Spencer Laube

So this will be the final instalment of this year’s Grade 11 blogs. Today we will talk about the Spring Exhibition that just took place on June 20th.  As Grade 11’s we were able to focus on a very important and interesting topic. The grade 11’s presented on the only war that the Americans lost which was the Vietnam war. Ironically, the Vietnamese people called it the American war.  I guess that shows how everyone’s perspective is different. The Vietnam war was the most costly political stunt that the Americans ever took part in. The amount of unnecessary deaths that unfortunately took place in this war was sadly catastrophic.

This project was the first time that we decided to choose a different medium to present than we have ever done before. Our teachers are very forward thinking and very creative when they come up with some of the great projects that we create. For this project we each presented our thesis in the media of conceptual art.

Before we started to learn about our project we should go over some of the steps that we took to get there. Before we just jumped into the conceptual art world we were able to go and visit an exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery that was filled with conceptual art pieces. Unfortunately I could not attend. I did however do some research myself about the world of conceptual art and research on the pieces that were on exhibit in the gallery. I am going to be honest and say that I was shocked about what was considered art. By the end of this project my point of view drastically  changed and I had a broader perspective.

Now let’s talk about the historical side of the story. We  learned about one of the biggest mistakes that was ever made by the American government. We learned all about the Viet Cong and their goal to gain independence for Vietnam and take over the south part of Vietnam. We learned about Ho Chi Minh and his world view on Communism. I really enjoyed learning about those topics and the push back by the American population after the news started to show all the deceased bodies of the Vietnam soldiers and innocent civilians.  Overall this was a very insightful part of the unit for me because I got to learn about real world mistakes that were made by presidents that I saw as American heroes.

Besides visiting the art gallery we did some research on the history of conceptual art and the world that conceptual artists live in. We learned about the “three definitions of a chair”.  We learned about the time an artist put his own human feces into a cylinder and sold it for $300,000 and many other interesting art pieces.

Now let’s talk about my project specifically as well as the night of the exhibition and how it all went. I am going to be honest and say that at first I did I have trouble coming up with my project because I was skeptical of conceptual art. After I opened my mind to understanding new things, the ideas just came to me. My project was surrounded by the idea that “knowledge is power.” When coming up with our ideas we were advised to come up with the thesis of our project before the actual art piece because like the title of this unit says, the idea is greater than the art.

In the Vietnam war the Viet Cong (the North Vietnamese) where severely over powered by the amount of military strength that the American military had. The leaders of North Vietnam knew that to win the war they had to learn how to fight the Americans and to gain the knowledge necessary  to outsmart them. The Viet Cong had knowledge of things like the jungle, climate, guerrilla tactics and could outsmart the Americans.  After I came up with the thesis the next step was to come up with the art piece that would go along with the thesis. I first started to think of a real word examples of power and also knowledge and see if there were any overlapping examples. Unfortunately there wasn’t and so I had to go in a different direction with the art piece. After different ideas I final concluded on the idea of creating a crossword puzzle that would be filled with different words that would help the Viet Cong win the Vietnam war. Within this crossword there would be three sets of blank spaces for words to solve. Each art connoisseur would have to come up with the missing words using the clues provided below. If they came up with the words and filled in the puzzle they would gain the knowledge necessary to win over the Vietnam people and win the war.

The night of the exhibition rolled around and it was time show up or show out. We were put into groups with people that shared similar concepts with their art pieces to ours. I was in a group with Hannah and we decided to take our assigned  classroom and cut it in half. We took everything off the walls to make the room as simple as possible. The ideas was to let the art do the talking so we wanted the room to be as minimal  as possible. Overall the night went well with no hiccups or imperfections and I was happy with the positive things people had to say about my project.

This entire unit has been eye opening for me because it shows the United States from a different point of view. The push-back by the public against conscription and the mistakes made by the Americans that caused all of the unnecessary deaths really changed my perspective on this important time in history. When I look back at my understanding of conceptual art it was a challenge at the start for me to understand the ideas but as time went on I opened my mind to better ideas and realized that the ideas are truly greater than the art.

