I really love the three things I do in my video. The next and final draft looked like this:

I really liked this project because it was something that I was good at: making videos on activities I love doing.

Guatemala Is The Place To Go

Sam

Hi,
I know my trip was a while back, but I want to tell you about it. Me and my family went there because my parents have friends that actually live there on a base, and a base it is!
It is a collection of houses that a bunch of people who are working for an organization called Fe Viva. They help out around the area and the community. The houses are surrounded by a huge concrete wall with barbed wire and broken glass on top.

This wall encircled the whole base to keep out thieves.

In the base there is also an orphanage and a playground for those kids. Except, when I was there with my family, the kids weren’t there because the government took them all out and put them in different foster homes before we got there.

The empty kids orphanage.

Anyways, when we got there we stayed in a nice house, but it was still hot wherever you went.

We stayed here for the week we were in this part of Guatemala

A range during the day from 26° – 35°C.
On the first day we built 3 picnic tables out of wood, so we could deliver them to poor families later on in the week. When we did deliver the first one the next day, we first drove way out of the city where the base was into the country.

Timelapse of the drive out to the homes.

Here, the people were really poor. If they were lucky their houses were concrete boxes with holes for windows and doors. Others had sheet metal, wood and tarp houses but almost all the houses had dirt floors.

Wall surrounding poor house.

Imagine that, living in filth your whole life, everyday. We are so lucky. We picked up a Guatemalan family that my parents friends knew because they would take us to the families that needed the tables. The first family we went to was a single mother with two kids, a boy and a girl both around the age 5-7. The boy was deaf in one ear. The mother had kept her yard very clean, and bursting with beautiful flowers and colours. It was inspiring to see that even in the dirtiest and poorest areas, there was still beauty and care. The joy and thankfulness on the family’s faces was worth all the effort when they received the picnic table. And although they spoke Spanish we could still communicate a little, even without the translation going through my parents friends, (they could speak Spanish almost fluently). We went to the next house, and still, poorest of the poor, but still were happy and kind.
Later on in the week we set out pieces of an awesome obstacle course that was already built, and to be used by kids from a church in the community. They came and we all had a run at the obstacle course in the base. It was very cool to see the other kids participating in athletic activities. Most of the boys ran it in their socks, just because they didn’t want to get their only pair of shoes: dress shoes, dirty.

We also went on an awesome auto safari, where we got to drive by all kinds of animals you would never see in Vancouver, or Canada, for that matter.

Selfie with a giraffe👌🏻

Me feeding the giraffe

Toucan!

We ended up also doing a kids program in a mountain village nearby. We went their and played soccer with the boys, and made friendship bracelets with the girls. All the kids were from ages 4-9 and they were very good at soccer. It was a lot of fun, we also did some skits and at the end, fireworks. In Guatemala you can launch fireworks whenever you want, but there were a lot of people firing them because it was New Years. The kids ran right up to the fireworks and started kicking them when they were still live!! They were not scared.

My little sister with the kids

Hanging out with the mountain village kids!

Some big trees there!

After a week of staying in the base, me and my family drove an hour to a more touristy city called Antigua. It’s amazing there. All the streets are cobblestone and there is an awesome market there where Guatemalans set up their small stores and sell anything from blankets to brass knuckles. It was very interesting to see what the people do for money compared to us. Most of the products they sell are hand made by them, like that paintings and blankets.

We also went ziplining once, which was amazing, but sadly I couldn’t bring my GoPro with me, even though it would have been amazing. We went over a huge canyon but we were in a superman position, where our legs and chest were held up so all we had to do was enjoy the ride. It was awesome.

Overall the whole trip was incredible, and I’m going to remember it for a very long time and I would love to go again.

The last family t receive a picnic table

My family eating at an amazing restaurant in Antigua

SLC: Sam’s Lovely Conference

Sam

Hello,

This post is about my SLC, (Student Led Conference), and in this post I’ll be talking about three pieces of work. One piece I’m most proud of, one piece I think shows the most growth as a learner, and the last piece Is one I think shows growth mindset.

My first piece of work, the one I’m most proud of, is the Think Different video. We did this project earlier in the year, and it wasn’t a big important one, but I feel like I really did great on it. I put a lot of work and a lot of time into this video and I think it didn’t get enough attention in class. This will take you to my post about the video and the creation of it:

Do You Think Different?

I really enjoyed creating this video because Muhammed Ali was an interesting person to research, and since he was a boxer and I love sports.

 

The next topic is something I think I’ve grown in as a learner, and I think it’s my ability to manage my time in order to come out with a strong end product. I think a very good example of this is the time during and right before we went to Seattle this year. We were planning out a big video we would make explaining how a certain group or organization of people were Crazy Ones. This blog post will tell you more about it:

Seattle Is a Crazy One

The video was very fun to make but we never did get around to finishing it.

 

The last piece of work I want to talk about is the work that shows my growth mindset. Growth mindset is something we learned about in grade 8, but it still carries on to help us a full year later, and it will be helping us all through our lives. It is just the way we think in a certain situation we don’t like, but we still push through and perform. The piece of work that I think shows it is my Destination Imagination project. Even though its not my favourite project, me and my group pushed through and performed well in the competition. Our challenge didn’t end up working,m but me and my group kept on going to a good finish. Go here to read more about it:

Destination Imagination: Year Two

Thank you for reading and listening to my SLC

Seattle Is a Crazy One

Sam

Hello,

A while back, from December 1st to 3rd, me and my PLP class went to Seattle for field school. We were there to research and film for our Seattle Crazy Ones video.

We were studying how certain people changed the worldview of the community around them. We were split into groups, and it was me, Robbie and Aiden looking at the Wright brothers.

Each group or business that other groups were studying were tied somehow to Seattle, and that’s why we were going to Seattle. We needed to create storyboards for a video we would create on our person, and explain with our own footage and interviews why the Wright Brothers were Crazy Ones.


We all needed to plan very carefully because we didn’t have time during the trip to change anything, we had a tight schedule. We wrote out our story boards and what we needed to film, and wrote out what we would ask the people we would interview. We ended up asking them one basic question: “What do you know about the Wright Brothers?” We got some pretty good responses, they would work perfectly with our videos since the point we were trying to prove was that not many people know the full story of the Wright Brothers.
So, anyways we left for Seattle with a decent plan for our video. We went to many places, the EMP museum, the Chihuly Glass Gardens, and Microsoft. We learned and film about the Wright Brothers in the EMP and interviewed people there. The whole trip was really fun, same with creating our videos when we got back. Here’s some photos and video of our trip that I still have:

And down below are two short clips of us filming for the video. Overall, the trip was lots of fun , and the video creation awesome as well.

https://youtu.be/nSdwrvJspmo