Tag Archives: reflection

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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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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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January 3, 2023

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Lake of Loons!

Hello, and welcome to my loon lake blog post. This post will talk about the first PLP feild study of the year (for my grade): my second Loon Lake Trip. On this trip, we did a three day leadership course, which was something I had never done before. This course was led by an amazing guy named Jono, so if I say that name, you know who it is.

On the day we left, everyone was very excited to be going on out first field study of the year, so we boarded the bus, and one and a half hours later, we had arrived in a completely new and beautiful place.

Arrival at loon lake

Since we were there for an absolutely packed five days, I will only go over the parts of the trip that influenced me the most.

The first part of the trip that I found really cool and that I think changed me as a person, was the workbook and the cool realization that came with it. Throughout the first three days of the trip, there was a workbook filled with self-exploration questions and activities, and with Jono’s guidance, I learned about myself in a way I never knew I could.

Debrief with Jono

The second part I will talk about was the personal posters. These were poster we made to show off who we are, and at first I was embarrassed that mine looked worse than others, or had less drawings, but throughout the course of the trip so many people wrote kind things on it that I felt completely satisfied with its representation of me. (every day we had time to write appreciations of something that person did that day)

Max and Mateo writing appreciations

We also did many outdoor activities, like low ropes, high ropes, and climbing. But my favourite outdoor activity was the two and one half hour hike we did on the last day. This hike takes you all the way around the lake

High ropes milk crate challenge
Rock climbing
Low ropes course

And my favourite: the hike

Amazing photo by Faith Sheewe

I really enjoyed the hike because Loon Lake is such a beautiful place, and I loved having that one last memory to remind me of this.

Thanks for reading my post. Goodbye.

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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.

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January 25, 2022

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Electrons and Atoms!

In the latest Scimatics 9 project, I learned about electron arrangements, magnetic charges, and much more. So, without further ado, here is the post!

As with most scimatics projects, we started off with a mindmap that showed what we knew going into the project and questions we had.

Project start mindmap.

The second assignment in this project was an experiment, which was split into two steps: an animation that explains the lab procedure and the actual experiment+lab report.

Experiment 2A lab video

The experiment was very fun, and I really enjoyed this experiment.

Lab report

I should also mention how throughout the project we did workbooks and other small activities to continue adding to our knowledge. The next big event in this project was milestone 4 though, which was the Bohr models and storyboard. The final product of this project is an animated video that shows electron arrangement through Bohr models. I decided that in my video I would show how sulfur dioxide and calcium phosphide form. My storyboard had 7 boxes that show the general direction of my video, and I created two Bohr models for each of the atoms, one after bonding, and one before. And after that, this was my final product:

storyboard and Bohr models.pdf

Then, I went on Christmas break for two weeks, and when I came back, I started working on my final animated video. I followed my storyboard pretty well, but added some extra details.

https://youtu.be/vU9p2WCHKpU

And now, for the curricular competencies of this project.

Communicating: Formulate physical or mental theoretical models to describe a phenomenon

Detailed and clear voice overs are synchronized with animation to explain bonding processes using proper scientific language.

My video contains clear voiceover that is well synchronized to the animation. It uses proper scientific language as well, like covalent, ionic, atomic, electron, etc…

Processing and Analyzing: Construct, analyze and interpret models and/or diagrams

A carefully animated video uses Bohr models to show electron arrangement of atoms and ions. It accurately portrays the electron exchange in ionic bonding and electron sharing in covalent bonding.

I spent time making sure that my electron arrangements are correct, and that the electron exchange is also correct.

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

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions.

I handed in all my work on time (excluding revisions, of course) and my work was quality.

Thanks for reading my post! If you liked it stay tuned for more. Bye

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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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January 3, 2022

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Revolutions on Trial

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. This post is about the latest project for PLP Humanities, Revolutions on Trial. In this project I learned about the French Revolution, the causes of a revolution, and what determines a successful revolution. So, without further ado, here is the post.

As with all PLP projects, we started with a driving question that we strived to answer in the project. The Driving Question for this project was: How Might we as Legal Teams Determine the Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness of a Revolution? And this is how I found the answer.

The first big activity we did in this project was called Nation X. We created a simulation of a society with very large class divisions. There were 4 groups, each with different right and abilities.this activity lasted two days, and contained many events that reflect actual similar societies. For example, in our simulation there was a large revolution to put our old king back in place, and this revolution split the country in two groups. My full reflection on this experience from my perspective is below.

The New Republic Of Nation X, in my opinion, was a fair and functional society. We had food, farms, wealth, happiness, and entertainment. I think that we achieved this by rooting out the people who would not fit in this society and creating a society so good it doesn’t even need laws. To ensure a fair and functional society, I think that there are three main elements that need to be there: basic needs met (food, water, etc…), some way of preventing people from doing bad things (laws, rules, or just generally good people), and lastly, an economy that produces these two things repeatedly. I think of these three things, the last one is the most important because to ensure the survival of a society, the society needs to be relatively self sufficient. But, both of the nations together are not functional in the end, so I do not think our classroom as a whole accomplished the goal. But, overall, this was a really fun activity, and I think it was also an interesting social experiment.