This year we have taken part in a brand new course in the PLP curriculum. This course is called the Personal Growth Plan or PGP for short. This course is designed to help you become a better person in school and in life. This course has taught me a lot of different skills that I can take into my life and change it for the better. There were several parts of this course including the book series called 7 Habits of Mind and the book What Do You Really Want? The final project in the course is called My Time Machine.

The year end final project would have to answer this question. ‘What do I know now that I wish I knew before?’ This is a great question because you can reflect on all of the different skills you learned in the course. There were three main skills that we learned this year. These skills were productivity, goal setting and the 7 Habits Of Mind.

Goal Setting

Goal setting was the most influential part of the three parts of the course for me. This is the part of the Time Machine project that I focused on. While reading one of the books in the PGP arsenal, I learned a great technique that I still use daily. This is called SMART goal setting, but I do it a little differently than others. I use this template that was given to us in the book What do you really want?  It is called the goal ladder template and it is designed to break down your goals to make them easier to understand the steps to help you to achieve your goals

For the Time Machine I created this visually-pleasing interactive presentation that resembles a stop-motion technique.  It will help you to better understand how to create your own goal ladder and how to take bigger strides to achieve the goals that you want to meet.

Here is the creation

This course has been amazingly life-changing for me. I wish that I had learned these skills at the beginning of Grade 8 so I would have been able to use these skills all through high school. The SMART Goal setting has changed my view on life and how I tackle my day to challenges that I encounter. For example at the beginning of grade 9 I made a goal for myself to be on the senior team for basketball in grade 10. I worked very hard at my goal until I achieved it. Looking back on it now it would have been a lot easier to achieve my goal if I had a goal ladder template to work with to make it easier to understand what steps I had to take. Thank you for reading my blog and I hope that you take part in setting yourself some goals. In fact, I challenge you to fill out the goal ladder sheet and take your goals to the next level.

Welcome back to my blog and in this instalment we will be talking about a very interesting topic which is the Cold War between the nuclear powers of Russia and the USA and some other events that ultimately point to one question. The inquiry question for this unit was “ How was the world on the brink”?

The final project for this unit was to write an essay that would answer the inquiry question above. Before we get there let’s talk about some of the other activities that we did that unit. We started this unit off with a very impactful movie called “13 Days”. This movie is a realistic re-creation of the thirteen days when the world was in suspense about what the nuclear powers of Russia and the USA would do. A lot of people know or have heard of the Cold War between Russia and the USA. The definition of a Cold War is a war where there is no active combat between the two countries. This was the case for these two countries. The movie 13 Days was a movie that covered the 13 days where the world was the closest to nuclear warfare. This movie was set from the point of view of the Americans which made the Russians seem like they were evil enemy. This is not the best way I thought the movie would have been set because if you don’t get both sides of the story then you can’t understand the event fully.

The next part of the unit was learning about the positives that came out of WWII. These are organizations  such as the United Nations and NATO. The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization that is tasked to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international co-operation and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations. The North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949.

As part of this reflection for this unit I had to research and write a small little informational piece about a social  change topic from the 1960’s. I decided to choose the topic of women’s rights and the women’s rights movement that happened at this time. I personally realized the connection between the world on the brink and the topic I chose, woman’s rights. The first connection that I made between the two were that they both happened to take place in the same time period. The second connection that I made is that they both were major changes in the world that altered cultures and people’s perspectives of the world. These two events seriously changed the landscape of how politics is conducted today.

Here is my paragraph, feel free to read it.

World on the brink social justice paragraph

Now let’s talk about the final piece of this unit. This was the essay which was an interesting process for me. If you know me then you would understand that I am a person that likes to follow the steps for certain things such as essays. This was a new experience for me when Ms. Willemse  had us write this essay and not follow certain steps in order.  We started with the thesis and this was no cup of tea for me because by the time I was done I had come up with 10 different iterations of a thesis. Next was the introduction part of the essay and this took another 5 tries to achieve where I wanted to be. Next in an uncomfortable change of events, we were told that we had to write the conclusion before the body paragraphs.  This was extremely hard for me because I was used to writing an essay in order and not skipping to the conclusion. This was another adventure, but this time I learned my lesson and got the approval on the first try.

