IT’S NOT EVEN REAL IT’S A METAPHORICAL MACHINE DANG IT
I would just like to start off this LPP by saying…
HELLO!
Now that I’ve said hello, I should probably explain why I’m writing this Learning Portfolio Post…
WE DID A PROJECT!
Shocking I know.
It’s not like we do all of our learning in project form….
Pshhhhh noooo.
Yeah we did another project.
ON HISTORY.
I LOVE HISTORY.
PLUS THIS WAS IRISH.
AND WE USED POTATOES.
Okay I’ll explain stuff now.
Revolutions–
Ever heard of the French Revolution?
The thing where Napoleon did the thing and people died and stuff?
In this recent unit, we’ve been learning about revolutions. Clearly I didn’t learn about the French one, that explanation was F worthy.
We were all given a revolution to learn about in groups.
We all chose our top 3 revolution choices then we were put in groups of 3 or 4 to learn about a revolution.
My group consisted of:
–Kailey
–Lauren
–Alivia
And myself.
Our revolutionary options were as follows:
French Revolution
American Revolution
Russian Revolution
Haitian Revolution
Meiji (Japanese) Revolution
Xinhai (Chinese) Revolution
Easter Rising (Ireland)
Now it’s all well and good to learn about revolutions and be like “eh look at me I know history and stuff about what happened in this timeline and how many people died in these battles!”
But whats the point on knowing about a revolution without knowing what a revolution is?!
Well ya see, we are being educated for a reason (hint: we need knowledge to fill our empty heads). And with education comes background knowledge.
Pretty much what Im saying is: we learnt what a revolution was of course.
FOR ANY OF YOU FOLKS WHO DON’T KNOW WHAT A REVOLUTION IS:
There you go, be educated my friend.
The group I was put in, and the revolution I decided I wanted to learn about was (*Dramatic Music*)
Easter is Rising!–
Did you know that there was a six day revolution in Dublin Ireland in April 1916?
It started on the 24th of April and ended the 29th of the same month. Not even a full week later!
Quick Review of the Easter Rising:
Irish want independence from Britain. British say no. Irish get mad. Fighty fighty happens, British win fights and sink ships with arms for Irish from Germany. Years later Irish get independence cause they’re done with Britain. The End.
Actual Review of Easter Rising in Six Steps:
The Easter Rising was a six day revolution caused by the fact that the Irish wanted independence from Britain. Over 3,500 Irish prisoners were taken after the fighting was over, most of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion.
There were six stages to our story, and these six stages stick through the project.
METAPHORICAL MACHINERY–
So, as usual, we didn’t just learn information and let it waste away in our brains.
We made a project! Like a physical (and virtual) project that we can show people and stuff it’s pretty cool.
Have you ever heard if a Rube Goldberg machine?
We made a machine with the design of one of those.
Don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is? Here’s an example!
There you go be educated my friend.
So if you watched that video, or you know what the Rube Goldberg machines are, you know what we based our machines off of.
We created machines like that, only every move and reaction was a metaphor for something that happened in our revolution.
For my group, we chose six parts of the Easter Rising’s story to tell through six metaphors on our machine.
Our metaphors were as follows:
1. The beginning of World War One: pendulum drops the weighted army men with needle in the end, popping a ballon
2. The for action of the rebellion: marbles drop out of balloon
3. The fighting: marbles rolling down the ramp
4. When the British intercepted the Irish reinforcements: marbles go into the water container at the end of the ramp
5. When the British won and took prisoners: under the water container is a button which turns on lights in a cage full of other marbles
6. Ireland finally became independent: the button also causes a motor to spin with a flag attached that has a magnet, which attaches to a clock, causing it to turn and hit a potato. The potato splits in half, showing the independence.
We built the machines with a steampunk aesthetic, meaning we had all of the gears and wires and machiney bits showing. Everything was also coloured gold, silver, or a coppery colour, adding to the aesthetic.
Steampunk… it’s gold and silver and copper. It’s wires and gears and steam engines. It’s air balloons and steam trains. It’s clocks and watches and piping. It’s an decor style and a story aesthetic. It’s top hats and waistcoats and old inventors glasses.
It’s part of our project.
As part of our project we had to make our machines using a steampunk aesthetic. Meaning we had all of our circuit wires showing, and we had most of our projects pained with gold, silver or copper spray paint.
To help us learn about the steampunk aesthetic for our projects we read a book called The Leviathan.
The Leviathan was a book that showed steampunk throughout most of the book. The book was partly about the beginning of world war 1 (When the Archduke of Austria was assassinated), only with a steampunkish twist.
If you want to read it, the title of this section is a link to the book!
The Video–
We didn’t just make a machine that has metaphors for a revolution of our choice.
No of course not, nothing is that… simple.
We made a video!
