Hallo and welcome to another blog post. Today, I am proud to announce that I have come up with a pretty good introduction to do, every single blog post, I will be greeting you in a different language, this time, it’s German, and the other, well 50 ish times were in English. Now, in this blog post I am going to be discussing a new project that we had just completed in Scimatics called “Like Terms”. In this project, we learned about polynomials, collecting like terms, etc.
For our final presentation, we got to choose anything that we wanted to do that involved us collecting like terms: a cookie (with the ingredients), music (with different notes and instruments), a bridge (with the materials), etc. Also, in this project, we got to choose our own driving question based on what we decided to do for our final presentation. My group’s driving question (Kaia, Julia and I) was “How can polynomials represent the quantity of each ingredient in a cake?”. Because, what we decided to do was make a cake that looked like an iPad (just to make it more PLP themed).
Understanding and Solving – Apply multiple strategies to solve problems in both abstract and contextualized situations.
In this case, it’s combining the like terms (in our cake/project) and demonstrating it. In our final presentation, we did show our original polynomials and it after collecting the like terms but, because we had so many different ingredients in our solution (which is how we used like terms, the amount of cups used with each ingredient), even after collecting the like terms, it was still pretty long.
Communicating and Representing – Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.
In this case, it was based on the quality of our presentation: practiced, clear, detailed, etc. And of us using the correct usage of vocabulary: term, coefficient, exponent, degree. We did prepare a pretty good quality presentation and did use the correct vocabulary, but I think that we could’ve used more of that vocabulary in our presentation, not to mention maybe trying to use coefficients or exponents to simplify our final like terms.
Connecting and Reflecting: Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.
In terms of our project, this just means having personalized and original work done in our project. Other than having a little inspiration for the cake and using recipes to make the different parts of the cake, everything was original and personalized to us; the iPad apps/apple pencil were our little touches to make them more “PLP”. For our presentation, I think that we could’ve made the keynote a little more artistic and eye appealing, personalized to us, but that is all I’d really change based on it being original and personalized.
Applying and innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through individual or collaborative approaches.
For this project, this competency just really means that we have used all of our class time very efficiently for our project work and extra learning. Every single class, we made sure that we got all of the work we had to get done, fast and productively. On the other hand, because we couldn’t make the cake in class, we worked on our polynomials/like terms, keynote, practicing the keynote and finding good and as simple as possible recipes.
To conclude, I had lots of fun with this project because I got to work with some classmates/friends that had good skills that helped with this project (i.e. Julia has lots of experience with cooking/baking and Kaia is very artistically minded and creative). Not to mention, I also learned how to use/make fondant because I am very inexperienced in cooking and baking. I also loved the concept of the project: having more freedom and options of what to do yet still using maths techniques to simplify the making of it (because math is important for lots of aspects in life).
Hi y’all and welcome back to my blog. Today I will be talking about my most recent and one of my favourite assignments that we had to do, I’ll give you one word…TikTok. Now you are all probably pretty familiar with tiktok, or at least most of you, since tik tok was actually the most downloaded app in 2019.
We started this new project called “Straight flowin’ / While I’m scrollin’ ”. Our driving question in this project is “How can we use current memes to comment on the significance and consequences of nationalism around the world?”. We have started off this project by reviewing, learning and studying memes, significance, consequences and nationalism. By memes, I mean TikTok, of course.
Now, if you don’t know what tiktok is, let me explain. TikTok is basically a video sharing social networking service that is used to create short lip sync, comedy, and talent videos. It’s a very awesomely addictive app, some people say that it could be the next vine, but personally, I don’t think it could get that good. Click here to see an example of a tik tok that I quite enjoyed, don’t worry, they are not all of cute animals.
There is a theory by Richard Dawkins that a meme is an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. I think this theory really applies to TikTok, even if it was actually created quite long ago in 1976. Across tiktok, there are videos of people showing their talents, a cool trick, or something of them lip syncing, which would be the idea. Spreading from person to person on their phones all around the world in the TikTok community.
Now what you’ve all been for, my final tiktoks. The people that were featured in the tiktoks were Julia, Ally and Kaia.
I really enjoyed the assignment since I was already pretty familiar with TikTok, plus I got to work with my friends. For some of the TikToks, we tried to be a little more unique but still using trendy sounds. I think that my group and I all worked very well together and all had lots of fun!
Hi and welcome back to my blog. Today I am talking about a recent project that we had just done in our maker class. In this assignment, we documented a live event and used our editing skills to create an amazing video.
The first step in this project was to plan out what type of shots I wanted, we call this, an action plan.
