Tag Archives: driving question

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May 13, 2024

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Fear Factor: how fear can change the world

In the latest PLP project, we explored how fear can be used as a tool for societal, technological, and governmental change; mainly through the lens of fear of nuclear weapons, in the quest to ultimately answer the driving question “How has fear been used as a political, defensive, and cultural tool to shape our society?”. So come along with me as I learn how nukes have shaped the world today.

This project started off strong with some over-the-holiday reading of the book Hiroshima by John Hershey. Once we were done reading and got back into school, we learned about a brand new PKM system called a “zettelkasten”. A zettelkasten is basically a second brain, consisting of many notes that can be made on anything you observe or learn throughout your day. It categorized notes into three categories:

Literature notes, which are summaries of a text and its message/themes without drawing your own conclusions

Permanent notes, which are specific ideas or concepts that you can create or learn

Fleeting notes, which are quick jots of any random thought you have that you should look back on again later and process into one of the other two types.

Now the notes are very helpful on their own, but the zettelkasten I used really shines because of the connections. Each note has a section at the bottom filled with my own thoughts, idea, links to sites or other notes, and much more. I found when I was making my final product it was easy to use this section to add more depth to my thoughts just by looking at the connections page.

I decided to make my zettelkasten a space in craft, as I already stored many personal notes in there before the project. I was actually able to convert many of my own “fleeting notes” into processed permanent notes after the project was over as well. I usually abandon most of the documents of my learning after a project, but with the zettelkasten system, I found myself actually keeping on using it after the project ended and retaining far more information than I think I would’ve normally.

The first processed note added to my zettelkasten was a literature note on the book I mentioned far above, Hiroshima. It my first time making a literature note, so I had a little trouble, but in the end making a note on the book helped me gain a much deeper understanding of the text, which made it worth it.

The next step of the project was to create three or more permanent notes based on the reading we did. Here are mine:

Worldview permanent note

Found Footage/Pseudo Documentary permanent note

Cost of Targeting Civilians permanent note

I found making these permanent notes, surprisingly, very enjoyable. It was the first time an awhile a school assignment really made me think critically and create something of my own.

Although the building knowledge section of any project, especially this one is important, I will not include much it in my blog post. The book Hiroshima was an awesome read, and we actually read another book “fallout” which depicts the story of families in a bunker after a nuclear strike. We also read or watched many secondary texts to gain a more complex understanding, including an article about America’s reporting of the bomb dropping, a documentary series about the Cold War, and the movie “Turning Point”.

After what felt like everything about nukes had been learned and recorded in my zettelkasten, I started work on my final product, starting with the development of a narrowed-down inquiry question.

I started off knowing I wanted to look into the technological aspects of nuclear bombs, but ran into problems when I tried to connect it to the driving question. After some time and lots of thinking, I came up with this: How Does the Fear of Nuclear War Influence Scientific and Technological Development?.

After creating a more clear goal for the information in my final product, I started outlining how I can share the information I learned. I wanted something engaging (at least something I would find engaging) and also thought provoking. I decided telling two stories, one what actually happened, and one an alternate reality where nukes were never invented, would be compelling and fit my goals for the product.

For the next two weeks I worked on my product, ultimately leading to my answer to the driving question: this presentation

Thanks for reading my blog post, and hopefully I will see you again in the next one.

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November 15, 2023

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Manhattan Project Squared

In the latest PLP project we learned all about the dawn of atomic energy: the manhattan project, Oppenheimer, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and so much more. Half of the class also ventured out to the birthplace of nuclear bombs: Albuquerque, New Mexico, to experience firsthand what happened there and capture media for the final product of this project, a book about the historical significance of the manhattan project.

This project started with a trip to where the first ever nuclear bombs were invented: Albuquerque New Mexico. This trip was not only an absolute blast, but we also learned s much valuable information firsthand. We visited the Trinity test site (where the first ever nuclear bomb was detonated), the los alamos lab were even today the military still innovates technology, the white sands missile range, and so much more. This trip not only gave us trivial information about the bomb’s development, but also gave insights on the cultural and economical impact present in the towns and people closest to where it happened.

