Monthly Archives: January 2018

(Insert Awesome mPOL Here)

Posted on by under About Me, Humanities, mPols & tPols, School

Hello, Internet.

So it’s time for another mPOL (Or SLC if you prefer). This time around, we’re focusing on the question “How are you going to progress as a learner before the end of the school year?”.

Before I can look at how to progress, however, I have to take a look back at the work I’ve already done this year.

We have five PLP classea this year: math, science, maker, humanities and planning 10. We’ve done various projects across those subjects, but I’m going to focusing on a few of them.

One of the places that I’ve been struggling this year has been scimathics. I haven’t had trouble with the material, but I’ve found it awkward to adjust to a style of learning math and science that requires you to be able to apply those skills to other things, or to draw upon other skills during projects and assignments. While it makes sense to do these things, especially in PLP, I’m someone who prefers to have math and science tests, or at least a more even mix of tests and projects, rather than just projects, and I haven’t been enjoying the class that much. I also feel, however, that I’ve been slacking in those classes; doing sloppy work on projects that confuse me, or handing in assignments late, both of which are things that I don’t want to do this term.

 

One project that I actually really enjoyed, and felt I did well on this term was the Social Justice podcast, in which my group focussed on Indigenous Rights. What I wanted to do originally for this project was a different subject, and I was disappointed not to be able to have my first choice, but when I got over that and started putting effort and energy into the project, I ended up learning a lot, and I felt proud of the work I was doing. Feeling good about the work I was doing made it enjoyable, so I kept on doing well.

 

A project we’re currently working on is Destination Imagination. This has been something that I’ve found to be stressful in the past, and that I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this year. We’re in a stage of DI that requires going through some paperwork and doing some research, and it has been stressful, as per usual. However, that may be at least in part due to my own attitude towards and experiences with DI, and not the actual work itself.

 

Which brings me to the answer to my question: the way that I want to progress as a learner this year is to learn how to adapt, roll with the punches, and change my attitude about things even if they’re not exactly what I want. If I focus on changing my own attitude, instead of worrying about the things that I can’t change, I’ll have a better chance of being happy with the work that I’m doing.

Toodles.

 

(Insert Awesome Winter Exhibiton Here)

Posted on by under Exhibitions, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, we’ve been working on podcasts throughout the year. For our winter exhibiton project, we did a set of interviews: one with a grade twelve PLP student, one with a family member or close family friend, and one with someone who attended the exhibition.

 

We each worked on this project with a grade twelve counterpart who helped us edit our podcasts, prepare for the exhibition, and found people at the exhibition for us to Interview.

 

The interviews we did were based off the style of StoryCorps, an organization that does short interviews with everyday people about their everyday lives, working from the philosophy that everyone has a story. We listened to some StoryCorps interviews in order to learn a little bit about their style, and the type of questions we should be asking.

 

Our first job was to interview a grade 12 PLP student. I interviewed Michael Sutherland . For this interview, we had to come up with a list of questions, and as we were working with the grade 12s, we were allowed to tailor our questions specifically to whatever story they wanted to tell. In this case, Michael told the story of how he got, disliked, and came to like his job– a theme that I held up throughout the rest of my interviews.

Our second job was to interview a friend or family member. I interviewed my mum, Celia, about her time working in a courthouse. She talked about her experiences working there, and the judges that she worked with.

The third thing we did was the exhibiton interview. For this interview, we split off into pairs, and each pair of grade ten students, as well as their grade twelve counterparts, was given a room in which to interview people. We were told to make our rooms look “cozy and comfortable”, so we put lots of lamps and fairy lights, brought a couch up from the theatre, put blankets and pillows on the couch, and added a touch of holiday spirit via a mini Christmas tree with a picture of David Boreanaz on it.

 

Then we took it in turns to interview the people our grade twelves brought back. I interviewed three people, but I decided to use my final interview, in which I talked to Kym Bontinen about being a nurse, and teaching other people how to nurse.

While I enjoyed some parts of the interviews, I found interviewing people without a very stagnant set of questions to be difficult. I also found it difficult to get clear audio. These are things that I would like to improve on in the future.

 

Toodles.

(Insert Awesome Hot Sauce Here)

Posted on by under Fun Stuff, Humanities, School

Hello, Interest,

So we just read a book called Little Brother . It focussed on a boy who got blamed for a terrorist attack, arrested and treated unfairly, and decided to rebel against the government that captured him. Actually, he was a bit of an idiot. The book, however, was enjoyable.

 

 

The book related back to our driving question for this unit, “how has technology acted as a disruption with its creation throughout history?”, and to our ongoing theme of identity.

And it’s about a part of the identity of one of the characters from Little Brother that I’m writing this post now. The book featured a character called Ange who loved hot sauce, enough for it to be a part of who she was. She even spent a significant amount of time building up an immunity to hot sauces which, she explained, ranked high on the Scoville Heat Scale.

You might not be sure what the Scoville Heat Scale is. Luckily, I have an explanation for you:

The Scoville Heat Scale, named after Wilbur L. Scoville, is a basic representation of the heat/hotness/spiciness of different hot peppers, hot sauces, or dishes containing large amounts of said peppers or hot sauce. The literal thing that it’s measuring is a pepper’s concentration of capsaicin, which is the component that makes human beings feel heat.

At the bottom of the scale (at literally zero) would be something like a sweet pepper, which does not contain capsaicin, and therefore isn’t hot. Closer to the top would be certain types of chili peppers that can reach over 300, 000 Scoville units. What this means, essentially, is that in order to make the amount of capsaicin in a pepper of this kind undectable to a human, extract from that pepper would have to be diluted in sugar water by a ratio of 1: 300, 000 units of water. Diluting pepper extract in sugar water and tasting it in order to determine how hot it was is a procedure that was created and used by Wilbur L. Scoville, hence the Scoville scale being named after him. He would usually have a panel of five judges testing the water and reporting back on whether the capsaicin was detectable or not.

Even within one type of pepper, the actual amount of Scoville units can differ based on a few different variables. Examples of these variables include how many hours of sunlight it had while growing, and what temperature it was grown at, how much moisture it contains, and the general chemistry of the soil it was grown in.

A Red Savina Habanero that reached 577, 000 Scoville units claimed the place of hottest pepper ever known, until a pepper was created that reached 1,001, 304 Scoville units, and even that was kicked out of first place by a pepper reaching 2.48 million Scoville units, which is what currently holds the title of hottest pepper.

In order to further aid my research on the Scoville Heat Scale, I decided to try some hot sauce myself. To my knowledge, I’ve never had hot sauce before, and I definitely haven’t had it straight up. I asked a friend of mine to film me trying some hot sauce that allegedly stands around 100, 000 Scoville units to see if I would burst into flames.

A while later, I decided to try the Scoville method of diluting hot sauce in sugar water. I definitely didn’t use enough to fully get rid of the hotness, but it did help tone down the immediate taste and left just the hot aftertaste.

All in all, I’d say I’ve proved to not be quite the hot sauce afficianado that Ange was, but at the very least no smoke came out of my ears. Learning about the Scoville scale gave me an interesting insight into the identity of this character.

Toodles.

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