Now let’s talk about my argument for the essay and the answer to the inquiry question for this unit. Let’s revisit what the inquiry question is for this unit. The question is “How was the world on the brink?” This is in reference to the Cold War that we talked about earlier in this blog post. My essay topic was surrounding the Marshal Plan and how it prevented the world from nuclear war. My final thesis for this essay is “The Americans devised the Marshal Plan not just to gain allies in Europe but to make a constant reminder of their presence.” My argument for this is that the Americans saw an opportunity to create economic wellness for themselves and the countries that needed aid after World War Two but they were starting to have worrisome thoughts about Russia and what they were doing. By having allies surrounding Russia it gives easy access to missiles if they needed to use them. This put a burden on Russia and enhanced the American presence in the Soviet Union.

I would love for you to read my essay

Here: The Marshal Plan essay 2

How can the actions of an individual change a system? This is the question I will be answering in this blog post. I will be comparing two different people that are from different time periods. There are commonalities and connections between Barack Obama become the first African American president and Jackie Robinson being the first African American professional baseball player even though they had different jobs.

These two influential people have both faced tough times while achieving something that had never been done before. When both these men broke the colour barrier in their own respective careers it was a major advancement in the civil rights movement that was started many years ago and still fights for equality today. These men were both judged for the colour of their skin and racially profiled in life but they didn’t step down and let the others win. They stood up for what they believed in and put the lives of other less-privileged African Americans on their back. I used this juxtapose image above to represent the many different similar skills and challenges that these two faced on their way to the top. The similarities are show in the photo by being able to overlap one photo with the other.

On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected President of the United States. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. At the beginning of his career, after a two-year stint working in corporate research and at the New York Public Interest Research Group, Barrak Obama was trying to make a name for himself in the business world. Barack took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group. For many years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely African American South Side. In 1996 Obama launched his political campaign where he won an election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat from the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. From there he worked as a senator and tried to represent the poor, less privileged families that didn’t have a voice. He would later run for office and become the second African American presidential candidate and the first African American president in the history of the United States.

Now let’s talk about Jackie Robinson’s rise to fame. Just like Barack, Jackie had to work hard to rise to his level of fame. After Jackie was finished with high school he went on to be the only student in history to letter in 4 sports (football, basketball, baseball and track and field). Just shy of graduating and receiving his deploma, Jackie was arrested for trying to help one of his friends who was unlawfully arrested by police. After this Jackie joined the army where he again was arrested or court marshalled for standing up for change when he was told to move to the back of the bus and refused. Later after the charges were dropped for insubordination, disturbing the peace and drunkenness (although he neither drank nor smoked) Jackie was discharged and went back to baseball where he caught the eye of dodgers own Branch Rickey. Branch made up his mind and decided that Jackie would be the man to break the colour barrier in Major League Baseball.

These two men worked hard to achieve their goals and optimized their talents and skills to make a change.  Although they were famous in different fields, they both paved the way for others to follow their lead and improve civil rights no matter where they are starting from in life or which path they take.

resources:

Jackie Robinson

Barack Obama

Wow, I am already in the middle of Grade 11 and it’s time for my presentation of learning also known as mPOL. If you don’t know what a’ presentation of learning’ is, it is basically a presentation that happens twice a year for PLP students to present to our parents and teachers how we believe that we can improve as learners.  We use examples of the work we’ve done so far this year to help explain our goals. For each PLP project there is always a driving question. This time it is “How are you going to progress as a learner before the end of the school year?” I will wrap up my introduction with a question I am going to ask you to think about and to comment on after my conclusion.   The question is “How can I work more efficiently and make better use of my time but not reduce the quality of my work?”   