The final product of this project was a book centered around one claim your group decides on (pertaining to nuclear energy of course). After lots of carful thought, our group’s claim was “The Manhattan Project is the reason the science of nuclear fission and fusion are creating positive change in our world today.” I actually disagreed with the assertion our claim makes, but we stuck with that claim regardless.

We wanted our book to feel like you’re reading and watching snippets from a bunch of movies, ads, and magazines. I was in charge of visual direction and I also created almost all the assets the book uses. I also helped edit and fact check every page of the book. Here are some of the pages I am most proud of. (I also wrote one of the top one’s magazine snippets)

Once we got through many rounds of tweaks, peer feedback, and revisions, we finally finished our book. I am very happy with the final result, but I think my group took it in a bad direction. Since our claim only talks about the good of the manhattan project (which is very little by the way) we have much more trouble filling up the ludicrous amount of pages we decided to add, and also make most sections of the book purposeless.

Overall, this has been one of, if not the best PLP project I’ve ever done. I loved learning about the rich history of the bombs and all the struggles that were involved making them, plus getting as close to the history ad possible with the field study gave it a quality I haven’t seen in any other projects (maybe loon lake). I just regret the direction our book went because I feel it didn’t accurately represent or show all the interesting parts of the manhattan project and nuclear bombs in general.

Thanks for reading my post! Stay tuned for the nest post where I learn how to debate like a boss. Bye bye now.

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June 12, 2023

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LIES! (And incongruencies)

In the latest PLP humanities project we learned all about Canada’s darker history of residential schools and cultural genocide to answer the driving question of “How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time”. So without further ado, here is the post.

The first step of this project was creating an I Am From Poem, which is a poem that describes me using a specific format. The way this connects to truth and reconciliation was very unclear at the start of this project to me, but later it connected back to the main idea of the project.

I Am From Poem

The order of this project was slightly disorienting, with Keystone 1 being the last keystone due and some other things like that, so I will go through this project in the order we handed them in.

🧱 Keystone 2

Part 1: History and Art

For this activity I explored a governmental act (I chose the Indian Act) and find art that reflects or makes a commentary on it. I found an amazing art exhibit called “The Indian Act Revisited” that looks at the Indian act and the current state of indigenous affair to see what has changed and what could be done. It consists of art form eight different First Nations artists. Here it is:

History And Art: The Indian Act

Part 2: Contemporary Issues

The goal of this segment was to find a text (art, music, essay, etc…) that reflects a modern indigenous issue. I found a song by indigenous artist “Dakota Bear” called Freedom that talks about inter generational trauma.

Contemporary Issues: Intergenerational Trauma

Part 3: Civil Dispute and Art

The last part of keystone 2 was a reflection on a civil dispute with sources and art. Here is mine:

Civil Conflicts and Art: The Oka Crisis

The next step in this project was a reflection on how I feel about living in Canada and my connections to truth and reconciliation. This is the part where the I Am From Poem ties back into the project, but to be honest, I felt like there could’ve been better ways to identify personal connections to Canada, like revising our I am from poems from a different perspective or creating rhetorical paragraphs from First Nations perspectives.

Truth And Reconciliation Paragraph

Throughout this project the whole class read a book called “The Marrow Thieves” by Cherie Dimaline. We also completed reading journal entries and reflections each week and finally at the end a paragraph that analyzes the book’s commentaries form the past and future.

My thoughts on the book

Personally, I really didn’t like this book; the dystopian future was somewhat believable, with the exception of one of the main plot points of the book: the ability to dream being lost by everyone EXCEPT First Nations people, with the secret being in their bone marrow. This is extremely unrealistic, as 1. Bone marrow cannot affect any of the brain’s processes 2. The government creates “schools” to place First Nations people in, killing them for their born marrow, but bone marrow can be harvested even right now in the real world without hurting the host, and 3. Bone marrow can infinitely be cloned with current technology as well.

“The Marrow Thieves” Journal

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Then finally it was time to work on the final product of this project: the collage. and after 6 drafts, this was the result:

Final Collage

Thanks for reading my post, and I’ll see you in the next one.

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February 6, 2023

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Romeo Romeo, What Did We Say About Poison?