Next we actually filmed our video. As you can see, I chose to do one of my soccer games. My team is a Div 1 team, which is a select team. In ranking, first there is house (div 3) as the lowest level, then there is silver/gold 2 (div 2) and gold 1 (div 1) and then after that there is metro and HPL which is the highest level. My team was going to be playing one of our rivalries called Avalanche. They are in our division and play for the same organisation as us. The thing is, they were the original gold 1 team and we moved up (from gold 2) last year. This year, they have been participating in metro-level tournaments, making them, really, really good.
Here is how my video turned out! (By the way, I’m number 7)
I am pretty happy with how this video turned out, I had some great videos, angles and shots. This video pretty much turned out how I wanted it to be. Although, the audio and lighting in the interview wasn’t the best, but still great. My team and I all worked really hard this game and had a great game so, I’m glad I got this one on video. Hope you liked it! See you in my next blog post!
Hi y’all and welcome back to another blog post. Since term one is ending, today, I will be talking about and reflecting on all of the videos that I had done this term. So, let’s get right into it!
4 Shot Film
Empowered Learner:I have leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in my learning goals
For this video, being the first video that we had made this year, I think that we did a pretty good job. The video quality of when Ms Maxwell was walking up could have been better if it wasn’t blurred up and the music at the end. Although this video may not have been perfect, I think that I was really surprised as to how it turned out with the angles, shots, organization and roles and it has definitely started this year full of videos off strong. Which is why, I think that my group and I had leveraged technologies and have taken an active role in achieving and demonstrating our learning goals.
Ghost Town Film
Knowledge Constructor: I can critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful experiences for myself and others
Similar to what I had said in my Alberta Reflection Post, this video did turn out pretty well, minus, the communication on who was bringing a cowboy hat and not using “landscape” during the whole course of filming. But we did all cooperate very well together. The editing was all done in iMovie but the writing at the beginning was done by Jude. If I had time (and wifi) at that time, I would’ve made my own music for the video. But I definitely learned some new things in the process of planning, filming and editing.
Drumheller Documentary
Creative Communicator: I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals.
Just like what I said in my Alberta Reflection Post, since this was a surprise task, we had very little time to plan, film and edit our videos. But, during this video, I did not waste any time and persisted well. I definitely had some troubles with the audio at times but in reality, I think that that was the only real flaw other than maybe trying to communicate more information about the artifact. For this task, we could only use Clips, an apple application. I thought that this was great because I got to learn a little more about this app and plus, it took less time to edit. But, I wasn’t fully comfortable with it because I hadn’t used it very much in the past.
Alberta People Video
Innovative Designer: I used a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions
As you could probably see in my This Land Is Us Project Reflection Post, my original and final video were very different and you could see a huge improvement between the two. I always made sure to be having a good eye for things when filming my video. I had planned all the questions that I was asking people in the course of the video but they had changed a little bit during the trip because I had began to be more specific with what type of content I wanted in my video. I rotated between my phone and iPad everyday because one of them on its own could not last the whole day.
Computational Thinker: I developed and employed strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions
I think that the original and final video had a huge difference, not to mention, the video quality was so much better. For the original video, where Finn and Brenton made the horror music. I had made the horror music for the last one. The thing that sucked for me though, was that I had no idea how to make horror music from scratch. Luckily, I had searched up many, many tutorials that didn’t make much sense and most were not from this update, that eventually ended up with the music that you hear in the final video. It wasn’t too good but definitely pretty god considering I had no idea what I was doing.
Knowledge Constructor: I can critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts, and make meaningful experiences for myself and others
This video, being our first of many revolution videos, wasn’t all that bad. Just like I said in my Revolution Post, the video quality and editing was good but, we could have perhaps filled in some missing information for some things that happened in between the events that were described and talked about in the video. My group persisted and worked together very well in the making of this video which really started our revolution project off strong. We only really used iMovie and maybe GarageBand for some music. I definitely think that we could’ve gotten some better shots for the last event but still, it was really good.
Innovative Designer: I used a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful, or imaginative solutions
In this video, we definitely used quite a variety of apps to get this video together and this definitely took the longest time to film and edit. We used GarageBand, iMovie, Pages (a lot, for the lyrics), voice memos and many of our devices to film. This video was the hardest to manage out of all of them because it took the most time and planning but it was definitely worth it. We had some problems to overcome such as, using our time well and not practicing the lines enough.
Computational Thinker: I developed and employed strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions
When it came to this video, we had amazing communication an planning with our props, backdrop and lines. The thing was, there was a problem about WHERE we would be filming. During the block that we had to film it, we had to move our set around because there were some communication issues with the people who originally allowed us to film there. Still, the video turned out great and I think that this may have been one of our best.