Of our machine of course.
And theres a much better explanation of the Easter Rising in it.
We made one rough draft and one good copy.
Rough Draft~
https://youtu.be/8yZZzuqUj1s
Okay so as you can see, we filmed this all in a aeroplane with a plastic bag over the camera…
No just kidding… though the audio defiantly sounded like it.
We had a lot of critique done by our teacher and classmates on what we could do to make the video better.
The feedback was:
*image of feedback here*
So we did our best.
Second (Final) Draft~ (DON’T WEAR HEADPHONES)
https://youtu.be/kgOkGXtjBFU
We all re-recorded our audio and we made sure to cut out the beginning. We tried to fix what we could and that was what we came up with!
Scimatics Part–
This project was a humanities/scimatics mix project, meaning we worked on this project in both humanities and scimatics. And while I’ve talked about what we made (the machine), and what the Easter Rising was, that was humanities stuff.
We got science and math in there too!
Part of the science that we did in this unit was the electric circuits that we included in our machines!
We used our information on circuits to create all different things will all of the projects.
For ours, we used our knowledge of circuits to make the lights light up in our jail, the clock hand to turn and the British flag to be hoisted.
Before we started making the machine, we learnt all about how to make circuits, how to measure currents with ammeters and such, and how to electrocute people (we didn’t though of course… that would be crazy our class would never! Well I mean we would… BUT WE DIDN’T).
We also did all of our design/planning for the physical machine in scimatics. We made blueprints and a full sized sketch. Of course we had to alter these plans after because there’s always change when it comes to creating projects. ALWAYS.
The Building Of The Machine–
Honestly… I wasn’t here for any of that.
I can not take any credit for the building and making of the machine because I didn’t do anything for it.
I went away on a trip to Australia for my older sisters wedding and when I came back, the machine was all built by my lovely group members.
If you’re interested in knowing about how the machine was made, I’m sure Kailey, Lauren or Alivia have it in their blog posts somewhere.
*building timelapse*
So What Work Did I do?–
According to some of my team members, none.
According to other of my team members, small things but still things.
I wrote the original script, helped design the machine, worked with my group to figure out what metaphors we were using, worked with Kailey on the second version of our full sized sketch and did my part for the video.
While I was away I was given the job of writing the script for our video. It was something I could do from the other side of the world and that I didn’t need to actually be in Vancouver to share. 
When I wrote the script, I sent it to my group members with a note attached saying “if there are things I need to change, just tell me and I will do so”. I never got a reply, and assumed it was a surprisingly good script. When I got back however I found that a lot of the script had been changed for me, therefore making it practically not my script anymore. While our group was mostly good with communication over the time of the project, this is an example of where we could have done better. I defiantly could have fixed the script while I was away if I had been updated on what had been changed and what I needed to add to the script. So as one thing I would have changed with this project it defiantly would be more communication while I was away.
I tried to do as much as I could when I got back, helping with whatever I could as we filmed and finished up the project. I did what I could to help my group and that was all I could do.
Three Things I Would’ve Changed–
-Communication with me through the project.
I went away at the end of the beginning of the project. I was away for most of the middle of the project, and I was given one job to do in that time. I did that job, and asked for critique.
I wasn’t given any. I then came back to find most of my work had been redone for me instead of me receiving critique on my script to fix it. Communication was defiantly not as good as it could have been.
-Missing The Middle Part.
I left for the middle part of the project and though I enjoyed my trip, and I would make the decision to go if I had the chance to re-do, I wish I was there for the construction of the machine. I wish I could have been able to help more with the project and help my group more.
-Patience and Control.
Throughout the time that I was working on this project I noticed that some people lacked patience and some were too controlling. If we didn’t do something perfect first try, sometimes people would get super frustrated with others and it didn’t cause I good vibe with our group for the rest of the day. And some people were also super controlling throughout the project. If 
something needed doing they would take no time in assigning it to someone. And while that is a good thing in most cases, sometimes a person would be halfway through their last job when they’re asked to do a new job and then they got told off for not finishing the first one and asked why the second one wasn’t started sooner and things like that and it seemed like sometimes there wasn’t an even amount of work going around by everyone even when I was there. It might just be me, but we seemed to be working under one group members orders while they watched and yelled. Not that it’s a bad thing to have good leaders just, I don’t think we were efficient being led like that.
Conclusion–
I learnt a lot about Ireland in this unit. I also learnt about how revolutions work. I learnt about circuits, steampunk, team work, design, war vs peace, good vs bad vibes and how much spray-paint stains tables.
I know this blog post was a bit different then others, it’s just because I was away for the middle part of the project and so I didn’t have as much of a role in it as I would have liked because I was away.
Thanks for reading!
I’ll see y’all in the next LPP.
And remember- NO SINGING IN THE BATHROOMS.