Hello readers, and welcome to my blog. This reflection is on the latest PLP project, “Romeo Romeo, are we still talking about Romeo and Juliet?” (I know, a bit clunky, but it works). The Driving Question for this project was: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling?” And to explore this question, we read and reflected on the play, and then created an adaptation of our own.

The first step to this project was reading the play. We read the most important parts in class, and completed sections of a theme book to analyze the themes of what we read and connect them to adaptations of the play. Here is my completed theme book:

Romeo and Juliet Theme BookDownload

The next step in the project was to get into groups, and brainstorm ideas for out film adaptations. Our job was to take one or two scenes from the play, and think and create original adaptations of them. I was paired up with Sylas, Dana, Declan, and Nolan.

We chose the scene where Juliet fakes her death, and started thinking. The first idea that popped into my mind was instead of faking her death, she could go into a cryochamber. I thought that this was the closest to death someone can come nowadays without actually dying, and proposed it to my group. They thought it sounded good, so we started filling it our film pitch form.

Film Pitch

Then, we created a script, and started filming. And then, when all is said and done, here is the final film:

And that concludes this post. Thanks for reading.

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October 29, 2022

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Gold Digging

Hello, and welcome to my blog post. This blog post will cover the first PLP project since the summer: Gold Digger. In this project I learned all about 1800s BC and the impact it has on us today to answer the driving question: “how did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?”. So, without further ado, here is the post.

To start this project we did a bunch of things to help our understanding, like class discussions and brainstorming on whiteboards. But, the first big art of this project were the three activities relating to major events in Canada’s gold rush history: the Chilcotin war, the Fraser valley gold rush, and the Cariboo gold rush. We completed three individual worksheets on both, which really helped me understand how much I knew and what I should learn for my final story.

Cariboo gold rush QuestionsDownload
Gold and Early BC QuestionsDownload

Paragraph summary of the Chilcotin War:
In 1862, the Tsilhqot’in people faced a great loss of life, as two thirds of their population had died from a smallpox epidemic spread to them by a Colonial construction crew. After the mass death, the Tsilhqot’in faced starvation. In 1864, they begged a construction crew for some food, when a road builder threatened to bring smallpox back to their community. Full of anger, A Tsilhqot’in Chief named Klatsassin lead a raid on the camp with 24 men and killed 12 of the road crew. Other attacks would bring the kill count to 21. A few months later, the Colonial officials invited the Tsilhqot’in to a peace negotiation, but when 8 Tsilhqot’in showed up, they were arrested and 6 of them were hung. In recent years, the BC government and the federal government have apologized for the hangings and exonerated the 6 men of their crimes

Cause and consequence sheet on the Chilcotin War

The next big step in this project was the first keystone. This keystone was about the effects of the migrants coming into Canada, and to show my knowledge, I made a Cause and Consequence Sheet and a written paragraph with the key idea being how the influx of migrants affected and shaped the Canada we know today.

Paragraph Summary:
The influx of people from the gold rushes is critical to the identity of Canada today. From our political standings, to the ethnicity of our people, and the countries rich history, so many elements of our home have been touched by the gold rushes. For example, according to statistics Canada, over 72% of Canadians are European Canadians, which means they are descended traceable from Europe. This is likely due in part from the gold rushes bringing many Europeans to come searching for gold. Another very important aspect of the gold rushes in BC are the indigenous people. In both of Canada’s big gold rushes, indigenous people played a large role, and also have suffered many losses because of settlers in Canada.

Cause and consequence web

As this was a shorter project than many other PLP ones, this next assignment marked the halfway point and the end of the Building Knowledge phase. For this assignment, we had to create a character card for a fictional or real character that is historically accurate to the gold rush. Here is mine:

Fictional Character Card

Now that I had established who he is and what my character does, I could start fleshing out the details of my final story. The end product of this project is a short-ish story around two pages about your character and some significant event they go through in their life. I wrote a story spine and worksheet to specify all the details of my story, then got writing.

Story Spine
Story Checklist

And now, the final story:

Final Product: Gold Rush StoryDownload

Thanks for reading my blog post, and see you in the next.