Manhattan Project²

I am going to start off with my favourite project that I have done so far in PLP this year. The Manhattan project was a great project about a very important moment in history. It involved the dropping of the world’s first nuclear bombs that halted World War 2 and brought Japan to its knees. We visited Hanford, Washington, one of the three major sites for this war project and saw how the operation was run.  It was a life-changing experience and really opened my eyes to the impact Hanford had on the world. Prior to the need of uranium to build the two nuclear bombs, Hanford was not even a place you could visit, it was not even called Hanford. Overnight a small town called White Bluffs was transformed into a factory town with hundreds of thousands of workers doing work for a project that they didn’t know what it would look like in the end.  The project for this trip and unit was to create a video that would encompass five facts about Hanford. My group was made up of myself, Kate and Sofia. We wanted to focus our video on the environment and the impact that Hanford may have had on the environment. Looking back at this project I enjoyed doing it but I think there were opportunities for improvement. I believe that even though we were at these places and had valuable primary sources at our disposal,  I was enjoying the moment and not necessarily taking in the amount of information that I should have to make the best quality video I could. One of these valuable primary sources of information was Larry Haylor who was a worker in Hanford while it was in service. In terms of my work habits, if I had planned ahead more, I could have gathered even more information directly from Larry to make the video even better.  Another way that I could improve on this project is the technical aspect. This encompasses excellent audio, visuals and script. These are all things that make a great video. I believe that I need to put less effort into writing and producing a video that I like and more effort into a video that would test well to the masses and would make it easier for people to be educated on the topic we are covering. At the end of the day these videos can impact someone’s learning and if it does that would make me very happy.

Hanford, Washington

The Carousel of Communism

Another great example of my learning that shows my great work habits and work ethic is the Carousel of Communism project. This project was for the 2018 winter exhibition. This project was the only time that the entire PLP cohort has worked together on one project. Our exhibition was based around the following three topics. The Crucible’s witch trials, the McCarthy trials against Communists and the present day Russian investigation on Donald Trump and his presidential election. I like to call it the ‘three prong approach’. So the exhibition was set in the 1950’s and had different references to connect all of these topics together. We started off by planning the entire presentation/play in class. This was the first time that the teachers let us plan the entire project with no input at the beginning from them. We created multiple story boards and many different charts to help us fathom the project we would be undertaking. We split up the gym into six different stations or sets to make a full play. Each set had 1-3 actors that helped bring the story to life. These actors also interacted with guides who brought the group of people from set to set and brought the story together. When we were introduced to this project I was quite excited about the thought of us all working together because I know the great work everyone can do on their own projects and I always thought that if we ever had the chance to all work on one big project that it would be amazing. I was not wrong, the project was great.  Unfortunately when the project was starting, I had just injured myself twice in one week and missed some school during a critical part of the project.  First I hit and cut my head mountain biking and needed stitches.  Three days later I was back at the hospital because I sprained my ankle in basketball and was on crutches.  This caused me to miss some school. Reflecting back, I wish I had the opportunity for a larger speaking role. Since I was not feeling well and was away, I was given a role without any say, and was thrown into the mix. I wish I had made more of an effort to get a larger role or insist on more lines for my role.  I was just told what to do as the project went on. I was feeling so busy catching up with school and physiotherapy that I went with the role I was given.  So to recap, to improve, I would have put a lot more effort into my leadership for my speaking role, even if I wasn’t feeling good and not let my injuries and trying to catch up on other work slow me down. Even if I couldn’t change my speaking role for the exhibition night, I am proud of all the work I did and leadership I displayed behind the scenes for the building of the sets.

Picture from the Exhibition

PGP

Alright now that that we have covered the Humanities portion of the MPOL it is time to talk about the work I have been doing in PGP. PGP stands for ‘Personal Growth Plan and this is in my eyes a great course that will help me become a better person in the long run. I have been playing sports since I was 1 or 2 and throughout these years I have set hundreds of goals for myself.   Some have been small and some have been big. When the PLP teachers introduced the idea of goal setting I thought I was already a pro. I thought that I was already a good goal setter so in the beginning I was skeptical and didn’t think it would make a difference.  I was reluctant to get started. As time went on and I worked on it further, I realized that this assignment isn’t just a paragraph about goal setting, it is meant to impact my life.  I started to notice that as I read the book and do the forms I could see how these steps could make a difference. I learned that writing big goals on a piece of paper, letting yourself see the goal everyday is a huge motivator for me and helps to keep me focused and prioritize.  If I set goals visually like this, I think it will make me a more effective learner.

