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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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January 25, 2022

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A Project about Poetry

The latest PLP project was all about poetry. I learned about myself, poetry, and what made the me right now. So, without further ado, here is the post.

We started this project with a cool entry event were we put together pieces of a chopped up poem and answered questions about the poem with it groups. From the very start, we knew we would be making a book of poetry, and the first assignment was to create 2 poems: a simile poem, and a metaphor poem.

The driving question for this project was “How might I construct text that shows who I am right now?” The answer to this question is almost anything! Poetry, art, writing, photography, drawing and creating all are forms of self expression that can help anyone show or learn who they are.

On the second day back, we learned about two concepts: juxtaposition, which is basically just surprising readers with two contrasting things, and comprehending poetry, in order to understand the message of the poem. Each day we got assign one or two new poems. That day, they were a found poem: creating a poem out of previously found material, and three haikus, which are poems were the lineage 5 syllables long, 7 long, then back down to 5.

On day three, not much happened we were assigned a new poem: an imagery poem. This poem is supposed to vividly describe one image.

On day 4 we were assigned a Sunday poem, a poem about the sounds of your worldview,and in class we practiced making silly sounds. (It sounds immature, I know) we were also tasked with starting to put our poems into out book.

In the last two days of this project, we were assigned three poems: an experience poem that describes an experience that shaped your worldview, a self portrait poem that describe who you are now, and a personification poem that describes what worldview is using personification. The self portrait poem can also be used to answer the driving question. And, on top of all that, we had to create and record meaning statements for all our poems and make complementary texts that go next to our poem.

After staying up very late for many days, I completed my book (which can be found below) and concluded this project. This project seemed shorter than previous ones, so this post is more snappy, but I hope you enjoyed it. Also, I feel like there was not enough time for this project, and I wish there was about 2-3 more classes in it.

Thanks for reading my post! I hope you enjoyed it. See you in the next one.

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October 20, 2021

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People And The Environment

Hello, and welcome to another post. Today, I am going to be talking about the latest PLP project I have done: people and the environment. The driving question for this project is: “How do people and the environment affect each other” and over the last five weeks, I have sought to answer that question. So, without further ado, here is the post.

The first thing we did was a writing activity about whether most people are protectors or destroyers of nature. For me, I almost immediately knew I thought they are destroyers. This is mine:

Baseline Thoughts Writing

The end product of this project is a letter to someone important about an issue. The letter must include possible solutions to that problem, evidence of the problem, and a clear and meaningful call to action, with the intention of creating meaningful change within our province.

Throughout the project we did multiple commonlit activities to help us understand message, meaning, themes, and how to use evidence. Each commonlit consisted of a story, and then questions about the things above.

The first milestone in this project was a letter plan conference, were I pitched the idea for my letter and clarified my plan to make the product. I decided I would write to the premier of BC, Mr. John Horgan about a law that could help stop BC’s extremely large amount of forest fires. BC accounts for over three quarters of Canada’s wildfires, so I wanted to try and help. This conference went well and provided lots of much needed clarification.

The second milestone was just an accumulation of all the commonlits: hey, come on out, quiet town, the sea also rises, and Lee Sherman and the toxic bayou. And for milestone three, we were to choose one of these stories, and connect the theme of the story to the theme of our letter in a three paragraph write up. before writing, I wrote an outline for my multi paragraph writing to sort my thoughts.

And, in the 60 minutes of class time we had to write the paragraph, this is what I came up with:

If I were to do it again, I would try to connect the two themes more strongly, and try to cut down the first paragraph a ton. But, all in all, I think I did a pretty good job.

Now, just like in the last project, the milestones were kind of shuffled, so this whole time I was also writing drafts for my final letter. I wrote five drafts of my letter, which are featured below.

So, once my final letter was finished, I addressed it, put it in an envelope, and sent it off.

Thanks for reading my post! I learned a ton in this project, and will in the next one too, so stay tuned. See you in the next post, bye.

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June 20, 2021

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Don’t Eat Rat Feces!

Today, I am writing a summative post about my latest, and last project of the year. This project is called Comic Cells. I learned a ton from this project, from what subsequent endocytosis is to why you shouldn’t eat rat poo. So, without further ado, here is the post.

As with all scimatics projects, we started off the project with a mind map of existing knowledge, question, sources, and anything else about the topic. Here is mine:

Project Start Mind Map

For the second milestone of the project, I created a wanted poster for a disease containing the date of discovery, how it affects cells, it’s mortality rate, and more.

Typhoid Wanted Poster

Then I started working on a storyboard to guide the making of my comic. The storyboard was a very rough guide to the comic, and some parts were not even in the final comic.

Rough Storyboard

Then I started to research a TON of facts about the virus I chose. (Hantavirus) To read more about hantavirus, veiw the sources down below. I learned a ton about cellular processes, and then started drawing pictures for my comic. I am not the best at drawing, so this was a hard task for me. However, I a very proud of the final comic, which is the namesake for this post.