Final French Revolution John Green and Animation Video
Empowered Learner:I have leveraged technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in my learning goals
This final video, certainly did put all of our best skills from the other revolution videos into one. It may have been a little too long, but I think it was fine. Since our last video didn’t have enough information, we wanted to get more in there but we ended up with a little too much. For the last video, we were certain to as to what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it and definitely achieved those goals.
Creative Communicator: I communicated clearly and expressed myself creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to my goals.
Even though, I had some extreme technical issues with losing all of my interviews and other media that I had taken that day, it all worked out. I went back there and re-filmed all of my b-roll and shots but didn’t get to re-film the interview with my mom. I still liked the different angles that I took, how synced it was with the music and my creativity with the different transitions and editing details in iMovie. I had a plan of how I wanted my video to look like but I thought of an even better way to put it all together.
To conclude, I have really enjoyed creating all of these videos. Even though, it may take more time with the screenplays, the storyboards, the call sheets, the filming, editing and publishing, it was definitely worth it. Plus, I can look back at all of those videos when I’m older! I am super looking forward to continuing making these videos and maybe, by the end of this year, to be a master video maker!
Hi y’all and welcome back to my blog and today I am going to be talking about the thing that every single grade 9 goes through on November 6th…yeah, you guessed it, Take Your Kid To Work Day. Every year, all of the grade 9s spend a day at their parents work and need to complete a few questions or something on a piece of paper but, this program is extra special so we all created super cool videos.
Here was my action plan that I did before the take your kid to work day. I think to make sure for next time would be to be much more detailed and specific with what I want my video to look like and what shots I want for it. But I mean, this action plan is a little bit more for editing because, at the take your kid to work day, it’s really just getting as much b-roll as possible and doing interviews.
My mom is a mortgage broker which means that she’s self employed so she has a pretty flexible schedule but, this also means that, if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get payed (because she doesn’t have a monthly salary or anything). So, even though my mom is self employed, she still works at an office that she shares with other people; Mark Rasmussen (A Realtor) and Andrea Johnson (A Notary Public). Even though they don’t work together, they can still work together on some projects or work off of each other.
Also, even though my mom does not work for a company, she represents an organization of mortgage professionals called Mortgage Alliance in fact, she is in an elite group within Mortgage Alliance named The Vine Group.
We started off the day and got to the office at around 8ish and I left at 4:30 ish to go to an after school activity but typically, my mom would stay till 5-5:30 ish but it really depends on the day or week.
During my visit on take your kid to work day, I also noticed that my mom’s work has some common things that we use now in PLP. For example, for each client, my mom has a certain amount of milestones, that she keeps track on an app called Floify. Just like in PLP, where we use milestones for each one of our projects. So, for some people saying that high school or school in general doesn’t prepare you for anything in the future, then your pretty wrong.
Now, I’m going to be reflecting on the core competencies that we are being assessed on in this assignment.
The first competency is “Question self and others about how individual purposes and passions can support the needs of the local and global community when considering career choices”. Now, my mom, being a very caring and selfless person, really loves to help others. This career also fit just right for her because, it uses her education in business and finance, her skills with problem solving and of course, with her love of helping people. So, when it comes to my mom’s career, she helps; first homebuyers getting a mortgage to actually afford it, people getting a second mortgage, a new mortgage and refinancing (dept).
The next competency is “Recognize the impact of personal public identity in the world of work”. My mom, like most adults uses LinkedIn to advertise and give/get shoutouts from people she’s worked with. She also has a professional facebook account that she posts things about mortgages and stuff for her clients to see. She also uses Floify to share with her clients and organize herself better.
The final competency that we were being assessed on is “Recognize and explore diverse perspectives on how work contributes to our community and society”. Just like what I said in the first one, my mom helps people in all sorts of ways. Everyone’s job should contribute to our community and society in different ways.
The thing is about my video, I had filmed everything and gotten such great shots of everything including an interview with my mom, but my iPad crashed and I had to go and refilm everything one day after school. The thing was, that my mom was leaving the day after Take Your Kid To Work Day and hadn’t come back till very late at night the day before this was due. So, I sadly, was not able to incorporate an interview with my mom.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed getting to live in what the life of an adult is a and how different it is from school, yet, kind of similar. The thing about work is that it’s typically focused more on either your passions/what you like and/or what you are good at. I learned a lot from this experience and glad that I got to see what it would be like for me one day.