PGP book

Conclusion

Overall these first 5 months of my grade 11 PLP year have been great. I have learned so much and gained new skills that I will be able to take into my life for years but there is always room for improvement.  I think that I can do better and be more effective with my time and still achieve a high quality of work.  In the next months coming up I will be improving on many different things and skills to again be the best person I can. I will be trying different writing styles so that I can expand my writing arsenal and expand my word repertoire. I will be updating my blog to make it more interesting and personal to me by diving into the Divi page builder to give it a more professional look. I think continuing to re-visit my goals each day will help me be more effective in my time and improve learning. Even doing this mPOL taught me something.  First I skimmed the instructions for the mPOL and started writing.  Then I looked at them more carefully later and realized I’d missed some things and I had to redo it.  If I review assignment requirements twice before starting it might take a few extra minutes in the beginning but I will save a lot of time later.  I will also plan ahead more so that I can make the best use of my time and gain more knowledge if I am reading or listening to a speaker.  PGP will help me be a better planner.  Overall in these upcoming months I hope to grow as a learner and become a person that will make a greater impact on this planet. Just like in sports, I feel that practicing a skill in school helps make you better.  It’s like the quote “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” — Will Durant   But practicing a skill takes time so that is why it is good to ask: “How can I work more efficiently and make better use of my time but not reduce the quality of my work?”  I will continue to work on this goal.

If you are a regular viewer of my blog or know anything about PLP then you would know that in a PLP calendar year there are two exhibitions. One being the winter exhibition  and the other is the year end exhibition. Since we just had winter break we will be talking about the recent 2018 PLP winter exhibition.  Since, the PLP 11 cohort is the oldest age group in the PLP system, we got to do something a little different where the whole class worked together on one exhibition.

1950’s

In Humanities recently we have been studying the 1950’s and everything leading up to “the greatest time in American history”. This was one of the main themes of the exhibition. At this time in the 1950’s everyone had just come back from the war and the economy was booming. America was at its peak and the idea of the American way was very popular. On the flip side, the Communists (Russians ) were secretly placing spies in American societies to get information on the booming country as well as spread the Communist way.

The Three Prong Approach

Our exhibition was based around the following three topics. The Crucible’s witch trials, the McCarthy trials against Communists and the present day Russian investigation on Donald Trump and his presidential election. I like to call it the three prong approach. So the exhibition was set in the 1950’s and had different references to connect all of these topics together.

The Planning and Layout

We started off by planning the entire presentation/play in class. This was the first time that the teachers let us plan the entire project with no input at the beginning from them. We created multiple story boards and many different charts to help us fathom the project we would be undertaking. We ended up appointing two people to be the DRI’s of the project. DRI stands for directly responsible individual. These people made the final decisions on different questions and problems we had.

So when I was in Grade 9 PLP the Grade 11s did a project similar to the one we did this past exhibition where they took the entire gym and turned it into a running play. Here is a link to one of the PLP 11 blogs from the prior PLP 11’s Our project was quite similar in terms of structure and how everything was laid out but our idea was to put curtains across the gym so that we could split it up and create 6 different sets.

Here are the sets

1.  Eisenhower   

2. Vets come home/Baby boom

3. Us vs Them (Communists vs Americans)

4. Korean war

5 Hollywood

6. Hearings

Each one of these mini skits had anywhere from 1-3 actors and ran for about 4 minutes each. On top of these skits we had 1-2 guides that were in character as well they interacted with the audience and the actors to make the audience feel as if they were being drafted into the war or were at one of the Communist trials. These guides also lead the audience through the maze to make sure that the transition between each skit/station was smooth and make sense.