Don’t Eat Rat Feces

And, as with all projects, there were core competencies I worked towards throughout the project. They are:

1. Questioning and predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

All class time is used for learning and creating a comic book story about cellular processes and/or diseases. I think I used almost all of my class time efficiently, but even so I still think I could’ve worked slightly faster in class and had less homework after school. But it worked out in the end, which is good.

2. Scientific communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies

Correct vocabulary and accurate diagrams are used. At least 10 interesting science vocabulary words are included in the story. I used more than ten science words in my Story, and I think my diagrams are concise and accurate at what they represent.

Evaluating: Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of evidence

Cell/bacteria/virus characters interact in a scientific way. Symptoms and logical outcomes of the chosen disease/cellular/ body process are integrated into the story. In my story, the reaction to the virus is realistic to real-life cases, and the outcomes are on the probable side.

Sources:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Thanks for making it this far. If you liked this post, make sure to check my other ones here. See you in the next post! Bye.

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May 11, 2021

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Atoms

As you can probably tell from the title, this project was one about atoms (and molecules, Kenetic energy, etc…). We spent about three weeks learning, coding and thinking to answer the driving question for this project: how can the behaviour of matter be explained by the Kinetic Molecular theory and the Atomic theory? So, without further ado, here is the post.

We started this project with a mind map and an experiment/magic trick. We wrote the mind map about what we already knew about matter, and then all of our questions about it.

Project start mind map

For the demonstration of atomic and molecular theory, the teacher performed a trick using a sealed bottle filled with water and an eyedropper.

The trick works by utilizing pressure. When the bottle is not squeezed, it looks like this:

Eyedropper at the top

But when the bottle is squeezed, the pressure increases, forcing the eyedropper down, and if you are subtle, it looks as if you magically made the eyedropper go down.

Squeezed bottle with the eyedropper down

One really cool activity was called the gemstone identification challenge. The whole class partnered up to measure the volume, weight, and then calculate the density of a few stones. The class average density was 3.74 grams per millemeter, and the closest density to that was that of colourless topaz, so we confirmed that the stones were colourless topaz.

Gemstone ID sheet

For milestone 2, we created accurate models for our coded project. In order to make our simulations or games follow this competency: Several different atoms/molecules, different states of matter, and particle motion are represented in the finished product. A historical model of the atom is chosen and implemented, we created some sort of model and text.

In order to create realistic and functioning models of atoms, molecules, and in my case quarks, I worked on three slides of information and graphics. It took three other versions to create to the one shown below.

The final three slides (to veiw them in higher detail, click here)

The next week was mostly spent learning more about matter and coding or refining our scratch projects. Then we did milestone four, which was a coding plan for the rest of the project. This was my milestone four coding plan:

Features:
Press space to show Bohr models
Press M to mute music
Press N to unmute music
Press Q to create more clones
Press 1-3 to change molecule type
Gravity that can be turned on and off
Click the reset button to reset the simulation
Use the temperature slider to change how fast the particles move.
Setting the temperature to zero will stop the particles from moving, other than gravity acting on them.
You can create different states of matter by adjusting the temperature and gravity.
you can adjust how much gravity there is.
You can move between subatomic particle models, Bohr models, and no models by pressing space bar twice This kinetic molecular theory is included in the simulation when the particles move. They follow the Kinetic molecular theory.

After creating a plan, I continued coding my scratch project until it was completely done and polished. If you want to check out my simulator, click here. After all was said and done, I created a summative mind map of the project, which helped round of the end of the project.

As with all projects, there were curricular competencies which you can see below:

Questioning and Predicting: Demonstrate a sustained curiosity about a scientific topic or problem of personal interest.

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions. I used all my class time efficiently, and I am very proud of my final product.

Scientific Communication: communicate ideas, findings, and solutions to problems using scientific language, representations, and digital technologies.

Several different atoms/ molecules, different states of matter, and particle motion are represented in the finished product. A historical model of the atom is chosen and implemented. I have three different molecule designs: H2O (water), carbon dioxide (CO2), and ozone (O3). I also have three Bohr models of the elements: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, And finally two subatomic models of protons and neutrons.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns (including coding) to solve puzzles and play games.

An interactive Scratch coded matter simulator or game is created with logical conditions and functional user controls. I created a simulator with four variables that the player/user can change, and extra aesthetic changes as well. The user can change limits all the variables, and the layout is logical and easy to use.

Thanks for reading my post! I had a great time doing this project, and i am sure to do more, so stay tuned .Even though I have featured it already, just in case, here is the link to my scratch matter simulator. Thanks to my friend Noah for all the coding help and feedback. If you want to check out his blog, click here. See you in the next post!