Hello and welcome back to my blog! Once again! Today, we are reflecting on my most recent project that just finished, Colonizing In A Tempest. Just like every project, we had a driving question, this project’s driving question was “How can we use Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and the history of New France to stage dramatic tableaus that help an audience understand the lasting effects of colonization?”. In case you are wondering, tableaus are like a play except the characters stand in one position and each character says one line. Let’s just say that it was a lot harder than it looks. There were lots and lots of Milestones but sadly, I won’t be able to explain all of them to you, the only ones that I will explain are the ones that helped me best understand the driving question.
1. What was life like in a colony? Skit + reflection
So, number one, after we learned a whole lot about Colonization, we were assigned to create a skit to show the audience what life was like in a colony in the New France era, I found this pretty fun since I am half French Canadian. In my skit, we were supposed to present the different roles in a colony and different people. My group and I decided to not only show it from one perspective but from 3. In our skit, we decided to not always use the same characters but put them in different scenes. Here is my skit:
Next, completing this activity, we had to write a reflection paragraph, so if you’d like to understand the skit more clearly, here it is:
I think that this activity really helped me understand the driving question because I got to learn more about the different roles in a colony and got true chance to get a sense of acting!
2. Active Readings
Now, on the Shakespeare part of our project, to help us understand the Shakespearean language and the play better, we completed these Active Readings. Every few days, we would watch one act of the play (there were five) then complete an active reading that had to do with the play.
Here they are:
I think that the active readings really helped me understand the driving question because it made the Shakespearean language much easier to understand and would force you to actually pay attention to the play and focus more while watching it. I especially had lots of trouble understanding the Shakespearean language because Shakespeare used all of these words and sentences that I did not understand one bit, it was very confusing.
3. New France History & The Tempest Timeline
The next thing that helped me understand the driving question was the thing that pulled those “two worlds” together: The history of New France and the play “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare. After we created a mood board (that showed the emotions that The Tempest made you feel throughout the play), we tried to connect those to the feelings of the New France era, and it ended up pretty well. It looked something like this except in a real timeline:
Hi! Welcome back to my blog! School is coming to an end, which means that there will be lots of final projects coming: you can expect to see a post on my tPOLs (just like mPOLs, click here to see it), my spring exhibition (click to see my winter exhibition post here) and my Blue Sky (it’s a project near the end of the year). But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today! So, you may be thinking, what is PGP? Are you making a real Time Machine? Like, a Back to the Future Time Machine? Or something along those lines… Well, PGP is this new course that was introduced to PLP, it stands for Personal Growth Plan, it teaches you how to become a better learner or just a better person overall.
Now for the Time Machine, I’m sorry to let you down, but it’s not a real Time Machine. My PGP Time Machine is my final project for this course (PGP), it is supposed to be something that we can present to our past self to educate our past self about all the wonder-ness of PGP and about things that I should know that I “wish I knew before”.
So now, let’s get onto the actual process of this project.
Since I chose to do a puppet show, I had to make the puppet (s), I had to write the script/what I was going to say, I had to film it, I had to edit it, I had to prepare my conclusion/reflection and now, this!
Our first step was our Proposal form, what we wanted to do, here was mine:
2. Making the Puppets
I made lots and lots of research to find a really good puppet with the materials I had at home, I finally found this video on Youtube:
It was pretty well explained and understandable.
The materials consisted of cardboard and fabric, since I didn’t have fabric in those type of squares and made for that specific craft, I used a shirt that I didn’t use anymore and it worked just as well!
It took me about two days to finish everything but it was definitely worth it because I think that they turned out pretty well!
3. Script
For my script, I wanted to include an introduction for people that don’t really know what a Time Machine is, so I made a small introduction for them to understand it better.
Then there was my story, my story is between two friends: Procrastinating Peter and Productive Penney, this also kind of reminded me of the type of relationship between my brother sometimes (that’s why I got him to be the voice of Peter), he always wants to do the things he wants first (like video games) before doing work. Procrastinating Peter was also kind of like my past self as well because I used to be like that and think the same way.
Lastly, for my conclusion, I reflected on the time of my past self, how I’ve changed and how my productivity has “evolved”.
Here is my script, is the last version but it was way different before.
4. Filming
Now, this was quite a struggle, I wanted to find a way to have my backdrop being hung up in the background with me sitting under it so you couldn’t see me in theshot. Since I had nothing but scotch tape to hang it up, it kept falling down. So, I took the back of one of my chairs to hold it up. For filming, I had to film it myself so I had to pile up a bunch of boxes on a chair to get the right angle. It was quite the challenge
5. Editing
This took me the longest to do, it took lots and lots of time since I wanted it to be absolutely perfect. I tried many different ways to get my audio in the story: I tried talking, subtitles and then I ended up going back to Talking.