The Roles

Now that we had figured out the overall look and layout of the exhibition it was time to put each person in their own respective categories. So at this stage of the project I had just sprained my ankle from playing basketball and was on crutches so the DRI decided to make me a disabled veteran in the play. I was put with Ethan Dennis, and Robbie Wharton. In our part of the play Robbie and Ethan were members of the military.  They were going around the neighbourhood giving out draft notices to ‘willing and able’ men to fight in the Korean war. My job in this section was to be one of the many residents and be a draftee into the war. At first this is where the injury would come into play. Sergeant Dennis and Sergeant Wharton would come to my door handing me a draft notice and I would declare myself unfit because of my injury that I sustained while l was in World War 2. This was part of the first version but we later scrapped the injuries because we found that it didn’t play enough of a significant role as well as I wasn’t on crutches anymore. My excuse for not wanting to participate in the war was that I just came back from the gruelling second World War. Dennis and Wharton would reason with me and make a valid point about how I would have to support my country and fight the communists so I ended up being drafted.

Building the Props

The next step before the exhibition was to build all the props that would actually bring the entire play to life. We all worked together to maximize our opportunities and use all of our skills. For the first scene we created a stage so that Eisenhower could address the nation. The second scene we created a modern house for the 1950’s. Scene three was ‘Us vs Them’. This scene was the Communist rally. It was set on a street, so we had to build some street lamps as well as bring in an old bench and a bike so we could bring the street to life. Scene four was my scene, this was the street scene where I would come out of my house and be drafted. We had to build a house as one of our props but luckily Sergeant Wharton had a telephone sized box that I could emerge from that was built for an earlier PLP Project. All we had to do was slap some new paint on it and give it a new roof. Scene five was Hollywood. We made the Hollywood sign out of cardboard and painted it white. This would lead into a live stage where they had been filming a reenactment of the Crucible. We created a Hollywood film stage. Lastly was the trial. For this scene we recreated a court room for the audience to sit in.

The Night of the Exhibition

The exhibition went very well. There were some hiccups along the way. For example in the Seycove gym there is a big wall that can swing out and divide the gym into two halves. We planned to use this wall as a backdrop for our street as well so that it would break up the gym and give each scene a smaller atmosphere. Unfortunately on the night of the Exhibition there was a big storm which knocked out all the power to every school except Seycove. The one thing the storm did break was the circuit board. This caused the motor that pulls the wall into place to malfunction. We were unable to use it and had to come up with more creative means. For the entire gym we used curtains that the band and choir use for their concerts. We hung rope from wall to wall splitting up the gym into sections. At the beginning of the night we were all so excited that we ran the first group through the play in half the projected time. As we have all been in the PLP program for 4 years now we are used to rising under pressure, and we did just that. We improvised some of our script to lengthen the play so that we could meet the projected time. Other than that, everyone gave us great reviews and was very impressed with our knowledge of the topics we had studied as well as our amazing acting skills.

Conclusion

Overall I really enjoyed this project and I would say that this is by far my favourite project that I have done in my PLP career. The amount of information in my head that I walked out of that building with on the night of the Exhibition was far more than any history class could have taught me. A great example of this is when we were off school for Christmas holidays I had an interesting discussion/debate with my uncle surrounding the McCarthy trial as well as the blacklisting of Hollywood movie stars. I was able to recall all of my information and facts that I had learned previously. I truly believe that if I hadn’t done this project and had only studied for a test on the same topic that I wouldn’t remember half the stuff I still do today. Usually the two biggest critics for our PLP projects are our teachers Mr Hughes and Ms Willemse but to our surprise they loved our project as well. This was a fun and interesting project and a great way for a class such as ours to bond and build teamwork skills.

Here is the walkthrough video of the play:

Lately in PLP we have been reading a play called The Crucible. It’s set in Salem Massachusetts  in the 1690’s but was written by Arthur Miller in the 1950’s. It’s main idea is about the horrific Salem Witch Trials.

While reading this book we have had to highlight and take notes of the interesting events that happen. In the assignments for this book we have to create three blog posts. Every blog post relates to a question that we have chosen from a list of questions. For this blog post I have chosen question 10. Question 10 relates to the book because The Crucible is considered universal and enduring and the question is to think of a book, movie or album from your generation that will be universal and enduring.