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June 17, 2022

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Time Is Money

Hello, and welcome to another post. The driving question for this project was “how can we predict our finances for the future?”. To answer this question, I created a narrated video. So, without further ado, here is the post.

The final product for this project was this narrated video:

Final video

To make this video, I combined all the milestones from this project into this video. Milestone 1 was just choosing my topic. I choose to make my business about wood puzzles.

For the second milestone, I created a spreadsheet that shows all my prices, time, and mateirials required for my business to operate.

For milestone three, I created an equation to represent my earnings.

Equation

for the final milestone (excluding the video) I created a graph that show my earnings over a span of time.

Graph

And then I combined them all together and added some spice and made the final video.

Now, for the curricular competencies.

Understanding and solving apply multiple strategies to
solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations

All time, materials, and equipment are accounted for in the cost of making your product or performing your service.

My video includes all equipment costs and they are all factored into my math.

Communicating and representing: represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic form

Linear equations are used to determine profit per transaction, hourly wages, and predicted NET earnings (minus deductions) over a year. Graphs are created, labeled, and explained.

I showed this competency by explaining graphs and equation throughout my video. My video contains labeled graphs, equations, and other statistics.

Connecting and reflecting: connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.

Video compares your new business to other careers and considers the value of your time, if your business can cover your costs of living/operating, and its sustainability/impact on the environment.

while my video does do this, I think it could’ve been done better by me directly comparing actual jobs rather than an average salary.

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June 15, 2022

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My First Film!

In the latest PLP 9 Project, I created a 6 minute documentary about nuclear power to answer the driving question: “How can I engage and entertain an audience using my video and storytelling skills”. This blog post will cover my journey making the final film.

The first activity in this project was recording an interview. We were put into groups and had to create a short video about a chosen topic, using interviews. In this activity, we learned how to shoot interviews, which would come in handy in the final documentary.

Interview Video

After this exercise I started thinking about what my documentary could be about. Some of my ideas included nuclear power, rubiks cubes, or parkour. In the end, I chose to make it about nuclear power because I thought I could make a clearer message about this topic. I did end up regretting this though, because it is very hard to get b-roll of nuclear reactors.

Then, the next step was to write a screenplay for my film.

As it turns out writing a screenplay for a documentary is quite difficult, but I managed to get it done. I also made a treatment and logline in my documentary planning DOCs.

Now, it was time to create a storyboard. A storyboard is a plan that consists of images for each shot, a short description of each shot, and sometimes some other details. This is what I made:

Then, it was time to start filming. The first thing I did was create the collage of news articles at the start, then I contacted an expert on nuclear power, Robert Anderson, for an interview. I also needed two interviews from people who are less than experts, so I did those aswell.

Then, I edited my film. My film turned out to be longer than it was supposed to be (3-5 minutes), but I felt this was necessary to include all the interesting parts of the interview. The final documentary is below.,

Thanks for reading this post! This project was one of my favourites of the year, and I learned so many new filmmaking skills that I can use to engage and entertain my audience.

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May 5, 2022

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My Vibrant Videos!

Hello, Im Theryn Strobl, and I am excited to write to you about a recent maker project, and in my opinion, the best PLP project I have participated in. In this project, I learned lots of filmmaking history and techniques on my journey to learn more about the movies! So, without further ado, here is the post.

We began this project with some brainstorming, a small lecture n some history of filmmaking, and then we were assigned a video about a hobby or skill we have. Being an avid snowboarder, I chose to make my video about that. The video contained some posters, a beginning, middle, end, and music. It was edited in an app called Clips, which I personally think is a very bad software, especially in comparison to its free counterpart, iMovie. But nevertheless, here is my final video:

A Story About Me!

The next day, we moved onto skill #2: a silent movie. This movie was supposed to recreate an old black and white movie, with no sound (other than a soundtrack) and not to long, making use of a certain poster (it’s the old-timey looking one). I made mine about finding the last lego peice in my contraption, and I think I conveyed the story using the limited storytelling options quite well.

The Last Piece

The next product in our moviemaking journey was a tutorial video that teaches how to do something. In the end, most of them were goofy and taught a very basic skill, but they could still do their desired job, so thats a win. In my group were Dana and Brooke. So, for the first step, we got started on our storyboard, which went through many painful revisions until we got it approved.