Another great tool to understand how and why revolutions happen is the crane brinton scale. Crane Brinton was a historian of France, and among other things, he studied multiple revolutions and fund common traits in all of them. Using his observations, he create a diagram that split a revolution into four stages: the incubation stage, the moderate stage, the crisis stage, and the recovery stage. My diagram of his theory is here.

Now that we had a clearer understanding of why revolutions happen, we were ready to start reading a famous story based off of an actual revolution. This story was Animal Farm. Animal Farm is a widely renowned novel with a movie adaptation written by George Orwell, which follows the events of a farm as the animal rise up against their captors and form their own society. We had book group discussions about what we read daily. It was great to see what a revolution is like from the perspectives of the people in it.

While reading the book, we were also assigned to groups of six that would each be studying a revolution. I was assigned the French Revolution. I researched the French Revolution until I fully understood it, and then created a graphic organizer to show my learning, Which I revised once.

Revolution Notes.pdfDownload

The next major step in this project was the Animal Farm written response. This was a three-paragraph writing were we explained the anatomy of the revolution in Animal Farm using Crane Brinton’s theory. We had an hour to write this in class, and I think that I got it done fairly Easily in that time constraint.

My thoughts on the revolution in Animal Farm, using the Crane Brinton theory

Now, we knew what we needed to know and were prepared the start creating the final product of this project. The final product is a courtroom trial were we put the effectiveness of the revolution up to the test. We created affadivats, scripts, props, and a set to perform out trials in front of our parents, friends, colleges, and even some random people. And after all that preparation, this is the final result:

So that conclude today’s post, about the revolutions on trial project. I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you want to check out my group member’s blogs, click any of the links below. Thanks for reading, bye.

Cole D.

Dana P.

Makenna C.

Cooper K.

Carter C.

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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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October 13, 2021

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Epidemic Exponents!

Hello, and welcome. I am back to school, and starting this year in scimatics with exponents! In the first scimatics project this year, Game of Exponent Laws, I learned how to evaluate exponents, exponent laws, and more. So without further ado, here is the post.

To kick of the project, we did a quick activity were we made up games that used one and two dice. We got into groups of four, and started working. And here are the rules we came up with:

Rollie poll-E

Assemble all the players in a circle. Decide who will roll first, and have them roll the die. If their roll is a 4, 5, or 6, add the roll to their point tally. If their roll is a 1, or 3, subtract their roll from their point tally. Point tallies cannot drop below zero, and if they reach twenty, that person wins. If they roll a 2, they get to roll again and multiply that roll by two and add it to their point tally.

Rollie poll-E 2.0

To win, gain 5 points. You gain a point when you correctly answer a question faster than your opponent(s). Choose someone to roll each round, and have them roll the two dice. Once the dice have settled, every player starts solving the math problem. If the dice are both even, devide the greater roll by the smaller one. If the dice are both odd, multiply them. If the dice are odd and even, add them together. Once you figure out the answer, say it aloud, and if you are the first to solve the problem, you get a point. Decimal points are allowed for answers. If the roll has a 1 then subtract 1 from the other roll

(Special thanks to Jocelyn for thinking of the names)

So, as common with scimatics projects, we all were supposed to make a mind map that’s outlines what we already know and what questions we have.

Project Start Mindmap

Now, in this project, the milestones were not a linear process, but in a slightly erratic way, with the milestones not coming in numerical order. So, for the sake of this post, I will tell you about the events of this project in chronological order.

After these first assignments, me and my partner started brainstorming Ideas for our game. Our first milestone was milestone four (confusing). For this project, everybody was given a partner, and together you and your partner would make a game that uses exponents as a central mechanic. So, eventually, me and Aliciah decided to make a game about viruses. Our idea was quite similar to pandemic: contagion, which is a game were each player is a virus trying to exterminate humanity. Our first draft of our rules are here.

Throughout the next week, we updated our game rules and did some exponent practice, and eventually landed on this set of rules:

Epidemic Exponents Final Rules.

After making these final game rules, it was time to make our game board and pieces.

Final Game Board!

And, of course, there were curricular competencies for this project, which are listed below.

Applying and innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches.

All class time is used efficiently for learning without distractions. All group members contribute equally.

I used my class time well, and I think that is reflected in the quality of my work. My partner and I shared equal part in the workload for this project.

Reasoning and Analyzing: Use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games

A clear and simple points system and win conditions for the game are carefully designed.

Points system is clearly represented by physical game pieces, and finding out who wins a game is easy and concise.

Communicating and Representing: Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms

A set of clear, complete, interesting and personalized instructions are created for how each player takes their turn. Examples are included. The game design uses at least 4 different exponent laws and using these laws is integrated into each player’s turn.

Our game features game rules completely written from scratch, with our own ideas and examples of gameplay and game pieces. There are over four exponent laws included in our rules.

And that concludes my blog post for today! Thanks for reading this far, and if you want to check out my partner Alicah’s blog, click here.

See you in the next post, bye.