For my example of the  book, movie or album that is going to be enduring and universal I have chosen the Harry Potter book series. Don’t get me wrong, the movies are good but I think that the books are better. I believe that the Harry Potter franchise is timeless because of how relatable the books are to all ages. A person of any age can pick up one of the books and immediately connect with one of the many memorable characters. Kids like to read them and adults like to read them to their kids. Another reason why the book will be relevant and popular forever is that they create magical, fantasy worlds that people can escape to and enjoy as well as have traditions and history in the stories.  Overall they are well written and keep readers in suspense always wanting to read more. Those are just some of the reasons why I believe that the Harry Potter franchise will be enduring and universal. Below I have created an interactive timeline that shows the books in order as well some interesting facts about them.

Lately in PLP we have been reading a play called The Crucible. It’s set in Salem Massachusetts  in the 1690’s but was written by Arthur Miller in the 1950’s. It’s main idea is about the horrific Salem Witch Trials.

While reading this book we have had to highlight and take notes of the interesting events that happen. In the assignments for this book we have to create three blog posts. Every blog post relates to a question that we have chosen from a list of questions. For this blog post I have chosen “How to Spot a Witch”.  This assignment was to create a paper or something similar on how to spot a _________. You fill in the blank.  For example, “How to Spot a Joey” or “How to Spot a Mountain biker”.

For my version I decided to make “How to spot a duster”.   A duster is a category of hockey player that you may see at the rink or on the pond. The definition of a duster is “Someone who is garbage at everything with bad flow and no skill at anything they do especially hockey.” Here is a short book that I created on how to spot a duster. Enjoy.

In PLP we are reading The Crucible as a class. This is a play that was put into a book and it is about the Salem witch trials that took place a few hundred years ago. While reading this book we have had to highlight and take notes of the interesting events that happen. In the assignments for this book we have to create three blog posts. Every blog post relates to a question that we have chosen from a list of questions. For this blog post I have chosen to describe my version of heaven vs hell.

For myself heaven and hell are two places that people can find themselves after their time on this earth has come to an end. Heaven is known as the place were you want to go when you die and that is something I believe. Hell is the opposite of heaven. Hell is somewhere you don’t want to go when you die. Some people believe that heaven is the after life. I think of heaven more as a resting place for people that have made the right decisions in life and have enjoyed their life. Hell is a place where you are put to do work for the devil because you have made the wrong decisions in you life time. Heaven and hell can also be a state of mind that some people find themselves in when they are very happy or unhappy about life.

A visual comparison that I made below shows heaven as a scenario of tranquility, sunshine and happiness on the left.  The depression, darkness and dreariness that hell provides is on the right.

Nuclear Bomb Explosion

The Manhattan Project²

Welcome back to my blog.  I would like to start my Grade 11 year off with a bang, literally a bang. Without further ado let’s jump right into it. This first unit is picking up where we left off at the end of Grade 10 when we were studying World War II.  We are talking about the Manhattan Project. If you don’t know what the Manhattan Project is well then you have probably heard of what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki around 1945. No, still never heard of it? Well this was the year that the US shocked the entire world by dropping the World’s first ever nuclear bombs on Japan. It turns out that the US had been building and testing these nuclear weapons for the previous 6 years. This is the story of the Manhattan Project.

Photo’s of the Manhattan Project:

So this is PLP which follows the criteria of project-based learning so we worked on a project about the Manhattan Project. There were three main sites where the Manhattan Project took place: Los Alamos New Mexico, Oakridge Tennessee, and Hanford Washington. These legendary, historic towns were built from the ground up overnight for the Manhattan Project.  Los Alamos was the testing facility for the world’s truly first nuclear bomb named Trinity. Oakridge was the site for the pilot plutonium plant and the uranium enrichment plant and lastly was Hanford. Hanford was the site of the world’s first nuclear reactor.

Hanford

As part of our learning for this trip we were lucky enough to go to Hanford, Washington, visit the Hanford site and actually get a tour of the B reactor. I do believe that this was a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. Being able to see the reactor in person really helped me comprehend the dramatic effect the Manhattan project had on the world. Hearing the first hand stories that the tour guides shared with us about their lives while working at Hanford, opened my eyes to the importance this place had to the people of the United States and the world.