DIY Video Storyboard

Then, we filmed and edited our final video.

How To Tie Your Shoe

And then, for the last and most fun skill, we were put into groups of three, and givin around two hours to make a short “special effects sequence”. The goal of this was to use special effects to help tell our story. We had some preparation beforehand to figure out a story and plot, but everything else had to be finished in the allotted time. This was also in a small group, and I was with Fraser and Nolan. So, we set to work designing a quick storyboard, and then got to filming. We filmed many takes, and got quite the blooper reel, but in the end, this was our film:

The All Great Magical iPad Heist

Then the entire class shared their videos in a mini film festival. An honourable mention of mine is this video:

Overall, this was probably one of my favourite PLP projects ever, and I actually enjoyed learning how to communicate using the medium of film, and creating truly vibrant video.

Thanks for reading my post! Make sure to stay tuned for the next one, I’ll see you later. Bye.

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April 28, 2022

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WW1 Can Be More Comical Than You Think!

In the latest PLP Humanities project, we learned about WW1, and what happened in it, after it, and before it. The Driving Question for this project was: “How might we use graphic novels to understand Canada’s involvement in WWI?”, and throughout this project I tried to answer it. So, without further ado, here is the post.

Five weeks ago as of writing this, we started this project by learning the causes and consequences of WW1.

Cause and Consequence Sheet

For the part of the Building Knowledge stage of this project, we read an amazing graphic novel called “World War One: The War To End All Wars”. We read this book slowly over the span of around two weeks, discussing the themes and images throughout the book.

After we finished the book, I wrote a reflection paragraph on the book, which can be seen below.

Graphic Novel Reflection

The book contained many interesting facts and information, but there is so much more to this war that one project cannot really include. So, since we cannot learn everything abut WW1, we had to pick a topic that we would like to learn about, and, eventually, make a mini comic book about.

Then we did some more learning and worksheets, then I started my final comic. I worked on it a ton, and finally finished it. Here it is:

The Battle of Cambrai graphic novelDownload

And my answer to the driving question: we can use graphic novels to understand WW1, and many other significant events, by reading them! (Or making them).

Thanks for reading my post! This project was really fun, even though I didn’t have much time to work on it, and I hope to see more projects like this in the future. Anyways, this concludes the post, and I’ll see you in the next one.

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April 27, 2022

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Seven Habits of Mine

In the latest maker project, we covered the “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Sean Covey, which is a book about self improvement. In this post, I will explain what these habit are, how they effect me, and how they can help me be my most effective self. So, without further ado, here is the post.

We started off this project by learning what the seven habits are. If you don’t know anything about the seven habits, here are two videos that hep describe them very well: Part 1 Part 2. For every section of the seven habits (the private victory, the public victory, and renewal), we completed a choice board. A choice board is basically an activity that shows our understanding of that section, and it could be note, drawing, video, podcast, or many others. For my first choice board, I made this drawing:

The Private Victory

It represents someone in somewhere private, obviously happy about accomplishing something, but with no one around to notice.

For the public victory, I made another drawing of some one giving a public speech.

The Public Victory

A speech represents the public victory because at it’s heart, the public victory is about “the art of influencing”, and what better way to influence many people than a public speech! Many of the largest events are told by speeches around the world every day.

For the next, and final choice board, I created an animation:

Sharpen The Saw

This is an animation I made of a saw blade being sharpened. It represents learning and growing, and always striving to be better.

And with that, I started working on the final 3 products, one to represent each of these three competencies:

Communicating

Thinking

Personal & Social

For the first one, communicating, I created an Apple Music playlist of songs that show communication (or the lack of it).

The playlist is HERE

For thinking, I created a container that represents my brain, and for peace of mind, I can put a little note, or random thought inside so that I remember it or can get it out of my brain.

For the personal and social competency, I created a drawing of things that help my personal life, and my social life:

The pencil and the things logo show what I use to stay on top of things and less stressed out. The arrows are a symbol of synergy, and working with others to be my best self, and the book represents me learning and improving myself, to keep the upward spiral going.

Thanks for reading my post, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.