6. Conclusion
This was a very fun yet challenging project to do but, everyone likes a challenge! I really wish I knew about Things, Time Blocking, the 7 habits and Goal Setting because I would’ve been a lot more organized, having a balanced life and setting goals!
My Time Machine had 2 drafts and there is quite a drastic difference between the two:
BeforeAfter
Now, in the words of Ally, thank you for attending my TedTalk.
I borrowed this picture from Gabby E (with permission of course!), go checkout her blog!
On December 21st, was what I thought to be one of the most stressful nights of my life so far but, it turns out, that it wasn’t even that bad! Drum role pleeeasee….it’s called the..Winter exhibition!
Well, you probably already read the title so, let me explain what the Winter exhibition really is about, so this special night is presented by each grade in PLP, in which each grade has their own assigned area to present their work. This Exhibition is supposed to be the last and final big project of our first half of the year. In my case (grade 8), we were assigned to do ours about religion, specifically eastern and western ones; Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.
Before we did the exhibition, we all had the chance to learn at least a little bit about each of these religions and visit each religion’s place of worship. My group (Rhiann, Kaden and Jude), were assigned Sikhism.
There were quite a few steps to accomplish before the exhibition, first, we had to make a poster explaining the 7 aspects of worldview; Geography, time, beliefs, society, values, economy and knowledge. Second, we had to preserve food/a beverage for the audience. Third, to create a game/activity for the audience to take part in. And fourth, we also had to bring some decorations to make the stand look better overall and to plan how it’s going to be set up.
So, let’s start with the first part of course, the poster. The main use of the poster was to show the audience the worldview of the Sikhs. Click here to see my post about wordview if you’d like to learn more.
Here is our first draft, it honestly looked a lot more clean and organized than the other posters but, our idea wasn’t the best since it had the exact same one as the example poster that our teachers showed us for inspiration. Our teacher also decided to rank us from best to worst posters because it would also help us with our competitive sides to always have the best one.
Here is our second draft, we tried to make our poster a lot better, by that, I mean get rid of our first poster and recreate a fresh, new idea. Just like what we were supposed to do, we needed to represent the seven aspects of worldview, or just the worldview of the followers of our religion’s worldview. So, this poster doesn’t exactly LOOK good, but the idea certainly was ALOT better.The colours may not look like a good choice for the background but, they are the main colours of the Sikh religion. For rankings, surprisingly got second place.
So our third draft, I think that it certainly looked a lot better. We had the idea and look right ish, we just needed to tweak up some parts a little then we would be ready to go. Just like, change our phrases/make them shorter and edit/clean up the visuals. For rankings, we got first place.
Here is our fourth draft, we changed the words up, tried to experience with a new font and add a filter on the food to make it look more like a drawing since the other visuals were too. For the rankings, we got third place.
Finally, our fifth draft, we decided to trash the idea of using a new font, we decided that we liked our old one better. We also, did had a little finishing touch with the words, then we were done!
Next, is the food/drink. My group wanted to make some food that the would look appealing/taste good for the audience and be easy to transport. Since Curry was way too hard to transport, we looked at making Lassi. Lassi is a Sikh drink that is basically a mango flavoured yogurt smoothie. We also decided on making sugar cookies with orange icing on top.
Next, the fourth step, our activity, the activity that we did was a sort of Jeopardy, if you’d like to check it out, click here. The majority of the information was on the poster except for the bonus questions.
Now for the last step before presenting, was our station planning/appearance, since I was so busy and with all of these things on my mind about the exhibition, I did not think about taking pictures so to make an easier visual for you, here is a drawing bellow.
So, those orange boxes that you see are exactly in the name, they to show our very best pictures from the sikh temple that we visited. Next to our left box, we have our photo documentaries that are basically a slideshow of the best pictures that we took of the religious sites with a specific theme, mine was symbols. Here is a link if you would like to watch it. Then, we have our activity followed by the food and another box with our poster drafts.
We were also presenting our photo documentaries which were our best photos from our feild studies to all the religious sites that we went to as a class. Here is mine if you’d like to watch it.
In conclusion, just like what I said at the beginning, this exhibition which was thought to be super stressful, was not. This proves that when you are well prepared, you stress a lot less. I really enjoyed this experience and I’m super excited to do it again! I think that my group worked very well together, we all split our tasks equally for example, Jude was in charge of the Jeopardy game, Rhiann and I were in charge of food, and so on. We also all presented pretty well, we spoke clearly and loud enough.