The project for this trip and unit was to create a video that would encompass five facts about Hanford. My group was made up of myself, Kate and Sofia. We wanted to focus our video on the environment and the impact that Hanford may have had on the environment. We thought that five environmental facts about Hanford was a good theme. Here is the final product of our video.

As I stated earlier in this post I was fascinated by what these tour guides and retired Hanford workers had to say about how the Manhattan Project and Hanford had impacted their lives. For example our tour guide Larry, stated that “if it wasn’t for the Manhattan Project and the creation of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Japan then some of my family members would have gone to war in Japan and may or may not have returned.” These real-life stories helped me understand the important impact the nuclear bombs had on the people of America.

Larry our tour guide

While we were learning about the Manhattan Project in class, I started to do my own research about criticism and negative impacts of the Manhattan Project. It is truly astounding to learn the number of fatalities that these bombs caused. Over 226,000 men, women and children lost their lives when these bombs were dropped. Even more interesting is the burden that these bombs put on the world. After the bombs were dropped the world’s eyes were opened to the fact that nuclear bombs were now on the table and the art of warfare would be changed forever. Another related interesting fact was that the scientists who helped create this mammoth weapon later became their own critics and spoke out against the creation. Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California and since August 6 1945 he has been known as the father of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer was one of the leading scientists in the Manhattan project alongside Albert Einstein. After the ground breaking creation of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer was named one of the chairman for the general advisory committee of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. He later used this position to lobby for international control of nuclear power to avert nuclear proliferation and a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union since they were also creating nuclear weapons.

Dr. Oppenheimer

Los Alamos:The Secret Cities of the Manhattan Project

Leading up to this big project for this unit we had completed other smaller studies to help us understand what the Manhattan Project was really about. Since we are an ipad-based course we played a game called Los Alamos:The Secret Cities of the Manhattan Project. This was a simulation of the three sites that the Manhattan Project was based on: Los Alamos, Oakland and Hanford. In the game we walked around the three sites collecting information as we talked to the different scientist and workers present during the game. After completing achievements by walking around the map and talking to everyone, players move on to the next stage in the operation until getting to the Trinity site where the bomb is dropped. This game really helped me put everything together to help understand what the workers and the scientists had to do on a daily basis as well as what the different sites of the Manhattan Project were like.

The Game: Los Alamos

Hiroshima and Nagasaki Newsreel

Back in the 1940’s there no 4K tv’s or tv’s in general so when you went to a movie theatre, they would play news reels instead of trailers before the movie started.  These were short little clips that would give you the rundown on what’s happening in the world on that day. A fun activity that we had to do was create our own news reel about the bombing of Hiroshima and  Nagasaki. These newsreels were only one minute long but they pack a punch and tell you everything you need to know. Unlike a newspaper with only pictures these news reels were the first chances for people to really see in video what happened with the nuclear bombs.

New to PLP this year is a new tool to support our learning. Instead of using Itunes U as a distribution spot for all of our work requirements and reference information, we now use Canvas. This new app allows our teachers to be more creative with how they teach us unlike ITunes U which was more restrictive. So for the Manhattan project we referred to this app to help focus our work on the right requirement in the app. This is also very helpful when it comes time to reflecting on our blogs.

Character Card

Another great example of learning that we had to do was the character card assignment. This assignment was to fill in a template that was kind of based around a baseball card. My character card was Major General Thomas Francis Farrell who was the Deputy Commanding General and Chief of Field operations of the Manhattan Project. General Farrell was handed-picked by General Groves for this position. Major General Farrell played a key role in the nuclear bombings in Japan and investigating the aftermath. Here is my character card:

My Character Card

Learning about the Manhattan project has really opened my eyes to what the world is really capable of. All this learning has showed me that the power that these nuclear bombs hold is nothing to mess with. It can be worrisome for some people to think that different governments around the world hold this power. With one click of a button, millions of people can die but it is really good that we are teaching teens in schools about this important time in history. Students need to know the major damage that these bombs can cause. Hopefully when we grow up and when it’s our turn to take the hot seat,  we will have learned from past leaders about what is needed to avoid repeating costly mistakes and how to achieve more global harmony.